(January 5, 2015 at 11:43 pm)Esquilax Wrote: But I'm not using normative behavior as the basis for my argument, I'm saying that moral behavior needs to be blind by necessity, in order to stop it just being a set of individual opinions. Approaching the question "is it good or bad to kill redheads?" from a hypothetical perspective where you are to be introduced into a society that adheres to however you answer that question as a randomly generated person- perhaps even a redhead yourself!- the rational answer one would come to is that no, it's not okay to kill redheads, because in that hypothetical you would be forced to consider what it would be like to live in that society, from the perspective of a redhead, and you would conclude that you wouldn't prefer to live in that world over one where the opposite answer would be applied.
But what if I ( as a rational human being ) don't care about society? I just want what I want and I want to kill redheads, and will try to get away with it. Is that somehow fundamentally wrong irrespective of what society thinks? If so, how?
I don't think it was by accident that Thomas Jefferson invoked the creator in the Declaration of Independence, "that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness". Full stop. All other opinions are subordinate to that ultimate endowment. No more "why that" questions.
