moral relativism

Should you think about your duty, or about the consequences of your actions? Or should you concentrate on becoming a good person?

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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:57 pm 'My team's god..."
Nobody here has said this.

I've said "team" has nothing to do with anything. I wonder why you felt compelled to reintroduce the word...

I said that the real God, the actual God, the living God is the only one of whom this is true. I said nothing whatsoever about "team." I marvel that you do.
Iwannaplato
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Iwannaplato »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:38 pm Then you have no complaint. Why even point out that he's a "hypocrite"? The word means nothing in particular, since "hypocrisy" is, you say, not "morally wrong." It's a marvel the word even exists, then. It signifies nothing.
Oops, forgot to ignore you. That said. Do you not understand what hypocrite means? It means someone who, for example, does things THEY consider wrong. That's what it means to me and that's what it means to moral objectivists. So, pointing it out OBVIOUSLY has a point, since most people do not like to go against their own morals and/or having this noticed. So, it makes perfect sense for me to use it to get people to rethink what they are doing if I don't like what they are doing.

This is actually pretty simple, but you keep reproducing the same nonsense because you seem to assume it is not possible to have preferences without thinking they are objectively correct. Or even universally correct. You're not being clever, you don't have me. You are simply not thinking this through or you HAVE TO be correct for some psychological reason or you simply cannot imagine other people not being like you despite what must be incredible evidence to the contrary at least in other categories of difference.

You seem to assume that if I don't believe in objective morals, I just have to accept the way everything is.
You seem to think that if I don't believe in objective morals, I can't get irritated by behavior, point out logical fallacies, struggle against behavior, try to make the world, locally and more broadly, the way I prefer based on my prefereces and, amongst other things, empathy. (you probably think empathy is depended on morals, but that's ignorance, it's via identification with others, which happens directly not via objective rules).
You seem to think that because I don't believe in objective morals this puts me in a situation, unlike yours, where I can't compel people. I can understand your fear, if that is what is going on, that without your preferences being objective morals you are powerless to object or strive to change things and that no one would have to listen to you. You certainly seem to judge things that way. But obviously you think YOU have the correct objective morals and you believing there are such things does not lead to others having to listen to you. As the wealth of disparate sets of claimed to be objective morals should indicate to you. And since you are repetitive and often repeat the same illogically arrived at conclusions, you have some deficits that make it even less likely you will convince people.
Those are the most common of the sillinesses coming from you.
And this time I will remember to foe your ass.
Enjoy your fallacies and fantasies of effectiveness.
Peter Holmes
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Peter Holmes »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:23 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:57 pm 'My team's god..."
Nobody here has said this.

I've said "team" has nothing to do with anything. I wonder why you felt compelled to reintroduce the word...

I said that the real God, the actual God, the living God is the only one of whom this is true. I said nothing whatsoever about "team." I marvel that you do.
Deflection, or what? I wonder why you don't address the actual issue. Okay, leave out 'my team'.

P1 Whatever God believes is not morally wrong is indeed not morally wrong.
P2 God believes infanticide is not morally wrong.
C Therefore, infanticide is not morally wrong.

Now, dodge this any way you like, the logical entailment of your claim about God is that any moral conclusion is possible. You're stuffed, and wriggling won't help.
Belinda
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:20 pm
Veritas Aequitas wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 9:03 am
Immanuel Can wrote: Wed Nov 16, 2022 6:33 am
"Intelligence" can't be valued universally, or even generally. Like every other possible criterion, it's relative to the percipient. There's nothing to tell us that "intelligence" is an objectively "good" thing, if subjectivism is true.
As usual you missed out the critical parts,
I stated therein,
"there is a positive trend of the increase of intelligence of the average human since say 5000 years ago to the present."
That's actually not important at all, unless we can show that "intelligence" is objectively a good thing for us to be gaining.

As a secondary note, I think you'll find that you've misunderstood what "intelligence" is. It's not information, technology or the accumulation of knowledge: it's processing ability, such as is indicated by IQ. And in those terms, there's no evidence of greater mental processing power between, say, 5000 years ago and today. Even the most enthusiastic Evolutionists are going to tell you that 5000 years is far too short a span for that. They'll want you to measure it in millions of years.

