Lord_BlackAdder posted:We should, I guess, start off with what you mean by "moral". Your argument makes no sense, if you're arguing that moral principles are not relative. Social progress is not necessarily moral. Survival is not necessarily moral.
Onoto posted:The first round went poorly for the Relativists. Let's see what they can do in Round Two. They come out and start working the body again, though they look afraid to commit. Adder tries a haymaker to the body, but that's the most adventurous attack so far. Quix hasn't countered yet, so we'll have to see if he can open up that cut some more and assert his dominance.
Quixotic-Sith posted:Lord_BlackAdder posted:We should, I guess, start off with what you mean by "moral". Your argument makes no sense, if you're arguing that moral principles are not relative. Social progress is not necessarily moral. Survival is not necessarily moral. Nonsense, you are misrepresenting what is being said. Mere survival is not cast in terms of "morality", and "social progress" is nebulous unless contextualized - I gave you a specific example of social progress (slavery), I'm not making blanket statements. Oh, I am not misinterpreting anything. I am saying, quite clearly, that anything to do with social progess is not necessarily moral. The abolition of slavery is not necessarily moral Let's see what you mean by "moral", then. If you want to start with terms and build from there, I'm fine with that. Let's lay a few things out first. 1. "Metaethical absolutism" versus "metaethical relativism" are essentially questions of epistemology ("philosophy of knowledge"), asking whether it is possible to know the moral status of an action. Absolutism says yes, relativism says no (a third possibility is emotivism, in which ethical judgments are categorized as a combination of a statement of fact with a statement of individual personal preference). Answering "yes" to this question does not necessarily bind the answerer to any particular position; it merely indicates whether the answerer believes such knowledge to be possible. Useless. Showing off. 2. "Moral" is a difficult term, and in some contexts is used interchangably with "ethical". I tend to use the term "moral" to connote issues of "good/evil" versus "right/wrong", which fit into the purview of ethics. If you don't want to make such a distinction, that's fine, as it doesn't detract from the overall argument. Very useful. Translation: I have no damn idea. 3. Particular moral methodologies are employed in arriving at particular judgments. Deontological assessment, consequentialist assessment, virtue ethics assessment, narrative ethics assessment, etc., are all derivatives of moral absolutism, they simply differ in the method of judgment (deontology is prima facie and/or a priori, for instance, while consequentialism is a posteriori). Useless. 4. Formal norms are different than material norms. Formal norms are overarching, guiding principles, while material norms are the rules that are generated by applying formal norms to particular contexts. Useless. All of these basic points are Ethics 101, and should have been covered in the first ethics course a college student takes. I'm happy to go into them in greater detail, but we've already entered tl;dr territory for the YJCC ADD/ADHD crowd. Showing off. The argument is not dependent upon philosophy - it draws support from a number of disciplines, including the hard sciences, social sciences, and humanities. It goes a little something like this: A. Principles of self-regulation have appeared in organisms since the first prokaryotes, eukaryotes, and archaebacteria. These principles of self-regulation manifest at the molecular, organismal, and social levels. These are not to be confused with anything necessitating a designer, but merely reflect natural laws of stereochemistry, as well as organismal, social, and environmental homeostasis. Organisms and cultures take on particular patterns that govern chemical and social behavior. B. We can agree that cultures appear to have different practices, and that these practices can also vary from individual to individual and/or time to time. The fact of this plurality, however, does not necessarily lead to relativism; if one is willing to concede that opinions can be ill-informed and mistaken, then the idea that disagreement-->relative is immediately discarded (since, after all, the difference can be due to the aberrant opinion lacking the information the correct opinion possesses). C. When cultures are examined from an etic perspective, we can identify 67 universal features (both roles within the culture as well as prohibitions on incest, arbitrary killing, and lying) that recur throughout societies. While cultures may differ in how they instantiate these principles (the practices are different), the principles remain the same. Marriage remains important, for instance, but the specifics of marriage vary from culture to culture. D. We can draw historical patterns of change - the rights and status of women and minorities, for instance, are objectively better in American society in 2008 than in 1708. The concept of progress from a lower state to a higher state is only possible if there is a metric by which both can be judged. Without this metric, there is no concept of "progress" - there is only "change". If morality is a social construction and/or is defined by the dominant mores of a given culture, then by definition one who is working to change these mores is acting immorally. The logical consequence of this position is that MLK, Jr. was a bad man for challenging the dominant racism of his time, a point which I've yet to encounter a relativist of any flavor supporting. There is more to this (e.g., Aristotelian arguments about the natural function of humanity (our telos) is our capacity for self-reflective thought, which is not culturally dependent, and which produces particular virtues that are objectively good for humans (since in this system of moral = "good/evil", what is good is necessarily prior to what is "right")), but I'm not sure how much detail you want. Useless.
-RebelScum- posted:All right, here I go. I believe that from an evolutionary perspective that a universal morality has arisen, I actually agree with what you say to a large degree. I don't necessarily follow up in the case of an individual differing by saying that you can absolutely claim that he is morally wrong though, and don't think that in cases where he isn't actively infringing on others that it should even be noted.
-RebelScum- posted:I'm a believer that you can (somewhat) arise beyond evolutionary hardwiring, for example abortions and birth control, and that for all practical purposes morality has at least some flexibility. I suppose you could say that I believe in universal morality, but don't necessarily think it's 100% relevant in practical matters.
-RebelScum- posted:Let it be noted that I do not have a degree in philosophy and this is largely an uneducated (or maybe a semi-educated) opinion. I'll now sit back and wait for my thrashing.
Onoto posted:Is it just me, or does it seem that we have a heavyweight fighting a light heavy? It's like Jack Dempsey versus practically anyone he ever fought.
Lord_BlackAdder posted:Onoto posted:Is it just me, or does it seem that we have a heavyweight fighting a light heavy? It's like Jack Dempsey versus practically anyone he ever fought. But I was only trying not to use teh jargon
Lord_BlackAdder posted: Um, as far as I can see, Quix still has not answered. If anyone bothers to read, Quix, you said nothing whatosever in response to my questions. You posted "stuff", made it long and complicated and didn't really answer. Try again, please.
