I have never witnessed first hand a lion killing an antelope; I have only seen carefully edited film which is almost always more sympathetic to the fleeing antelope than the very hungry lion with cubs to feed. It is difficult to resist the slant of the film maker that the predator is cruel and evil (at least to some extent) and the prey is innocent and good (pretty much entirely). Are the furry little animals in one's yard vermin one would wish to be preyed upon, or are they cute little bunny rabbits. 1 rabbit is cute. Way too many rampantly reproducing rabbits are vermin. Come, Lord Eagle, Prince Hawk, feast and raise a plentiful brood.

It follows, then, that the "good life" is not the most "moral" life exactly, but rather the least "immoral" life. — darthbarracuda

There have to be both moral lives and immoral lives for us to know that there is a difference. I propose that we are not always immoral, even least immoral, all the time. We are often moral, occasionally immoral; more and less moral, more and less immoral.

For we all screw up. We all cause tension between people. We all halt the desires of others while maintaining our own. And yet we can't help it, either. — darthbarracuda

"All we, like sheep, have gone astray. We have turned, everyone one in his own way. And the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all."

No, we can't help it, because we are part of nature. While we do not each seek exclusively our own good, we do and we must take care of our own needs once we are able. (Unlike lions, though, we tend to cull as much of the herd as we can get our claws into, to our long-term disadvantage.)

I like where you're taking this but, to offer a slightly different perspective, I suggest you look at it from a dynamic as opposed to a static point of view. The fact that our lives are "least immoral" rather than "most moral" is because our minds have now left our bodies in the dust in an evolutionary sense. Surely you must've heard of the expression, "X was way ahead of his time" and these words perfectly describe how our bodies and the so-called reptilian parts of our brain are far behind our higher mental faculties with respect to morality. Yes, emotions have a major role in morality but it's our reason that actually discerns right from wrong and our reason, evident from our everyday experiences, doesn't have complete authority over the way we live our lives. It's reason that allows you to see the "most moral" but it's the other less-evolved side to us (our bodies and certain parts of the brain) that makes "least immoral" the only moral life we can muster. Give it time. Perhaps the parts of us that I referred to as less-evolved will catch up. Fingers crossed.

I think this is a very interesting point.

Although, I think that drawing a clear line between our "reason" and our "emotion" is problematic.

To reference David Hume:

"Moral distinctions are not derived from reason ... Moral distinctions are derived from the moral sentiments: feelings of approval (esteem, praise) and disapproval (blame) felt by spectators who contemplate a character trait or action"

(Source: Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.)

Hume also said that reason is a "slave of the passions", i.e. it merely puts into practice morals derived from elsewhere. This leaves us in a quandary if we are to claim that morals are derived from reason.

Hume also said that reason is a "slave of the passions" — afterthegame

With respect due to the great David Hume, what he said can only be the result of his reason putting 2 and 2 together regarding its relationship with the passions. Like someone once told me, the first step to solving a problem is to recognize it and Hume's succinct pronouncement marks this first step, as a Jedi once said, towards bringing balance to the force or, if all goes well, eradicating the Sith who feed off of passion.

the first step to solving a problem is to recognize it — TheMadFool

It almost comes down to a "chicken and egg" problem, haha. What came first: reason or emotion?

Personally, I would say that emotion comes first.

Let us take the example of a calculator which, by today's standards, is a very basic computer. Nonetheless, it can represent the activities of the human brain. We can put whatever we want into that calculator. We could input millions of sums. But in the end we will only choose 1 sum out of those many many possibilities.

My understanding is that our conscious thought processes work the same way. There are millions of possible thoughts. But only 1 will emerge from the brainy ether. What determines that is an emotion, which is provoked by unconscious thought, which in turn is provoked by an external stimulus.

emotion comes first — afterthegame

Well, we're supposed to be the brand-new species, just 2 - 3 million years old and there's a reason I suppose why the primitive parts of our brains are labeled reptilian.

What determines that is an emotion, which is provoked by unconscious thought, which in turn is provoked by an external stimulus. — afterthegame

This doesn't seem to add up especially if you consider what you said above. If emotions precede reason, how can thought/reason be the link between emotions and external stimuli.

I have a theory though and it requires the notion of degrees of reason. This is a must if we're to accommodate the fact that emotions are essentially reactions to stimuli, whether physical or mental, and thus have to be reasoned to at some point along the process from stimulus to emotion. In most animals, there's just that amount of reason necessary to transform a stimulus into an emotion but in humans, there's a whole lot more of reason and that makes us susceptible to/capable of translating a greater variety of our experiences into emotions. In short, it appears that, contrary to what I've been saying, emotions in humans, due to how well we can reason, are more complex, or perhaps, more accurately, more complicated.

But then again we have the small matter of emotions being, till date, unprogrammable on a computer. Making a computer logical is, quite oddly I must say, the easy part. Is reason really the more advanced part of the human brain? If yes, why is it so easy to physically replicate on a machine? If no, then emotions can't be primitive or reptilian. All this assuming evolution is moving in a direction from the simple to the complex.

Because of this, I believe that to a certain extent, all conscious entities (thus morally-responsible entities) are morally disqualified....
It follows, then, that the "good life" is not the most "moral" life exactly, but rather the least "immoral" life. . — darthbarracuda

Sometimes the hole dug is wa-ay deeper than you thought it was - or at least a little bit deeper. It's a common enough flaw in thinking and argument to equivocate absolutes, yielding, for example, absurdities like partial or absolute truth.

The notion of moral disqualification is (imo) no small matter. But you both giveth and taketh when next you imply that morality is on some kind of continuum. A gold ring, for example, need not itself be pure gold, but the gold in it certainly is. Is morality then the gold? Or the alloy? In a ring, of course, the alloy makes stronger, the cheapening being incidental and a matter of market. With respect to morality, perhaps the alloy makes the ground of possibility. That is, if disqualified from morality as any kind of categorical 24-karat perfection, then perhaps morality as human possibility becomes the attempt to be moral.

Implicit too is that morality is a matter of reason, inevitably clouded by sentiment or feeling. And that's to be argued. Interesting stuff. What, then, do you say morality is, and of what a function?