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

To: Dayuhan who wrote (78059)	4/14/2000 2:48:00 AM
From: one_less	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 108807

You raise some interesting points, although we are starting to have some conceptual contagion here. I think in your first paragraph you are making a good point that people, because they are people, are likely to resolve similar problems in a similar utilitarian way. The ladder example is a good one. Someplace in the cave where ideas rest exists the form for a ladder. So people are able to imagine a ladder when they have the need. We wouldn't invent a plate or a clock to climb up a cliff. Those inventions come from other utilitarian efforts. What interests me here is that the idea or form for "ladder" is available to us under given circumstances, so we discover/invent it. Since, different cultures can discover "ladder" then we don't worry about who first came up with the concept and taught everybody else. The idea is out there in the universe or cave where ideas come from or whatever, but its standing on its own as an idea. Likewise, you seem convinced that the only possibility of a God is that people seem to readily conjur up a God when they feel the idea has utility. However, you have to agree that the idea is out there for human consumption all on its own. And here is a juicy thought...<<An example: cultures around the world evolve "moral" principles governing who may have sex with whom.>> First let me point out that I don't think cultures evolve moral principles. I think they evolve and establish guidelines or standards of behavior that may be based on a moral principle, but that the principle itself has to stand alone as an idea. Of course, this is the favorite plowing field of most people who want to talk Morality. In line with the discussion up to this point, however, I have to contend that it is like your example of fire. Sex in this case might be viewed merely as a utilitarian. In other words not good or bad in and of itself but depending on its application it might have a good or bad outcome. One person, the sexer, might use sex as a manipulative tool to get someone else, the sexee, to do their bidding in a manner that the sexee might normally consider wrong or bad. A society might view sex as simply a tool for propogating the species and in this sense only the "best" genetic material should be involved and sex should only be peformed as breeding needs indicate. There are numerous other implications for the utility of sex. If you dismiss the idea that there can be something innately good or right at the core of the thing then you are correct in saying that societies dictate who does it with whom. In fact, you are santioning the practice. This then becomes simply a political process for who gets their utilitarian right definition of sex acts authorized for the moment. Personally, I see the need to define the characteristics for acceptable membership in society, underlying this issue. This is really a tangent off of the original question of whether morality is innate or not.