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To: A.J.Armitage
So which is it? Are you defending a morality -- if we can call it that -- which is "never absolute", or one deduced from basic axioms?

The former. One which can and should be revised in the light of new experiences, new understanding, changed conditions.

However, the violation of them must also be part of the range of human behavior you mentioned earlier. Otherwise why have a moral precept?

Human beings seem to be genetically designed to try to get as much as they can but to become jealous if others obtain what they do not have. Morality is an attempt to limit both behaviors so that a society can function. There are lots of situations like this one.

But why should I care if it makes others angry? Because I'm afraid they might be angry enough to hurt me?

Sometimes. Sometimes you may genuinely care about the other person. Why? Well, that's part of your genetics. You might as well ask why you feel anything. Why you have two legs and not three.

It's pretty complicated...but so is the rest of reality.

84 posted on 05/30/2005 12:40:15 PM PDT by liberallarry
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To: liberallarry
The former. One which can and should be revised in the light of new experiences, new understanding, changed conditions.

Should? Why should? Was the new version always better, and we just didn't know it? If so, there must be a common standard by which to judge -- and it is this standard which I mean when I say "morality". Please tell me which standard this is and how we may discover it with more specificity than you did above, since the meaning of experiences and conditions must be interpreted and understandings must be reached validly.

Also, please tell me if the rule against child molesting is, in principle, up for grabs based on "new understanding". And who decides.

Human beings seem to be genetically designed to try to get as much as they can but to become jealous if others obtain what they do not have. Morality is an attempt to limit both behaviors so that a society can function.

No, that's not what morality is. That's what law and social convention is. Morality stands over law and conventions and lets us judge them wrong and conclude they ought not to be as they are.

Sometimes. Sometimes you may genuinely care about the other person. Why? Well, that's part of your genetics. You might as well ask why you feel anything. Why you have two legs and not three.

I could ask what if I'm a sociopath, but as it happens I'm not. I do care about others. But this has nothing whatsoever to do with morality. It is observation. Morality says I should care; if I actually do, well and good, if not, I ought to change.

89 posted on 05/30/2005 2:02:17 PM PDT by A.J.Armitage (http://calvinist-libertarians.blogspot.com/)
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