Reddit reviews Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics

I was 34. Yeah, pretty late by /r/atheism standards. ex-hindu.

Had my doubts about certain parts of Hinduism and I was vocal about it too, confronting friends about it. But, I carried out lot of rituals none the less and did believe for the most part. I was god believing Hindu.

When I was 34, I distinctly remember the day I came to the final conclusion that there was no God, not just Hindu but the claims of any of the big religions, Christianity, Islam etc. of existence of God were false. I celebrated that day by eating a Wendy's burger. As a Hindu, I would not have eaten beef. Told wife on the same day. She remains Hindu but respects my decision.

Shaking off some of the remaining superstitions took some time e.g. the rings, chains that I took to be good luck charms. But in about 4-5 months I was free off it all. I use to park in a certain direction. Not any more. Lot more of parking space has opened up for me now. :-) Lot more of life has opened up as well. I couldn't be happier.

I rationalize my actions and try to hold myself to a higher moral standard. Any graduate level ethics course can teach you much more about morality than any of the religions. Thinking that there has been no progress on this front or that religion has monopoly on morality is just not correct any more. This is a pretty good book on the topic: http://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775/ref=ntt_at_ep_dpi_4

If you're interested in Harris's take on it in particular, I suggest looking at this blog post, and also follow the links to some philosophers' reviews of his book, The Moral Landscape. I'm glad Harris responded to his critics, though I don't think he rebutted the most important criticisms.

If you're interested in the underlying question about how ethics might be rationally derived, you could work your way through the SEP page on Kant's Moral Philosophy and investigate others from there. It's pretty dense though! Sidgwick's book that I mentioned above is good and very relevant if you want to trace through the history of these ideas.

If you want to skip to more recent discussion, Simon Blackburn has two books on the topic: Being Good is very accessible and meant to introduce the topics to non-philosophers; Ruling Passions is more technical but IIRC, Chapters 5 and 6 are very relevant to this exact debate and reasonably approachable.

"Health is the slowest possible rate at which you can die."

You should read a little bit. Simon Blackburn has an interesting chapter on death in Being Good. Basically: humans enjoy lots of things that nevertheless end, and imagining a world where they don't end doesn't make them better, it makes them worse. Life is not much different.

Personally I skipped around quite a bit, because some books cover certain topics better than others. However this particular book is pretty short and sweet, but gives you a great solid intro tot he topic (which I find absolutely fascinating).

Edit: I really think you should read the intro, which is available to view. It's very engaging.

> Not beyond philosophy of science and picking up the occasional book (Singer, Nieztche, some Eastern oriented stuff) and a decent amount of political philosophy.

Ah, OK. You should maybe consider reading Think, an introduction to philosophy by Simon Blackburn. It's a good read, but more importantly, it's short and accessible.
If you want something more focused on ethics, I suggest Blackburn again with Being Good. Also short and accessible.

> The claim that 2 + 2 = 4 seems much more concrete than the claim that 'killing is bad.'

I would agree ("2 + 2 = 4" is a priori, the other is most likely a posteriori), but I am not arguing that killing is bad, I was just demonstrating that something relatively uncontroversial, like "killing is wrong", cannot be applied in a world where ethics is just subjective.

> Can one choose to just not care about right/wrong?

Sure - what one does is separate from the discussion of theory. One could believe 2 + 2 = 60 even! :D

> instead choosing to focus on the result of such behavior and how it ultimately harms oneself.

Sounds a lot like utilitarianism :-) You should read up on ethical theory - I think you would enjoy it.

Take your time, don’t be too worrried about needing to have all your opinions in order and arguments to back them up. Ethics and morality is a complicated subject, and if you study it in depth your opinions are going to evolve over time through life experience and discovering nuanced ways of thinking about tough questions. For an intro I highly recommend this book: https://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775#productDescription_secondary_view_div_1524704107598

Again dont worry about making decisions about what you think and why. Just read from a variety of sources, have engaging conversations (not arguments) with other people who find the topic challenging, and keep an open mind as you continue to grow and learn. People have spent whole careers wrestling with these questions, there’s no rush!

Here, play with these for a while. Or pick up a book on ethics. Not that I think either will change your mind. If you start from the premise that any answer you come up to must be the obvious one, then you'll never be disappointed or conflicted.

Are causal readers discouraged from reading introductory ethics texts because there is the vocabulary used by ethicists? Do you know that using this language discourages the causal reader?

I mean to say, some sort of vocabulary is necessary to get enough specificity, and many philosophers that write introductory texts use the traditional vocabulary after introducing how they will use these terms.

Take, for example, Simon Blackburn's Being Good: A Short Introduction to Ethics. It uses most of these terms that Harris thinks are incredibly boring, but it's a huge seller and highly rated by both professional philosophers and the public press (you can't say that about Harris's books).

> I would really like to start reading some real philosophy, but find a lot of philosophical jargon to be very confusing (For example, I still don't exactly understand what a priori is supposed to mean)

You might benefit from spending some time with a philosophical dictionary. These are books that list a bunch of philosophical terms, with each of them given a definition and a few paragraphs or pages of explanation by a philosopher who specializes in that field. So, for example, the entry on "a priori" would be written by an epistemologist who has published on a priori knowledge.

> I was wondering if there was like an "Ethics for Dummies" out there.

Yes, there are a bunch of books like that.

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=introduction+to+ethics

Here's one that has a good reputation:

https://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775/ref=sr_1_7?ie=UTF8&qid=1493839865&sr=8-7&keywords=introduction+to+ethics

You're in dangerous territory. I'm not a fan of moral relativism myself. While I certainly don't have all the answers, I can't see the actions of the demons as ever being good. I'd rather not say that from one "species" point of view enslavement, torture, murder, etc. of beings capable of higher order thinking, autonomy, and morality is "good". If we go down taht road, then there is no good and evil, only good and evil relative to a certain culture. My intuition is that that understand of good and evil is inherently flawed and misses the point of what I understand good and evil to be.

Sounds to me like your interest in moral philosophy has been piqued. If you're into reading non-fiction, grab a book or two.

This one might be good, though I haven't read it (I know of Blackburn)

This was one of my introductions to moral philosophy and I think it covers things well. Find a used copy or your local library might have a copy.

http://www.amazon.com/Being-Good-Short-Introduction-Ethics/dp/0192853775

The declaration of human rights is universal across all cultures...

http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/