If the subjugation of a minority resulted in a preferred form of order, would you declare it moral? — Hanover
As I see it, morals mostly express human values, not facts. Morals are not true or false, they work or they don't. Where do those values come from? I think some are inborn and some are learned. — T Clark
Agreed - I think that just because something is illegal doesn't mean it cannot be moral in certain circumstances, and that some things that are legal can be immoral in certain circumstances.
But it is different when considering the existence of moral facts. Moral facts could be vague, or very specific, and could be applied by a virtuous person in novel ways. There would be room for creativity, even, when considering the application of moral facts in a way that we don't have when considering the application of some of the very specific laws we have. — ToothyMaw
I hear you. I'd privilege the first one over the second, but rewrite it as - a set of rules used to help keep us safe, implemented with minimal judgement and dogmatism. — Tom Storm
I'm not interested in people's personal codes — Tom Storm
God no! This is atrocious, Tom. Sorry, but putting it the way you wrote it sets us back 200 years. There is nothing in moral discourse that draws the boundary on where we can and cannot judge moral actions. Just because a society in this or that peninsula practices and legalizes human sacrifice does not mean we can't judge such behavior in our own turf. Yes, we might not be able to stop that society from committing human sacrifice except through invasion/war, but it doesn't mean our own discourse must preclude it from our judgment.There are small examples all over the world, in history and now, from child soldiers to child labor. We can argue against such things and hope to end them, but what we are doing is advocating for our values as superior, based on a set of principles or rules. I believe I can defend my values against others, but I would, wouldn't I? Wouldn't you? — Tom Storm
That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is a dangerous moral view. — L'éléphant
That they chose differently is not an indication that their moral choice is reasonable or ethical . Remember, we win by rationality, not necessarily by changing the actual behavior of a society. In other words, we can't force them to be wise in mind and in action.The point I am making is that I can imagine a culture that disagrees and chooses differently. — Tom Storm
While it is apparent that Haidt's views might be compelling, they don't seem to address justifications for morals, — ToothyMaw
I have come across the claim in another thread that no moral claims are true [ ... ] — ToothyMaw
This is where one might be mistaking an axiom with reasonableness. An injunction against murder is reasonable and ethical, though we might find that there is not an axiom that specifically calls out that murder is false. — L'éléphant
This is not an axiom. This is an example of harm principle. Oh yeah, Mill's harm principle is not an axiom -- it is a moral assumption with strong, reasonable backing such as the golden rule. — L'éléphant
If murder is bad - as the very meaning of murder is that of a certain kind of killing that is bad - then murder is bad. — I like sushi
Nuance in language and interpretations of events and circumstances does not take away from the general meaning of the term ‘murder’ being bad. — I like sushi
Not everyone likes the taste of strawberries but that does not mean that strawberries are considered to taste bad, yet no doubt there is someone out there who thinks something most consider to taste awful to taste bad. The experience of tasting something nice and something bad exists. The variance of experiences does not detract from the existence of such experiences. — I like sushi
Morality is as meaningless as ethics. There is meta ethics and we are never within its reach yet constantly craving its presumed judgement our lives even if that means said ‘craving’ is non-existent. What we do is what we do. How we interpret what we do is merely that … an interpretation of NOT a complete understanding of. — I like sushi
The only ‘right’ thing we can do is acting as we see fit rather than bending to the will of others mindlessly. — I like sushi
we can hardly ever judge what we do as being right or wrong but we are always unable to escape from the idea that what we have done, or do, is a defining part of how we navigate through life. — I like sushi
Morality and ethics are social apparatus. We are not bound by pure subjectivity yet we are enchanted by the idea that we choose as an individual for ourselves and independent of others’ views. — I like sushi
It is a sea of hidden nuances and dead ends. I this respect it has more in common with the general outline of science being a constant riling against convention for the sake of seeking ‘better’ pathways to fuller understanding. — I like sushi
I haven't read any Hume. I know of his fork, however. — ToothyMaw
