Proving What We Already "Know"

[bennyboy]

"I don't just hunt animals for food, I hunt them for fun."

I suspect you may, in fact, have as feelings-based a moral system as the "squee" that makes people fall in love with baby animals. 

You must mean to say that you suspect I have feelings - but ofc - that's not in dispute by me or any of these different propositions about moral statements.  I could do, and enjoy, all sorts of bad shit, and do.  I could do, and hate, all sorts of good shit - and do.  I can be made to feel shame for doing something that I know is not wrong, and I can be made to feel shame for -failing- to do a thing I know is wrong.  

It's not that I suspect you have feelings. It's that I doubt there's any other basis for your moral positions. I think rationale comes at the tail end of the formation of moral positions, not at the beginning.

But your instincts don't say "squee" they say "rawr" in that context.  I'm trying to give you a moral escape, in that your "rawr" instinct is external to your conscious awareness-- it is part of your mental environment, let's say, and those feelings are a product of billions of years of animal interactions that you have nothign to do with.  But if you don't think its emotions that serve as the differential basis for your moral calculation, then what, objectively, IS?

You're looking for moral escape.  I'm focused on factual accuracy.  That's a running issue.  That a person has some instinct to do x will not answer the question of whether or not that thing x is good or bad.  

No, but whether the people around him have the same BALANCE of instinctive feelings certainly will. People have "squee" and "rawr" instinct to varying degrees, and in different ages, they take turns coming to the forefront.

But maybe, as you say, I don't understand anything about anything.  Tell me, then, on what objecitve basis is your willingness to harm some organisms but not others not considered "moral or immoral based on it's [sic] utility to me or whether I feel a certain way as a product of my biological origin."

You should ask if, before you ask how.  I've yet to find an organism that I'm not willing to harm..and I don't need to consult any moral system for that.  The things I'm willing to do, as a set, overlaps with good and bad, as sets, just as it overlaps with what I like and what I don't.   

Well, what makes the good and bad good and bad? Societal norms? Other people's opinions?

It was once pretty normal to disregard the feelings and well-being of black people on the basis of difference, though some might have "hunted niggers just for the fun of it, and don't need to consult any moral system for that." Now, it's pretty normal to disregard the feelings and well-being of animals, presumably on the basis of difference. What makes you so sure that a hundred years from now, YOU won't be portrayed as an uncivilized brute, and the statues of everyone you ever admired torn down because they were cross-species cannibals?