Farmageddon said:
Edit: Holy crap, wall of text :/ Lost the track of time and length, actually just lost an exam beacuse of this. God, sometimes I hate the internet. Anyway, sorry for the lenght of it :P
I mean, you're saying there are absolute morals, that are intrinsically right. And when people show there are other cultures who disagree with your morals, you defend your position by saying "they are wrong". Now, I'm not sure you notice it, but you're basically saying you're right because you're right. There are absolute morals because my morals* are absolutely right. And my morals are right because they are. So there are absolute morals because there are. *- or a subset of morals I'm not entirely aware of but which includes many of my morals - Do you see it? Sure, when you apply it to the extreme case like the murder cannibals, it's easy to make it sound "right". Of course doing that is wrong. Who could think otherwise? No one here, sure. But those guys did think so. My point is, don't you realise those guys could use the same argument you used? Let's say some people, over there, are having this same discussion. One of them argues agains absolute morals and uses us as example. The other says, yeah, but they are obviously wrong. For them, the idea of our moral (on this matter) could be as outrageous and revolting as their is to us. What exactly is the diference that makes your argument valid and "his" wrong? What makes you better? Is it because you're some kind of bastion of Truth? Why can't he feel the same? And, if you can apply the same argument for both sides, doesn't that show you the argument itself is invalid? Now, before you ask, it doesn't mean I would be complacent to their practice. I have my opinion, and I believe I have every right to defend it whenever it concerns me, even if I can't quite prove my opinion is right at an absolute sense. I simply trust my opinion better, that's the reason for it to be my opinion after all. Anyway, I actually think they are wrong because I don't believe people have souls you'll absorb by eating and both will turn into a better being or something like that, which I suppose is more or less their reasoning. You might think they are wrong because people do have souls, but you'll only cause these souls suffering by eating them. How can you be so sure you're right and they're wrong anyway? Any of the groups may have any amount of objective (or objective-looking - for them) evidence to support their views, and in this sense believe they are indeed right, above an opinion. But of course you can't really be completelly sure. Just as much as you could put yourself in a position of being objectivelly right as opposed to them by last couple of paragraph's reasoning, I could, by the same reasoning. see myself in the same position relative to you. But you'd argue against that, and say my "evidence" is no good. How's that different? Any of the three groups could position itself like that against any of the other two. Of course, since their conclusion looks so absurd for us, it's easy to dismiss that. Point being that these morals aren't absolute in the sense that morals "passed down" (or provoked or inspired or whatever) by a superior, perfect being (which was the conclusion you were trying to draw, right?) should be. Better yet, my point is that even if we agree that those guys are wrong, there's no way we can derive a "God" from that or even ascribe a deeper, transcendental meaning to our agreement. You could argue something like "see, they have different morals because they're basing their morals on a different subset of beliefs", sure. In a sense you might even be able to argue they feel it's wrong to cause suffering just for the sake of it and that that's the deeper moral universal among humans. I'd say there's indeed a tendency for that, but then again, we're social animals. It makes complete biological sense if we have that kind of predisposition on some level. No sense invoking a superior being to explain that. Basically what you're saying is humans have some genetic resemblance between themselves. Don't think anyone is going to argue that. But our actual morals differ a lot. Even if people have a tendency to feel it's wrong to cause suffering just for the sake of it, most people don't feel so bad when there's personal gain involved, at varying degrees. And how they vary. Someone might be ok to do it just for a bit of sadistic pleasure while others might need much, much more. And in this sense that "basic moral" is so feeble and would allow such different outcomes that look mutually outrageous and unbearable that I am hard pressed to see anything so special about that. Actually, it might be simplyfied even more to say people, even if at an unconcious (or partialy unconcious) level, balance the pluses and the cons of their actions for themselves and only take actions that seem positive on that light. That's your moral universal destiled. We're all assholes deep down. Cheers. I think I kinda dragged it out too much, not sure it's as coherent as I'd like, but it should make sense :) Also, this is really off-topic, ins't it? :P |
You pulled it out of context.
It's an arguing method, to reply like that. The background is that I felt Highwaystar hadn't gotten to the core point I'm discussing. And the background is also that he objected to my statement of objective morals being false. What's his evidence for objective morals being false? He simply demonstrates there are different cultures with different morals in history of mankind (as if I wasn't aware of that) and from that draws a conclusion that morals are culturally relative and can not be universal. In my opinion that was a poor argument. Btw here is Highwaystar's statement I replied to:
"I ask, how can two societies be so radically different in their moral code, and yet their morals be absolute? It's actually impossible."
But I never said that every person and every culture has a full understanding of the absolute moral code. I never said that all expressions of morals on our planet are absolute. Nothing like that.
(actually for my case I only need to show one strong example of universal morals, thus my drastic example of torturing babies in the thread)
My original statement in this thread (that Highwaystar objected to) was:
since most people have absolute morals (without knowing or admitting it to themselves) most people also believe in the supernatural.
(the logic of the second part of the statement goes something like this: absolute morals needs an external cause, or at least they make a strong argument for something supernatural like a God, aka "the moral argument" for the existence of God, which is an age-old argument).
Yes it's off-topic.
