if there is no truth value in any relative moral judgment, why make them? — Rank Amateur
...we must keep morality intact today, because without it we would lose the glue that holds communities together. — Brett
that was my point, moral or not is just preference, there is no truth. Vanilla or chocolate, Red Sox or Yankees. One is not the true answer. — Rank Amateur
Obviously. Your problem seems to be me not agreeing. — Brett
I'm very much a 'meaning is use' person when it comes to language, so the problem you're outlining doesn't even arise. 'Good' when used of a moral type of action, simply doesn't mean the same thing as 'good' when used of a lawnmower, or 'good' when used of an answer to a maths sum. We use words to make something happen in the world and that varies with circumstance.
To give an example, I might say "murder is wrong" to someone about to kill a non-combatant in my platoon. By that I would really mean something like "I'm betting you think murder is wrong too and I'm reminding you that killing a non-combatant is technically murder".
Alternatively I might say "raising interest from loans to poverty strike nations is evil" by I which I mean "I'm in the camp of people who think this is evil and I want people to know it"
Like most language, it depends on the circumstances. — Isaac
I think you’re saying I’m not saying anything and that I think disagreeing is saying something. — Brett
Firstly, you've just repeated Moore's open question argument without showing how you resolve it. You've argued "we must keep morality intact today, because without it we would lose the glue that holds communities together.", but now you need an argument to show why we must keep communities together.
Secondly, and I think most importantly here, what makes you think our survival was dependent on one single morality. It certainly wouldn't appear to have been reliant on one single personality type, or physical type. In fact, there's a very good argument in favour of the evolutionary advantage of neurodiversity within communities. So what makes you think one set of moral rules would be right for everyone, even from a purely biological point of view? — Isaac
It just turns all such judgements to preference. Murder or not murder is the same as vanilla or chocolate. — Rank Amateur
And so far no one has been able to say what morality is, despite all the contorted formulations I’ve read. — Brett
Even if that were the case, what relevance would it be? — Terrapin Station
If one wants to persuade people of something, stop worrying about what's objectively true about the thing in question and start reading books like: — Terrapin Station
I'm just not seeing why people think objectivism is of any greater pragmatic use. — Isaac
Sweet Jesus. You are very much back at square one, as if twenty pages of correcting errors in understanding has achieved nothing. — S
'Universal' doesn't necessarliy mean 'objective'.What is the difference then between near universal agreement and nearly objective? — Rank Amateur
Yea, I still see a logic flaw, you don't. — Rank Amateur
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