quote:

ORIGINAL: blacksword404

When you come into a country you agree to abide by its laws. If I was then running around poisoning people then you have the right to try me in a court of law. To determine my guilt. But you just can't get together in a town meeting and point to me and say " Hey we haven't killed anybody in a long while. I say we kill that guy".

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

My objection wasn't to using the word "absolutes" in connection with morality. My objection was to denying that there are moral absolutes, on the grounds that doing so confronts a logical paradox.

I agree that there is always some circumstance in which simple formulaic rules like the ones you cite can be argued against, but for the argument to be valid it must invoke a morality that is implicitly absolute. Consider the example you give in your next post:

Putting my cat to sleep because of widespread cancer: right.
Killing cats for entertainment: wrong.

Is that necessarily true? Would you accept that it might not be? Because if morality is in the final analysis relative, then it becomes perfectly conceivable to declare pleasure the highest good, and if you find pleasure and entertainment in torturing cats to death then that's an entirely fine and dandy thing to do.

Is that really where you want to go? Because any notion that some kind of middle ground exists is an illusion.

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML
Agreed. The example of Nazi Germany suggests that morality is a social construct. There were people who disagreed with the anti-sematic philosophy and rhetoric but quickly learned to keep quiet about their opinions. This tells us that morality is imposed by structural power.

quote:

ORIGINAL: GotSteel

quote:

ORIGINAL: vincentML
Agreed. The example of Nazi Germany suggests that morality is a social construct. There were people who disagreed with the anti-sematic philosophy and rhetoric but quickly learned to keep quiet about their opinions. This tells us that morality is imposed by structural power.

Sure not everybody drank the koolaid and some Germans fled Germany others tried to keep their heads down. But there were also the rest who were convinced that Jews were destroying Germany, they were convinced that it was "righteous" to kill the Jews. Sort of like how the Real 'Merikins are convinced it's "righteous" to oppress homosexuals.

quote:

Our inability to articulate one is not an argument against there being moral absolutes. We may not know what they are, or more likely they are not of a kind that can easily be subsumed in nice little sound-bites. But the fact remains that if morality is relative, then there is no such thing in any meaningful sense; it's simply whatever anyone wants to say it is.

quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub
Righteousness is just following what is viewed moral...and that fits just fine in the Moral grammar theory.

Hitler was immoral and he gathered others around him that were as well... as I said in a previous  post I believe morality as we are discussing in this thread is personal.

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ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: evesgrden

If I posit that there are no moral absolutes

Well now you're just running us around in a circle. If that claim was absolutely true, it would be false.



[/quote

Do you understand the concept of a moral absolute?
It's a perspective that there are actions which are inherently good or inherently bad.

I don't believe that to be the case; i.e that an action is inherently good or inherently bad, ergo, I don't believe in moral absolutes. I believe that context is crucial to the definition of what we consider good or bad.

I cannot make it anymore clear than that, and there's certainly nothing else for me to add if you're using your own personal definition of "moral absolute".




_____________________________

What you permit, you promote.

(in reply to Kirata)

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata

quote:

ORIGINAL: evesgrden

Do you understand the concept of a moral absolute?
It's a perspective that there are actions which are inherently good or inherently bad.

I don't believe that to be the case; i.e that an action is inherently good or inherently bad, ergo, I don't believe in moral absolutes. I believe that context is crucial to the definition of what we consider good or bad.

You haven't provided a definition for a moral absolute. What you've handed me is a definition of Moral Absolutism. In my view moral absolutes, purely as a practical matter, would have to be standards against which actions can be judged, not simply a catalog of acts in themselves. So I can't feel terribly sanguine about that view, but neither do I agree that the only alternative is to deny the existence of moral absolutes altogether.

K.

quote:

ORIGINAL: kdsub
Are we born….Good?

quote:

ORIGINAL: Kirata


~ FR ~

On the subject of moral absolutism more generally...

Will you let me fuck you for a million dollars?
   Sure!
How about twenty bucks?
   What do you think I am?
We've established that. Now we're just haggling about the price.

I doubt there is anyone here who wouldn't agree that to kidnap, rape, and murder a child is a morally odious act. Period. Do Not Pass Go. Regardless of the fucking "circumstances". When it comes to certain acts, we're all moral absolutists. There remains only to haggle about what's on the list. And most importantly, why.

K.

quote:

What is actually evident is that almost all moralities share common elements, proscriptions again murder and theft for example.