Harmony among the majority? Or harmony among everybody? — chatterbears
Nonetheless, I still am not clear what you mean by harmony. So when you say, "between the interacting parties", you are referring to the slave and the slave owner, correct? Not, the slave owner and other slave owners. — chatterbears
Of course.Again, how would you respond to your daughter/friend/family member who has just been raped. Would you be supportive? — chatterbears
"That's just the way he feels about interpersonal behavior." That's certainly true, but my feeling about it wouldn't be based on the rapist's feeling about it. My feeling about it is my own disposition, a factor of how my brain works, etc.Or would you say "if he felt right in his action to rape you, that's just his interpersonal behaviors."
What I am trying to get at here, is you must have some sort of mechanism you use to differentiate a good action from a bad action. — chatterbears
You may (or may not) believe rape is a bad action, because of Reason A. — chatterbears
Ethics/morality is relative. — BrianW
Yeah, how I feel about the behavior in question. That's the mechanism that everyone uses, whether they realize/admit it or not. — Terrapin Station
Yes. Unfortunately, ethical/moral guidelines depend on the level of intelligence of the participants involved. What I mean is that, for slavery to come to an end, both parties (the slave owners and the slaves) had to realise what was wrong with their interactions. This is because, back then, just as now, there are those who readily accept the circumstances they're in without the proper forethought. This often results in people being okay with inequality, such that, there's appearance of harmony while the disharmony is masked in ignorance.
In the case of ignorance, ethics/morality should not be the foremost query, rather how the relevant information should be acquired. I think such is the case with the relation between humans and animals, or more specifically, the determination of the equality of animals. — BrianW
I assume you apply the same logic to mentally disabled people, who have the same intelligence level as animals. (depending on how far they are on the spectrum). — chatterbears
Of course. — Terrapin Station
"That's just the way he feels about interpersonal behavior." That's certainly true, but my feeling about it wouldn't be based on the rapist's feeling about it. My feeling about it is my own disposition, a factor of how my brain works, etc. — Terrapin Station
Yeah, how I feel about the behavior in question. That's the mechanism that everyone uses, whether they realize/admit it or not. — Terrapin Station
Once again, if it's "because of reason A," reason A would have to itself be a moral stance, because moral stances are not derivable from anything that's not a moral stance. I wouldn't say that "rape is bad" is based on another, more foundational, moral stance for me.
Re "I feel it is wrong to cause harm to others," once again, I don't use any sort of overarching principle approach to ethics, and I certainly don't endorse any general proscriptions of "harm," because that's too broad/vague in my view. — Terrapin Station
Yes, you will argue that the “feelings” are still the basis for the dedication to the principal in the first place, but that isnt the same thing as their feelings on each behaviour/morals. — DingoJones
Doesn't matter. If I created an artificial vagina that men could buy to deter them from raping women, would you accept their reasoning if they told you, "But this artificial vagina doesn't feel like the real thing. Therefore, I will go back to raping women." — chatterbears
This is the point I have been trying to address with Terrapin for a while now. He seems to be only addressing ethics from a meta perspective, without even acknowledging the normative or applied ethical realm, which is also very important and does in fact matter. — chatterbears
Why would you support a rape victim? — chatterbears
You keep going down to the base level (level 1) when discussing these issues . . And if you say you don't have one, then maybe you need to read a bit more about ethics and the 3 tiers of an ethical system (metaethics, normative ethics, applied ethics) . . . But clearly you still have an idea in your head that governs your ability to discern right from wrong. . — chatterbears
I didnt suggest you should, just that you shouldnt make an erroneous claim about the mechanism “everyone uses, whether they realize/admit it or not”. — DingoJones
I assume you apply the same logic to mentally disabled people, who have the same intelligence level as animals. (depending on how far they are on the spectrum). — chatterbears
So what if a person is groomed to believe something, or indoctrinated. Women who claim they have choices in societies like the middle east, but more enlightened women know this is not the case. Do you apply the same logic to those people? — chatterbears
Right. I fully recognize that someone might have something like "It is wrong to initiate nonconsensual violence" as a foundational moral stance, and then they might say, "Murder is the initiation of nonconsensual violence Therefore it is wrong to murder" on top of that, where they're reaching "It is wrong to murder" as a logical/rational extension or implication of their foundational stance.Well when you said “how I feel about the behavior in question.” I took that to be your feeling in the moment, rather than your feeling when you decide the foundations of your ethics. — DingoJones
Ok, I understand the way YOU view those instances but that isnt what you said, you said “everyone” whether they “realize/admit it or not”. I think you can say that about morality being based on some kind of subjectivity/feelings, but it is erroneous to apply that to everyone in all moral instances. As we just discussed, some people are not actually doing that. — DingoJones
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