(May 28, 2018 at 11:13 am)Catholic_Lady Wrote: What if my justification is this: value is a matter of assignment. A thing has value only so far as it has been assigned value by the people who value it. So if I don't care about or don't like a particular individual, that person has no value to me. In other words, a thing has no value apart from the value the individual person gives it.
I would agree with you. But other people have values as well. And they matter just as much as yours for exactly the same reason. You see?
Quote:Are you saying human beings have intrinsic value? If so, says who?
No, I'm saying values are intrisically valuable. That's why they're values, lol.
But I think that it's very clear and axiomatic that violating someone else's values, or in other words, making them suffer, is more morally important than, say, eating a bowl of ice cream. There's clearly an asymmetry. Violating someone else's values is more bad than fulfilling your own is good. This is also why greed is considered a bad thing, whereas the opposite, avoiding harm, isn't. It's why paramedics are more morally important than entertainers. When someone is suffering there's a demand to help them. If someone isn't suffering but they could be having a lot of fun, well, that would be nice but there either isn't any moral imperative at all for them to enjoy themselves, or there's far, far less of an imperative than there is to help someone who is actually suffering.
Like I said, needless suffering being a bad thing seems like the most reasonable axiom of all. And we do need some axiom if we are to have any objective system at all. If someone asks me to prove that suffering is harmful that's like someone asking me to prove that poison is unhealthy. At some point we have to accept that certain things are clearly morally wrong in the same way that we have to accept that some things are clearly bad for our health. And, indeed, there's just as much evidence that suffering exists as there is that poor health exists. And to say that there's no way I can prove that suffering is harmful is just like saying there's no way I can prove that poor health is harmful. Then you may say "Well, just because it's harmful doesn't mean it is bad" but harm already implies something bad. The point is that this axiom is an extremely reasonable starting point for an objective morality... and the fact no one can give a single example EVER of something that is neither harmful nor hurtful nor deprives anyone of anything and is still bad somehow elucidates this axiom. EVERY SINGLE EXAMPLE of something bad, that has ever been demonstrated, is either undesirable to someone, deprives them of something, or is harmful or hurtful to someone. Or in other words: Makes them suffer on some level.
