Seems to me that people are forever banging on about 'the good', as if it were out there to be discovered, or simply a matter of common sense, but actually, it seems slippery, a contingent thing, a piece of construction work. — Tom Storm
Seems to me that people are forever banging on about 'the good', as if it were out there to be discovered, or simply a matter of common sense, but actually, it seems slippery, a contingent thing, a piece of construction work.
— Tom Storm
I doubt that you - Our aw shucks, I’m not a philosopher, Aussie Everyman – has trouble knowing the difference between right and wrong very often. — T Clark
Determining right from wrong in a particular situation is easy. What is not so simple is recognizing the subtle way our criteria of ethical correctness shift over time. — Joshs
I doubt that you — T Clark
has trouble knowing the difference between right and wrong very often. — T Clark
Whether you or I can make reasonable choices on occasion is not really the point. — Tom Storm
Uncovering this seems to be the role of a philosopher, not the work of a couple of assholes on the internet. — Tom Storm
Determining right from wrong in a particular situation is easy. What is not so simple is recognizing the subtle way our criteria of ethical correctness shift over time. — Joshs
I don't know what this means. The only time I need to know right from wrong is in some "particular situation." — T Clark
From what I've seen, many philosophers are at least as big assholes as you and I are. — T Clark
I don't think I've ever done wrong by accident - because I didn't know it was wrong. It's not that I've never done wrong, but when I did it, I knew it. It isn't that hard to tell. — T Clark
...the usual reliance on some universalistic grounding of ethical normativity mixed with a sprinkling of cultural situatedness. — Joshs
Determining right from wrong in a particular situation is easy. What is not so simple is recognizing the subtle way our criteria of ethical correctness shift over time.
— Joshs
I don't know what this means. The only time I need to know right from wrong is in some "particular situation." — T Clark
But here's the thing, we are discussing how moral behaviour works and this concept of 'the good' keeps arising. What is it? I am interested in how doing wrong make sense if there is no foundational basis or transcendent source of the good. — Tom Storm
Anything else isn't morality at all, it's social control - what society does to keep the skids greased. — T Clark
If all it is entirely personal, then why would you or I judge others for making bad or wrong discussions or celebrate good actions? — Tom Storm
Yes, and each time, in each particular situation, how can you be sure that what makes that situation right or wrong draws from the same rules, criteria and justifications as the previous time, or compared with 20 years ago? — Joshs
The almost universal agreement about the most significant moral issues I outlined above doesn't change from time to time or culture to culture, as least when it comes to members of what one considers one's own community. — Janus
It sounds like we’re in agreement. — Joshs
The other terror that scares us from self-trust is our consistency; a reverence for our past act or word, because the eyes of others have no other data for computing our orbit than our past acts, and we are loath to disappoint them.
But why should you keep your head over your shoulder? Why drag about this corpse of your memory, lest you contradict somewhat you have stated in this or that public place? Suppose you should contradict yourself; what then? It seems to be a rule of wisdom never to rely on your memory alone, scarcely even in acts of pure memory, but to bring the past for judgment into the thousand-eyed present, and live ever in a new day. In your metaphysics you have denied personality to the Deity: yet when the devout motions of the soul come, yield to them heart and life, though they should clothe God with shape and color. Leave your theory, as Joseph his coat in the hand of the harlot, and flee.
A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, — Emerson - Self-Reliance
I would say that most everyone knows very well what theft, assault, rape, murder and torture are — Janus
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