Descartes launched a similar project. Ultimately the will to live conquers skepticism. There's a path in front if you. Put foot to path.

First, the pragmatic perspective: whether you like it or not, practically all of our knowledge is fallible. You can either a) curl up in a ball and do nothing, or b) accept this and place your epistemology on pragmatic grounds.

Second, the whole "certainty is a necessary condition for knowledge" thing is highly questionable. I suggest looking into actual epistemologists and what they have had to say.

You could try to take up an art as a hobby. Personally, I enjoy Tai Chi, dancing, singing, piano playing and drawing. You'll find lots of new and wonderful experiences in the arts.

Unfortunately I don't think the will to live conquers skepticism at least applied to me, I've suffered enough in this life and if I can't find the meaning in it, something true that makes it worth it, I really don't have desire to keep on living

Unfortunately I'm a "Sciences" kind of guy and the thing I desire the most is the truth, an experience for me is only worth having if it has some value, some purpose, of course I like to feel pleasure and be happy, but that is not at all what I want or need from life, it seems that what I want from life is something that I can't have at all.

Thanks for your answer, I will follow your suggestion and read more about epistemology.

Sorry to hear that.

... the more I searched for certainty and order in things the more I started to notice that nothing at all is certain ... — John Pride

How can you be certain that nothing at all is certain?

I have put aside all beliefs because they in no way can be used as tools to reach truth ... — John Pride

But you evidently hold to the belief that beliefs in no way can be used as tools to reach truth.

I do not mean to downplay the struggle that you are experiencing; rather, just to point out that having beliefs that are uncertain is an inescapable aspect of the human condition. I often quote this passage from Charles Sanders Peirce, because I think that he makes a very important point.

We cannot begin with complete doubt. We must begin with all the prejudices which we actually have when we enter upon the study of philosophy. These prejudices are not to be dispelled by a maxim, for they are things which it does not occur to us can be questioned. Hence this initial skepticism will be a mere self-deception, and not real doubt; and no one who follows the Cartesian method will ever be satisfied until he has formally recovered all those beliefs which in form he has given up. It is, therefore, as useless a preliminary as going to the North Pole would be in order to get to Constantinople by coming down regularly upon a meridian. A person may, it is true, in the course of his studies, find reason to doubt what he began by believing; but in that case he doubts because he has a positive reason for it, and not on account of the Cartesian maxim. Let us not pretend to doubt in philosophy what we do not doubt in our hearts. — CP 5.265, 1868

Most of your beliefs are reasonably accurate. The ones that are mistaken will either become apparent from your subsequent experience, or will not make much difference anyway. A life of inquiry, scientific and otherwise, is well worth living - even though you must always treat your findings as provisional.

I will say this: you will probably not find a way to fully eliminate Cartesian levels of skepticism. There will always be room for doubt. The question is whether we need to have no room for doubt in order to claim knowledge.

...

Start with something that you personally cannot deny, and go from there.

Imagine dropping a heavy television onto your fleshy and exposed toes. Ouch.

Pain hurts. Dropping a T.V on your foot is undesirable.

You would be surprised how much you can reason from such a basic fact.

I don't know if you can relate or if your situation is similar but I use to worry about how short of a life we have along with the fact that if we die and don't live again or have an after life it kind of makes everything moot; along with the fact that even if we could live a little long ours lives in many ways could or would still be moot. The sensation of such anxiety and depression could be a liken to someone trapped in a slow burning house where they as well move about slowing yet inevitably knowing that no matter where they run to they will still be in the same house and they will always need to find a way to escape. It also doesn't help that the people around you being in the same situation since they likely don't see the problem at all or at least not the same way as you do.

"We do what we do because that is the way that we do it". and after some time of playing this game we call life, reality, or whatever we return back to the inanimate nothingness from which we came. While other people may try to rationalize the situation, the truth is under all the narratives built up by our axioms and sugar coating we put on our reality is there is no truth, or rhyme or reason to everything. And to make matters worse or mind/neural bio-feedback system CRAVES purpose and meaning like a addict fiends for drugs, often making it difficult for someone in situations that are like what you say you are in.

I don't have advice that is guaranteed to work since I don't know you, and each person in such a situation may require unique help but it might be useful to take a step back and realize that a it is somewhat normal to be in this state of mind (as anyone being depressed over the questioning their religion or belief system sometimes becomes), and that by taking some small steps you can help normalize the situation.

If you can't find a rational reason for putting up with reality, you can choose to just become more hedonistic and choose to do things that you like to do, instead of always sacrificing momentary happiness for some greater goal. Yes, this may make you less disciplined and less focused but as you said yourself those things don't matter as much as they use to. Think of it like this way, when you are a kid you are really only focused on your momentary happiness, and it really doesn't matter if the world is going to end next week if you get to have a really cool party today. While this isn't perfect it might be a better course of action than being paralyzed by anxiety and depression.

The only other advice I can give you than being a reckless hedonist is to try and develop a variety mental tricks that help you with your depression and anxiety. I call them trick because they are simple techniques people use to cope with their problems. Some of these might be momentary escapism/romanticism, dark or cavalier humor, occasional drinking and other vices when things gets a little to much, and/or certain eastern philosophies if and when using vices and dreaming all day become too much of a problem. Ok, maybe I don't have the mental tricks thing down since many of them may make matters even worse but the alternative is to find a way to brainwash yourself enough so that you believe in whatever you believed (or perhaps start believing something else) before you stopped believing it.

Good luck! :D

I've suffered enough in this life and if I can't find the meaning in it, something true that makes it worth it, I really don't have desire to keep on living — John Pride

You might actually be suffering from a psychological malady, such as depersonalisation disorder, or anhedonia. Might be more beneficial to engage a counsellor than to try and philosophise your way out of it.

If for example I would see something that I think is morally wrong, not because I believe in it, but because it makes me FEEL bad, I can't even act or judge the situation if I have no undeniable justification as to why that is bad — John Pride

Educated feelings are as good a guide to right action as any other. Reasoning is always built on premises: where are the premises for moral action to come from but feelings, developed through experience and reflected upon rationally? I read Aristotle as a guide to ethics only late in life, but can recommend them with a good study guide. It's a question, for him, of doing the right thing in the right way with the right feelings. All the best.