But the important point is merely this: how do you show that "intelligence" or any other quality you hope is increasing, is "good," if you are a subjectivist? For then, you have to say it's not objectively good. So subjectivism implies it's only good for those who prefer to think it is, but they may be objectively wrong, for all we can know. :shock:
It is the positive trend...
We don't know if it's "positive." "Positive" is a subjective quality here, because we're being subjectivists. Since it's not objectively positive, it could be neutral or even negative, objectively, for all we can know.

There is also a "positive" increase in human violence. The last century was the bloodiest in history, by far. That is also a "trend." But I doubt you take it for granted that's "good."
I am not saying intelligence is objectively Good.
Then you're not really saying anything at all. You're simply saying, "I like intelligence." Okay, you can. But since that is merely subjective, it doesn't show anything value-positive or objectively important.
...intelligence can be improved, thus so relative morality can also be improved
That does not follow at all. One can be more intelligent, only to be more wicked, too.

In fact, the cunning wicked person is manifestly much more dangerous than the fool.
You cannot deny there is a reduction in the acts of Chattel slavery [now legally banned in the world]
Neither of these claims is true. I've showed you the stats, that slavery is worse and more than anytime in history, today. But you don't believe the statistics, and so try to redefine "slavery" as the kind of thing done in the Southern States two hundred years ago. You don't consider wage slavery, sex slavery, gulag slavery, child slavery, or any other kind as relevant to your claim.

So by "fixing" your stats, you get to keep saying this: but it's just not true. I wish it were.

Moreover, it's not "banned in the world" at all. China has huge slave labour camps. The trans-saharan and African trades continue. Sex slavery is rampant, especially since modern communications have made it much easier...And there's no body of governance in the world today even capable of banning it.

I don't know what planet you're living on, when you say things like that.
Thus under pure relativism, a person can be moral [avoiding evil
Nope. If subjectivism is right, there's no evil. So there's nothing to "avoid." A mass-murderer who is right in his own eyes is just as "good" as a humanitarian. And neither is objectively good or evil.
If morality is subjective, then for some there is evil [as defined. e.g. genocide, murder, rapes, etc.] while for some others [the minority] such acts are not evil.
That's actually illogical. If morality is really "subjective," then your sense that genocide, murder, rapes, etc. are "evil" is also subjective. And it doesn't matter whether it's a majority or a minority that believes it: for majoritarianism itself is also subjective. Maybe the minority is objectively right. They often are, actually. How do you prove that in this case, they're just not?
How do you even determine that extinction is "bad"? Are you saying it's an objectively evil outcome? If it were, then it's not relative or subjective, and there is at least one objective moral value.
Yes, to me the deliberate act of causing the extinction of the human species is the utmost of all evil acts and that is objective.
Then you are no longer a subjectivist at all.

Even if there is one moral precept, then morality isn't subjective. And, in fact, with that one precept, a bunch of others can be organized; for things that contribute to survival must then be objectively good. And we can start to discuss what those things would be...freedom, food, shelter, protection, health...etc. And each one of those would be objectively good, too, since they contribute to the one precept you've identified.

But now we're a million miles away from subjectivism. Because of your concession, morality is now entirely objective again. You just need to work out your details, but that's what the result will inevitably be.
Note in general rapes and murder of even one person is already considered "bad" or "evil", then a serial murder is more evil, mass murder, genocide is most evil and surely the genocide of the whole human race is definitely of the utmost & absolute evil. Surely you are not going to object to this definition of evil?
"Is considered bad"? By whom? Who is doing the "considering" in your sentence? How do we know that the right people are doing the "considering"? Hitler considered genocide a positive good. So did the SS. In my experience, I've found that primitive tribesmen often consider wiping out a rival tribe a positive good. Biden apparently thinks wiping out Putin is a positive good. And Putin thinks wiping out Ukrainians is a positive good.

Look, I would agree with you that it's bad. But how do we confirm that we're right? Why are we the locus of objective moral truth?
Now a supposedly evil person would not regard his murdering one or a few of his enemies as a bad or evil act, but he will regard as evil if someone were to threaten to murder him or his loved ones or those of his 'tribe'.
That doesn't clear anything up. So what if you wouldn't want it done to you? That's subjective. Maybe "Kill all the Germans" is bad, but "kill all the Slavs and Poles" is good. How would we show it's not?
Thus murder and the act to exterminate the human race is of the utmost evil.
Subjectively?
I am miles from moral subjectivity as I had always claim for such a position.
So why are you arguing with me, then? You and I agree: morality is objective. You and I might still disagree about what the objective moral principle is, maybe: but that morality is not subjective, that we agree on.
But if there's only one God, then they're objective.
There is no real God nor an objective one God.
That's assumptive, on your part. You cannot demonstrate it. You can assert it, insist on it, wish it, or pray for it. But you cannot show it, and you do not know it.
there are many ONE-GODs as there are many religions
True, but it doesn't suggest anything.

