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

To: epicure who wrote (30294)	9/30/2001 7:16:57 PM
From: St_Bill	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Tell me whether I'm right? It seems to me that you want to avoid, almost at all costs, morally loaded language -- stuff like good and evil, right and wrong. You'd rather couch your judgments in terms that avoid the need for explanations of an alleged part of reality whose empirical basis is question. You don't want to talk about values, just facts. This point of view has a venerable and well-respected history. Less philosophicallyYou don't want to talk about values because more often than not, they're used as groundless, mindless weapons justifying persecution. If we can just sick to the facts and we'll be alright. Am I any where near what you're thinking? I am sympathetic. Honest. But I spent a lot of years studying and actually teaching ethics. I surprised myself by discovering that there is some hope for it, once we clear away some (not necessarily all) the religious input and get down to facts. In fact, my dissertation was all about this -- examining the idea that there is an evolutionary basis for morality. Ever read any of E.O. Wilson -- the famous ant lover? This is a long story that I won't bore you with. The thing of it is, regardless of the language you choose, you're not a relativist. Sorry, but you're not. Part of my definition of a relativist is that you have to be a person that refuses to think. Obviously you don't fit that aspect of the definition.