luke warm, on Feb 7 2009, 04:44 PM, said:
if morality is evolved, as mike says, then it is subjective... if subjective, it is conventional... to use a very tired analogy, at one time (even now, i suppose) one group of people thought it was right, maybe even good, to destroy the jewish race... now another group thought it was bad (or wrong)... what that means, if morality is subjective, is that destroying the jewish race is either good or bad depending on ones culture or, if might does make right, on who wins
You keep doing the same thing, it seems to me, in all of your posts. You make an argument based on a premise that is assumed to be valid, without acknowledging that you have done so... and without acknowledging (recognizing?) that those to whom you are replying don't necessarily accept your premise.
Thus you take my suggestion that what we perceive as a moral sense is evolved, then state that 'then it is subjective'. Why?
Of course, we can get into an interminable and almost certainly doomed debate about what 'objective' means in this context. But in the sense that there is an evolved part of our moral sense... that would, in my view, be 'objective' in the sense that it developes through the patterns of cellular development, growth, and interconnectivity of our brains. In any given infant, the pattern will, according to my limited reading, be influenced by environmental factors... alcohol use by the mother, other nutritional factors, and so on, will impact the development of the brain in the fetus, and nutritional and other environmental factors will impact the brain in the developing infant, on a physical level... I am not, in this sense, referring to cultural factors.
So physical factors having a biological impact on the growth of the brain will influence the extent to which the moral sense (and any other hard-wired capacity) may be expressed, but, assuming a healthy environment, and allowing for some degree of variation due to genetic mixes, I can see that the child will have within itself, due to the patterns into which the brain grew as a result of biology, a basic and largely uniform-across-the-species moral compass. This is 'objective' in my view. It is not generated by consensus or culture.
This would usually tell parents that it is wrong to kill their own children.. that it is right to risk their own lives for their children. How far this goes, I don't know.
It appears to be almost universal that one would not physically push a stranger into the path of a moving train in order to save a group of strangers further down the track. It appears less clear that it is universal to refrain from diverting the train down a track where it would kill that same stranger, in order to save that same group on the original track.
So it seems to me, again recognizing my limited reading, that the basic moral sense is akin to an available but not well-defined set of rules, that awaits and is suited for expansion by cultural learning.
This is why, it seems to me, that some behaviours that appeared to be moral in one era are now viewed as repugnant.
Jimmy, you say that indiscriminate killing is always objectively immoral.
But, consider your religion... I gather that you are a form of Christian.
In the battles between sects in the early centuries, it was considered morally right to slaughter those who preferred a slightly different set of dogmas. Later, heretics were burnt at the stake, with fervent and no doubt heartfelt and sincere prayers being offered, by the executioners, for the soul of the heretics.
Read any of the stories of the Conquistadors and it is apparent that the indiscriminate slaughter of tens of thousands of natives in Central America was morally appropriate (I am not referring to the accidental genocide inflicted by the infectious diseases carried by the invaders).
People (including devout Christians) once boiled cats alive as a form of entertainment. People routinely tortured others in an effort to make them resile from certain unpopular beliefs. Slavery was an unobjectionable practice for almost every culture for almost all of recorded history. Women were and remain in many cultures property of the male (the Western tradition of the father 'giving away' the bride is not called that for no reason.. the daughter was the father's property until the wedding, when she became her husband's property... and the Christian church endorsed this view.. and, in a number of sects, still does today).
Anyone who claims that he now knows what is 'morally right' and that this world-view has always been 'right' is either ignorant of history or profoundly egocentric.
The truth appears to be that the vast majority of the christians who have ever lived prior to the last couple of centuries would have strongly disagreed with much of what we view as morally inappropriate. If it is possible that they, believers as they were, had a faulty moral sense, viewed 'objectively', what makes anyone today sure that they themselves are 'right'? All I can say is that such a worldview strikes me as the height of arrogance.
'one of the great markers of the advance of human kindness is the howls you will hear from the Men of God' Johann Hari
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