Many people being wrong
doesn't mean there's no right answer.

See, you say the same thing, below...
the theological model of morality of Islam cannot be moral objectively.
Well, then, the fact that Islam, or Hinduism, or Buddhism, or Zoroastrianism, or Mormonism, or Santeria, or Voodun is wrong does not even remotely suggest that Christianity, or Judaism, or some other religion hasn't got it right. It just means there are a lot of people who are wrong.

But we know that for a fact, anyway. We know it because of Aristotle's Law of Non-Contradiction. It states that two genuinely equal and contradictory ideas cannot be true at the same time and in the same way. All these religions are genuinely contradictory to each other. Thus, whatever else we know, we know that almost all of them are simply wrong. They have to be. Logically.

But we also know that this doesn't suggest one of them cannot be right. We maybe don't know yet if that's true, because they could ALL be wrong (unless the whole set of them covers all possibilities, in which case one must be right). But logically, then, one could be right.

That's simple logic. And it doesn't matter which "religious" or ideological perspective one comes from. It's equally true for all. If we can do logic, then we already know that one is possibly correct, even if the others aren't.
During the human past there have been surges in and restraints on human intelligence. There have been regimes where certain classes of person, such as wives and unmarried girls who were destined to be wives, were required not to be intelligent.

There have also been regimes where a premium was placed on intelligence, for instance in cities where there was a lot of trading and finance going on.

Intelligence can be fostered especially in the growing child. Liberal regimes allow persons such as women, slaves, and disabled people to have their intelligence fostered from an early age. Barriers to learning include top-down prejudices such as secular and religious ideologies.

When you include emotional intelligence, the better we reason the better are our ethics and intentions. There was a tremendous jump in reasoning ability during two or three centuries in the human past, roughly two and a half thousand years ago, in Eurasia, and we still feel the benefits of that age.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Iwannaplato wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:51 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:38 pm Then you have no complaint. Why even point out that he's a "hypocrite"? The word means nothing in particular, since "hypocrisy" is, you say, not "morally wrong." It's a marvel the word even exists, then. It signifies nothing.
Oops, forgot to ignore you. That said. Do you not understand what hypocrite means?
In a subjectivist world (which is what we're talking about), it has to mean nothing.

There are no wrong "values" in that world. Just the fact that, subjectively, somebody "values" them makes them "valuable." So being a liar, being a fraud, being a sneak and being a hypocrite are not objectively wrong, then. Even going against what one's own moral code says to one...violating one's own conscience...isn't objectively "wrong," then.

But if you think it IS objectively wrong to be a hypocrite, can you show them why it is?
...it makes perfect sense for me to use it to get people to rethink what they are doing if I don't like what they are doing.
And in a subjectivist frame, it equally makes sense for them to ignore you, if they decide to. They don't have to choose to "rethink," let alone change what they decide to do.
You seem to assume that if I don't believe in objective morals, I just have to accept the way everything is.
I don't think that's possible. Nobody can live as a logical moral subjectivist. It's too painful, too disadvantageous, too dysfunctional even to try.

So what they do instead is become inconsistent. They essentially say to others, "All YOUR morals are subjective, as are the morals I don't like; but MY most cherished morals are objective." They won't put it quite so honestly, because that would expose their hypocrisy; but that's the upshot of what they're doing.
...you probably think empathy is depended on morals,
Empathy has its own problems, and many of them; but that might also be one of them.

You can't be "empathetic" with the good and bad happening to another person unless you actually think what's happening to them is "good" or "bad." So yes, objective morals underwrite empathy.
You seem to think that because I don't believe in objective morals this puts me in a situation, unlike yours, where I can't compel people.
Far from it.

I think that what you will really have to do is resort to force. You can't any longer "compel" by moral reasons, so the only thing you can do is "compel" by way of threat, violence, deception, or other form of abusive power. What else can you do, when reasons are all "subjective" and not binding on anybody else? All you've got left is force, if "compelling" is your purpose.
I can understand your fear,
:lol: Thank you, yes...I'm terrified. :D
...without your preferences being objective morals you are powerless to object or strive to change things and that no one would have to listen to you.
I'm not a subjectivist. That has no fear for me. But you use the right word: "powerless." Once one becomes a subjectivist, the only way that people can be made to "have to listen to you" is by way of power.
But obviously you think YOU have the correct objective morals
I haven't made that claim.

