Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Right_and_Wrong_About_Right_and_Wrong
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Metaethics
Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
“Whatever we may say about the merits of torturing children for pleasure, and no doubt there is much to be said on both sides, I am sure we all agree it should be done with sterilized instruments.”
– G.K. Chesterton
This is basically Harry Baird's argument. That, in regard to some behaviors, absolutely no one can seriously argue that there is a "both sides" moral agenda.

To which I noted my own ambivalence:
This comes closest to upending my own "fractured and fragmented" frame of mind. People tap me on the shoulder and ask "can you seriously believe that the Holocaust or abusing children or cold-blooded murder is not inherently, necessarily immoral?"

And, sure, the part of me that would never, could never imagine my own participation in things of this sort has a hard time accepting that, yes, in a No God world they are still behaviors able to be rationalized by others as either moral or, for the sociopaths, justified given their belief that everything revolves around their own "me, myself and I" self-gratification.

And what is the No God philosophical -- scientific? -- argument that establishes certain behaviors as in fact objectively right or objectively wrong? Isn't it true that philosophers down through the ages who did embrace one or another rendition of deontology always included one or another rendition of the transcending font -- God -- to back it all up?

For all I know, had my own life been different...for any number of reasons...I would myself be here defending the Holocaust. Or engaging in what most construe to be morally depraved behaviors.
And...
If someone's morality functions to provide them with self-gratification in what they construe to be a No God world then for them, "in the absence of God all things are permitted". Their frame of mind shifts from "is it the right thing to do?" to "can I get away with it?"

Now, as far as I can tell, the function of your morality revolves around concluding that if particular behaviors are repugnant to you that makes them immoral. But for particular sociopaths abusing children is not repugnant at all to them. On the contrary, it arouses them.

Now, if there is an omniscient/omnipotent God then this is a Sin. There is no question of getting caught and no question of being punished. No God however and the abuser of children never does get caught...? Then what?
In turn, I noted that there may be any number men and women who find the abuse of children in any form to be repugnant. Yet they are able to rationalize, among other things, the abortion of unborn babies in the womb.

Also, we live in a world where "each day, 25,000 people, including more than 10,000 children, die from hunger and related causes." un.org

Or...

https://www.unicef.org/social-policy/child-poverty

And how much of this is attributable to those who own and operate the global economy? The amoral, "show me the money" capitalists hell bent on making the rich richer.

Or...

"250 million children between 5 and 14 are forced to work in sweatshops for up to 16 hours per day. The sweatshops produce products for western markets including clothing, shoes, and toys." the world counts.
“Man is the measure of all things.” – Protagoras
Which men? Measuring what things morally and politically? As though these measurements did not/do not vary dramatically down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally.

Pick an issue. Then line up the liberals and conservatives here. Let them provide us with the tools -- moral and political prejudices -- they use to measure their own "my way or the highway" parameters of right and wrong behaviors.

Oh, but no, in regard to things like capitalism vs. socialism, big government vs. small government, I vs. we, genes vs. memes, religion vs. atheism, idealism vs pragmatism, might makes right vs. right makes might vs. democracy and the rules of law...that's hardly ever been a factor at all historically and culturally.
One of the most common beliefs that people have about morality is the idea that different times and cultures have radically different moral standards. This assumption fuels moral relativism. Moral relativists believe cultures, individuals, and times do differ in their basic moral values, and that relativism is the best explanation for these differences. Moral relativists also hold that all moral views are equally valid because each culture (or person) invents their own morality.
Yes, moral relativists believe "cultures, individuals, and times do differ in their basic moral values, and that relativism is the best explanation for these differences" because the history of the human race to date could not possibly be more indicative of that.

As for believing that all moral narratives are equally valid, that would generally be applicable more to the sociopaths among us. No God from their frame of mind and all things can be rationalized. Including the abuse of children.

But what of the moral objectivists down through the ages? From the theocrats to the Nazis to the Communists, what human pain and suffering have they managed to sustain down through ages? Not to mention the amoral autocrats and dictators and thugs that nations like America have propped up for centuries.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
The assumption that different times have radically different moral standards can also be seen in a position called moral presentism, which maintains that we should not judge the past using our present moral standards.
No, it's not a question of judging others by our own "present" standards, but of recognizing the obvious...that in regard to moral prescriptions and proscriptions down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally, given particular sets of circumstances there will often be conflicting assessments of which behaviors ought to be rewarded or punished. In other words, pertaining to gender roles and social justice and economic values and sexual practices and religious beliefs and government powers and on and on and on. In fact, even in the "present" there are any number of conflicting moral narratives and political agendas regarding any number of behaviors around the globe. It just comes down to how "radical" the differences are.

