RE: Meaning of Right and Wrong... Finally Answered!
October 7, 2010 at 4:54 am
(This post was last modified: October 7, 2010 at 4:58 am by Edwardo Piet.)
(October 6, 2010 at 5:57 pm)padraic Wrote: Human beings are essentially self interested animals. Many if not all moral rules are related to individual and/or group survival as they are reciprocal.
As far as I'm concerned self-interest motivates all action by definition. I can only be interested in something for myself because if I'm interested in something for others' sake then that really can only possibly be because I desire it for them for myself. If I didn't find it desirable for myself to help them then I couldn't be desiring it by definition.
Survival isn't the same as self-interest at all. Not everyone wants to live and not everyone that wants to live considers it the number one priority. Me for example. There is definitely forms of torture out there that is so unbearable I would definitely rather die, certainly if it went on for long enough.
Quote:Non sequitor.The purpose of life is itself.It's not a non-sequitur because people can only desire what they believe to be more pleasurable or less painful than there current situation. Suffering can't truly be desired because even a masochist who supposedly desires pain can only do so because he either gets pleasure from it or believes he does.
What do you mean "the purpose of life"? Objectively speaking there is no purpose of life. Life doesn't need a purpose to live because it's already living, it just lives. Subjectively speaking people have their different unique purposes and, like I explained above, that's not always about surviving.
Quote:The most powerful drives we have are to survive and reproduce.
Maybe so but not always. And in fact there is no bigger drive than the fact our drives themselves are without exception driving towards believed pleasure or away from believed pain. We can't desire what we personally consider unpleasant by definition.
Quote: Whether life is pleasant or horrible is irrelevant.
It's completely relevant. If life is unpleasant or horrible in the sense of considered undesirable then that shows that our desires themselves are more important for moral considerations than our survival. And that's obvious anyway because it's obvious that not everyone who's living wants to live. Our desires themselves can be the only thing important for our own (subjective) moral considerations because it's only possible for us to value what we subjectively value. And what other subjective values are there besides desires?