But I would assume that you think your morals are right, too, do you not? You're not somebody who is a scoundrel by your own morals, are you? I would hope not.
you believing there are such things does not lead to others having to listen to you.
No, of course not.

But if I can be rational, and they are rational, and both of us are people of goodwill, I can persuade them, if objective morals exist...or they can persuade me, if my morals fail to be objectively right. But if there are no objective morals, then neither of us can persuade each other, and we have to use force on each other to get what we want.

Not a good option.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:29 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:23 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 2:57 pm 'My team's god..."
Nobody here has said this.

I've said "team" has nothing to do with anything. I wonder why you felt compelled to reintroduce the word...

I said that the real God, the actual God, the living God is the only one of whom this is true. I said nothing whatsoever about "team." I marvel that you do.
Okay, leave out 'my team'.
I never put it in.
P1 Whatever God believes is not morally wrong is indeed not morally wrong.
P2 God believes infanticide is not morally wrong.
C Therefore, infanticide is not morally wrong.
The logical form is valid, but Premise 2 is false, as is the conclusion.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:56 pm During the human past there have been surges in and restraints on human intelligence. There have been regimes where certain classes of person, such as wives and unmarried girls who were destined to be wives, were required not to be intelligent.
Ah, the "Patriarchy" myth. I'm familiar with it. It has been inculcated and perpetuated by Feminists, for their own ideological advantage.

When those same women were "not required to be intelligent," men were living every day in mineshafts, bent over double and with black-lung, or freezing in the Arctic and frying in the Sahara, or dying by their thousands in wars women didn't have to fight. History was no picnic for anybody...it's only ever been the rich that had it any better, and even the rich of a hundred years ago were far poorer than the ordinary middle-class person today, in terms of quality of life.
There have also been regimes where a premium was placed on intelligence, for instance in cities where there was a lot of trading and finance going on.
And women now make up more than half of the university-educated. So are we now to say that intelligence in men is being denigrated today? Are women now the hierarchically privileged, the intelligencia, and men the abused class?

Or should we take away the high marks of those women at university, and bar them from their achievements, and deny them their career opportunties, and level them with the dumber women and the uneducated men, because otherwise it would be "hierarchy"?

But all this is not the point.

We were speaking of hierarchies. Hierarchies are not evil. They are an inevitable product of attention to any quality or criterion. There's no way to avoid them, and it wouldn't be good if we did.
When you include emotional intelligence,
"EI" was a fad, of course. More recent research has severely undermined the fad.

For one thing, it's not quantifiable in any sort of way IQ is. It's unscientific. It's not even reliably measurable. Emotions are not predictable enough.
...the better we reason the better are our ethics and intentions.
Heh. :D

Really, B.? You think history backs you on that claim?

Well, in the last century, we were more technologically advanced, knowledgeable and educated than in any previous century in history. And we also killed more human beings, in more brutal ways, than in all the previous centuries of human history, by orders of magnitude.

So it doesn't seem that knowledge advancement translates into ethical advancement, at all. The problem is in our own natures. Giving wicked people more power and knowledge doesn't turn them into good ones...it just gives them a bigger stick to hit people with.
Peter Holmes
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Peter Holmes »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:15 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:29 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 3:23 pm
Nobody here has said this.

I've said "team" has nothing to do with anything. I wonder why you felt compelled to reintroduce the word...

I said that the real God, the actual God, the living God is the only one of whom this is true. I said nothing whatsoever about "team." I marvel that you do.
Okay, leave out 'my team'.
I never put it in.
P1 Whatever God believes is not morally wrong is indeed not morally wrong.
P2 God believes infanticide is not morally wrong.
C Therefore, infanticide is not morally wrong.
The logical form is valid, but Premise 2 is false, as is the conclusion.
Don't be obtuse. The general form is this.

P1 Whatever God believes is morally right or wrong is morally right or wrong.
P2 God believes X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.
C Therefore, X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.

The point of variables is that they can have any values. So any moral conclusions follow from those premises.

But enough. Your dishonesty is boring. As ever.
Belinda
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Belinda »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:29 pm
Belinda wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:56 pm During the human past there have been surges in and restraints on human intelligence. There have been regimes where certain classes of person, such as wives and unmarried girls who were destined to be wives, were required not to be intelligent.
Ah, the "Patriarchy" myth. I'm familiar with it. It has been inculcated and perpetuated by Feminists, for their own ideological advantage.

