(December 12, 2010 at 11:47 am)Captain Scarlet Wrote: Morality is made mysterious by theists who often ask were it came from. Its casusitry I'm afraid. There is a lot of evidence that we have to behave well to one another in order to survive as a species. Just a simple thought experiment: what happens to a society who believe murder is always acceptable? They die out, therefore only societies who do not think murder is always acceptable survive. But it runs deeper than that, a more detailed sketch of human morality without the need for god can be seen in the contractairan model. It is by no means a full explanation, but is no worse than the god model and it is simpler in that it does not need to invoke a diety.
1. Survival is not the only object of evaluation regarding shared values so any moral theory based on survival is false (does not consider all values). Survival based morality also requires that anything that is contrary to survival is morally wrong (unless a sub-criteria is established) making even willing death (suicide and euthanasia) morally wrong. All recreational activities that carry risk of death are also contrary to survival values.
2. Social contracts do not exist, political contracts are a 'best representation' and not a 'mutual agreement' - it is not necessarily majority either in some nations either, more like 'largest minority' and even if it was the majority or unanimous it would still be an argument from popularity: "It is true that P (moral proposition) because the majority believe that P".
Besides, Contractarianism would conclude that rape is morally right should the group in question mostly agree to it, so really it's moral relativism + a piece of paper (contract).
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