What metaphysical process do you have access to that can demonstrate why my values are better than theirs, other than already agreeing to my suppositions about wellbeing? As Hanover says you need to believe in some transcendent guarantor of morality to do this definitively and then you also need to demonstrate that your version of transcendent is in agreement with your version of morality. How is that done? — Tom Storm
The "is" of morality doesn't address justifications for morality, which is the point of this thread. I know evolutionary psychology is great and all, but it is kind of irrelevant to this discussion. — ToothyMaw
Would antisemites be doing a good thing if they refused to bow to the will of people who aren't assholes? — ToothyMaw
I don't think it's irrelevant. It explains that, and why, murder is wrong but war is right, why there are the moral strictures there are and how they are not arbitrary in the main but sometimes they are, and why different environments produce different moralities in the same species. — unenlightened
The justification of any morality is 'group interest' - nature demands it, the ancestors say it, God says it, everyone says it except the individual, who insists on asking "why should I?" as though they are not part of a larger whole. — unenlightened
Dilemma questions such as this (if I understood you) arise out of consideration of group conflict - ie conflict of scale. Family, tribe, nation, species, ecosystem, all have a claim on the individual's loyalty and self-sacrifice. We are seeing the result of the failure of traditional moralities to consider the interests of the environment. We have not been taught to make that identification in particular by Capitalist economics, which is founded on the merciless exploitation of environmental resources as slaves, as ancestor fossils, and as the living environment. 'Why should I not burn fossil fuels?' has a very clear, very cogent answer, that we need to learn to internalise as a species. Antisemitism, racism, the persecution of any sub-group, corrodes the cooperative functioning of society and prevents us from acting together to address global issues. — unenlightened
my good friend Hume — unenlightened
my good friend Hume did not deny morality, He merely denied the authority of reason. Thus you cannot get an ought from an is, nor a will be from a has been, nor an object from a sensation by any reasoned argument. But he was no more against morality than he was against science. — unenlightened
Meta ethics has supplanted Ethics it is just that people are slow to realise this. — I like sushi
In a few hundred years it will likely be viewed as laughable ad phrenology is. — I like sushi
I can justify killing someone but justification is just as likely an ‘excuse’ as a ‘reason’. — I like sushi
Jonathan Haidt argues that our moral values are the product of inborn evolutionary adaptations. He lists the following 5 innate moral foundations:
Care/harm
Fairness/cheating
Loyalty/betrayal
Authority/subversion
Sanctity/degradation — Joshs
For me, the purpose of social control; including enforcement of rules, laws, customs, and etiquette; is to prevent people from causing avoidable and undeserved harm and seeing to it they face the consequences of their actions. If you want to call social control "morality," that's fine, but making moral judgements about people isn't an effective way to protect others. That's the important point for me - moral judgement leads to ineffective social control. Is righteousness and retribution more important to you than a peaceful, safe society? Not for me. — T Clark
Moral condemnation versus punishments aimed a deterring future antisocial behavior are not mutually exclusive. That is, it is possible that the condemnation will result in deterrence and it is also possible that we can both morally condemn and additionally offer pragmatic solutions to deter the behavior.
If we do believe certain acts are immoral (and you indicate you do, in particular those that do not lead to a safe peaceful society), I don't see why it would be inappropriate to call it immoral, condemn it, and declare it bad if it in fact is. From there, I would agree, we now need to decide how to resolve the issue, but I don't see why identifying it and calling it what it is is a incorrect first step. — Hanover
:100:I don't think we all realize the fundamental assumptions guiding our moral beliefs:
1. we are humans.
2. as such, we have emotions, beliefs, desires, fears, etc.
3. from this, we know we have a common ground upon which a moral discourse can succeed.
That a society is stupid, ignorant, low IQ, backward mentally, uneducated, brainwashed, and just plain sociopath is not an excuse to promote relativism as an acceptable moral principle. Relativism is adangerous[self-refuting] moral view. — L'éléphant
:up: :up:I think the point is not that morals need or don't need justifications, but instead that humans animals and agents, whomever can't thrive properly or healthily under extreme negligence and continuance of this negligence whether intentional or not eventually leads to inevitable demise. — Cobra
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