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On Morality (maybe just an interesting story)
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Post by
pezz
People try to look for moral absolutes in specific, out of context situations. Specific yet wholly un-contextualized situations are possibly the most useless tools one can possibly use in an argument. 'Killing is wrong, except in such and such situation' does not mean morality is subjective if you haven't even made an attempt to point out that this special situation isn't fundamentally different from any killing. Because of this approach, very few people have first principles when it comes to their morality. I think morality would be absolute if it was backed up by solid first principles and was logically extrapolated from there.
The most interesting first principle for ethics I've seen (and the one I generally subscribe to, at least intellectually) is that furthering life is at the heart of what 'good' is, and destroying it is at the heart of 'evil.'
This is because matter does not face creation or destruction, just reorganization. Only life is created or destroyed. Hence it is the only thing in the universe that can truly be preserved or wiped out.
At this point I tend to look at Aristotle's three tiers of the 'soul' for guidance as to what life can morally
choose
to destroy other types of life.
And the word choice leads to another theory about good and evil: Those terms only apply to actions which rational things choose to do. If the sun blows up tomorrow and wipes out humanity, it won't be the sun acting 'evil'. It will be an unfortunate chemical reaction. But if some brilliant psychopath blew up the sun, that would be 'evil' because he had a choice, whereas the sun doesn't consciously pick and choose which chemical reactions take place inside of it based on a complex value system.
So what is the point of this? I'm pointing out that we already have a skeletal framework for evaluating specific situations
in their appropriate context
that we can apply to any situation. We can say: What did this action do to life? And how free was the agent to choose other courses of action? These questions can be applied to
anything
and make sense. The answer won't always come easily, but there will always be an answer of some kind. THAT is what you need to make morality objective. Looking at random out of context instances and never even realizing that you have no first principles is of course going to lead to a subjective understanding of morality because your values can subtly shift every time you come across a new problem.
Post by
Orranis
For you maybe. I'm not arguing that it isn't generally good, just trying to say that everything is prey to circumstance, and there is no absolute morals from what I've seen. Let's say there was a democracy, and 80% voted that the other 20% should be kicked out of the land. Now lets say it's a dictatorship, but the dictator thinks that would be wrong, and doesn't let them. If he allowed them freedom, then they would do something that is unethical.
None of that has anything to do with morality.
Yes it does. Would it be right to take away the will of a majority of people to stop them from committing evil? Even if it doesn't, then prove to me why freedom is automatically good.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
For you maybe. I'm not arguing that it isn't generally good, just trying to say that everything is prey to circumstance, and there is no absolute morals from what I've seen. Let's say there was a democracy, and 80% voted that the other 20% should be kicked out of the land. Now lets say it's a dictatorship, but the dictator thinks that would be wrong, and doesn't let them. If he allowed them freedom, then they would do something that is unethical.
None of that has anything to do with morality.
Yes it does. Would it be right to take away the will of a majority of people to stop them from committing evil? Even if it doesn't, then prove to me why freedom is automatically good.
Just because a good thing can be used for evil does not make the thing bad.
Post by
229791
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Yet another example that begs the question. You're assuming that what they liked to do was in fact morally licit.I have no idea what you just said, but I used that to show morals aren't always the same in every society - there's no god or creator to bring us morality... (or we can't rationally know the existence of such)
And I just said you're assuming that just because someone believes something, it's good.
Post by
229791
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
And I just said you're assuming that just because someone believes something, it's good.They (the vikings) thought it was fine, I don't.
Yes, and I'm saying that just because they 'thought' it was good, didn't/doesn't make it so.
Post by
Orranis
For you maybe. I'm not arguing that it isn't generally good, just trying to say that everything is prey to circumstance, and there is no absolute morals from what I've seen. Let's say there was a democracy, and 80% voted that the other 20% should be kicked out of the land. Now lets say it's a dictatorship, but the dictator thinks that would be wrong, and doesn't let them. If he allowed them freedom, then they would do something that is unethical.
None of that has anything to do with morality.
Yes it does. Would it be right to take away the will of a majority of people to stop them from committing evil? Even if it doesn't, then prove to me why freedom is automatically good.
Just because a good thing can be used for evil does not make the thing bad.
No, but it makes it so that it's not absolutely good. Either way, prove to me why freedom is good period.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Either way, prove to me why freedom is good period.
Didn't I already say it is
self-evident
?
Post by
229791
This post was from a user who has deleted their account.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
It would've been immoral by our standards.
And just because we think suicide is bad, doesn't make it so. What is right and what is wrong are determined by our surroundings. If I would have lived in the ancient viking times, I most probably would've thought what they did was right. (
or you never know
)
There you go, begging the question again.
Post by
Deepthought
Is killing someone really a good thing when it saves others?
Assuming that the
only two possible outcomes of your actions
are:
A) Kill one person.
or
B) Kill more than one person.
and that you don't know/can't predict what these people will do with their lives, then yes, I would say that taking the action(s) that results in less death is good.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Is killing someone really a good thing when it saves others?
Assuming that the
only two possible outcomes of your actions
are:
A) Kill one person.
or
B) Kill more than one person.
and that you don't know/can't predict what these people will do with their lives, then yes, I would say that taking the action(s) that results in less death is good.
You're just assuming that the lesser of two evils is automatically good.
Post by
Deepthought
You're just assuming that the lesser of two evils is automatically good.
Where is the possible good, relative to this situation?
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
You're just assuming that the lesser of two evils is automatically good.
Where is the possible good, relative to this situation?
Why does every situation have to have a possible good?
Post by
Deepthought
You're just assuming that the lesser of two evils is automatically good.
Where is the possible good, relative to this situation?
Why does every situation have to have a possible good?
Every situation with more than one outcome must have a relative good, if only relative to the evil of the other outcomes.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
Every situation with more than one outcome must have a relative good, if only relative to the evil of the other outcomes.
Must? Why?
If X is the standard, and both fall below it, then neither is good.
Post by
Deepthought
Every situation with more than one outcome must have a relative good, if only relative to the evil of the other outcomes.
Must? Why?
If X is the standard, and both fall below it, then neither is good.
But we aren't using a standard here, I specifically mentioned "relative".
And there must be a relative good because there is a difference between one person dying and between multiple people dying.
Post by
Hyperspacerebel
But we aren't using a standard here, I specifically mentioned "relative".
And there must be a relative good because there is a difference between one person dying and between multiple people dying.
There has to be a standard, or else you could not say that killing 1 man is better than killing 10.
Why is 1 man dying better? Because it's closer to the standard of no men dying.
Throw out the standard and you cannot make any moral claims whatsoever.
Post by
Deepthought
There has to be a standard, or else you could not say that killing 1 man is better than killing 10.
I never denied the existance of a standard, I claimed that we(or atleast, I'm) are not fully using it.
Why is 1 man dying better? Because it's closer to the standard of no men dying.
The standard is not attainable in this case. In this case, the closest (and only the closest) we can get to it must be considered "good".
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