RE: Morality without God
April 7, 2021 at 10:08 am
(This post was last modified: April 7, 2021 at 10:27 am by The Grand Nudger.)
Scientific realists would tell you to use the exact same process to resolve those disputes. Pleasure-ought.
Let's say you have two pure hedonists, but these two pure hedonists have a disagreement as to whether or not some thing is good. We set out in the world to see whether or not the thing they claim to be good or bad does..or does not, provide, create, or increase pleasure.
In a dispute between a hedonist and a not-that-ist, we set out to determine which of the two opposing claims better represents our observations of reality.
In principle, simple..but that doesn't detract from the difficulties we might face in practice. It may even be that there are some moral conflicts which we do not posess the knowledge or the ability to resolve - but even this doesn;t make those questions unresolvable. These would not be problems of either system
Rather, it's a statement about our competence, at least first. Dispensing with concerns there, we might still offer that some moral conflicts are -objectively- unresolvable to the exclusive or majority benefit of one side or another. I think that you might find that this is our moral conclusion in a great many cases, and especially in cases of immense personal, moral, and even existential import. Earlier, we couldn't determine whether we thought that killing a human being was always bad, or, if it were, whether it would always deserve an equivalent level of moral condemnation between two otherwise dissimilar examples. The difference between evil, malice, tragedy, and circumstance. Moral resolution is not a requirement of moral objectivity or moral naturality. Objectivity and naturality are terms which express a way of looking at moral things - not the claim that we will be able to resolve every or even any specific moral conflict. We hope so, we think it works like that in other cases, but..ofc, we can always get it wrong. Perhaps moral conclusions, in the full light of objectivity, are ambiguous because there is much ambiguity in real life. Perhaps there are moral disputes, because there is much to dispute in the moral import of real life. Our systems are clean and explained and conceived of in vacuum, but the world does not present itself to us this way, and an objective assessment is based on the particulars of -that-.
Consider my caveman earlier. How would you convince him of the value of the fire extinguisher? Well I'd show him how to use it and figure that much would carry him over. To the cannibal..I'd eat my livestock, then his livestock, then his children, then his spouse, then his mother and father and his cousins and his aunts and his uncles......and....... if he still hadn't figured it out..him. If, after all of that, he still claimed he couldn't see any difference or problem with eating people at all..I'd be content to declare that person morally incompetent....and probably more than just morally. Not that it would matter, since he'd be dead or dying and the world would be free of at least one cannibal even as it created another.
Let's say you have two pure hedonists, but these two pure hedonists have a disagreement as to whether or not some thing is good. We set out in the world to see whether or not the thing they claim to be good or bad does..or does not, provide, create, or increase pleasure.
In a dispute between a hedonist and a not-that-ist, we set out to determine which of the two opposing claims better represents our observations of reality.
In principle, simple..but that doesn't detract from the difficulties we might face in practice. It may even be that there are some moral conflicts which we do not posess the knowledge or the ability to resolve - but even this doesn;t make those questions unresolvable. These would not be problems of either system
Rather, it's a statement about our competence, at least first. Dispensing with concerns there, we might still offer that some moral conflicts are -objectively- unresolvable to the exclusive or majority benefit of one side or another. I think that you might find that this is our moral conclusion in a great many cases, and especially in cases of immense personal, moral, and even existential import. Earlier, we couldn't determine whether we thought that killing a human being was always bad, or, if it were, whether it would always deserve an equivalent level of moral condemnation between two otherwise dissimilar examples. The difference between evil, malice, tragedy, and circumstance. Moral resolution is not a requirement of moral objectivity or moral naturality. Objectivity and naturality are terms which express a way of looking at moral things - not the claim that we will be able to resolve every or even any specific moral conflict. We hope so, we think it works like that in other cases, but..ofc, we can always get it wrong. Perhaps moral conclusions, in the full light of objectivity, are ambiguous because there is much ambiguity in real life. Perhaps there are moral disputes, because there is much to dispute in the moral import of real life. Our systems are clean and explained and conceived of in vacuum, but the world does not present itself to us this way, and an objective assessment is based on the particulars of -that-.
Consider my caveman earlier. How would you convince him of the value of the fire extinguisher? Well I'd show him how to use it and figure that much would carry him over. To the cannibal..I'd eat my livestock, then his livestock, then his children, then his spouse, then his mother and father and his cousins and his aunts and his uncles......and....... if he still hadn't figured it out..him. If, after all of that, he still claimed he couldn't see any difference or problem with eating people at all..I'd be content to declare that person morally incompetent....and probably more than just morally. Not that it would matter, since he'd be dead or dying and the world would be free of at least one cannibal even as it created another.
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