Maybe, but in my experience (5+ years of seeing behavioral health 'specialists') the only benefit of going to the head shrinkers is that sometimes you can get them to give out meds. If there is anyone that it would help talking to it would be a friend or family member is has some real idea of the situation.

I'm not saying that none of them can help, I'm just saying that if a person fairly disciplined, intelligent, and knows enough about life and psych 101 to deal with most of their problems but yet has issues that can not be easily resolved then a few minutes (or even a few hours) with a behavioral health specialist will unlikely change things other then perhaps some access to meds that they where unable to get before. However even trying to get meds is such a process that it is often almost not worth it.

If you can tell yourself "don't worry, be happy" then you know about 98% of the skills it take to take care of yourself instead of seeing a newbie behavioral health specialist. And even if telling yourself that doesn't do anything, it doesn't matter since it won't work any better coming from someone else. Of course this is just my humble opinion and it is unlikely to hurt someone to see a head shrinker once if they haven't done so in order for them to draw their own opinion.

If you persisted for 5+ years, maybe you were being helped.

Not really, in order for me to get my meds it was a requirement that I had to continue seeing someone but I would try to schedule the appointments as far apart as possible. There also have been plenty of times where I haven't seen anyone.

Then again your talking to someone who has type 2 diabetes and has never monitored or really been careful with their blood sugar for the last two years that I've had it. I kind of get a kick out of watching a doctors reaction when I tell them that. :)

I also think a lot about what is meant by good and what is meant by bad, or would they exist without each other? I want to discuss this, that's why i have signed up for the forum, would you or anybody like to discuss some arguments about this?

Sure Override, I'm willing to discuss it. In fact ethics ,aside form religion, is one of my favorite topics. :)

You can do all kinds of mental gymnastics if you wish, but eventually many of us realize that what we know of as 'good' and 'evil' are merely best guesses as to what is good and evil according to true objective morality, that is if true objective morality exist. In layman terms humans are highly fallible so every time you hear someone say such and such are 'good' and/or 'evil' then it is helpful to note that it might only seem that way from their point of view.

In theory if one could perceive ALL the wants, needs, hopes, desires,etc of not only every thing that exists and has some kind of self interest BUT ALSO everything that could potentially be, you would have something very close (or at least a heck of a lot closer than we have) to an idea of what objective morality really looks like. As far as I can tell, the amount of information average person has on this kind of information would be less than one grain of sand in an hour glass, and possibly less than one grain of sand on a beach.

The easiest work around for this issue is too simply admit one's own ignorance on all kinds of big questions, label any of these really big questions as 'non-trivial' problems, and replace the words good and evil in my own internal critical thinking with the words 'useful' and 'counter productive' (or anything else that you wish to signify that good/evil merely means something is either useful to them or it is counter productive to the things they see as useful) and accept that when other people use the words good or evil that it fairly often that it is merely their opinion.

Also it is helpful to note that good/evil more or less can only be judged by the consequences of any particular action may cause. Kant and some other philosophers have made the mistake of saying certain actions are always 'good' (such as trying to be nice and polite to people I guess) and others are 'evil' (such as killing innocent people) regardless of the consequences of such actions. In simple mental models (or more accurately social norms and rules) of our world these things seem 'ok', until you factor in more complex factors.

I guess the simplest way to say that consequences are the only thing that doesn't make moral beliefs merely arbitrary, the only non-biased way to determine whether some action is good or bad has to be based on whatever actions such consequences bring; even if trying to determine what consequences certain actions may bring can be more complicated and messy then the way we usually think about it.
Anyways my time is kind of up (cause I got to go somewhere ) , but I'll continue if it seems like a few people are actually reading this stuff.

dclements thank you for your detailed answer, i also hope some other people would also read and contribute to this conversation.

You have pointed out some interesting themes where any of them i would lie to talk about, but one of the most interesting ones for me is just in your first sentence where sadly you mention that doesn't interest you much, that is the relation of good and evil with religion. If you don't mind I would like to start as beginning point on this, at least not what is good and evil in religion, but the relation of it with these terms.

The question i would have would definitely be "would there be good and evil if there was not religion and no punishment and reward for these actions after death" at all. This could be a difficult question for me to answer at once. To answer this question let's think this question first; "Which one was first in timeline: first religion or the invention of terms good and bad"? I don't think there would be any way to figure out the answer of this question also. This or alike sub-questions that would try to support answering first question will hardly bring us to a real answer, so not spending too much time on them, let's go to first question in simple way "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad?". This question is nearly impossible to answer in an absolute way cause there would be too much unknown and too many variables to consider about including human itself and relations with its social environment.

Until now i just wanted to show that there seems to be no direct way of answering the correlation between religion and good and bad relation directly. In such cases what i would like to do is go through the current phase, because current phase is the result of what have been in the past, without knowing the real reasons of what created them. This may not bring us to a point of absolute reality, but may bring us to a point where at least satisfies us to live with our questions in our minds.

I don't want to discuss religions deeply, but according to my perception of the world that we live on today, for majority of people including me, good and bad are related to religion. How i come to this point is the outside world taught me like this because i see on movies and on televisions and on holy religions this way. So looking at the current situation i think good and bad are thought to me and they are related with religion.

We can go to a different point from here, but if we can justify the thesis "good and evil is related with religion" that would be good starting point. Open to suggestions of course on how to continue.

Socrates said ''the only thing I know is that I know nothing''. They killed him but that's beside the point.

Absolutism is hypocritical in the sense that it asserts its "truth" regardless of what is true. It is indifferent to sufficient reason to believe x. Instead there "I want x!". That's not so scientific.