When those same women were "not required to be intelligent," men were living every day in mineshafts, bent over double and with black-lung, or freezing in the Arctic and frying in the Sahara, or dying by their thousands in wars women didn't have to fight. History was no picnic for anybody...it's only ever been the rich that had it any better, and even the rich of a hundred years ago were far poorer than the ordinary middle-class person today, in terms of quality of life.
There have also been regimes where a premium was placed on intelligence, for instance in cities where there was a lot of trading and finance going on.
And women now make up more than half of the university-educated. So are we now to say that intelligence in men is being denigrated today? Are women now the hierarchically privileged, the intelligencia, and men the abused class?

Or should we take away the high marks of those women at university, and bar them from their achievements, and deny them their career opportunties, and level them with the dumber women and the uneducated men, because otherwise it would be "hierarchy"?

But all this is not the point.

We were speaking of hierarchies. Hierarchies are not evil. They are an inevitable product of attention to any quality or criterion. There's no way to avoid them, and it wouldn't be good if we did.
When you include emotional intelligence,
"EI" was a fad, of course. More recent research has severely undermined the fad.

For one thing, it's not quantifiable in any sort of way IQ is. It's unscientific. It's not even reliably measurable. Emotions are not predictable enough.
...the better we reason the better are our ethics and intentions.
Heh. :D

Really, B.? You think history backs you on that claim?

Well, in the last century, we were more technologically advanced, knowledgeable and educated than in any previous century in history. And we also killed more human beings, in more brutal ways, than in all the previous centuries of human history, by orders of magnitude.

So it doesn't seem that knowledge advancement translates into ethical advancement, at all. The problem is in our own natures. Giving wicked people more power and knowledge doesn't turn them into good ones...it just gives them a bigger stick to hit people with.

Women and children and also men have been and still are involved in heavy manual work . The kept wife was a sign of conspicuous consumption, for those who could afford a kept wife.

Intelligence is valued irrespective of gender.

Emotional intelligence is no fad. Emotional intelligence is taught in all good schools via the arts.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:59 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:15 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 4:29 pm Okay, leave out 'my team'.
I never put it in.
P1 Whatever God believes is not morally wrong is indeed not morally wrong.
P2 God believes infanticide is not morally wrong.
C Therefore, infanticide is not morally wrong.
The logical form is valid, but Premise 2 is false, as is the conclusion.
Don't be obtuse.
I wasn't. It's the truth.
The general form is this.

P1 Whatever God believes is morally right or wrong is morally right or wrong.
P2 God believes X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.
C Therefore, X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.
Now your form is also invalid. P2 simply repeats P1, and thus the conclusion is gratutious.

But you have an additional problem, and it's that P1 has to contain two distinct terms. That means that you must be assuming that "Whatever God believes..." and "morally right or wrong" are two different terms ("is" being the predication).

If "Whatever God believes" and "morally right and wrong" are the same term, then your sentence is true but tautological. And it can't form the premise you want, because it has only one term, and a first premise needs two. If you are assuming they're not the same, you do have two distinct terms in Premise1; but then you've already presumed (not demonstrated) your conclusion, by making it implicit all the way back in P1.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Belinda wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:13 pm Women and children and also men have been and still are involved in heavy manual work .
Nothing remotely close to what men were...and are, still, today.
The kept wife was a sign of conspicuous consumption, for those who could afford a kept wife.
Well, the rich could afford it, and rich wives could afford to be "kept." But for the vast majority of men, that was utterly impossible, as it was for the vast majority of women.
Emotional intelligence is no fad.
Well, the more recent critiques give good reasons for us to know it is.

Moreover, even in the ways its been "effective," a very dark side of it has now emerged. See The Atlantic: https://www.theatlantic.com/health/arch ... ce/282720/

So it's clearly not necessarily even a good thing. Narcissists and sociopaths can be very good at it.

It's like technology -- not a bad thing in itself, but everything depends on the moral character of the person wielding it.
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iambiguous
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Re: moral relativism

Post by iambiguous »

8 Sources Of Morality
Nick Byrd
2. Evolution

Evolution is invoked to explain many things. One of them is human morality.
Of course evolution.

