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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Dayuhan who wrote (17845)	7/9/2001 11:06:11 PM
From: The Philosopher	Respond to of 82486

Sorry, I was unclear. Thought you understood, guess not. Why not? "Negative" can refer to an outcome not consistent with goals we have selected. We can certainly refer to negative within our own lives and, if you extend moral relativism to the culture, as most do, within our own culture. We can say that we view certain results WITHIN OUR CULTURES as negative. That's why we can have laws, and principles, that govern our societies. What we CANNOT say, if we are true moral relativists, is that they are absolute negatives, which is what I understood you to be saying, or at least that they are negatives for other people as well as for ourselves. I believe you were using the term negative in that context, extending beyond our own culture and imposing our views of what is negative on other people or cultures. That is a violation of moral relativism.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (17845)	7/9/2001 11:08:18 PM
From: Greg or e	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"We would all agree that killing people is a bad thing to do" Ah, no, all people do not agree with that. That's why there are prisons full of such people. Why should they? Or are you perhaps willing to grant yourself the very thing you would deny others, the "right" to determine their own morality. "Moral relativists have to decide what to believe, rather than allowing someone else to decide for them." Some moral relativists like killing people, are they wrong? "we have, by our own relative criteria, decided that they are undesirable. This is not a moral judgement at all." As soon as you step out of the realm of personal opinion into the public square, your opinions cease to become that and they become "moral judgements". I think you are deluding yourself if you think otherwise.

To: Dayuhan who wrote (17845)	7/9/2001 11:11:29 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Look at it this way. We would all agree that killing people is a bad thing to do, though we may arrive at this conclusion through very different processes. Why would you say a thing like that? That's just plain silly. Hamas thinks it's a good thing to kill Israelites. The Chinese think it is good to execute even non-murderous criminials. The Taliban believes it is a good thing to stone adulterers to death. We think it is a good thing to execute terrorists. The moral relativist, IMO, would have to say that for Hamas, the Chinese, for the Taliban, for us, certain killing is good. We have absolutely no agreement on which killing is good and which is bad. A moral absolutist would try to say what you say, that certain kinds of killing are always bad. The moral relativist would say that each person, each culture must define for itself what killing is good and what killing is bad, that there is no universal standard, and that the Chinese standard is just as valid for them as ours is for us as Hamas's is for them, etc.