RE: What would be the harm?
November 30, 2018 at 11:11 am
(This post was last modified: November 30, 2018 at 11:16 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Well, that's just the thing, we -don't- want to look to evolution if we're hoping to establish intrinsic good (or evil). We do, however, have to contend with the fact that our agency evolved as an artifact of other-than.
To use the context of that archetypal homunculii..the business of moral objectivity is in identifying and deprioritizing those behaviours or biases (or humoculii advocating them) that are an artifact of instrumental goods, of survival. We do this because we understand that what is natural..and in this case that which may produce an edge in the game of not becoming extinct, is not necessarily right. Nor, for that matter, is the conceptually unnatural wrong.
To use harm as the example..it is natural to harm, in fact..some amount of harm is naturally unavoidable and another amount is unknown. The question jorm proposed was, in the event that we removed those things considered harmful, why do we then continue in our insistence that some x is wrong. Does this demonstrate that our moral schema is built on a foundation of sand? In a sense, yes, it does..but since the business of objective morality, as above, is to identify those instances and eliminate that problem...it's an issue for other-than schemas, not moral objectivity.
So, for example...when we read about julie and mark and invest ourselves in a cogent and thorough assessment of that situation, the objective answer is, "No, in that case it would not be morally wrong". If the question of morality is "where is the harm" (and that's certainly one of the questions, at least, lol) and there is no harm, only one conclusion can rationally follow. We can make observations regarding some other situation..or the general case, but that would be an answer to some other question.
To use the context of that archetypal homunculii..the business of moral objectivity is in identifying and deprioritizing those behaviours or biases (or humoculii advocating them) that are an artifact of instrumental goods, of survival. We do this because we understand that what is natural..and in this case that which may produce an edge in the game of not becoming extinct, is not necessarily right. Nor, for that matter, is the conceptually unnatural wrong.
To use harm as the example..it is natural to harm, in fact..some amount of harm is naturally unavoidable and another amount is unknown. The question jorm proposed was, in the event that we removed those things considered harmful, why do we then continue in our insistence that some x is wrong. Does this demonstrate that our moral schema is built on a foundation of sand? In a sense, yes, it does..but since the business of objective morality, as above, is to identify those instances and eliminate that problem...it's an issue for other-than schemas, not moral objectivity.
So, for example...when we read about julie and mark and invest ourselves in a cogent and thorough assessment of that situation, the objective answer is, "No, in that case it would not be morally wrong". If the question of morality is "where is the harm" (and that's certainly one of the questions, at least, lol) and there is no harm, only one conclusion can rationally follow. We can make observations regarding some other situation..or the general case, but that would be an answer to some other question.
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