" dclements thank you for your detailed answer, i also hope some other people would also read and contribute to this conversation."
— Override

Your welcome. :D

"You have pointed out some interesting themes where any of them i would lie to talk about, but one of the most interesting ones for me is just in your first sentence where sadly you mention that doesn't interest you much, that is the relation of good and evil with religion. If you don't mind I would like to start as beginning point on this, at least not what is good and evil in religion, but the relation of it with these terms.

The question i would have would definitely be "would there be good and evil if there was not religion and no punishment and reward for these actions after death" at all. This could be a difficult question for me to answer at once. To answer this question let's think this question first; "Which one was first in timeline: first religion or the invention of terms good and bad"? I don't think there would be any way to figure out the answer of this question also. This or alike sub-questions that would try to support answering first question will hardly bring us to a real answer, so not spending too much time on them, let's go to first question in simple way "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad?". This question is nearly impossible to answer in an absolute way cause there would be too much unknown and too many variables to consider about including human itself and relations with its social environment."
— Override

Your kind of getting into some of the over thinking of things that I usually like to avoid but I guess that is "Ok" for now. If you can try to separate your thinking into two different tasks where one task you can either ask questions and/or speculate on whatever and the other is to merely collect data without asking too many questions or try to interpret the data in any way than what it is. You can think of this as some sort of medieval form of scientific inquiry on whatever but I believe it is not that far different than how they go about things today. The purpose of such methods is to sort of take take a snapshot and preserve whatever it is being monitored before the people that are allowed to speculate on the data can molest it for their own purposes. Maybe you can envision and understand the purpose of this but I will leave it at that for now.

Anyways your question if it could be easily answer would be worthy of a few doctoral thesis for sure if it was to be done properly, but since I don't have the time or resources for that I will have to rely on a more quicker and messier method. Man most likely discovered religion/ethics right about the time he evolved from animal to be something of what we consider to be human. While it is possible for man to have do this even earlier or for animals to have kind of ethics and religion, what we consider to be "ethics" and/or "religion" is to be a uniquely human trait (at least how it is defined in Western societies) I will stick with this version of it since it is the easier thing to do and will unlikely make a difference.

I'm no anthropologist but I believe it is likely the most of the first ethical/religious type questions and actions done by early man was a cross between day to day survival ( ie. primitive pragmatism) and early ceremonies and questioning about nearly anything. It might be hard to imagine why early man would bother to bury their dead or start rituals, but if you look at Shintoism (a primitive religion still practiced in Japan) you will see how the line between religious ceremony and common, if not occasionally odd social practices (like the Shiners with their funny hats and tiny motorcycles at parades) are not that far apart. If you think of it parades while not exactly the same thing as religious ceremony they are close enough to be the same thing in certain cultures. Anyways for me they are mostly the same thing and since I doing this the quick/dirty method I'll again just leave it at that and that most if not all religious ceremonies are just a kind of social ritual of one sort or another covered with a little bit of fluff so even if we didn't have 'religions' we would still have some sort of social/religious ceremonies of one sort or another just because it is part of human nature.

Ok, at this point I'm going to have to do something to make things quicker by mentioning that my viewpoint is influenced by Julian Jaynes's "Bicameralism" and his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" even though I have never really read the book. To the best of my knowledge his belief was that early man had kind of a "split personality" where at some times he operated as a simple minded individual that didn't think to much for themselves (or at least even more simple minded than many simple minded people today that still do the same) and a second ego that was tied directly to the Super or "God" ego. While not really the same thing in certain insect of other than human societies there is a kind of hive mind at play. Certain individuals in the group do the actual leg work of thinking about things and other members of the hive mostly focus on carrying out the tasks that need to be done. I like to think of the thinkers as some kind of 'chiefs' (who's job is sometimes made easier by other doing most of the physical work for them) and the other people as, as well just workers or drones since Indians doesn't have a good ring to it. The funny thing is that these workers or plebs can often do the job of thinking for themselves by merely asking themselves "what would the chief tell me to do" whenever they get cut off from their tribe. Or at least they could do that kind of thing long enough until they often got reconnected with them if they knew enough about how to survive. Anyways the theory goes that this mentality fell apart as soon as tribes got much bigger and people no longer had any real "chief" to rely on to tell them what to do, or at least any person that really act like a chief when too many other people also try and pretend to be a chief. Also the theory goes that there is a residual aspect of this mentality with us, and of course if this theory is true it would do a lot to explain the what, where, when, and whys of religion but it is mostly still just a theory and I believe there is still a lot of controversy and problems with it.

However if what Julian Jaynes and Bicameralism says is mostly true than religion was created as a kind of leftover mentality to help deal with our inability to function without a hive or tribal mind. It might also help to explain a bit why human beings tend to form hierarchical if not corrupt social structures since the beginning of time but some of that would be beyond this topic. For me ad my view of things it is merely a means to explain a lot of 'fluff' with religion/ethics that I usually like to ignore and/or explain away with the excuse that it is because, well it is just seems counter-protective to me.

Another issue I will mention is the binary/false dilemma. Whenever anyone talks about "good" and "evil" they often will have the tendency to think that something has to be one or the other much like some people think some answers have to be yes or no or how Beavis and Butthead would think that something was either cool or sucks. However characteristics or attributes of something in our world is more often than not more complicated than can be merely summed up in either one or two states. Even in digital logic where circuits are built specifically for their ability to be able to represent either '0' or '1', the actual implementation/dynamics of the circuits are more complicated and messy so the idea of them being a mere bit storing either a 0 or 1 isn't the whole truth. I'm getting a little bit long winded here but the point I'm trying to make is reality is often more complicated than can be represented in simple 'good'/'evil' labeling or any other models or labeling we can think of at the moment. I could on about other fallacies and how they effect our judgement but pointing out one, along with some of the issues of how religion can effect our judgement (whether for good or bad) should do for the moment.

Ok, so after all that we are left with a simple but real question which is "What action or actions(and/or thoughts) should I take that are best for me that would allow me to have the best life possible and/or the best outcome for both me and everyone else.". You see underneath all the fluff or morality, religion, and whatever else, ethics is merely a tool we use to survive. It is really nothing more and nothing less than this, however every waking moment of your existence is governed by the problems and issues that ethics tries to grapple with so it would be hard for me to stress enough the actual importance of it when everything we do requires us fall back to our 'simple tools' in order to fix or guide things in our lives.

