RE: Is Moral Nihilism a Morality?
June 21, 2019 at 7:38 am
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2019 at 7:50 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Something I wonder when people say things like "there's nothing intrinsically wrong about x" is whether or not they believe it, or if this is, instead, the academic position they've arrived at in contradiction to their internal experience.
I've found that it's incredibly rare for a person not to think that there's something about x that makes that x wrong. That's just my personal experience, but it dovetails with a vast amount of sociological data to the same effect. Even a committed nihilist can't help but believe that x is wrong because y - though they may insist that their moral intuitions are in error.
Or, maybe, people have a skewed view of extrinsic and intrinsic value in moral theory? So long as there's something about x that makes x wrong, rather than something about y that makes x wrong - that would be intrinsic value. Or at least the contention of intrinsic value.
Then again, perhaps we unintentionally scrub the act before we make the comment. We say, for example, that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing knowing that much bickering later we will differentiate between killing and murder just as we differentiate between sex and rape. We think that there -is- something intrinsically wrong with rape and murder, even if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing and sex.
I've found that it's incredibly rare for a person not to think that there's something about x that makes that x wrong. That's just my personal experience, but it dovetails with a vast amount of sociological data to the same effect. Even a committed nihilist can't help but believe that x is wrong because y - though they may insist that their moral intuitions are in error.
Or, maybe, people have a skewed view of extrinsic and intrinsic value in moral theory? So long as there's something about x that makes x wrong, rather than something about y that makes x wrong - that would be intrinsic value. Or at least the contention of intrinsic value.
Then again, perhaps we unintentionally scrub the act before we make the comment. We say, for example, that there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing knowing that much bickering later we will differentiate between killing and murder just as we differentiate between sex and rape. We think that there -is- something intrinsically wrong with rape and murder, even if there's nothing intrinsically wrong with killing and sex.
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