RE: What would be the harm?
December 2, 2018 at 6:35 pm
(This post was last modified: December 2, 2018 at 6:41 pm by bennyboy.)
With regard to defining harm:
Sure, you can find objective examples of "harm," once it's defined. Very few people would argue that breaking a leg isn't harm to a human being. And if you choose to define harm as bad, you can say that breaking someone's leg is bad.
But the original conception itself is that there's a right state for a leg to be in, and a wrong state, with being broken in two pieces definitely a wrong state. Even then, there could be some space giant species abducting people and putting them in pots, and breaking legs is an objectively better way of getting them to cook properly. They may not see any real harm at all, since we are a lower species.
But back to vegetarianism. You'd likely fight to the death to protect a human baby from being killed with a bolt gun to the head. You'd almost certainly not do the same for a calf. I'd argue that's because babies make you feel "squeeeeee" and veal makes you feel "yummmmm." Or perhaps you just look around and see that one of those harms is frowned upon, and one of them not so much.
Unless the sense that morality is objective actually informs our decisions about how to behave, then not only would I (as I have so far) judge whether that view is correct in any way, but even if correct, I'd ask whether there's any value to holding that view.
It seems to me that I can make up whatever ideas about right/wrong I want, in response to my own feelings. I then have enter into a process of negotiation with my peers-- to find out which ideas they'll get behind, which ideas they want ME to get behind, and to discuss methods by which we can cause others to fall in line.
Now, social morality can be called objective, in the sense that consequences for behaviors are enforced in a way mostly beyond my control. I might not think that jerking off on a bus harms anyone ("Hey, I'm doing it into a bag. It's cool!"), and that therefore it's okay to do. But I'm going to be immediately in a losing negotiation-- several police who are unwilling to engage philosophically with me.
But even then, I'd say that ultimately, all those moral ideas came from the way archetypal Man, if not all individuals, feels about things.
Sure, you can find objective examples of "harm," once it's defined. Very few people would argue that breaking a leg isn't harm to a human being. And if you choose to define harm as bad, you can say that breaking someone's leg is bad.
But the original conception itself is that there's a right state for a leg to be in, and a wrong state, with being broken in two pieces definitely a wrong state. Even then, there could be some space giant species abducting people and putting them in pots, and breaking legs is an objectively better way of getting them to cook properly. They may not see any real harm at all, since we are a lower species.
But back to vegetarianism. You'd likely fight to the death to protect a human baby from being killed with a bolt gun to the head. You'd almost certainly not do the same for a calf. I'd argue that's because babies make you feel "squeeeeee" and veal makes you feel "yummmmm." Or perhaps you just look around and see that one of those harms is frowned upon, and one of them not so much.
Unless the sense that morality is objective actually informs our decisions about how to behave, then not only would I (as I have so far) judge whether that view is correct in any way, but even if correct, I'd ask whether there's any value to holding that view.
It seems to me that I can make up whatever ideas about right/wrong I want, in response to my own feelings. I then have enter into a process of negotiation with my peers-- to find out which ideas they'll get behind, which ideas they want ME to get behind, and to discuss methods by which we can cause others to fall in line.
Now, social morality can be called objective, in the sense that consequences for behaviors are enforced in a way mostly beyond my control. I might not think that jerking off on a bus harms anyone ("Hey, I'm doing it into a bag. It's cool!"), and that therefore it's okay to do. But I'm going to be immediately in a losing negotiation-- several police who are unwilling to engage philosophically with me.
But even then, I'd say that ultimately, all those moral ideas came from the way archetypal Man, if not all individuals, feels about things.