Another way to break it down, is that ethics (and/or religion depending on how and what you define as religion) is instrumental in not only the big questions that primitive man use to really on their chiefs for, but also their supposedly mundane tasks they did each day to survive. I guess this in a way answers your question "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad" which would be both yes and no in that 'yes' people would still have to rely on some kind of system of beliefs in order to answer the question as to what they 'ought' to do (which in itself wouldn't be completely different from ethic/ religious/ ideological type thinking that we have today but also 'no' in that it isn't a given that such thinking would frame our actions and problems in the same way as today when some people say such and such are 'good' while something else is 'evil'. In other words there would or could be something of a "paradigm shift" where our system of seeing/talking/labeling of the world around us would be differnt than it had been before.

Hopefully I answered enough to move on at least for now...


"Until now i just wanted to show that there seems to be no direct way of answering the correlation between religion and good and bad relation directly. In such cases what i would like to do is go through the current phase, because current phase is the result of what have been in the past, without knowing the real reasons of what created them. This may not bring us to a point of absolute reality, but may bring us to a point where at least satisfies us to live with our questions in our minds."

— Override

In my way of thinking about things religion/ ethics/ morality/ ideology/ labeling things 'good'or 'bad/ and even any kind of system of beliefs you can think of are ALL MERELY LABELS FOR THE SAME THING. When your talking about someone's religion, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's ideology, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about when someone chooses to label things either 'good'or 'bad, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's morality, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about even any system of beliefs they may use to get about their day, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. I'm being kind of repetitive and I know each of those terms don't mean EXACTLY the same thing but in my humble opinion more often than not it isn't necessary to split hairs on how they are different when dealing with some of the more complicated stuff.


"I don't want to discuss religions deeply, but according to my perception of the world that we live on today, for majority of people including me, good and bad are related to religion. How i come to this point is the outside world taught me like this because i see on movies and on televisions and on holy religions this way. So looking at the current situation i think good and bad are thought to me and they are related with religion.

We can go to a different point from here, but if we can justify the thesis "good and evil is related with religion" that would be good starting point. Open to suggestions of course on how to continue."

— Override

If you have ever read post modern philosophy you might familiar with the terms 'narrative' and 'context'. In layman terms, a 'narrative' is kind of like a giant story that is told to everyone from the time they are kids to when they become adults and the term 'context' is term use to describe how something relates to narrative but more or less means the same thing as a narrative. As inside larger or main narrative there can be another smaller narratives or sub narratives much like there are sub plots within the main plot of a movie; and possibly smaller/sub narratives within those.The concept of a narrative/context can be both simple and complex because while they are something the same thing as mere religion and morality they are also concern with things like social norms, psychology social conditioning, various kind of subtle and/or benign brainwashing,etc.

To give you an example of how this works a type passage in post modern philosophy using the words narrative to say something might go something like this "the word 'good' and 'evil' only have meaning withing the context of the narrative they are derived from, but outside of that narrative they could be meaningless and/or moot". While someone who believes in 'good' and 'evil' could argue that that is not true and that their concepts of the world around them really has good and evil in it, the problem is left open for debate.

For the post modernist saying this, it is possible or probable that 'good' and 'evil' are merely labels/mental constructs of the world around us but may not actually represent how or what the world actually is. Even if they are wrong and mistaken in some way (and the guy who says such and such are 'good' or 'evil' is ACTUALLY correct in some way) is position is STILL SOUND AND 'Ok' from his point of view and for people that think like him. The reason for this is he is not arguing whether such and such are actually good or evil, but merely the possibly there being issue with how we label things good or evil. He likely also aware that even his own question of labeling of good and evil is in large part due to his own narrative that he is drawing from and since other people's narrative could be biased/flawed it (hopefully) would be as much of a surprise to him to eventually notice a thing or not correct in his own system of beliefs, even if that sometime takes a bit of time.

Ok, I finally got to the part where I need to reference the medieval scientist's data collectors. To quickly recap the data collectors (whether it is being done then or now) are only allowed to collect data and are nether allowed to 'fudge' the information/numbers nor add any kind of opinion into their process of collecting data. If you ever studied statistics and/or how people are able to 'lie' and/or cherry pick with it, you should understand why it needs to be done that way. If there needs to be any lying and or cherry picking actually done, it will be the data collector's superiors who have the authority to draw opinions and conclusions about such things. However the beauty such a system is the raw data can still be referenced by others (if it isn't destroyed, which could create more problems for the people who wish to destroy it than it is worth to do that) if they what to draw their own opinions about it.

In a system where collecting the data and drawing opinions is being done at the same time (which is how human thinking is done most of the time) any kind of data that we can find useful has a better chance to be shewed. The reason I'm bring this up is since you are wondering what it looks like to live in a world not influenced by 'good'/'evil', religions, etc all you got to do is think like one of these data collectors for a little while and you will start having a better grasp on it. While I'm sure you or anyone reading this may realize that writing down numbers appearing on a senor and deciding whether to lie to a killer who asked you to tell him where your friend is hiding are two completely separate things, there is actually a simple work around for that. But I probably should reference Hume in order to do that.

Hume's most famous quote (or at least the quote of his I know best) is "you cannot get an ought from an is". In layman terms this means that the actions one believes they should carry out for their greatest benefit (the 'ought' part of the post) CANNOT be derived by the mere facts and/or data (which is the 'is' he is referencing) that one is able to access at the time of that decision. That could sound really bad, since we but often derive and 'ought' when put in a certain situation and that choice isn't too rarely probably the best course of action at the time; whether we really had enough or not enough information/resource to go by. But the wrinkle is even if we are 'Ok' with getting an ought from an is throughout our lives, we are also aware of how fallible our thinking and actions can be and we also know that such 'judgement calls' can be full of issues and human error. Another way to look at it is every time you DO derive an 'ought' from an is and make one of these judgment calls, YOU HAVE TO RELY ON YOUR OPINION (or your best guess if you prefer to call it that) instead of actually being able to simply use the facts around you to determine what to do. I think Kierkegaard mentioned something about life being open ended because of this,but I can't remember too clearly if this was what he was talking about. Hopefully I'm not getting too long winded by now.