And it's the moral objectivists among us who insist that, re one or another God or No God font, the best of all possible worlds is always the one that they subscribe to.

Then back to just how many One True Paths there have been and are now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_r ... traditions
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_p ... ideologies

Even among philosophers themselves the number of "schools" is mindboggling:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_s ... philosophy
For example, the American comedian Bill Maher recently said that Columbus committed atrocities, “but people back then were generally atrocious.” He argued that our judging Columbus or Washington is like “getting mad at yourself for not knowing what you know now when you were ten”, like saying, “stupid me for wanting to be a breakdancer and ghostbuster.” His point is that it is unfair to judge the past (or his ten-year-old self) from the current more mature perspective.
Exactly! How is that frame of mind not applicable regarding any number of contexts? After all, Columbus set the stage for the arrival of white Europeans in the "New World". And that set the stage for "manifest destiny" and the eventual "relocation" of Native Americans [who lived in what they construed to be the Old World] to reservations. Not to mention the introduction of black slaves.

And, again, it's not a question of fairness or unfairness, but of how "back then" behaviors such as this were rationalized given frames of mind entirely at odds with many that exist in the "present". Even the Christian Bible itself was used to condone it.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Philosophy Now wrote: Thu Jun 08, 2023 12:43 am Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.

https://philosophynow.org/issues/156/Ri ... _and_Wrong
In the primary values, he is quite right about, but he seems to hedge around the obvious. Morality is self-interest and whether it is acknowledged or not the foundation of morality is our common biology, its well-being and its security. It also is a survival mechanism common among species. The formation of groups, communities, civilizations depends upon identification with others selves upon which compassion arises and compassion is the seed of civilization. It is easy to lose sight of the fact that morality is a biological extension and/or an expression of ones humanity, the true foundation of morality is a common biology. The secondary moral values are of little consequence, and change as fashions do, well-being and security are the first principle moral values.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
While there are differences between relativism and presentism, they both make this popular yet questionable assumption that different cultures have different moral standards.
Of course, this cries out for particular contexts. Yes, we are all human beings genetically. We all require the same things to subsist, to survive...food, water, shelter. We all must sustain a community able to reproduce itself. We all must sustain a community able to defend itself. But down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally this has been accomplished given many different economic, social and political frameworks. And different moral standards pertaining to any number of contexts. And over and again there have been communities that believed that their own standards reflected the optimal framework.

After all, philosophers themselves have only been around a few thousand years to explore and explain the "human condition" in terms of "relativism and presentism".
In this article, I want to critique this assumption by arguing that fundamental moral values do not change with time or culture, and that we modern people are no more moral than our ancestors. The correct way of viewing history is not to dismiss past mistakes by saying they had different standards, nor to judge them using new moral standards. The correct view is to recognize that different times and cultures share the same basic standards, even if only a few people in any time live up to these universal standards. To support this view, I will outline the three main fallacies relativists and presentists use when arguing that different cultures have different moral standards.
Talk about a "general description intellectual contraption." What will interest me of course is the extent to which he applies this didactic "philosophical assessment" to particular issues like abortion, gender roles, animal rights, socialism/capitalism, gun control, human sexuality, the role of government, "I" more or less than "we", the separation of church and state, social justice issues, foreign policy, the environment, climate change and on and on and on.

"Fundamental moral values" pertaining to them.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
To support this view [above], I will outline the three main fallacies relativists and presentists use when arguing that different cultures have different moral standards.

1) Relativists and presentists overestimate moral differences, and underestimate the foundational similarities, among different cultures and times.
Here you would have to gather anthropologists, historians, ethicists, sociologists, political scientists, etc., together and pin down exactly what it means, in regard to morality, to speak of "foundational similarities" when it comes to historical and cultural contexts where there were differences [sometimes considerable differences] in and between communities regarding attitudes that pertained more around "I" or "we", around greater or lesser government involvement in the lives of citizens, around cooperation or competition, around capitalist/market political economies or socialist/collectivists political economies, around pragmatism or idealism, around religious or secular practices, around egalitarian philosophies or racist/sexist/classist philosophies, around might makes right, right makes might or democracy and the rule of law.

