(May 5, 2015 at 7:00 am)Alex K Wrote: @dahrling
Quote:How can we argue against this if good and evil aren't universal truths, if they are only based on culture?
before I can try to give my answer, can you say what you mean when you use the words "Good" and "Evil"? I can't say whether it is universal if I don't know what you mean by it.
That is an excellent question, which most people never really properly address.
I have my answer to that question, already given, which is Hume's answer to the question. No one else, though, has expressed any interest in that answer in this thread. Of course, if someone does not agree with Hume, one may come up with one's own answer to the question. Hopefully, whatever answer one comes up with will somehow be relevant to the way the terms are commonly used, though since different people have different ideas on the subject, no matter what one comes up with, it will not perfectly match all of the ways the terms are used by various people. But that looseness is explained in Hume's treatment of the subject. The pure subjectivist approach does not fit as well with common use as Hume's treatment of this, as people do commonly distinguish between personal preferences and what is right and what is wrong. If ethics were purely a matter of personal preference, then, because I like Mozart, I would be right in saying that people who dislike Mozart are immoral. That, though, is not how one normally speaks, except as a joke. And that is why the pure subjectivist approach should be rejected.
"A wise man ... proportions his belief to the evidence."
— David Hume, An Enquiry Concerning Human Understanding, Section X, Part I.
