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To: unspun
Since morality is created by beings, what must be answered first is the question-What is the purpose of the moral code?
Whatever that purpose is, it must be universally applicable and logically provable to serve that purpose. It's the examination of that purpose and the proposed solutions which determine it's objectivity, or subjectivity.
504 posted on 05/03/2003 2:51:22 PM PDT by spunkets
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To: spunkets; exmarine; betty boop
Since morality is created by beings, what must be answered first is the question-What is the purpose of the moral code? Whatever that purpose is, it must be universally applicable and logically provable to serve that purpose. It's the examination of that purpose and the proposed solutions which determine it's objectivity, or subjectivity.

What if morality is created by the supreme being (or, is an expression of who he is) and is universally applicable, and logically provable by him, to him, and for him to serve his purposes?

If true, I think that means it is both ultimately subjective and ultimately objective.

But of course, those two words each have different meanings.

Any comments?

507 posted on 05/03/2003 5:15:16 PM PDT by unspun (Isn't it about someone?)
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To: spunkets
Since morality is created by beings, what must be answered first is the question-What is the purpose of the moral code?

Now that is an interesting question indeed. If the Objectivists are right, then asking the purpose of a moral code is like asking the purpose of gravity, or photons. In other words, it doesn't have a purpose -- it is just another in a list of "natural laws," which would be there regardless of whether or not humans existed.

In that case, it would seem that we cannot limit objectivist philosophy to humans, any more than we can limit gravity or photons to humans.

Now, in nature we see all manner of adaptations to gravity and light, but they are all predicated on the characteristics of those phenomena. And if Rand is right, and her objective principles are true, then we ought also to see in nature all manner of adaptations to the objective morality she espoused. But we do not -- we see various versions of the law of the jungle, instead.

The usual argument at this point is that we humans are different, because we can think about stuff. But that represents a specific assumption about who/what is affected by this set of "objective truths," and it further requires us to assume (without justification) that the existence of a rational mind somehow makes immoral the law of the jungle that seems to rule in non-human objective reality.

Turning it around, objectivists like to claim that beings who behave contrary to objective morality are somehow doomed. But if this is objectively true, then anything that behaves contrary to objectivist principles is doomed, whether or not there is a mind to apprehend the rules. Clearly this has not occurred in nature; thus, the scope of Rand's "objective truths" is at best limited to one particular facet of objective reality.

In either case, we are led to a contradiction, whereby a set of supposed "absolutes" does not have universal application.

517 posted on 05/03/2003 7:21:53 PM PDT by r9etb
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