I don’t think good and evil are objectively real as moral terms, but if something makes us select against certain behaviour, it may be because said behaviour results in organisms deleting themselves from existence. So that “evil” actually means “unsustainable”. But this makes it situational (your sustainable expenditure depends on your income, for instance, so spending 100$ cannot be objectively good or evil).
Moral judgments vary between individuals, cultures and societies
Yes, and which actions result in you not existing will also vary. There’s no universal morality for the same reason that there’s no universal “best food” or “most fitting zoo enclosure”, for “best” cannot exist on its own. Calling something “best” is a kind of shortcut, there’s implicit things being referred to. What’s the best move in Tetris? The correct answer depends on the game state. When you’re looking for “objectively correct universal moral rules” you might also be throwing away the game state on which the answer depends.
I’d go as far as to say that all situations where people are looking for universal solutions are mistaken, as there may (necessarily? I’m not sure) exist many local solutions which are objectively better in the smaller scope. For instance, you cannot design a tool which is the best tool for fixing any machine, instead you will have to create 100s of tools which are the best for each part of each machine. So hammers, saws, wrenches, etc. exist and you cannot unify all of them them to get something which is objectively better than any of them in any situation. But does this imply that tools are not objective? Does it not rather imply that good is a function taking at least two inputs (tool, object) and outputting a value based on the relation between the two? (a third input could be context, i.e. water is good for me in the context that I’m thirsty).
If my take is right, then like 80% of all philosophical problems turn out to be nonsense. In other words, most unsolved problems might be due to flawed questions. I’m fairly certain in this take, but I don’t know if it’s obvious or profound.
I don’t think good and evil are objectively real as moral terms, but if something makes us select against certain behaviour, it may be because said behaviour results in organisms deleting themselves from existence. So that “evil” actually means “unsustainable”. But this makes it situational (your sustainable expenditure depends on your income, for instance, so spending 100$ cannot be objectively good or evil).
Yes, and which actions result in you not existing will also vary. There’s no universal morality for the same reason that there’s no universal “best food” or “most fitting zoo enclosure”, for “best” cannot exist on its own. Calling something “best” is a kind of shortcut, there’s implicit things being referred to.
What’s the best move in Tetris? The correct answer depends on the game state. When you’re looking for “objectively correct universal moral rules” you might also be throwing away the game state on which the answer depends.
I’d go as far as to say that all situations where people are looking for universal solutions are mistaken, as there may (necessarily? I’m not sure) exist many local solutions which are objectively better in the smaller scope. For instance, you cannot design a tool which is the best tool for fixing any machine, instead you will have to create 100s of tools which are the best for each part of each machine. So hammers, saws, wrenches, etc. exist and you cannot unify all of them them to get something which is objectively better than any of them in any situation. But does this imply that tools are not objective? Does it not rather imply that good is a function taking at least two inputs (tool, object) and outputting a value based on the relation between the two? (a third input could be context, i.e. water is good for me in the context that I’m thirsty).
If my take is right, then like 80% of all philosophical problems turn out to be nonsense. In other words, most unsolved problems might be due to flawed questions. I’m fairly certain in this take, but I don’t know if it’s obvious or profound.