The answer I've always adhered to is along the following lines:
ASSUME "no objective or absolute moral standards."
I propose the following:
1. Most individual people, in most situations, want to avoid pain, and being sad, and dying. We each want to be happy.
2. For whatever reason - evolutionary or otherwise - most people are made happy by other peoples' happiness, and made upset when other people are in pain, and sad, and dying.
3. We enforce the rules that, roughly, maximize happiness. We don't allow rape because a) an individual being raped is having a horrible experience, and b) we don't want people to have horrible experiences. On some internal empathetic level we want others to be happy.
Ultimately, there may not be any absolute morality, but each individual has an internal sense of what makes them feel "good" and what makes them feel "bad." Most of us, in the long run, feel good when other people are feeling good, and recognize that if we allow practice X that makes the individuals it affects feel really bad, then one day we might be subject to practice X and end up feeling really bad. So, we ban practice X, and get the double benefit of 1) making it less likely to happen to us, and 2) making it less likely to happen to others.
ASSUME "no objective or absolute moral standards."
I propose the following:
1. Most individual people, in most situations, want to avoid pain, and being sad, and dying. We each want to be happy.
2. For whatever reason - evolutionary or otherwise - most people are made happy by other peoples' happiness, and made upset when other people are in pain, and sad, and dying.
3. We enforce the rules that, roughly, maximize happiness. We don't allow rape because a) an individual being raped is having a horrible experience, and b) we don't want people to have horrible experiences. On some internal empathetic level we want others to be happy.
Ultimately, there may not be any absolute morality, but each individual has an internal sense of what makes them feel "good" and what makes them feel "bad." Most of us, in the long run, feel good when other people are feeling good, and recognize that if we allow practice X that makes the individuals it affects feel really bad, then one day we might be subject to practice X and end up feeling really bad. So, we ban practice X, and get the double benefit of 1) making it less likely to happen to us, and 2) making it less likely to happen to others.
How will we know, when the morning comes, we are still human? - 2D
Don't worry, my friend. If this be the end, then so shall it be.
Don't worry, my friend. If this be the end, then so shall it be.
