It's not relativism if its what people universally want. In other words they all want the same kinds of things, just for different people — Janus
Note I'm speaking about the orthodox view regarding the evolution of the idea of individuality and individual rights. Is that what you are speaking about? — Janus
Give me an example of a group that wants murder, rape and torture for their own members (excluding ritual sacrifice). — Janus
If they feel like raping someone, just declare them to be outside your group and now you can. — Isaac
Right, well in that case you'd need some evidence that in the famously egalitarian hunter-gatherer tribes, the 'chief' regularly abuses his/her power for arbitrary reasons. — Isaac
What you wrote doesn't even pertain to the first 200,000 years of human culture, so no, it is not evidence of the 'almost always' correlation you're claiming. — Isaac
I don't understand what point you're making here. Your argument is that there can be arbitrary abuse of power. In an egalitarian society (one on which power is distributed equally), who is it that the abuse of power is forcing? — Isaac
If we regard moral propositions as purely subjective, enforcing law and order amounts to nothing more than 'might makes right', right? — JosephS
I would think that we look for an objective standard in order to justify applying that standard to others. — JosephS
Events are as much fact as objects are.
The holocaust is an example of what was an immoral fact. — Galuchat
If it's an immoral fact, then there must be some facts that are moral and some that are immoral. That is, immorality needs to be established in addition to the facts. Therefore, it's not sufficient to just establish the factual nature of an event to establish immorality. — Echarmion
It's not considered a moral fact by everyone - hence the subjectivity of morality. There are some that deny the event even happened.The holocaust is an example of what was an immoral fact (perceived particular). — Galuchat
Check out recent research on mirror neurons. — Galuchat
We can share feelings because we are members of the same species, but we are also individuals that have goals that can conflict or work together. All humans experience sorrow, but not always about the same thing or in the same circumstance.In what sense can empathy be said to be objective? — Echarmion
Who is in who is out is determined socially, communally, not arbitrarily by individuals I would say. — Janus
I found it very interesting but found nothing in it that contradicts anything I have been arguing and I remain convinced that hunter/gatherers do not have ideals of individual human rights. — Janus
Interestingly the Western conception of human rights involves private property, a notion of which would have likely been non-existent in hunter/gatherer groups. This is not to say that people would not have had their own clothes, or baskets, or digging sticks, weapons, dwellings or whatever, of course, but the possessive notion of private ownership would likely have been absent.. — Janus
Conflict resolution is personal in tribal societies. That means that more powerful lineages are more difficult to hold accountable. — Echarmion
Right, but in those first 200.000 years, there was, so far as we know, no such thing as a declaration of universal human rights. — Echarmion
What I am saying is that it seems to me that religious authority was an important ingredient for the development of western individualism. — Echarmion
Really? The 'powerful lineages' are easy to hold to account in Christian/religious cultures? — Isaac
So now it's become an actual legal document we're supposedly referring to. — Isaac
You do realise this whole discussion started with a claim that there was no barrier to inhumane treatment in non-Christian cultures, now we're talking about the fact that there was no written legal document. — Isaac
That's a far cry from what you started out saying. — Isaac
Sort of a painfully obvious question occurred to me that is more of a 'houskeeping' matter: do you think Darwinian ethics included discussing all branches of Philosophy? — 3017amen
In fact, the very idea of an “ought” is foreign to evolutionary theory — Wayfarer
I don't imagine this is new, but it is rather new to me. — JosephS
Peoples' ethical model include the "ought" in order to support the superior "is" existent within group selection. The "is", just in case this is too muddy, involves the statistical disadvantage of maladaptive principle selection. — JosephS
This is interesting, but potentially problematic, for me. If the in/out status of society members is not determined individually, then how do you resolve the sorties paradox? — Isaac
What about the fierce defence of autonomy, even for children? Is that not a right held more highly there than here? I don't know how much of Gray's work is gone into in that article, but do you think, after reading it, that a 12 year old child in western Europe really has more 'rights' than one in the communities Gray describes? I fail to see what they might be. — Isaac
Yes. This is something that interests me too. The extent to which private property is tied up with rights. I don't think the western conception of 'rights' is a healthy one, based as it is on individuals and their rightful accumulation of property, but that's probably way off topic here. — Isaac
I think it is reasonable to believe that if an individual was anti-social to a significant enough degree to cause problems for the group, they would have been ostracized. — Janus
Having said that, in Australian Aboriginal tribes, as far as I know, children were required to go through "initiations" when they reached certain ages, and I don't believe that would have been a matter of choice. — Janus
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