<div class="gmail_quote">2010/8/16 samantha <span dir="ltr"><<a href="mailto:sjatkins@mac.com">sjatkins@mac.com</a>></span><br><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;">
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John Clark wrote:
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<div>On Aug 14, 2010, at 2:12 PM, Jebadiah Moore wrote:</div>
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<div>There is a form of relativism that doesn't posit that
relativism itself is objectively good,</div>
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Relativism - relative to what exactly? What objective facts are used
to judge the relative merits of one course of action as opposed to
another in a particular situation?</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>"Morality" seems to mean not only judging the value of a course of action, but the "goodness", which seems to be some sort of evolved mechanism designed to make us cooperate.</div>
<div><br></div><div>And in my formulation thereof (and most others), the judgement is made relative to your background, so that people vary in their judgements, but none of the judgments are "correct", because they are statements of value.</div>
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<div>Then forget about good or bad, is relativism objectively true?<br>
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<div> only that objectivity doesn't exist.</div>
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That is as an objective a claim as I have seen.</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Again, I apologize for not-being sufficiently clear; I only meant that moral objectivity (a.k.a, moral absolutism, a.k.a the belief that acts are objectively and absolutely right or wrong) doesn't exist if some sort of supernatural something doesn't exist (because otherwise there is no source of judgment, and because physical laws don't exist at the level of humans, and because if there was a physical law it'd have to manifest itself in some observable way).</div>
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<div>Similarly, "good" and "bad" are super-generalized terms
of value, with "good" and "bad" usually being relative to some value of
"normal" and with "better" and "worse" being used comparatively. [...]</div>
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Really? What is your definition of "value" then? On what basis do you
determine what is "better" or "worse"?</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>I'm not going to go into detail with my own personal value system, since it is detailed and boring and I don't explicitly know most of it ;)</div>
<div><br></div><div>But "value" is different from "moral". Values are quite general; you "value" anything which you have a preference for, be it sex or chocolate pudding. They are determined by genetic and social evolution, but they are arbitrary in the sense that your particular set of values very well could be completely different from what they actually are, and they'd still be values.</div>
<div><br></div><div>Morals are a specific type of values, which (as I mentioned above) seem to be mainly oriented toward making our monkey brains work together instead of killing each other.</div><div><br></div><div>"This ice cream is good because it is vanilla" is a value judgment; "this person is bad because he killed my mom" is a moral judgment AND a value judgment (since a moral judgment IS A type of value judgment). </div>
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<div>Value is judged according to some standard; there isn't a
universal standard of value, obviously, because different entities have
different values due to their different goals, positions, and domains
of interaction.</div>
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I am not concerned with universal. I am concerned with rational
ethical standards in the realm of human beings first and foremost. So
you are saying their are no commonalities based on the nature of human
beings to root values in?</div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Of course there are commonalities. But not as many as people seem to think, particularly when it comes to edge cases. "Ethical dilemmas" are enlightening in this department. </div>
<div><br></div><div>I do have hope that someone will design an ethical standard optimized in a sort of utilitarian way, so as to please the most people. This would at least be interesting. Though I am afraid of this, since a claim to "optimization" might spurn acceptance, and since a lot of people seem to think that atheists/agnostics are evil.</div>
<div><br></div><div>The problem is, that because there isn't a universal ethical standard, and because there are many different standards held by many different people/groups which are often conflicting, any particular standard is going to be either incomplete or will judge some things to be bad that many think are not and visa versa. If it's incomplete, it will be rather like our common law (though of course you could probably improve it). If it's complete, then there are Big Problems, since there's no good way to decide which people to favor. Even utilitarianism doesn't cut it for me at least, since (for instance) it'd be rather probable for something like atheism to be considered evil. And I'd be willing to bet if you actually made a utilitarian judgment, almost everyone would disagree with the system you came up with in some way, and people don't like to follow systems they disagree with even if they agree with a lot of it.</div>
<div><br></div><div><br></div><blockquote class="gmail_quote" style="margin:0 0 0 .8ex;border-left:1px #ccc solid;padding-left:1ex;"><div bgcolor="#ffffff" text="#000000">False. In the context of beings with an objective set of
characteristics there is an objective basis for what is the "good"
regarding the behavior of those beings toward one another.<br></div></blockquote><div><br></div><div>Simple counterexample: the prisoner's dilemma. And that's with both parties sharing an objective value system.</div>
<div><br></div><div>And, like I think I pretty clearly explained, people seem to have lots of conflicting points of view on what is good and evil (as well as good and bad in general). If there isn't an outside universal, and half the people believe thing A is good but B is evil, and half the people believe thing B is good but A is evil, and you can only have A or B... what's the objective good?</div>
<div><br></div><div>Instead of merely asserting your thesis, argue it out. Or point out a flaw in the opposite argument (in this case, mine).</div></div><br>-- <br>Jebadiah Moore<br><a href="http://blog.jebdm.net">http://blog.jebdm.net</a><br>