So a relativist has a conundrum -- how to make an argument against foundationalism without making a universal or truth-based claim? — L'éléphant

A very cogent post. :up:

I think we are just as hard-wired not to care as any out-group or disparaged tribe will demonstrate — Tom Storm

One could say we’re hard-wired to care whether things make sense to us. If we can’t make sense of out-groups, then that care takes the form of threat, the drive for self-protection and the circling of the wagons around our in-group.

Hmm, you think so? It seems to me a threat has to exist for us to note one. Albeit, this could be memorial threat rather than imminent and so sometimes it'll be erroneous.

I think outgroups function fine when they stay apart from yours. I, personally, have absolutely no issue with voluntary social segregation along cultural lines - I'm fairly sure any form of Islam which is anything but mild is fairly incompatible with a free and open society - so too is full religious right-wing Christianity.

I just don't know how to create a central control mechanism like a federal govt without favouring different groups in ways that suck.

Thanks. Yes, there often seems to be a default fear or suspicion of people or things we don’t understand.

So If i were to for instance attempt to stop someone harming my child, it's not because I think its right, its because I, personally, don't want that to happen because it'll make me feel bad. — AmadeusD

That strikes me as a mischaracterization of the situation. If I saw someone about to harm my child, my implicit response would not be "this will make me feel bad, and I prefer not to feel bad, therefore I'll intervene". Rather, feeling bad would be a response to the perceived worth of my child and the destructiveness of the harm. If my only motivation were only to avoid bad feelings then I would have to regard sedating myself as morally equivalent to protecting my child. But I don't because I judge the child's well-being to be objectively worthwhile and the harm to be truly wrong. That's why I might be willing to risk immense suffering or even death in order to protect them. You're taking a complex cognitive assessment and trying to reduce it to pure emotion.

Emotivism can't adjudicate between competing moral positions. No morality rightly can, because it cannot appeal to anything but itself (the theory, that is - and here, ignoring revelation-type morality as there's no mystery there). The only positions, as I see it, that can adjudicate between conflicting moral positions on a given case is are 'from without' positions such as the Law attempts to take. I still don't think there's a better backing than 'most will agree' for a moral proclamation. — AmadeusD

This proposal seems self-defeating. When you claim that no moral adjudication Is possible you are making a judgement, claiming it is more reasonable than alternatives, and implicitly inviting others to accept it. This already presupposes a commitment to the bindingness of certain norms of rationality, such as that we should consider all positions, understand them accurately and weigh the arguments for and against them. If you truly thought that normativity is reducible to emotion there'd be no point in coming to a philosophy forum to engage in complex arguments in support of anything at all.