RE: A Case for Inherent Morality
June 21, 2021 at 2:05 pm
(This post was last modified: June 21, 2021 at 2:20 pm by The Grand Nudger.)
Are we taking issue to sliding scales? The difference we call intelligence between plants animals and human animals is no more or less a sliding scale to my mind. Additionally, if we're taking behaviors, situations, actors, participants, observers and recipients into account when we moralize..that seems rather methodical and exhaustive. Is that what a sliding scale looks like, and, if so, what exactly is the issue with sliding scales supposed to be? If we grant that it is one, whatever that's taken to mean...then?
Similarly, is acting out of self interest categorically not moral? Is the issue with acting out of self interest, or some other specific thing being alluded to by it's mention? Leading me to my final q - in discussing issues with self interest or sliding scales...haven't we just made a judgement...about sufficient and insufficient basis for Proper Moralizing™? I think that you'll find that when ethnographers and ethicists refer to moral behaviors, they're significantly un-judgey in the use of the term. Some terrible thing that another person does because they believe it to be the highest virtue would still be, to a meticulous observer, a moral behavior. Saying that people engage in moral behaviors and judgements is a brute fact of mere observation. We know that we're doing it, whatever it turns out to be, whatever it's metaethical status. Every position on morality is a position on that fact of human behavior.
I tend to get the impression that people have particular sets of moral propositions in mind when they have objections like these. Ones that stick the landing with respect to some particular moral claim which they don't believe is well made. The utility of the objection beyond that, imho, limited to nil. For example, if moral behavior were inherent and a sliding scale...then that's what morality is/would be. It would just be a fact of x. That humans beings are born with this sliding scale thing we all do, and can't help but do.
Similarly, is acting out of self interest categorically not moral? Is the issue with acting out of self interest, or some other specific thing being alluded to by it's mention? Leading me to my final q - in discussing issues with self interest or sliding scales...haven't we just made a judgement...about sufficient and insufficient basis for Proper Moralizing™? I think that you'll find that when ethnographers and ethicists refer to moral behaviors, they're significantly un-judgey in the use of the term. Some terrible thing that another person does because they believe it to be the highest virtue would still be, to a meticulous observer, a moral behavior. Saying that people engage in moral behaviors and judgements is a brute fact of mere observation. We know that we're doing it, whatever it turns out to be, whatever it's metaethical status. Every position on morality is a position on that fact of human behavior.
I tend to get the impression that people have particular sets of moral propositions in mind when they have objections like these. Ones that stick the landing with respect to some particular moral claim which they don't believe is well made. The utility of the objection beyond that, imho, limited to nil. For example, if moral behavior were inherent and a sliding scale...then that's what morality is/would be. It would just be a fact of x. That humans beings are born with this sliding scale thing we all do, and can't help but do.
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