Or, sure, keep it all rather general and "philosophical":
The first problem with the claim that morality changes with time and culture is that it doesn’t, since the foundations of morality do not change. Moral people in all times and places seek to reduce unnecessary suffering, create order, be fair, and to treat people with respect. Jesus and Buddha, for example, are worthy of praise not because they are surprisingly modern, but because they lived in harmony with timeless moral standards.
The unnecessary suffering of which citizens in which sets of circumstances? Order and fairness and respect for whom?

Just look at the history of human interactions over the centuries. All of the brutal conflicts and wars and inquisitions and genocides and flagrant injustices. The "one of us" vs. "one of them" conflagrations involving both God and No God dogmas. Millions upon millions enslaved or oppressed or exploited or repressed. The reality of Manifest Destiny and imperialism and colonialism. The reality embedded in statistics like these:

https://www.globalissues.org/article/26 ... -and-stats
https://www.brookings.edu/blog/future-d ... 3-billion/
https://www.unicef.org/social-policy/child-poverty

Foundational morality?! Given the history of the human species to date?!!

Then there's the reality of the military industrial complex and the war economy where billions and billions and billions of dollars are dumped year in and year out:

https://sharing.org/information-centre/ ... tion-earth
https://www.scientificamerican.com/arti ... solutions/
https://borgenproject.org/the-relations ... l-poverty/

Finally, the enormous consequences embedded in the policies of the amoral nihilists...the "show me the money" crony capitalists around the globe who own and operate the world economy for all practical purposes. Then the sociopaths...
The central claim I’m defending here is that it is a mistake to believe there are fundamental moral differences between various times and cultures. In Ethics for Beginners, Peter Kreeft agrees, and argues that the essential content of ethics across cultures and times doesn’t vary much since...

“No one has succeeded in creating a system of values in which arbitrariness, self-indulgence, egotism, cruelty, injustice, force, deliberate lying, and arrogant, sneering superiority were virtues, while wisdom, self-control, altruism, kindness, justice, reason, honesty, and humility were vices. It is psychologically impossible to experience a moral obligation to live the set of vices in the first list or to experience guilt about living the set of virtues in the second.”
Really? What is crony capitalism if not predicated precisely on those former qualities? The whole "morality" of the "free enterprise system" revolves around the market. A "me, myself and I" mentality which is often manifested in a dog-eat-dog competitive race to the top. Sure, within particular families or small communities, the latter qualities can prevail. But the "larger society" is no less embodied in one or another "deep state" where those of wealth and power sustain a "system" that perpetuates their own selfish interests.

As for "moral obligations" in your community, you tell me what that revolves around in regard to...

* abortion
* gun control
* animal rights
* capital punishment
* sexuality
* social justice
* affirmative action
* the welfare state
* war
* climate change
* health care
* criminal justice
* immigration
* religious freedom
* education
* hate speech
* euthanasia
* gender roles
* minimum wage
* labor unions
* foreign policy
* crypto currency
* campaign contributions
* lobbyists
* prisons
* energy policies

Foundational morality here.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
Not even Friedrich Nietzsche or Ayn Rand succeeded in transforming cruelty and lying into virtues, or reason and self-control into vices! The bottom line is we cannot escape the fact that these are foundational and ubiquitous virtues and vices, and those who overestimate the moral differences between cultures or individuals fail to recognize that.
Cruelty and lying about what? About abortion? About gun control? About animal rights? About homosexuality?

Which government policies are cruel in regard to these issues? Which moral narratives are lies?

Back to the "show me the money" moral nihilists who own and operate the global economy from Washington D.C and Beijing and Moscow. Run the part about virtues and vices by them. Or by the sociopaths.

