mway wrote:
(please argue).

mway wrote:
Morality is a code of conduct. A code that changes over time,

"mway" wrote:
and has no basis other then that which is conjured up out of thin air (please argue).

"mway" wrote:
I was wondering if anyone on these forums had a logical, rational reason for the continuance of morality at all?

"mway" wrote:
Could we all not just do what we want?

"mway" wrote:
What difference would it make?

I personally believe that there are no "higher values", no inherent morals present in nature or dictated by a higher intelligence.

When thinking about morals and such, I find it useful to think about where morals came from in the first place. For this I will refer to Friedrich Nietzsche's Genealogy of Morals.

Nietzsche thought that people possess a "Will to Power", a drive, a force, a will to exert power and influence. During the times when no communities of any sort existed man's Will to Power was exerted outwards onto to the world. However, when communities were established man found that he would have to control is primal desires to exert himself on his surroundings in order to be fit to live in a useful community. Thus, the Will to Power was turned inwards on oneself and now man himself became a new wilderness to conquer. Morals, then, come from a process of self observation (driven by this Will to Power), such observations do include one's community, one's environment, and these observations are what we use to determine what is good and bad. Morals are therefore subjective; their existence is mind-dependant. There are no universal morals that one is judged by that distinguish the "good" from the "evil." There is only what you think and what others think.

Your ethics are entirely based on your perceptions and therefore, unfortunately for you, may be influenced by irrational emotion.

Many people, when viewing ethics in this way, conclude that they are meaningless/valueless (nihilism). On the contrary, I do believe that there is a rational justification for having ethics:

1. Your Will. "I want", "I will", is, for me, a logical justification for holding a certain moral. "Why do you believe this?": "because I want to." You have a Will and that Will is bound to manifest values and ethics of some sort, unless the Will itself deteriorates (which is also inherent in nihilism). You can base your ethics on rationalisations, for example, "I believe that eating animals is wrong because it causes suffering to them", though of course you’re going to have to take a "leap to faith" (read Søren Kierkegaard) and simply assert, with your Will, that "suffering is wrong."

2. It is beneficial to have ethics. Ethics are based on value judgements. The destruction of what is valuable is "bad" and that which preserves/creates value is "good." Man thrives on value, it spirits man to do great deeds and create great art but on a smaller scale it is an expression of mans power to exert his own preferences and the Will flourishes on this. Contrast this to nihilists, who find nothing valuable and become apathetic, their Will is paralysed.

Though this still does not answer the question of whether ethics are valuable or not, it merely points out the utility of them. Why should you care about ethics, about your Will or about your benefit in the first place? Why make the irrational assumptions that these things are meaningful?

That motivation to create value, to create ethics, must come from an affirmation of life, nature and yourself. You must embrace these things and care about them. May that be because you find these things beautiful, aesthetically valuable, or perhaps you affirm these things because your Will drives in that direction and living for your Will, or in harmony with your Will, is somewhat a meaningful endeavour, to live an "authentic existence", to live as what you are (this is an existential view).

The fact that you are completely free to create your own morals is daunting. Like when a potential suicide victim hesitates to "jump" even though there's nothing actually stopping him. Again, the motivation to overcome this anxiety comes from your Will and your affirmation of, basically, what you are: life, man and the world you live in.

Nietzsche wrote:
When a philosopher today gives us to understand that he is not a skeptic [...] all the world is offended to hear it...

[...]

Against this kind of “good will”—a will to the actual active denial of life—there is today confessedly no better sedative and soporific than skepticism...

[...]

“Are our ears not already filled with nasty sounds?” says the skeptic as a friend of sleep and almost as a kind of security police: “this subterranean No is terrible! Be quiet, you pessimistic moles!” For the skeptic, that delicate creature, is all too easily frightened; his conscience is schooled to wince at every No, indeed even at a hard decisive Yes, and to sense something like a sting.

[...]

For skepticism is the most spiritual expression of a certain complex physiological condition called in ordinary language nervous debility and sickliness...

[...]

they no longer have any conception of independence of decision, of the valiant feeling of pleasure in willing—even in their dreams they doubt the “freedom of the will.”

[...]

Paralysis of will: where does one not find this cripple sitting today! And frequently so dressed up! How seductively dressed up! ... “objectivity,” “scientificality,” “l’art pour l’art,” “pure will-less knowledge” is merely skepticism and will-paralysis dressed up—for this diagnosis of the European sickness I am willing to go bail.

mway, in his signature, wrote:
If you blindly believe and accept morals, you are no different to any theist, you are just in denial of your belief in some sort of god.

mway wrote:
Morality is a code of conduct.