RE: On Moral Authorities
November 10, 2016 at 6:03 pm
(This post was last modified: November 10, 2016 at 6:13 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
(November 10, 2016 at 5:54 pm)Ignorant Wrote: If you equate happiness with pleasure, then you'd be right. In other words, if the ______________ was "pursuing and obtaining as much pleasure as possible", then it would be hedonism. Does happiness mere pleasure? I don't think so.5
Oh boy, a semantic objection. If happiness isn't pleasure, and pleasure isn't happiness..then I don't know what is...but I don't base my morality on either, so it's irrelevent to me either way.
Quote:I couldn't agree more. Would you agree that, if there is no such thing as an "object" (in the subjective vs. objective sense) we could reliably call "human nature", then there is no rational means for human to approach a judgment about the morality of a human being?Nope.
Quote:Either:I don't approach moral questions in the context of the question asked above, even when I do refer to "human nature".
Human nature itself is the ultimate object about which subjects make moral judgments.
Subjects, consciously or not, evaluate human action based on their own answers to the questions: "what is human nature/In what consists a well-lived human life?" and "which actions will bring about the best individuation of a well-lived human life in my own personal context?"
Quote:orI don't approach moral questions in the context of the question asked above, even when I -don't- refer to "human nature"
There is no human nature and no object about which subjects make moral judgments
Subjects, consciously or not, evaluate human action based on their answers to the questions: "who/what must I obey?" and "what must I do/what does my authority tell me to do?"
The second one seems like a boring and frustrating way to live, but that is just me.
Help and harm, that's the entire system, for me (and I might even be inclined to shave it down to just harm). I'm not, even in that, trying to be "the most helpful" and I don;t insist that anyone "must obey". There's no statement for me along the lines of "the most helpful life is the most well lived life" or anything that even remotely approaches it. I don;t, in my opinion...leave room for people who disagree, but if pressed, academically, and someone disagrees about help and harm,...say they disagree about the nature of either or the nature of human beings, I let them have it. If they think that some "x" is helpful that I think is harmful...they should do it, we'll see who eds up getting hit over he head with a brick after it's done, lol.
Since neither your either -or- your or seem to apply to me, that suggests that there are other ways to address these things. While I appreciate such classifications as braod strokes we've seen, for example by reference to Kant, that one mans tleology is another man deontology...and whatever permutation there may exist in between our outside or either relegates any insistence that they be one or the other, imo, to the dustbin of the history of moral philosophy. It;s eaither that, or we're making subtle frame shifts in reference without acknowledging or realizing that we've done so....and subsequently saying very foolish things, lol.
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