Pick a standard normative moral theory — MindForged

The problem is that one must also be ready to explain why the chosen moral theory is correct. Thus, the question of moral epistemology and moral ontology are not easily separated- even though they are logically distinct.

I am guessing that you want to say that we can only judge a society by its own social-cultural-moral standards?

Constantly I see historical figures being vilified or being hailed as heroes, which of course is fine on its own, but should we be teaching that to children as objective truth? — TogetherTurtle

We should teach children that nothing can be (correctly) recognised by a human as "objective truth". History is as good a subject as any to introduce the concept of uncertainty to our children, and how there is nothing that is ironbound-absolute-guaranteed-truth. Nothing will benefit them more. :up:

Yeah, sort of. I think that applies for the past just as much as other places today might put it better.

Completely agree. I think the human mind is too unreliable to find objective truth in most things. Don't get me wrong, I don't think the reality we see isn't real at all, maybe just altered a bit t our liking. (Pattern Recognition and the like)

bad and beneficial can go together. Colón had "bad" intentions, today we would call him entepreneur or something worse; but the consequences of the process had some very good outcomes, such as civilizing a whole continent where human sacrifice was still practiced to appease demons or where Science was three millennia behind the Old World.

It is real in the same sense that what happens in a videogame is real. The videogame interacts with the real people and machines outside, is determined by them; but the dragons, green skies, dark galleries or your avatar in the game aren´t real at all. All we ever experience in life is inside the videogame, and that is a good thing because that´s how you can get points and win fights. Our sensory system is really an advanced simulator in real time, an interface.

bad and beneficial can go together. — DiegoT

I think this is true within context. Within the context of the modern world where many of the resources in the new world are being put to use to grow the world economically, I think we can maybe justify some atrocity. However, within the context of an old world that only valued science slightly more than a new world, I think that no one really has a claim to be doing things for the benefit of the other side.

The video game analogy is interesting. It sort of implies that mechanisms of the universe exist in such a way that, at least in our current form, we can not experience. I'll think on that.