What is the philosophical argument in a No God world that comes closest to that fabled deontological moral and political agenda? Given sets of circumstances where conflicted value judgments might pop up anywhere along the ideological spectrum.
Here’s another piece of evidence supporting the claim that the moral foundations do not change with time. It was well known not everyone in the Eighteenth or Nineteenth Centuries thought slavery was good; but in fact there have always been moral reformers protesting slavery in their own time. Not only is it incorrect to say everyone before the Nineteenth Century believed slavery was good, it is also disrespectful to the many abolitionists who argued against slavery in their time. Some people have always protested slavery, and continue to do so today (there are more slaves in the world now than ever before).
Slavery. That's often the issue that is broached when discussing human morality over time historically. But the trafficking of human beings still goes on today. Millions still endure it in one form or another. And capitalists by and large came to prefer wage-slaves. They have no choice but to earn a wage because the bills aren't going to pay for themselves. But then once they punch out they're on their own.
Some might passionately object by arguing that slavery is clearly the norm in history, claiming that this shows that the idea that slavery is wrong is relatively new. But this claim is incorrect. Do you really think no Egyptian slaves thought the practice unfair, for instance? Are there no records of Aztec slaves wanting justice as well as revenge?
That doesn't mean that those who did enslave others weren't able to rationalize/justify it: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Proslaver ... ilizations.

Occasionally through God and religion. Others like Aristotle believed that "some people were slaves by nature".

And my point here is always the same. That, in a No God world, there does not appear to be a philosophical argument able to establish that slavery is inherently or necessarily immoral.
Or consider again Jesus and Buddha. The way they treated the sick, poor, and outcast – basically, the lowest or most needy in society – also imply that slavery is wrong. And while only a minority live up to truly universal standards of morality – Jesus, Buddha, some saints or peasants you never heard of – that’s not a good argument against the existence of those standards. They lived a morality that few in any time can live up to, even when they agree with the ideas in principle.
Okay, where does the morality of Jesus and Buddha come into play in regard to things like abortion and gun control and animal rights and homosexuality? And dozens of other issues that continue to tear us apart morally and politically?

And to speak of Jesus's message implying that slavery is wrong, was He or was he not in turn the God of the Old Testament: https://www.gotquestions.org/Bible-slavery.html
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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No one has succeeded in creating a system of values in which arbitrariness, self-indulgence, egotism, cruelty, injustice, force, deliberate lying, and arrogant, sneering superiority were virtues...
So writes Peter Kreeft. Balderdash. Considering the "virtue" of cruelty alone, Kreeft apparently has no acquaintance with human sacrifice, sati, infibulation, infant exposure, torture, slavery or any of the many, many other "systems of values" featuring cruelty. Kreeft should try abandoning his thought experiments and acquire a minimal knowledge of actual history.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
The second mistake relativists and presentists make when arguing that different times and cultures have different moral standards, is failing to distinguish between primary and secondary values. While they are correct that some moral values change, they fail to notice that it is only the secondary values that change, not primary ones.
Note to any relativists and presentists here:

Given a particular context in which moral values often come into conflict please note for us how you distinguish between primary and secondary moral values.
Primary moral values are the foundational (and universal) values that exist before we reason from them, while secondary values are the product of primary values plus reasoning. For example, moral people agree on the primary moral value of reducing unnecessary suffering; and if they later learn that the polio vaccine reduces suffering, then they argue for the secondary moral duty to get vaccinated.
Okay, one can accept this as a fundamental moral obligation. Now go out and convince the amoral "show me the money" capitalists among us that even though many of their economic policies around the globe [from sweat shops to minimum wage to propping up repressive theocracies in order to sustain access to oil] often results in enormous human suffering, they are obligated to stop what they are doing.

Or run it by the sociopaths.

Or pin down whether aborting unborn babies causes more or less suffering than forcing pregnant women to give birth.

Or capital punishment. Does executing criminals not bring pain and suffering to their families and loved ones?

And even in regard to vaccinations and covid, some argue that they relieve suffering while others insist that down the road they will eventually cause more suffering.
Notice that they didn’t invent the secondary moral obligation, they discovered it: they discovered that the polio vaccine reduces unnecessary suffering, and so now have a new way of achieving the primary (and timeless) moral value of reducing suffering. Primary moral values do not change over time or across cultures, although secondary moral values do.
Once again, note a particular moral conflagration that has plagued the human species for centuries. Even though many on both sides might agree that minimizing human suffering should be the aim of, say, government policies, those on the liberal/left end of the political spectrum and those on the conservative/right end, along with those who champion capitalism and those who champion socialism, will argue fiercely regarding which policies do in fact reflect the most rational and virtuous solutions.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
The relativist or presentist may ask, “Are you saying I share the same morality as those who engaged in witch-hunting and human sacrifice?”

