RE: The Ethics of Belief
July 23, 2015 at 7:16 pm
(This post was last modified: July 23, 2015 at 7:22 pm by bennyboy.)
(July 23, 2015 at 12:35 pm)Pyrrho Wrote: I think it is an unreasonable belief to suppose that you have the capability to kill everyone, so Clifford and I are quite happy to condemn such an idea. (We would both condemn it for other reasons as well, but more than this one is unnecessary for the present purposes.)Does a moral idea really have to be associated with a statistical chance of success for it to be moral? I don't have an argument against that, except a flat rejection. I'd say that a person who thinks he can really kill everyone is delusional, and his morality or lack of it cannot be sensibly judged.
Anyway, let's say I think it's immoral to litter, and moral to pick up garbage, and so every day I pick up a little garbage. Would you argue that my behavior is the expression of an idea based on lack of sufficient evidence-- the idea that I could eventually pick up all the garbage in the world? I don't think that makes sense. I think it's more correct to say that moral behaviors are the expression of oneself as the Archetypal Man-- that we behave in a way that, if all others also did, the world would achieve an ideal state (i.e. the moral vision).