Anyways all this would be merely a kind of anal retentive for ethics except it can be applied to desensitizing ethical questioning and inquiry. While mere data can no longer apply to determine what need to do, the process of how data is used has determined (or at least in the how it works in the model I'm describing). While the paradigm shift isn't completely obvious, it isn't too hard to flesh out for you (or anyone reading this) who isn't already aware of what I'm talking about, of course that is if you don't understand.

For example it is a fact that you have to put gas in your car to go, but it isn't a fact that you ought to put gas in your car to make it go. The reason I used this example is it shouldn't be that hard to realize that for people that drive cars there often isn't a question of whether they should put gas in their car if they need to get somewhere but at the same time it is also obvious that it isn't a given that people should be taking that course of action at certain times. Also it is obviously a fact that cars need gas to go somewhere where needing to go somewhere is obviously not a fact, or at least it is almost is obviously not a fact.

A tougher example would be " is isn't a given a doctor 'ought' to give a patient a life saving vaccine/medicine/treatment/etc if doing so will save their life". Obviously saying something like this at the wrong time and/or place can get me B-slapped by someone that disagrees (which is part of the reason I use it) but I hope that anyone emotional just reading this can put such this to the side for one moment. In a narrative that relies too much on 'good' and 'evil' there is obviously a dilemma here. I'm sure some people can say saving someone is almost always 'good' and choosing to not help them is almost 'evil' and that there might be some exceptions here or there, but even that kind of open mindedness is incomplete. The thing that is being overlooked even in that context is that whether or not the doctor chooses to try and save someone depends if they believe that a human life is worth saving, which isn't as much of given (in Hume's type analyzing of things) as it is often a given in the 'good'/'evil' framework of things.

If you take that even one step further and start asking the questions such as " 'ought' we do everything to prevent wars and/or mass deaths of human being by other events", "is it a given that human beings/ the human race ought to survive","is a a given that humans 'ought' to pursue knowledge and progress to the best of our ability", "is it a given that my life has value and I ought to do everything in order to live" you might end up in area where John Pride was in his opening post if you are not in the right mindset when pondering such things. Depending on your frame of reference and how one ponders such things such questions can lead to skepticism, fallibilism, nihilsim and such. Anyways hopefully this kind of wraps up things as I started with primitive religions and ended with talking about some aspects of Post modernism and the issues dealt with by nihilsim and similar philosophies.

If there is some confusion it might help by listening to an old Jane's Addiction song called 'Ain't No Right' which is sort of about the issue at hand:

Jane's Addiction - Ain't No Right (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6691i0KDE

(One of my favorite parts of the video is when he gets hit by a shoe that someone threw at him at the concert)

Also one final note, this whole "can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' ", no good and evil, nihilism, etc isn't about it being a better system of morality/religion or whatever since all my arguments can be construed as one kind of hedonism or another (I like to label myself as a hedonistic nihilist, but I'm obviously trying to be cute when I do that).and anyone that knows something about hedonism could come up with reasons it is not so great. At any rate I hope I sort of got you where you wanted/needed to go.

" dclements thank you for your detailed answer, i also hope some other people would also read and contribute to this conversation."
— Override

Your welcome. :D

"You have pointed out some interesting themes where any of them i would lie to talk about, but one of the most interesting ones for me is just in your first sentence where sadly you mention that doesn't interest you much, that is the relation of good and evil with religion. If you don't mind I would like to start as beginning point on this, at least not what is good and evil in religion, but the relation of it with these terms.

The question i would have would definitely be "would there be good and evil if there was not religion and no punishment and reward for these actions after death" at all. This could be a difficult question for me to answer at once. To answer this question let's think this question first; "Which one was first in timeline: first religion or the invention of terms good and bad"? I don't think there would be any way to figure out the answer of this question also. This or alike sub-questions that would try to support answering first question will hardly bring us to a real answer, so not spending too much time on them, let's go to first question in simple way "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad?". This question is nearly impossible to answer in an absolute way cause there would be too much unknown and too many variables to consider about including human itself and relations with its social environment."
— Override

Your kind of getting into some of the over thinking of things that I usually like to avoid but I guess that is "Ok" for now. If you can try to separate your thinking into two different tasks where one task you can either ask questions and/or speculate on whatever and the other is to merely collect data without asking too many questions or try to interpret the data in any way than what it is. You can think of this as some sort of medieval form of scientific inquiry on whatever but I believe it is not that far different than how they go about things today. The purpose of such methods is to sort of take take a snapshot and preserve whatever it is being monitored before the people that are allowed to speculate on the data can molest it for their own purposes. Maybe you can envision and understand the purpose of this but I will leave it at that for now.

Anyways your question if it could be easily answer would be worthy of a few doctoral thesis for sure if it was to be done properly, but since I don't have the time or resources for that I will have to rely on a more quicker and messier method. Man most likely discovered religion/ethics right about the time he evolved from animal to be something of what we consider to be human. While it is possible for man to have do this even earlier or for animals to have kind of ethics and religion, what we consider to be "ethics" and/or "religion" is to be a uniquely human trait (at least how it is defined in Western societies) I will stick with this version of it since it is the easier thing to do and will unlikely make a difference.