My answer is “Yes, basically.” Like you, their morality was based on reducing unnecessary suffering, creating order, being fair, and the other primary values. They just differed in how those values were to be applied.
What to make of that...

A fundamental moral component of human interactions is the desire to reduce unnecessary suffering, create order and being fair; and if that's manifested culturally, historically in witch hunts and human sacrifice, so be it? The important part is that from the perspective of those who embrace such practices the aim confirmed the primary value of morality?

Basically?

Okay, what of the Nazis who felt the suffering of the Jews was necessary to attain and then to sustain an ordered society that resulted in greater fairness for the aryan race?

Instead, the Nazis would be criticized for being "presentists"...for construing human values solely in terms of the Nazi ideology?

I may be misunderstanding him here.
As C.S. Lewis argued in Mere Christianity, you too might adopt witch-hunting if you really believed in witches who sold their souls to the devil to do his evil work of spoiling crops and killing children. The difference between you and the witch hunters is not that they had different fundamental values, it’s that they believed in malevolent, powerful witches while you don’t. Your disagreement with witch hunters is about facts, not about primary moral values.
Nope, I think I understand his point. It just seems rather peculiar to me. It's as though no matter what behaviors are pursued by a particular community, no matter how ghastly or horrendous we might see them, as long as their motivation reflects what he construes to be a primary moral value it qualifies as what is right and wrong about right and wrong.

What I do here instead is to note how these "primary moral values" shift and evolve both historically and culturally. And that philosophers are not able to pinpoint the behaviors that all rational men and women are obligated to embrace as deontologically sound.

Also, that in regard to things like witch-hunts, what counts is not what one believes about witches but what one is actually able to demonstrate is in fact true about them. And thus connecting the dots between rooting them out and the community's primary moral values.
Consider too human sacrifice. Many of the people who engaged in human sacrifice had different factual beliefs from you, not different primary moral values. Would you object to human sacrifice if you believed in a god who commanded the sacrifice, and the many consequent utilitarian benefits of the sacrifice, such as rain for the crops, so that the rest of the people may survive? Again, your disagreement with those who practiced human sacrifice is mostly a disagreement on factual grounds and the associated secondary moral values, not a disagreement about primary moral values.
And surely, it's the same thing here. Literally sacrificing human beings to the Gods is sanctioned if those doing it truly and, in all sincerity, believe it springs from a bona fide "primary moral value".

How about you? How do you interpret all of this? What important point might I be missing?
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
In The Elements of Moral Philosophy, James Rachels uses the example of Eskimos who sometimes killed newborns. It sounds like the Eskimos had a very different morality, until you understand that in the harsh Arctic environment they did not have the resources to feed everyone. The Eskimo mother allowed her baby to die because the alternative – the older children dying – was worse.
See how it works? Given specific historical and cultural and circumstantial contexts, "primary moral values" can be used to rationalize behaviors that some here would insist are "universally immoral". That's how the objectivist mind works. Like those who embrace animal rights not recognizing that the arctic environment is such that it is ludicrous to argue that it is immoral for the people there to hunt seals, caribou or polar bears. Some no doubt would demand that they uproot their communities and relocate to places where they could properly become vegetarians.

Thus...
Again, our apparent moral disagreement with the Eskimos is not a disagreement in primary values, for we both feel an obligation to care for the young. The disagreement arises because of the different environments and resulting factual claims at work. In this harsh environment, you too would probably choose to sacrifice one baby to save two older children.
Then back to those who rationalize all of the many other behaviors as the "lessor of two evils". Like those who might argue that, okay, abortion is the killing of a human being, but it is a human being totally oblivious to the reality of life and death and is being killed only because the alternative is to force fully aware women to give birth.
To take a modern example, when two people disagree about a moral obligation to get vaccinated, they usually agree that it is good to reduce unnecessary suffering, but disagree on the scientific claims. For example, Bob may want what is best for his son, but he does not believe the moral obligation to get his son vaccinated because he believes the vaccine will harm his son. In this case, again, the apparent moral disagreement between pro and anti-vaxer is about factual claims, not about primary value claims.
Okay, so out in the real world what is a particular government to do in regard to a particular affliction like Ebola or AIDS or covid?? Who gets to decide definitively which policies do in fact reduce the most unnecessary suffering? Or what of those religious fanatics who insist that the consequences of their own child's affliction will be left in the hand's of God?

