unapologetic

Unseen wrote:
Your “facts” are all contingent, not necessary.

True.  But they give us our illusion of objectivity.

Unseen wrote:
in the former instance being noncompliant makes you actually and factually wrong even if no one knows it, including you. Disobeying man-made/societal standards simply makes you liable to be punished or shunned.

It’s a fine distinction.  Only people who are ethical in the first place will care if they are “factually” wrong about a…[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
Principles that unbending are to be viewed as facts, not choices.

But if something is viewed as a moral fact, that doesn’t change that following it is still a choice.  We behave as if child care is an absolute, but some people still violate that principle.

_Robert_ wrote:
The Nazis certainly cooperated with each other. If they would have won the war and created that 1,000-year Reich they would have cared for children, cooperated, and have concluded that each individual is all the better for the effort, despite all the temporary pain and suffering.

Just because the cooperation was used for unethical…[Read more]

jakelafort wrote:
Simon, you’ve given examples of broad and general. Are you in favor of an absolutist approach to morality?

Absolutes – we absolutely must care for children, for example – are broad and general, but the ways they are carried out in real life are many and diverse.

jakelafort wrote:
An adaptive approach on the other hand that is borne of broad and general ethical principles is well founded, i think. To suppose there is a clear right and wrong in all instances is religious-think.

Some things never change.  For example:

• the need to take care of children.
• the need to cooperate, and cooperate ideally…

[Read more]

Unseen wrote:
What, then, is your refutation of Richard Dawkins’ argument in the video above against moral absolutism??

I don’t know about refuting it – I think I agree with it.  Moral absolutism is a personal and cultural thing, in that the standards we use for evaluation are both personal and cultural.

Unseen wrote:
We make moral choices typically because we can’t not make them. We muddle.

I think, in real life, in a morally relevant situation, we are faced with a number of potentially competing values.  Which one shall win out?  I propose that bodily well being / compassion is the most important.

Unseen wrote:
Moral relativism is the view that moral judgments are true or false only relative to some particular standpoint (for instance, that of a culture or a historical period) and that no standpoint is uniquely privileged over all others.

I take a descriptive approach in my studies of evolutionary ethics, such that I just seek to describe…[Read more]

As I understand it, moral relativism states that every moral system is equal in merit.  Or perhaps that is a straw man.  In all my studying of evolutionary ethics, I haven’t come across the term.  People talk about moral pluralism – many moral systems, with some differences in structure, and a lot of differences in choice of values and how pu…[Read more]

TheEncogitationer wrote:
If Moral Relativism was true, there could be no basis to praise or condemn anything outside one’s own society, nor even to praise or condemn anything within one’s own society, since the folkways and mores of society are, according to Moral Relativism, the standard of Good and Evil.

I agree with that.  I think the way out…[Read more]