(July 13, 2017 at 2:23 pm)Khemikal Wrote: Well, I asked you, and you suggested harm. I agree. The great thing about an objective moral standard is that you don't -need- a list, ala the ten commandments (and there we are seemingly assuming that an objective morality would be like a religious decree). You can use that standard to assess -any- potential situation with moral ramifications..and even to assess whether or not something -is- a moral situation to begin with. I could suggest refinements and additions..but, ultimately, harm seems to be sufficient as an objective moral standard. Particularly in that it is positively -inescapable- when discussing morality. This is exactly what a properly basic belief is taken to be. An axiom of any system x. It's an axiom not only for secular moralities..but also religious moralities...the latter of which go to great lengths to insert their gods into the chain..but that;s all it is, an insertion - and a needless one at that.
I'm pretty sure you already know what things are right and wrong, don't you? We have powerful heuristic mechanisms built into us (and into our interactions as a society) for determining that even in the absence of a scholarly treatise or point by point description. Even if you didn;t know, and had never seen a treatise or a description, and your give a fuck-o-meter was broken..it;s still entirely likely that your behaviors would conform to the standard we use, as we've been selecting each other for fitness along those lines for quite some time now. You're an accidental "not a rapist" for example. It's not that you don't do it because you believe it's wrong, but because you simply don't want to.
How do you reckon that happened?
Ok, so you say harm is the objective moral standard. I can see where you are going with this even if I'm not quite convinced yet. Just because the two of us agree on not harming people doesn't mean that something outside ourselves has objectively made it a moral standard. I still need to think about it some more.
And about the "intentionally tripping someone vs. accidentally tripping someone" argument, I would say both are equally immoral if harm is the standard. After all, when you accidentally trip someone don't you apologize? Why would you apologize if you've done nothing wrong?