I'm no anthropologist but I believe it is likely the most of the first ethical/religious type questions and actions done by early man was a cross between day to day survival ( ie. primitive pragmatism) and early ceremonies and questioning about nearly anything. It might be hard to imagine why early man would bother to bury their dead or start rituals, but if you look at Shintoism (a primitive religion still practiced in Japan) you will see how the line between religious ceremony and common, if not occasionally odd social practices (like the Shiners with their funny hats and tiny motorcycles at parades) are not that far apart. If you think of it parades while not exactly the same thing as religious ceremony they are close enough to be the same thing in certain cultures. Anyways for me they are mostly the same thing and since I doing this the quick/dirty method I'll again just leave it at that and that most if not all religious ceremonies are just a kind of social ritual of one sort or another covered with a little bit of fluff so even if we didn't have 'religions' we would still have some sort of social/religious ceremonies of one sort or another just because it is part of human nature.

Ok, at this point I'm going to have to do something to make things quicker by mentioning that my viewpoint is influenced by Julian Jaynes's "Bicameralism" and his book "The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind" even though I have never really read the book. To the best of my knowledge his belief was that early man had kind of a "split personality" where at some times he operated as a simple minded individual that didn't think to much for themselves (or at least even more simple minded than many simple minded people today that still do the same) and a second ego that was tied directly to the Super or "God" ego. While not really the same thing in certain insect of other than human societies there is a kind of hive mind at play. Certain individuals in the group do the actual leg work of thinking about things and other members of the hive mostly focus on carrying out the tasks that need to be done. I like to think of the thinkers as some kind of 'chiefs' (who's job is sometimes made easier by other doing most of the physical work for them) and the other people as, as well just workers or drones since Indians doesn't have a good ring to it. The funny thing is that these workers or plebs can often do the job of thinking for themselves by merely asking themselves "what would the chief tell me to do" whenever they get cut off from their tribe. Or at least they could do that kind of thing long enough until they often got reconnected with them if they knew enough about how to survive. Anyways the theory goes that this mentality fell apart as soon as tribes got much bigger and people no longer had any real "chief" to rely on to tell them what to do, or at least any person that really act like a chief when too many other people also try and pretend to be a chief. Also the theory goes that there is a residual aspect of this mentality with us, and of course if this theory is true it would do a lot to explain the what, where, when, and whys of religion but it is mostly still just a theory and I believe there is still a lot of controversy and problems with it.

However if what Julian Jaynes and Bicameralism says is mostly true than religion was created as a kind of leftover mentality to help deal with our inability to function without a hive or tribal mind. It might also help to explain a bit why human beings tend to form hierarchical if not corrupt social structures since the beginning of time but some of that would be beyond this topic. For me ad my view of things it is merely a means to explain a lot of 'fluff' with religion/ethics that I usually like to ignore and/or explain away with the excuse that it is because, well it is just seems counter-protective to me.

Another issue I will mention is the binary/false dilemma. Whenever anyone talks about "good" and "evil" they often will have the tendency to think that something has to be one or the other much like some people think some answers have to be yes or no or how Beavis and Butthead would think that something was either cool or sucks. However characteristics or attributes of something in our world is more often than not more complicated than can be merely summed up in either one or two states. Even in digital logic where circuits are built specifically for their ability to be able to represent either '0' or '1', the actual implementation/dynamics of the circuits are more complicated and messy so the idea of them being a mere bit storing either a 0 or 1 isn't the whole truth. I'm getting a little bit long winded here but the point I'm trying to make is reality is often more complicated than can be represented in simple 'good'/'evil' labeling or any other models or labeling we can think of at the moment. I could on about other fallacies and how they effect our judgement but pointing out one, along with some of the issues of how religion can effect our judgement (whether for good or bad) should do for the moment.

Ok, so after all that we are left with a simple but real question which is "What action or actions(and/or thoughts) should I take that are best for me that would allow me to have the best life possible and/or the best outcome for both me and everyone else.". You see underneath all the fluff or morality, religion, and whatever else, ethics is merely a tool we use to survive. It is really nothing more and nothing less than this, however every waking moment of your existence is governed by the problems and issues that ethics tries to grapple with so it would be hard for me to stress enough the actual importance of it when everything we do requires us fall back to our 'simple tools' in order to fix or guide things in our lives.

Another way to break it down, is that ethics (and/or religion depending on how and what you define as religion) is instrumental in not only the big questions that primitive man use to really on their chiefs for, but also their supposedly mundane tasks they did each day to survive. I guess this in a way answers your question "if there was no religion, would there be good and bad" which would be both yes and no in that 'yes' people would still have to rely on some kind of system of beliefs in order to answer the question as to what they 'ought' to do (which in itself wouldn't be completely different from ethic/ religious/ ideological type thinking that we have today but also 'no' in that it isn't a given that such thinking would frame our actions and problems in the same way as today when some people say such and such are 'good' while something else is 'evil'. In other words there would or could be something of a "paradigm shift" where our system of seeing/talking/labeling of the world around us would be differnt than it had been before.

Hopefully I answered enough to move on at least for now...


"Until now i just wanted to show that there seems to be no direct way of answering the correlation between religion and good and bad relation directly. In such cases what i would like to do is go through the current phase, because current phase is the result of what have been in the past, without knowing the real reasons of what created them. This may not bring us to a point of absolute reality, but may bring us to a point where at least satisfies us to live with our questions in our minds."

— Override

In my way of thinking about things religion/ ethics/ morality/ ideology/ labeling things 'good'or 'bad/ and even any kind of system of beliefs you can think of are ALL MERELY LABELS FOR THE SAME THING. When your talking about someone's religion, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's ideology, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about when someone chooses to label things either 'good'or 'bad, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about someone's morality, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. When your talking about even any system of beliefs they may use to get about their day, your talking about how and/or why they choose to look at the world a certain way and how the act based on it. I'm being kind of repetitive and I know each of those terms don't mean EXACTLY the same thing but in my humble opinion more often than not it isn't necessary to split hairs on how they are different when dealing with some of the more complicated stuff.


"I don't want to discuss religions deeply, but according to my perception of the world that we live on today, for majority of people including me, good and bad are related to religion. How i come to this point is the outside world taught me like this because i see on movies and on televisions and on holy religions this way. So looking at the current situation i think good and bad are thought to me and they are related with religion.

We can go to a different point from here, but if we can justify the thesis "good and evil is related with religion" that would be good starting point. Open to suggestions of course on how to continue."

