RE: Proving What We Already "Know"
July 24, 2022 at 7:04 pm
(This post was last modified: July 24, 2022 at 8:51 pm by bennyboy.)
Any fact of the real world could be considered in a subjective moral system, or in the feelings that contribute to it.
Maybe someone LOVES logs-- like, they will actually cry every time they see a log burning. If you could get 2 of those nutjobs in a room together, a new moral code would be established pretty quickly.
The same goes for animals. I know of many vegetarians who would literally cry at the idea of a cow being killed. And there are plenty who would see them as no less silly than those who would weep over logs.
Trying to loop back to the OP, now-- do moral worlds even exist? Can you "know" that X is right or wrong (call this category-A), or is that just short form for "I know that the people around me would approve or disapprove of X?" (category B)
I think it's a fairly serious problem in society that people confuse the latter with the former. When challenged, they will spin some made-up rationale to show that a category-B belief is really category-A.
They don't "know that my family and friends disapprove of homosexuality." They "know" that homosexuality is wrong, and that anyone who does wrong should be punished, perhaps by death. But they don't know this due to any objective fact-- they "know" it through social osmosis.
This is why I challenge "scientific" positions-- it's important never to stop questioning them, such that "science," the best system of inquiry into reality, not be replaced with "Science" as a dogma, and that people "know" things that are in fact absorbed by social osmosis. How many people say they "believe in" science who know absolutely nothing about it but do not KNOW that they are conflating category-B knowledge with category-A? I'd venture-- almost all of them.
Maybe someone LOVES logs-- like, they will actually cry every time they see a log burning. If you could get 2 of those nutjobs in a room together, a new moral code would be established pretty quickly.
The same goes for animals. I know of many vegetarians who would literally cry at the idea of a cow being killed. And there are plenty who would see them as no less silly than those who would weep over logs.
Trying to loop back to the OP, now-- do moral worlds even exist? Can you "know" that X is right or wrong (call this category-A), or is that just short form for "I know that the people around me would approve or disapprove of X?" (category B)
I think it's a fairly serious problem in society that people confuse the latter with the former. When challenged, they will spin some made-up rationale to show that a category-B belief is really category-A.
They don't "know that my family and friends disapprove of homosexuality." They "know" that homosexuality is wrong, and that anyone who does wrong should be punished, perhaps by death. But they don't know this due to any objective fact-- they "know" it through social osmosis.
This is why I challenge "scientific" positions-- it's important never to stop questioning them, such that "science," the best system of inquiry into reality, not be replaced with "Science" as a dogma, and that people "know" things that are in fact absorbed by social osmosis. How many people say they "believe in" science who know absolutely nothing about it but do not KNOW that they are conflating category-B knowledge with category-A? I'd venture-- almost all of them.
