Silicon Investor (SI) -- The First Internet Community

STOCKTALK

We've detected that you're using an ad content blocking browser plug-in or feature. Ads provide a critical source of revenue to the continued operation of Silicon Investor. We ask that you disable ad blocking while on Silicon Investor in the best interests of our community. If you are not using an ad blocker but are still receiving this message, make sure your browser's tracking protection is set to the 'standard' level.

Pastimes : Let's Talk About Our Feelings!!! -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: epicure who wrote (74906)	2/22/2000 12:51:00 PM
From: jbe	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

X, the thread has argued about this issue before -- not in relation to ethics, but in relation to aesthetics. Same approach: how can you prove Beethoven is better than Burpo Bubbles, say? And if you can't prove he is, then your opinion is only "subjective," hence no more authoritative than anyone else's. And since "subjective" judgments can't be "true," and since the only judgments recognized as "objective" are those that can be backed up by incontrovertible scientific proofs, we are left with the assertion that only scientific propositions can be "true" -- and that, only for a while, until they are unseated by new "truths." Now, many of us sense this can't be right: that everything is summed up in an uncompromising either/or, black/white, true/false, saved/damned, objective/subjective, good/evil, etc., etc. It is like looking at a ruler, and noticing only the ends of the ruler, and not the middle. O inches counts; 12 inches count; but 6 inches don't count? As I see it, you are telling me that this object I am measuring must be at least a foot long before it can be considered real; and that anything shorter than that is non-existent. As a matter of fact, in the field of ethics anyway, plenty of philosophers recognize at least one middle, alternative position between the two poles of "true" and "false," "objective" and "subjective," etc. May I recommend an incredible site -- "Ethics Update": <http://ethics.acusd.edu/> It's got everything: articles and bibliographies on just about every imaginable aspect of Theoretical Ethics and Applied Ethics (including Relativism, of course); discussion forums; even a search function (look up "objectivity", for example). The editor of the site, Lawrence Hinman, is head of the Values Instituteat the University of San Diego (more or less out in your neck of the woods?), and an advocate of pluralist ethics (the mid-point alternative to absolutist & relativist ethics). Here's a passage from the intro. to his text on the subject. I could've sworn he'd stolen the passage from me! <g> Absolutism fails to offer a convincing account of how opposing people could be both well-informed and good-intentioned. It says there is only one answer, and those who do not see it are either ignorant or ill-willed. Relativism fails to offer a convincing account of how people can agree. It says no one is wrong, that each culture (or individual) is right unto itself. However, it offers no help about how to resolve these moral disputes. There is a third possible response here, which I will call moral pluralism. Moral pluralists maintain that there are moral truths, but they do not form a body of coherent and consistent truths in the way that one finds in the science or mathematics. Moral truths are real, but partial. Moreover, they are inescapably plural. There are many moral truths, not just one–and they may conflict with one another. ethics.acusd.edu