— Override

If you have ever read post modern philosophy you might familiar with the terms 'narrative' and 'context'. In layman terms, a 'narrative' is kind of like a giant story that is told to everyone from the time they are kids to when they become adults and the term 'context' is term use to describe how something relates to narrative but more or less means the same thing as a narrative. As inside larger or main narrative there can be another smaller narratives or sub narratives much like there are sub plots within the main plot of a movie; and possibly smaller/sub narratives within those.The concept of a narrative/context can be both simple and complex because while they are something the same thing as mere religion and morality they are also concern with things like social norms, psychology social conditioning, various kind of subtle and/or benign brainwashing,etc.

To give you an example of how this works a type passage in post modern philosophy using the words narrative to say something might go something like this "the word 'good' and 'evil' only have meaning withing the context of the narrative they are derived from, but outside of that narrative they could be meaningless and/or moot". While someone who believes in 'good' and 'evil' could argue that that is not true and that their concepts of the world around them really has good and evil in it, the problem is left open for debate.

For the post modernist saying this, it is possible or probable that 'good' and 'evil' are merely labels/mental constructs of the world around us but may not actually represent how or what the world actually is. Even if they are wrong and mistaken in some way (and the guy who says such and such are 'good' or 'evil' is ACTUALLY correct in some way) is position is STILL SOUND AND 'Ok' from his point of view and for people that think like him. The reason for this is he is not arguing whether such and such are actually good or evil, but merely the possibly there being issue with how we label things good or evil. He likely also aware that even his own question of labeling of good and evil is in large part due to his own narrative that he is drawing from and since other people's narrative could be biased/flawed it (hopefully) would be as much of a surprise to him to eventually notice a thing or not correct in his own system of beliefs, even if that sometime takes a bit of time.

Ok, I finally got to the part where I need to reference the medieval scientist's data collectors. To quickly recap the data collectors (whether it is being done then or now) are only allowed to collect data and are nether allowed to 'fudge' the information/numbers nor add any kind of opinion into their process of collecting data. If you ever studied statistics and/or how people are able to 'lie' and/or cherry pick with it, you should understand why it needs to be done that way. If there needs to be any lying and or cherry picking actually done, it will be the data collector's superiors who have the authority to draw opinions and conclusions about such things. However the beauty such a system is the raw data can still be referenced by others (if it isn't destroyed, which could create more problems for the people who wish to destroy it than it is worth to do that) if they what to draw their own opinions about it.

In a system where collecting the data and drawing opinions is being done at the same time (which is how human thinking is done most of the time) any kind of data that we can find useful has a better chance to be shewed. The reason I'm bring this up is since you are wondering what it looks like to live in a world not influenced by 'good'/'evil', religions, etc all you got to do is think like one of these data collectors for a little while and you will start having a better grasp on it. While I'm sure you or anyone reading this may realize that writing down numbers appearing on a senor and deciding whether to lie to a killer who asked you to tell him where your friend is hiding are two completely separate things, there is actually a simple work around for that. But I probably should reference Hume in order to do that.

Hume's most famous quote (or at least the quote of his I know best) is "you cannot get an ought from an is". In layman terms this means that the actions one believes they should carry out for their greatest benefit (the 'ought' part of the post) CANNOT be derived by the mere facts and/or data (which is the 'is' he is referencing) that one is able to access at the time of that decision. That could sound really bad, since we but often derive and 'ought' when put in a certain situation and that choice isn't too rarely probably the best course of action at the time; whether we really had enough or not enough information/resource to go by. But the wrinkle is even if we are 'Ok' with getting an ought from an is throughout our lives, we are also aware of how fallible our thinking and actions can be and we also know that such 'judgement calls' can be full of issues and human error. Another way to look at it is every time you DO derive an 'ought' from an is and make one of these judgment calls, YOU HAVE TO RELY ON YOUR OPINION (or your best guess if you prefer to call it that) instead of actually being able to simply use the facts around you to determine what to do. I think Kierkegaard mentioned something about life being open ended because of this,but I can't remember too clearly if this was what he was talking about. Hopefully I'm not getting too long winded by now.

Anyways all this would be merely a kind of anal retentive for ethics except it can be applied to desensitizing ethical questioning and inquiry. While mere data can no longer apply to determine what need to do, the process of how data is used has determined (or at least in the how it works in the model I'm describing). While the paradigm shift isn't completely obvious, it isn't too hard to flesh out for you (or anyone reading this) who isn't already aware of what I'm talking about, of course that is if you don't understand.

For example it is a fact that you have to put gas in your car to go, but it isn't a fact that you ought to put gas in your car to make it go. The reason I used this example is it shouldn't be that hard to realize that for people that drive cars there often isn't a question of whether they should put gas in their car if they need to get somewhere but at the same time it is also obvious that it isn't a given that people should be taking that course of action at certain times. Also it is obviously a fact that cars need gas to go somewhere where needing to go somewhere is obviously not a fact, or at least it is almost is obviously not a fact.

A tougher example would be " is isn't a given a doctor 'ought' to give a patient a life saving vaccine/medicine/treatment/etc if doing so will save their life". Obviously saying something like this at the wrong time and/or place can get me B-slapped by someone that disagrees (which is part of the reason I use it) but I hope that anyone emotional just reading this can put such this to the side for one moment. In a narrative that relies too much on 'good' and 'evil' there is obviously a dilemma here. I'm sure some people can say saving someone is almost always 'good' and choosing to not help them is almost 'evil' and that there might be some exceptions here or there, but even that kind of open mindedness is incomplete. The thing that is being overlooked even in that context is that whether or not the doctor chooses to try and save someone depends if they believe that a human life is worth saving, which isn't as much of given (in Hume's type analyzing of things) as it is often a given in the 'good'/'evil' framework of things.

