S
Sciborg_S_Patel
From a discussion with a friend, some cobbling of our exchanges. Curious about others' take on the subject...
"Two things fill the soul with awe and wonder: the starry heaven above, and the moral law within."
-Kant
There's always going to be an Is-Ought problem, no matter what studies people do to show how morality comes from biology. After all, there's all kinds of scientific studies suggesting all sorts of awful conclusions. There's just no way to get proscriptive claims from scientific descriptions.
If morality is arbitrary, moral indignation should go out the window. Yet when people live their lives, rarely-if-ever do you see people claiming their most cherished principles are relative to our species, our time in history, and so on.
When you say something like a child's freedom from forced slavery/prostitution/conscription is a fundamental right, you usually don't mean it's conditional to your society's particular point in history and culture. You're talking about something that is always applicable unless there are extreme mitigating factors that invoke other morals - like bringing back the draft to preserve a nation, or killing someone to protect your children.
The problem with moral compasses is people feel this strongly about different things, and a single person might change their morality over time. Makes one wonder if Good can be divided between Lawful Good/Neutral Good/Chaotic Good...(;))
Anyway, whenever you make a moral judgement or advocate for a moral outcome you're taking a sort of reality gamble that your assertion transcends personal preferences.
Thus, as the author Matthew Stover states, morals are the set of beliefs that you think everyone should live under even while accepting you might be wrong. The mitigating factor is you may have a hierarchy of morals that prevent you from insisting certain morals be made into law or be adhered to regardless of circumstance -> For example the importance of the freedom of religion trumps the belief that one's religion is the right choice, or the right to self-defense trumping the law against murder.
In short, it's a big mess but you just try and do the right thing anyway. :)
'This perhaps was the mystery of Kaliyuga, the obscure age much favored by women and those without caste, who, in the general confusion, might seize a chance for liberation otherwise denied to them.
In the flagrancy of contradiction, there was no longer any cult that could act as axis and lodestone, only bhakti, the heart's devotion, that addresses itself to anything, is ready for anything, a perennial emotion whose first messengers were Krsna's gopis, wandering around alone with their herds.'
-Roberto Calasso, Ka
"Two things fill the soul with awe and wonder: the starry heaven above, and the moral law within."
-Kant
There's always going to be an Is-Ought problem, no matter what studies people do to show how morality comes from biology. After all, there's all kinds of scientific studies suggesting all sorts of awful conclusions. There's just no way to get proscriptive claims from scientific descriptions.
If morality is arbitrary, moral indignation should go out the window. Yet when people live their lives, rarely-if-ever do you see people claiming their most cherished principles are relative to our species, our time in history, and so on.
When you say something like a child's freedom from forced slavery/prostitution/conscription is a fundamental right, you usually don't mean it's conditional to your society's particular point in history and culture. You're talking about something that is always applicable unless there are extreme mitigating factors that invoke other morals - like bringing back the draft to preserve a nation, or killing someone to protect your children.
The problem with moral compasses is people feel this strongly about different things, and a single person might change their morality over time. Makes one wonder if Good can be divided between Lawful Good/Neutral Good/Chaotic Good...(;))
Anyway, whenever you make a moral judgement or advocate for a moral outcome you're taking a sort of reality gamble that your assertion transcends personal preferences.
Thus, as the author Matthew Stover states, morals are the set of beliefs that you think everyone should live under even while accepting you might be wrong. The mitigating factor is you may have a hierarchy of morals that prevent you from insisting certain morals be made into law or be adhered to regardless of circumstance -> For example the importance of the freedom of religion trumps the belief that one's religion is the right choice, or the right to self-defense trumping the law against murder.
In short, it's a big mess but you just try and do the right thing anyway. :)
'This perhaps was the mystery of Kaliyuga, the obscure age much favored by women and those without caste, who, in the general confusion, might seize a chance for liberation otherwise denied to them.
In the flagrancy of contradiction, there was no longer any cult that could act as axis and lodestone, only bhakti, the heart's devotion, that addresses itself to anything, is ready for anything, a perennial emotion whose first messengers were Krsna's gopis, wandering around alone with their herds.'
-Roberto Calasso, Ka