What would be the harm?

[bennyboy]

You say that like it's a bad thing!

What's the alternative?  And if there is no alternative, is it objective on its own terms?

As I mentioned on my entrance into the previous thread about morality, we could view instinct as a highly variable but nevertheless objective reality. I'd argue that is because those instincts to some degree make our moral agency illusory. Sure, I could theoretically arrive at the idea that since all is just QM particles, it's okay if my daughter gets raped-- but I don't really have the choice of arriving at that idea, because my primate instincts are an expression of perhaps a million years of trial and error, and exercising control over my genetic descendency is part of that program for sure. What's more likely is that I'll rage about it, that other adult males will sympathise and also rage about it, and that we'll arrive at the idea that this behavior must not be tolerated. I'd say I had my first daughter for about an hour before I realized that I'd be able to kill for her if I had to; it wouldn't even be a hard decision to make. I literally looked at that little baby and thought that: "I will protect you until I die, and I pity the fool who thinks that there's a law strong enough, or an army big enough, to save him from me if he harms you."

Ultimately, the sense of harm must be instinctual, since all feelings are instinctual. Yes, we can develop complex layers of ideology or religion over that, but ultimately, they all derive from instincts about survival, about reproduction, and about genetic fitness-- or they serve as a response to knowledge about those instincts.