If you take that even one step further and start asking the questions such as " 'ought' we do everything to prevent wars and/or mass deaths of human being by other events", "is it a given that human beings/ the human race ought to survive","is a a given that humans 'ought' to pursue knowledge and progress to the best of our ability", "is it a given that my life has value and I ought to do everything in order to live" you might end up in area where John Pride was in his opening post if you are not in the right mindset when pondering such things. Depending on your frame of reference and how one ponders such things such questions can lead to skepticism, fallibilism, nihilsim and such. Anyways hopefully this kind of wraps up things as I started with primitive religions and ended with talking about some aspects of Post modernism and the issues dealt with by nihilsim and similar philosophies.

If there is some confusion it might help by listening to an old Jane's Addiction song called 'Ain't No Right' which is sort of about the issue at hand:

Jane's Addiction - Ain't No Right (Video)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vx6691i0KDE

(One of my favorite parts of the video is when he gets hit by a shoe that someone threw at him at the concert)

Also one final note, this whole "can't get an 'ought' from an 'is' ", no good and evil, nihilism, etc isn't about it being a better system of morality/religion or whatever since all my arguments can be construed as one kind of hedonism or another (I like to label myself as a hedonistic nihilist, but I'm obviously trying to be cute when I do that).and anyone that knows something about hedonism could come up with reasons it is not so great. At any rate I hope I sort of got you where you wanted/needed to go.

In my way of thinking about things religion/ ethics/ morality/ ideology/ labeling things 'good'or 'bad/ and even any kind of system of beliefs you can think of are ALL MERELY LABELS FOR THE SAME THING. — dclements

I agree. It's as if personalities are founded on core beliefs. Sometimes a core belief is abandoned and a person experiences a revolution in their thinking. A child who believes in God might eventually decide that the sky is empty and the universe doesn't care. That all the talk of right and wrong is just talk about preferences. Those with power prefer X and will punish Y. So the world is transformed from a righteously ruled rational realm to a chaos of force, persuasion, and self-invention. I think those who want God not to exist are attracted to being a small, fragile god themselves. Indeed, the lonely little man in the void is simultaneously grand and godlike in his consciousness. To lose God properly is also to lose every ideology that might dominate the individual (it's just monkey-breath in the void, right?) On the other hand, our starring monkeys want a dominant position. They want their self-invention recognized and thereby realized objectively. So they identity themselves with trans-personal principles (politics, art) that others also identity with, so that status becomes a measure of incarnating truth or justice or science rather than the traditional God. But as you say, it's more or less the same. The point is to climb to the high place. The point is status and its enjoyment in terms of some virtue. Of course I would use this theory to explain the creation and presentation of this theory.

Socrates said ''the only thing I know is that I know nothing''. They killed him but that's beside the point.
—TheMadFool
Part of the reason they killed him is they realized he knew too much. For many knowing that you know nothing sounds like your stupid, but for others they realize he is aware of the things he doesn't know; which means he is at least smarter than the people who thing he is stupid for admitting his knowledge of what is more or less insignificant when compared to that which he doesn't have knowledge of. Of course when he says this he is hinting that this is true of us all whether we like to admit it or not.

One person knowing this may not make much of a difference, but if that one person is able to teach/influence too many others it might upset the status quo that exists in a society. And that is likely the reason they decided to kill him; that plus he might of seemed to arrogant at his trial.

"I agree. It's as if personalities are founded on core beliefs. Sometimes a core belief is abandoned and a person experiences a revolution in their thinking. A child who believes in God might eventually decide that the sky is empty and the universe doesn't care. That all the talk of right and wrong is just talk about preferences. Those with power prefer X and will punish Y. So the world is transformed from a righteously ruled rational realm to a chaos of force, persuasion, and self-invention. I think those who want God not to exist are attracted to being a small, fragile god themselves. Indeed, the lonely little man in the void is simultaneously grand and godlike in his consciousness. To lose God properly is also to lose every ideology that might dominate the individual (it's just monkey-breath in the void, right?) On the other hand, our starring monkeys want a dominant position. They want their self-invention recognized and thereby realized objectively. So they identity themselves with trans-personal principles (politics, art) that others also identity with, so that status becomes a measure of incarnating truth or justice or science rather than the traditional God. But as you say, it's more or less the same. The point is to climb to the high place. The point is status and its enjoyment in terms of some virtue. Of course I would use this theory to explain the creation and presentation of this theory."
—Ignignot

True. Whether we are a hedonist, atheist, or theist we are influenced by our id/ego and the base desires that come with them. While we all may have dreams and higher purpose in mind to guide our actions, the human condition binds us much like a leash does with a dog. And this is true whether we remain in a low place or manage to occasionally climb to a higher place that you mention. After all a higher rung on the latter only means one is able to get a leash is just a little bit longer for a little while until someone decides to put it back to it's original length.

It may sound very demeaning for me to word it this way, but if it is really that way (perhaps I'm just exaggerating just a little), it would still be appropriate. At least while reading your comments I feel a little bit less crazy then I sometimes imagine myself to be. :)

While we all may have dreams and higher purpose in mind to guide our actions, the human condition binds us much like a leash does with a dog. — dclements

Great analogy. I think it was Diogenes who masturbated in the street and joked that he wish he could do the same trick with his stomach, which is to say just rub it to make the hunger go away. To be fair, much of the pleasure of life is animal or bodily pleasure. But there's definitely a less obviously bodily "status" pleasure as well, since many will starve themselves to be seen in a certain body.

It may sound very demeaning for me to word it this way, but if it is really that way (perhaps I'm just exaggerating just a little), it would still be appropriate. At least while reading your comments I feel a little bit less crazy then I sometimes imagine myself to be. — dclements

I was just reflecting on this in another thread. We associate sanity with education as a general rule in this culture, and yet some of most praised and famous thinkers are "crazy" in the sense that they threaten not only yesterday's sacred cows but also today's. There's something creepy about thinking, and yet there's something comforting about an old, famous book --as long as it stays on the shelf. A good analogy might be that most Christians believe in the miracles that happened 2000 years ago, but not many (as I understand it) believe in a miracle that happened this morning across the street. There's a distance effect involved that sanitizes the situation.