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I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what morality is though. It is NOT objective. You can't point to it, you can't test it, you can't derive it. Humans are creatures of emotion and logic. The two are not opposites, they are orthogonal. They are unrelated. Something can be emotional and logical, non-emotional and logical, emotional and non-logical, or non-emotional and non-logical. Morality, insofar as I'm discussing purely its existence, is emotional. Now, defining morality is a problem that meta-ethics has been having for quite some time, but lets just try a quick experiment. Logically, it makes sense to create a series of rules which will push us collectively towards our desired outcomes. Is that morality? Well...its part of it. Its a little too...clinical though. Too sterile. That would describe the law perfectly, but the law is a very distinct social construct from morality. Morality doesn't just concern itself with beneficial vs. destructive, it concerns itself with good and evil. Those two concepts are simply not reducible to reward schema. What we think is good, what we think is evil, they are gut reactions. In other words, they're emotional.
That said, I don't want to seem like I'm talking past you. Obviously your issue is that if we create a world where those gut emotions rule we can end up in a VERY bad place. This should not really be refutable. You can have your pick of historical and modern examples. I'm just talking about your moral structure itself; what you're trying to accomplish (presumably protect against moral tyranny) is beyond a doubt a worthy goal.
Quite right- not everyone desires survival. However... There are logical conclusions that you would draw from that would look very alike an objective morality.
it concerns itself with good and evil.
These are not yet defined. I don't use the stereotypical meanings of good and evil at all. Thus, we are at a impasse because my definition of both these words is abundantly clear to be different to yours.
what you're trying to accomplish (presumably protect against moral tyranny) is beyond a doubt a worthy goal.
Thank you. There's a problem with logic based morality: we are not sure that we are completely sane. I don't mean this in a philosophical sense nor a "all humanity" sense. I mean that there are a proportional amount of people whose logic does not match other's. I recognize this problem and don't actually have an answer to it.
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[–] Facade ago
I think you have a fundamental misunderstanding of what morality is though. It is NOT objective. You can't point to it, you can't test it, you can't derive it. Humans are creatures of emotion and logic. The two are not opposites, they are orthogonal. They are unrelated. Something can be emotional and logical, non-emotional and logical, emotional and non-logical, or non-emotional and non-logical. Morality, insofar as I'm discussing purely its existence, is emotional. Now, defining morality is a problem that meta-ethics has been having for quite some time, but lets just try a quick experiment. Logically, it makes sense to create a series of rules which will push us collectively towards our desired outcomes. Is that morality? Well...its part of it. Its a little too...clinical though. Too sterile. That would describe the law perfectly, but the law is a very distinct social construct from morality. Morality doesn't just concern itself with beneficial vs. destructive, it concerns itself with good and evil. Those two concepts are simply not reducible to reward schema. What we think is good, what we think is evil, they are gut reactions. In other words, they're emotional.
That said, I don't want to seem like I'm talking past you. Obviously your issue is that if we create a world where those gut emotions rule we can end up in a VERY bad place. This should not really be refutable. You can have your pick of historical and modern examples. I'm just talking about your moral structure itself; what you're trying to accomplish (presumably protect against moral tyranny) is beyond a doubt a worthy goal.
[–] Gake_The_Cake ago
Quite right- not everyone desires survival. However... There are logical conclusions that you would draw from that would look very alike an objective morality.
These are not yet defined. I don't use the stereotypical meanings of good and evil at all. Thus, we are at a impasse because my definition of both these words is abundantly clear to be different to yours.
Thank you. There's a problem with logic based morality: we are not sure that we are completely sane. I don't mean this in a philosophical sense nor a "all humanity" sense. I mean that there are a proportional amount of people whose logic does not match other's. I recognize this problem and don't actually have an answer to it.