(Constant quoted from someone:)”What we know about the causal origins of our moral intuitions doesn’t obviously give us reason to believe they are correlated with moral truth.”
Yes, but to a healthy intelligent individual not under duress, these causal origins (I’m assuming the reptilian or even mammalian brain centres are being referenced here) are much less a factor than is abstract knowledge garnered through education. I may feel on some basic level like killing someone that gives me the evil eye, but these impulses are easily subsumed by social conditioning and my own ideals of myself. Claiming there is a very small chance I’ll commit evil is far different than claiming I’m a slave to my reptillian desires.
Some people are slaves to those impulses, courts generally adjust for mental illness.
(denis bider wrote:) “Obert seems to be trying to find some external justification for his wants, as if it’s not sufficient that they are his wants; or as if his wants depend on there being an external justification, and his mental world would collapse if he were to acknowledge that there isn’t an external justification.
To me, this reads to say that if solipsism were true, Obert will have to become a hedonist.
Correct. Or are you claiming Obert needs some sort of status? I didn’t read that at all. Patriotism doesn’t always seek utilitarianism as one’s nation is only a small portion of the world’s population. Morality does. Denis, are you claiming there is no way to commit acts that make others happy? Or are you claiming such an act is always out of self-interest? The former position is absurd, the latter runs into the problem that people who jump on grenades, die.
I’m guessing there is a cognitive bias found in some/many of this blogs readers and thread starters, that because they know they are in a position of power vis-a-vis the average citizen, they are looking for any excuse not to accept moral resposibility. This is wrong. A middle class western individual, all else equal, is morally better by donating conspicious consumption income to charity, than by exercising the Libertarian market behaviour of buying luxury goods. I’m not condemning the purchasing behaviour, I’m condemning the Orwellian justification of trying to take (ego) pleasure in not owning up to your own consumption. If you are smart enough to construct such double-think, you can be smart enough to live with your conscious. Obert does not take Morally correct position just to win the argument with idiot Subhan. There are far deeper issues that can be debated on this blog about these issues, further up the Moral ladder. For instance, there are active legal precidents being formed in real world law right now, that could be influenced were this content to avoid retracing what is already known.
(Constant quoted from someone:)”What we know about the causal origins of our moral intuitions doesn’t obviously give us reason to believe they are correlated with moral truth.”
Yes, but to a healthy intelligent individual not under duress, these causal origins (I’m assuming the reptilian or even mammalian brain centres are being referenced here) are much less a factor than is abstract knowledge garnered through education. I may feel on some basic level like killing someone that gives me the evil eye, but these impulses are easily subsumed by social conditioning and my own ideals of myself. Claiming there is a very small chance I’ll commit evil is far different than claiming I’m a slave to my reptillian desires. Some people are slaves to those impulses, courts generally adjust for mental illness.
(denis bider wrote:) “Obert seems to be trying to find some external justification for his wants, as if it’s not sufficient that they are his wants; or as if his wants depend on there being an external justification, and his mental world would collapse if he were to acknowledge that there isn’t an external justification.
To me, this reads to say that if solipsism were true, Obert will have to become a hedonist. Correct. Or are you claiming Obert needs some sort of status? I didn’t read that at all. Patriotism doesn’t always seek utilitarianism as one’s nation is only a small portion of the world’s population. Morality does. Denis, are you claiming there is no way to commit acts that make others happy? Or are you claiming such an act is always out of self-interest? The former position is absurd, the latter runs into the problem that people who jump on grenades, die. I’m guessing there is a cognitive bias found in some/many of this blogs readers and thread starters, that because they know they are in a position of power vis-a-vis the average citizen, they are looking for any excuse not to accept moral resposibility. This is wrong. A middle class western individual, all else equal, is morally better by donating conspicious consumption income to charity, than by exercising the Libertarian market behaviour of buying luxury goods. I’m not condemning the purchasing behaviour, I’m condemning the Orwellian justification of trying to take (ego) pleasure in not owning up to your own consumption. If you are smart enough to construct such double-think, you can be smart enough to live with your conscious. Obert does not take Morally correct position just to win the argument with idiot Subhan. There are far deeper issues that can be debated on this blog about these issues, further up the Moral ladder. For instance, there are active legal precidents being formed in real world law right now, that could be influenced were this content to avoid retracing what is already known.