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

To: Lazarus_Long who wrote (70868)	7/23/2003 12:14:09 PM
From: TimF	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 82486

OK. Back up. What does "absolute moral principle" mean? Simply that some things are wrong, and they are still wrong no matter what anyone else thinks. I thought you meant something like "the mind or intent of God". For many people that might be what they mean but not for me. If God exists I don't think that either omnipotence or being the creator of the universe a priori means that God would be a perfect moral example. AH! So is an "absolute moral principle" simply one that works? Because that essentially is what the laws of physics are- -they are "laws" because they work with a high degree of reliability in the physical world. I was using "the laws of physics" in that context to mean not the current scientific understanding of how the universe works, but actually how it really works. We will probably never have, and likely can not have a perfect understanding of how it works but I don't think its useless to try and I think science has a better understanding now then it had in the past. " reality would still be there." Would it? How can you know? THAT is an assumption You try to make a coherent system of thought based on the idea that reality does not exist. Not just that we can't perceive reality but that there is no existence... Which is simply another way of saying it is simply your opinion. Only in the sense that any philosophical idea or even scientific theory or "law" can be seen as a matter of opinion. You do need to make some assumptions; solipsism must go, for one thing. But given that, and some additional empirically based observations and some assumptions about what is and is not desirable for a society (which can be derived from those observations), you can then work out a set of rules, backed by reason, to get you there. And the position of Solon and I is that that is actually how existing moral codes came to be in the first place. I would agree with a similar process, but I would say that that is how we discover moral principles or at least the closest approximation of them that we can get to, rather then how they are created. Not by gods speaking out of thunderclouds on mountain tops. I never said moral codes are derived from gods on mountain tops either. My views on absolute morality don't depend on the existence of God or gods and if any supernatural powerful creator of the universe exists, the standards would at least in theory apply to such a being as well. Tim