Comrade Tovya said:
vlad321 said:
Comrade Tovya said:
vlad321 said:
marciosmg said:
I think we will never completely agree because of that. I believe some morality is subjective and some are objective.
You don't.
Now, here is a question: Do you believe that "right and wrong" does not exist or do you believe that us, humans, can never be sure if our "right and wrong" is the correct one?
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Neither actually. Everyone has their own definition of right and wrong and everyone is sure that theirs is the right one, and what is right to some is wrong to others. Therefore right and wrong doesn't exist simply because we, humanity as a whole, will never be sure of what right and wrong is.
Edit: P.S. Why the hell does every time I have tests/project due the morning I end up in a philosophical argument in VGC? Maybe that explain my grades this semester....
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Neither right or wrong exists? So Adolf Hitler's definition of "right" by exterminating Jews, Gypsys, Gays, and Cripples is subjective... and according to your definition, we shall never know whether or not Hitler was good or evil, because his definition of "good" is good for him?
If the definition of "good" and "evil" have no true guidelines, then what is the fabric of morality? Why feed the hungry in Africa? Why protect a woman from sexual assault? Why even call the police if I witness a thief breaking into my neighbors home?
If the meaning of "good" means nothing at all, then why have a United Nations to help prevent war? Afterall, under your definition of good, an evil dictator who slaughters his own populace may be considered justified in murder. If my neighbor wants to kill random people who drives past his home, how can I call this evil? Afterall, for him, he might very well consider it good to murder.
Such subjectivity would mean the unravelling of our society, and a meltdown of all social standards. The very fact that the Western world has setup a court and system of laws directly opposes your way of thinking, therefore providing no justification for such a loose standard of morality. Therefore your assertion that it is impossible to say whether or any given activity is wrong or right is in total defiance of the very system which you take part in everyday.
A society that has no standard in which to define wrong or right would break down into anarchy.
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Oh dear, did you at least read the entire conversation or did you just skim it? People from our point of view label him as evil, meanwhile from Hitler's point of view everything was good and trying to stop him was evil. Who's right then? Us? Just because we decided to label genocide as evil? Who says genocide is evil? Is there anything that tells us that genocide is evil outside of what we, ourselves, decided? There is absolutely nothing in the universe that labels something as evil, we do that ourselves, therefore it's completely and utterly subjective. The proof of that is that there were people who thought of the holocaust was righteous. As to the court, we created that court so we can give even more authority to spread our very subjective morals. I'm not saying let's live without morals, everything will just end up in anarchy, there are obviously morals which should be enforced, as you have pointed out, murder, and ones that don't have such a high priority, like abortion in this case.
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No, I very carefully read every response in the thread since I logged off last night...
Your very specific statement was "Therefore right and wrong doesn't exist simply because we, humanity as a whole, will never be sure of what right and wrong is."
I never put words into other people's mouth... I always remain quite specific so as to avoid presumptions.
Remaining specific in my responses to what you say:
The assertion that genocide is wrong only because "our side" says it is, is simply preposterous. And there is something in the universe that says that genocide is evil... we do.
At one time, humanity roamed the earth as nomads... there were no moral laws except those which governed the individual family structure. As time progressed, The family "clan" evolved into a tribal system that encompanied more people, and further rules of government. The tribal unit was later replaced by local government which was in turn replaced by a national system.
To even assert that we no right to define the standards of what is moral and what is immoral is to do just what you wish to avoid: Anarchy
Morals are no subjective... although I will say that they are constantly evolving. At one time, in the western world, the Catholic Church was the so-called moral pillar in which the standards of morality were based. And after western societies looked inward, they realized that the Church was hypocritical in its definition of morality. On one hand, the old church said murder was evil, and at the same time, the local branches of the Catholic diocese were each deciding what the defininition of murder was.
Using the Jewish people as an example (because they have long been kicked around), in Rome they were largely protected under the auspice that their Christ said to love all men. Yet, local tribal customs in England that merged with the Roman Catholic standard redefined the definition of murder as subjective. Under the early English Church, they allowed the murdering of Jews because they saw the Jew as an enemy of Christ, and therefore inhuman.
That is what subjectivity in morals gives us. It misleads the populace into believing that there is no wrong or right, and that what your neighbor may consider murder, you may consider justified killing.
Once again, such a system only provides for the moral decay of society and a breakdown of any organized form of government that glues society together.
As I stated before, under a system where there are no basic rules for which society to govern itself, there is no purpose for government at all. The very basic concept of government is a common goal of good and the protection of it's citizens. If a government has no power in which to define laws, then they have no power in which to enforce their system of unification.
We can argue until we are blue in the face whether or not a fetus is human being at the moment of conception or after the child leaves the birth canal. Yet, if we cannot come to the agreement that whatever we decide to define as a human should be protected under the unified fabric of morality, then we are no different than animals. We should therefore all go our own ways and retreat back to caves as our ancient ancestors once did.
I'm not even talking about abortion, nor am I asking you to define when a child becomes a unique human being. I am simply asserting that without a basic definition of right and wrong, then every other discussion of humanity becomes null and void.
The very foundation of what seperates man from beast is our ability to reason. And reason evolves into a basic sense of right and wrong. If there is no right, and there is no wrong, then we are no longer human, and are simply animals that roam the planet.
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