Harbal wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 5:11 pm
Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Sat Apr 15, 2023 4:09 pm
Here's the problem: the values of somebody "conditioned by" the culture of Somalia are not the values of somebody conditioned by being raised by Wall Street bankers. The values of somebody raised in Sweden are not those of somebody raised in the favelas of Brazil or the shantytowns of the Philippines. The values of an Englishman are not those of a Chinese dictator. Sure, they all have "values:" but how does your view give information a Russian or Cuban or can use to negotiate a common law, a common penal system, or any common institution at all with the Ghanaian and the Honduran, let alone how the Nihilist or Pragmatist can speak and act in common with the Humanist or the Muslim?
In fact, some theorists, like the Feminists and Developmentalists, have proposed that even women can have their own kinds of "morality," such as Ethics of Care, which are essentially different from male-generated views. So it looks like "cultural conditioning" isn't even going to get half the population to be informed of what "moral" means, or ground a single institution or common project anywhere.
But isn't that exactly how the world is?
Morality between different nations, different cultures, different religions, and even different individuals withing any of the above, varies greatly, which very much suggests there is no single, objective source of morality.
It's certainly how the world
has become, in practice. But it doesn't mean that there isn't an objective moral code back of all that...for we have no reason to believe, and every reason to disbelieve, that all moral codes are equally good.
And I think you'll probably agree: the moral code of North Korea is not as good as that of South Korea, in at least some respects, no? The moral precept, "Don't steal" is better than the pragmatic principle, "If you can get away with it, do it." The decision to allow women to vote is better than the decision to deny them that -- or, if you prefer, the decision to prevent them voting is better than the one to allow them to vote; because it doesn't matter which way around you put it, so long as you realize that some principles are above others, and not all moral codes are equal.
Because all moral codes are not equal, some are better than others. That's obvious. But in what way are some "better"? They can only be truly "better" if, in some way, they are more conformed to what objective, true morality is. So the decision to allow women equal rights as human beings is, in view of the objective fact that they deserve equality, a "better" decision than the decision to deny that they have rights. It's closer, if not identical, to the objective moral truth of how things actually are.
There are follow-up questions to that, such as "How do we know?" But for the moment, the important principle is only this: it is clearly not the case that all moral codes are equal. Some are, indeed, better than others; and it cannot be otherwise, since they mutually contradict on key issues. It's not snobbery to say so: it's just realism.
Only
after we know that can we go on to the follow-up questions. Because the first thing we've got to get rid of is the empirically and logically untenable idea that all codes are equal, and there's nothing to choose between them.
Harbal wrote: I don't have an approach.
IC wrote:Fair enough. But that means that your way of deciding morals has no utility to anybody but you.
True, but I neither claim that it has nor intend that it should.
Right. But then, your approach to morality is not recommendable to anybody. And it can't ground a society, or inform a judicial system, or structure a polity, or even advise a common life. And normally, those are goods for which we all look to a code of ethics or morality. If it can't do those things, then it really can't do anything valuable at all...at least, for anybody outside of yourself.
Morality seems to be more to do with emotion and sentiment than rationality, to me. I suppose Kant's, " one should act only in accordance with that maxim through which you can at the same time will that it become a universal law”, or you fella, Jesus's, treating others as one wants to be treated, have some rationality in them, and I think both are sound principles.
Okay, but now you're no longer appealing to "culture" or "developing" morality, but rather to one or another objective moral precept. You've left your original position, and moved to that of Kant or Jesus, instead.
I can see a case for promoting a belief in objective morality, if controlling a population's attitudes is your goal, and your own morality does not forbid such deceit.
That's a danger, of course, and one I would not only freely recognize, but would share your caution against. A humanly-invented code of morality is just bound to become that: a ruse for controlling other people, and illegitimately so. All the more reason, then, that we need not to trust such things, but rather to revert to the objective moral truths that underly the whole universe, not to some pretender to the same.
But there's no refuge in relativism. Denying the existence of such a moral code will not save us from tyranny or exploitation; it will only remove from us any semblance of defense against the same. For example, our rights
cannot actually be violated by an aggressor,
if the objective fact is that we have no rights in the first place. But that doesn't mean nobody will ever become aggressive, and nobody will ever foist upon us the harms we associate with "violation of our rights"; we're still going to be aggressed against, in such a case, but we won't even be able to say, coherently, "You've violated my rights."
In other words, if there's no objective moral code, we've lost even our ability to
protest evil.
Sorry, Gary...that's a rather naive and stereotypical assumption on your part, I have to say. If that were the case, why would I always be polite to you, or sympathize with your situation at all?
