So again... in a society with some people with some preferences, and others with other preferences... how are we to decide which to allow? Do the stronger make the rules? Does the majority rule (vote on it?)Why should they care? Firstly, they are very likely to care without any encouragement from me, because my dislike of seeing others suffer is very widely shared in the human population. To the extent that it isn't, the challenge to me is to try to persuade enough people to care so that action is taken. That's what is happening in political debate.
Lastly, you observe that a - presumably incurably psychopathic - serial killer will not care. That doesn't matter. All I need to do is to persuade enough people to take action to arrest and imprison him. What the serial killer thinks about that is irrelevant. — andrewk
Neither. I was answering your question, which was not about either of those alternatives. Your question was about what I would do, in a situation in which somebody is doing something that I find morally abhorrent, but which they do not.And again... are you merely telling us facts? or telling us what should be done? — anonymous66
All valid questions, but tangential to whether or not the Golden Rule stands on its own — javra
One does not need to have a formalized theory of the Golden Rule for it to be innately present, such as instincts are. To say otherwise would be to say that there can be no sense of fairness devoid of there being cognition of what fairness implies. A child playing in the school yard doesn’t need to know what the abstract concept of fairness is—to have thought of fairness—in order to sense that it is unfair to be bullied or to bully, for example. — javra
So no. Feeling something is not equivalent to thinking something. — javra
Do we will those basic feelings of fairness into being? — javra
This is contrasted to those basic feeling of fairness being part of our inherent biological makeup as humans, which would make the foundations of ethics no longer morally relative. — javra
power is ability to accomplish; — javra
Whereas, according to relativism, a murderer isn't wrong, — anonymous66
It seems you must have some way of judging between preferences, — anonymous66
I wonder if we're on the same page here. Earlier you called yourself a relativist, but now you're calling yourself an emotivist. Which are you? — anonymous66
You also made a valid distinction between descriptive and prescriptive. Which are you advocating? — anonymous66
Do the stronger make the rules? — anonymous66
Have you ever had a moral disagreement?I'm trying to understand moral relativism.. I'm trying to understand what it would be like for me to be a moral relativist (and trying to determine if any moral relativists actually exist). — anonymous66
I wouldn't say that wondering how the golden rule could even exist at all "standing on its own" would be tangential to the issue of whether it stands on its own, but okay. — Terrapin Station
Aside from my comments above, this argument doesn't hold water. Say that a sense of fairness is unconscious, that it's innately part of our biological makeup. Well, there can be an individual who has physiological abnormalities so that they have no such unconscious sense as part of that individual's biological makeup. Thus, the sense of fairness is still relative to individuals. It's present in the individuals who have it, and not present otherwise. — Terrapin Station
Ability to accomplish what? And you're obviously equivocating here, as you were talking about power in the context of governments and societies and "might is right." — Terrapin Station
Even if you were to argue that it's impossible to have a human with abnormal physiology, so that they have no sense of fairness, and necessarily, all humans have the sense, it would still be relative to humans, since it's not a part of rocks, say. — Terrapin Station
Regarding this and a few subsequent comments, when addressed biologically, the sense of fairness would be something inherited through genotype. — javra
At the end of the day, though, do you perpetually question whether the individually person next to you is so endowed with this capacity? — javra
Yet the same question can be brought up: do we as agents originate the reality of the Golden Rule individually and communally in manners in which the Golden Rule could fully vanish among the morality of people were all people to so will? — javra
No equivocation on my part. Moral relativism addresses morality which is due to individual(s)’ ability to affect, influence, control, or coerce others (in this case, regarding that which is moral) – hence, ethics which is there due to power. — javra
It seems to me that relativism is the morality of the herd. — Cavacava
If rules, like the Golden Rule, can be anthropologically supported, as the way humans in general have acted throughout time, regardless of context, — Cavacava
Even under the view that what morality is relative to is individual disposition?
Why wouldn't that be a contingent matter in that case? It would be that humans have happened to believe/act that way, but not be that it's a metaphysical necessity for them to act that way. It would be metaphysically possible for there to be a human who does
Of course, that we'd be able to show that every human who has ever lived has believed in or acted per the golden rule is completely dubious, but assuming we could do that somehow
Descriptive moral relativism holds only that some people do in fact disagree about what is moral; meta-ethical moral relativism holds that in such disagreements, nobody is objectively right or wrong; and normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it.
The "individual disposition" is to a large extent a delusion, — Cavacava
we are all part of a tribe, a city, a state, a nation; what and how we think are structured by these roots, whether we are aware of it or not. Again, its the 'Good' life that become the goal in a capitalistic society, and those who achieved it societal icons.
What is "metaphysical necessity"? — Cavacava
Do we have to show that every human being is rational? — Cavacava
normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it
normative moral relativism holds that because nobody is right or wrong, we ought to tolerate the behavior of others even when we disagree about the morality of it
Unsurprisingly, there's absolutely no reference in the Wikipedia article to anyone who considers themselves a moral relativist who says V. — Terrapin Station
As far as I’m aware, moral relativism is the view that moral values are hierarchical rather than absolute — Robert Lockhart
No I think we all act in or out of accordance with norms. The relationship of norms and our actions is one of authority/universal and responsibility/particular. All four of your siblings work from normative positions, while each has a difference stance, these stances in how you explained them all seem normative. If you measure up the actions of any group of individuals you will typically see a bell shaped distribution...the normal distribution.An individual delusion?
“No man is a hero to his valet, not because the former is no hero, but because the latter is a valet.”
If you're going to claim that not only was every human being who ever existed rational, but that it's a metaphysical necessity that they're rational, I would say yes, because the notion is implausible. There are human beings who existed who weren't rational--because they were born with severe brain abnormalities so that they were effective vegetables, for example. The same goes for the golden rule. There are clearly humans who don't or haven't subscribed to it.
I said that all of the siblings in your example act normativley, — Cavacava
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