Originally posted by ivanhoe So, in your view the Nazi's one day might be praised for what they did.
Even you might evolve in that direction according to your own theory. Right ?
The Israelites received high praise for massacring civilian populations; now their glorious victories are subject to censure. Perhaps things are evolving away from that direction, with the Nazis representing an abhorrent throwback.
Originally posted by twhitehead My point is that a person can have a set of moral standards but not follow it. But are morals the standards we claim to follow or the ones we actually follow.
Then they are not his moral standards at all, but the standards he should be, but fails to uphold. This is not a subject of morals, but of people's various psychologies.
Originally posted by Halitose So the phrase: "Mother Teresa was better than Adolf Hitler" would have no meaning to you as you have no independent moral standard to judge them by??
I was a little rushed typing this out. Here's how the sentence should have read:
So the phrase: "Mother Teresa was better than Adolf Hitler" would have no more meaning than say, "Chocolate ice-cream is better than vanilla ice-cream". It is merely an opinion; the voicing of one preference over the other.
Originally posted by AThousandYoung The word 'morality' can be defined any number of ways. There will generally be some similarities between different peoples' definitions, but the definition and whether or not some action or situation is moral according to any situation will depend on an individual's opinion. If there is a god or gods, then their opinion about that definition is no more valid than anyone else's.
I suppose this means it's relative.
Would you say torturing babies for fun has nothing inherently wrong with it, but your personal preference would go against such an action?
Originally posted by telerion Biological evolution is not directional in the sense that it is progressing to a supreme standard. As moral standards, I don't know. I think we have gotten better over time, but then if what rob says is true we should not be surprised that I would think so.
If there is an independent moral standard, then why is this absolute standard superior to all ...[text shortened]... mass infanticide?
[b]Would you say this "moral code" is normative?
Yes, I think so.[/b]
I think we have gotten better over time...
Again, this assumes some standard by which you are comparing the others.
Should we also expect it to be internally consistent?
I'd give that an emphatic "yes". Cue Midianite/Amalekite/Martian genocide here.
Yes, I think so.
If it is normative, i.e. it tells us what we aught and aught not do, would you say it should apply to all people at all times, or are some exempt from it?
Originally posted by Conrau K Well, they're definitely not absolute. All you have to do is examine the changes in morality that have occured over the past thirty years. I would then say that most people morals are relativistic.
But whether morals should or shouldn't be relative is a fickle.
Our knowledge about the atom has changed over time. Would you say there is no atom?
Originally posted by Starrman I'll take this one. I don't think morality is a qualitative thing, at least in term of the relationship between both one moral an another, and between previous morals and future ones. Whilst new morals standards are generally seen to be an improvement on previous ones, I don't think they are necessarily an improvement on all morals which came before. The ...[text shortened]... mple, in modern times; a lot more complex, this is a reflection on the complexity of society.
Fair enough, but it seems like you are positing, "what's good for society" as an absolute moral.
Originally posted by twhitehead My point is that a person can have a set of moral standards but not follow it. But are morals the standards we claim to follow or the ones we actually follow.
Morals are claims about what we aught and aught not; what actions are right and wrong. The violation of a moral standard does not IMO infer the absence of one.
The term "natural law" is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two kinds of theory are logically independent. It does not refer to the laws of nature, the laws that science aims to describe. According to natural law ethical theory, the moral standards that govern human behavior are, in some sense, objectively derived from the nature of human beings. According to natural law legal theory, the authority of at least some legal standards necessarily derives, at least in part, from considerations having to do with the moral merit of those standards. There are a number of different kinds of natural law theories of law, differing from each other with respect to the role that morality plays in determining the authority of legal norms.
The term "natural law" is ambiguous. It refers to a type of moral theory, as well as to a type of legal theory, but the core claims of the two kinds of theory are logically independent. It does not refer to the laws of nature, the laws that science aims to describe. According to natural law ethical theory, the moral standards that go ...[text shortened]... ermining the authority of legal norms.
19 Jun '06 14:27
Morals -- relative or absolute.
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