RE: What IS good, and how do we determine it?
June 22, 2015 at 2:39 pm
(This post was last modified: June 22, 2015 at 2:51 pm by Thumpalumpacus.)
(June 22, 2015 at 12:03 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: No. A person's culpability is relative. The objective act itself is not. I know you see them as the same thing, but I see them as 2 different things, so you have to keep that in mind.
Except that you explicitly equated culpability and moral responsibility. That means that moral responsibility, that is to say the morality, of an act is not objective.
You've demonstrated this belief of yours time and again in this thread, when you draw on circumstances when judging the morality of an act. You called the situation with the mother "immoral" until some objections brought you away from your talking points and to your senses. I agree with Stimbo, that you are an essentially decent person seriously trying to square her own moral compass with what she has been told by people she respects and adores.
(June 22, 2015 at 12:03 pm)Catholic_Lady Wrote: What did you think of my example with the insane person who killed 10 people at the mall? The act of killing 10 people is an objectively immoral act. But the insane person's culpability is probably completely eliminated. His culpability being lessened does not change the fact that going into a mall and killing 10 people is still immoral.
How can you have an immoral act without an actor? Morality is not some abstract crap that we view as a shadow on a cavern's wall. Morality is a condition of every human action. You yourself acknowledge that such lofty, abstract phrases such as "All murder is wrong" is entirely dependent upon circumstances. That is a tacit admission that the real world circumstances of an act are more important than abstractions.
