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

To: TimF who wrote (59464)	9/29/2002 9:36:40 PM
From: Solon	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

"Even though I think I disagree with you in that area I don't think disagreeing with me is something that I would "accuse" someone of." Your choice of "attack" conveyed the message to me that you considered my lack of speculation as regards "objective morality" to be a fault. Hence my use of the word "accusation". "It would be more accurate to say that the post was about favoring the idea of a person determining what they think is moral for themselves rather then blindly accepting an externally imposed code." Well..because religions and societies all tell me different things. On what basis would I consider one of them to be "objective"? I have been to Venezuela. It was not immutable there. Nor did I find it so in Spain, Matamorus, or Martha's Vinyard. If there is any evidence of absolute morality anywhere on earth, I have seen none of it. I would be happy to talk about it accept I have no basis to discuss it factually. "Evidence" from primitive scripture is transparent in its subjectivity, and metaphysical speculation IS sheer speculation...usually, absurdly so... "It would be more accurate to say that the post was about favoring the idea of a person determining what they think is moral for themselves rather then blindly accepting an externally imposed code." What choice do I have? Even if you accept some external claim of having the moral truth...you have yet made a choice to reject an infinite number of different and conflicting claims. "If any desire strong enough to cause action can by definition not be considered as an example of a person violating their own moral code, and if you don't accept external moral codes as having importance or validity then it doesn't make sense to even have the philosophical study of ethics." I have not said that external codes have no importance--only that they are not immutable, nor evidencing any grounding in some realm of absolutism. "Something morally wrong (in the opinion of the person making making the decision) may be practically beneficial" And I am choosing to consider the path chosen as representing de facto evidence of choosing what is "good" for that person...or at least what is "better" than all other alternatives...given what THEY believe. Where you do not consider a particular act to have moral relevance, we can simply consider it to be irrelevant to our discussion...as indeed it would be. I do assume that people consider life and happiness to be default and defining values rather than death and unhappiness. I recognize that some people do choose death as a highest value at some point in life, but I consider that to be the negation or denial of value. "I disagree with the idea that all of peoples actions are motivated by some ethic." I was using "ethic" in the broadest sense of choices of "good and bad"--better or worse. Also, the point of our discussion is to examine the moral choice. If my use of "The synthesis at the time informs the predominant ethic." refers (in your mind) to an act which has no moral quality, then (in all such instances) it simply becomes irrelevant to a question of morality for you. It does not weigh on our discussion in those instances where you think it does not by virtue of a morally neutral act. And I am quite content to allow that the qualifier of "moral" is unnecessary and uninformative where you consider it so to be. Websters: "the discipline dealing with what is good and bad and with moral duty and obligation"