After all, we are explaining morality grappled with by the human species. And, unless you are partial to God, the human species itself only exists because we are the [so far] culmination of the evolution of life on Earth. No evolution, no us. No us, no philosophy. Among other things.

Then the profound mysteries that revolve around human brain matter. Matter not only conscious of itself as matter but matter that is actually able to "think up" arguments for and against behaviors that human brains themselves may or may not be able choose freely to opt for.
An evolutionary psychological view of morality holds that ethical systems, judgments, and norms are products (or byproducts) of various forms of evolutionary selection.
Maybe, but given that biological life itself began on Earth about 3.7 billion years ago, It took an awfully long time for "ethical systems" to become a part of this "selection". And we are to make of that...what exactly?
After all, disapproving of certain practices (e.g., killing children) and approving of other practices (e.g., cleanliness) may become more or less common depending on how they impact reproduction rates.
Well, overall, the killing of children may have become a biological imperative built into the human brain, but any number of children are killed for any number of reasons by individual men and women. Not to mention the fact that for biological life that we evolved out of, the killing of offspring seems to be the whole point of nature. The classic example being that of a 1,000 leatherneck turtle eggs hatched, only 1 will actually make it to adulthood.

As for cleanliness, there are complete slobs by the hundreds no doubt right in any particular community.
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Peter Holmes »

Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 6:15 pm
Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:59 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 5:15 pm
I never put it in.


The logical form is valid, but Premise 2 is false, as is the conclusion.
Don't be obtuse.
I wasn't. It's the truth.
The general form is this.

P1 Whatever God believes is morally right or wrong is morally right or wrong.
P2 God believes X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.
C Therefore, X is morally right and Y is morally wrong.
Now your form is also invalid. P2 simply repeats P1, and thus the conclusion is gratutious.

But you have an additional problem, and it's that P1 has to contain two distinct terms. That means that you must be assuming that "Whatever God believes..." and "morally right or wrong" are two different terms ("is" being the predication).

If "Whatever God believes" and "morally right and wrong" are the same term, then your sentence is true but tautological. And it can't form the premise you want, because it has only one term, and a first premise needs two. If you are assuming they're not the same, you do have two distinct terms in Premise1; but then you've already presumed (not demonstrated) your conclusion, by making it implicit all the way back in P1.
Simplification:

God believes X is morally right/wrong; therefore, X is morally right/wrong.

And that's the non sequitur. A non-moral premise can't entail a moral conclusion.
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Immanuel Can
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Immanuel Can »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 7:37 pm Simplification:

God believes X is morally right/wrong; therefore, X is morally right/wrong.
Do you mean it as a tautology? Or do you mean that you want me to accept that "What God believes..." and "morally right" aren't exactly the same thing?

Either way, there's no syllogism here...no logic, no demonstration, no evidence...just a statement of what you think is true, I guess.

So what was your question for me?

I'm really puzzled. I mean, I suppose it's possible you think "moral" means something prior to, or independent of the phrase, "What God believes is moral," but I can't imagine how you'd decide that, or why you'd think a Theist would think that's true.

In fact, I don't know how you still think the word "moral" can have any content at all, except for "whatever delusion of value my own culture holds at the present moment." But if that's all it is, a delusion your culture holds at the present moment, then it doesn't seem you could ever even ask the question, "Is what my culture believes moral?" The answer, from your perspective, would have to be, "What my culture presently believes is what my culture presently believes (i.e. "moral")." And, of course, that's just a tautology. It certainly doesn't allow you to ask if what your culture presently believes is the right thing. It has no "outside," no transcendent or larger standard to which you could refer in making such a judgment.

And that's also a problem with your critique of God, as I understand it. For if I understand it correctly, your point is supposed to be that God does, or at least could, in theory, call "moral" that which is not-moral (rape, murder, infanticide, etc.) But in a relativist scheme, NOTHING is not-moral. So I can't make heads-or-tails of what your objection is. It doesn't seem that your own declared relativism and subjectivism grants you any platform from which to launch any moral objection...against anything.
Skepdick
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Re: moral relativism

Post by Skepdick »

Peter Holmes wrote: Thu Nov 17, 2022 7:37 pm And that's the non sequitur. A non-moral premise can't entail a moral conclusion.
Having already explained it to you, you can no longer plead ignorance. It must be malice now!

The past entails ALL possible futures
There is no is-ought gap because there is no present-future gap.

There's a good reason why "We ought to kill Hitler" is not an moral ought; but "We ought to kill Putin" is a moral ought.

Because time.
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