As always, for many extremists, it is their own political and ideological dogmas that become the overriding concern. The evil Big Brother liberal globalists are not only orchestrating the vaccination drives to run the world but the pandemics themselves are all hoaxes.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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This doesn’t seem like a discussion of the article and more just you ranting nonsensically about morality.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Darkneos wrote: Sun Jul 02, 2023 4:50 pm This doesn’t seem like a discussion of the article and more just you ranting nonsensically about morality.
Sorry, but I've already got three Stooges here. :wink:
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
3) Relativists and presentists mistakenly think different times have radically different moral standards because they mistakenly believe the present is more morally advanced than the past.
Well, this relativist merely notes that in regard to many moral conflicts, communities down through the ages historically and across the globe culturally have prescribed and proscribed different behaviors pertaining to different sets of circumstances in different -- sometimes very different -- ways.

And that philosophers and ethicists using the technical tools at their disposal have not exactly come up with deontological arguments that takes this into account such that anything approaching the author's rendition of "primary moral values" is established. On the contrary, he notes some rather extreme behaviors that have been rationalized in particular communities as "proof" that "fundamental moral values" do in fact exist. That's why some folks engaged in human sacrifices.
Most modern people believe the modern world is morally better than the past because many countries have legally abolished slavery, child labor, and other evils. Modern people may also feel superior because those who would disagree with them are, for the most part, dead.
Other modern folks, however, construe wage slavery as just another form of human bondage. As for child labor, run that by the great Christian from Arkansas, Sarah Huckabee Sanders: https://www.npr.org/2023/03/10/11625318 ... ee-sanders

As for "other evils", well, there are liberal Christians and conservative Christians one can take that up with.
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Re: Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong

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Right & Wrong About Right & Wrong
Paul Stearns argues against moral relativism and moral presentism.
First, in Orthodoxy (1908), G.K. Chesterton argued that those who believe the present is more advanced often say that people should ‘get with the times’, but this is no more useful than saying ‘Get with Thursday at 3 pm instead of Friday at 1 pm’. Time is just a number, and it is no help to tell people to ‘get with the times’. Should you get with the abolitionists or with the slaveholders in their time? Or in modern times, do you get with the moral vegetarians or the moral carnivores? How can one ‘get with the times’, when the times always contain contradictory views?
How about those who argued "get with the times" in communities where witch hunts and human sacrifice was justified as a "foundation of morality"?

Back to this part:
The relativist or presentist may ask, “Are you saying I share the same morality as those who engaged in witch-hunting and human sacrifice?”

My answer is “Yes, basically.” Like you, their morality was based on reducing unnecessary suffering, creating order, being fair, and the other primary values. They just differed in how those values were to be applied. As C.S. Lewis argued in Mere Christianity, you too might adopt witch-hunting if you really believed in witches who sold their souls to the devil to do his evil work of spoiling crops and killing children. The difference between you and the witch hunters is not that they had different fundamental values, it’s that they believed in malevolent, powerful witches while you don’t. Your disagreement with witch hunters is about facts, not about primary moral values.
Or am I misunderstanding his point?

Didn't many who enslaved black men, women and children, like many who eschewed eating animal flesh base their own convictions on what they deemed to be a fundamental "foundation of morality"?

How does this ever and always not evolve over time historically and around the planet culturally?
So instead of advising one to ‘get with the times’ (which often translates to ‘get with the majority’), one should advise people to get with their conscience, which tries to reduce unnecessary suffering, treat people with respect, and the rest. Generally, one should get with good reasoning and the deeper aspects of morality that do not depend on one’s culture, the majority opinion, or the time in which one lives. Get with morality instead of the times!
Okay, embrace abortion on demand or make them all illegal. Which is most likely to "reduce unnecessary suffering, treat people with respect, and the rest"?

Prohibit private citizens from owning guns or allow them to purchase whatever they can afford. Which is most likely to "reduce unnecessary suffering, treat people with respect, and the rest"?

Reduce government down to the manner in which Libertarians prefer it or expand it to accommodate the polices of those like Bernie Sanders. Which is most likely to "reduce unnecessary suffering, treat people with respect, and the rest"?

"Good reasoning and the deeper aspects of morality" then.
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