• thewonder
    1.4k

    I wasn't quite sure how you got from the drowning child example to the other examples of autonomous moral behavior. It seemed like you were almost arguing for a kind of evolutionary Sentimentalism before citing a set of examples which would either refute Sentimentalism or suggest that there was something wrong with human nature. You're also making arguments about what morality is and not what people ought to do, which I don't think you have adequately elaborated upon so as to have moved beyond Kant, Spinoza, Kierkegaard, Nietzsche, Socrates and Aristotle. It seems that you're suggesting that there exists autonomous moral behavior, which is innate and acquired through evolution, and acquired moral behavior, which is socially constructed, both of which you suggest are inextricably bound to the replication of a person's DNA. That seems like a sweeping scientific claim that would require further evidence, as well as that your philosophical claim about what morality is, one that is wholly apart from any suggestion as to what it ought to be, remains to either be proven or justified.

    I don't want to come down too hard on it as you have written over ten pages, but, as you have been so insistent upon people reading it in this thread, I felt like you were all too eager for any form of critique whatsoever. I would consider reading up on the Sentimentalism of David Hume that Immanuel Kant took such great efforts to refute, whatever evolutionary Psychology you can find on the subject matter, as well as even Peter Kropotkin's Mutual Aid, taking a step back, reconsidering putting forth a theory of Ethics that would be what The Origin of the Species was for both Biology and Christianity, tossing some ideas around, and writing a fuller description of your Ethical theory.

    Being said, you probably shouldn't be so insistent upon that people read it in this thread.
  • thewonder
    1.4k

    I can't remember who it is, but someone else in this thread said the question was rather semantic, which I agree with.

    It seems like your postulating that Ethics just simply exist. I am of this supposition as well, but have no real proof of it at this current point in time.
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