I fail to see how a "pragmatic" argument could lead to the conclusion that pain is "wrong".
It's essentially just a restatement of what I said above. I do not wish to be harmed. In a society where people are free to harm one another, I am likely to be harmed. The consensus view is that most people agree with me in not wishing to be harmed. Therefore, we define causing pain to others as being off-limits, by defining the causing of pain to others to be "wrong".
I should think that someone with even the mildest of religious stirrings (be they monotheistic, pantheistic, or something even less defined than that) would understand right away that regardless of how we were created, or even if we were "created" as such, our existence is a sacred thing, an end in itself.
Wellnow, that gets back to the subject of evolution in a way, doesn't it? It seems to me that if evolution via natural selection is the correct description of how we came to be, then it doesn't make much sense to define us as an "end" at all, in much the same way that no other form of life is really an "endpoint". We may define our current existence as sacred and an end unto itself, but if we step back and look at the big picture, that's purely an arbitrary decision.
The next question I would ask you then is - why is life sacred?
If you accept, a priori, that life and human existence has some grand meaning, then your argument makes sense. But if it is not the case that we are particularly special, the rationale for morality in this sense falls by the wayside.
So how do you say "circular argument" in Latin? ;*P The reason, in the case of the Nazis, why it was so hard for them to build such a society is that people fought it. They didn't accept it. It certainly wasn't that depopulation simply reduced their numbers to the point where society couldn't function; there were still plenty of people left over, so that wasn't the issue at all. If not for people's unwillingness to accept it, there's little reason that I can think of why it wouldn't have produced a very formidable society.
Except that this is almost exactly what I said - I think you and I are not far apart at all here. People didn't accept the Nazi regime, for whatever reason, and so the society was not viable in the long term. Saying that if not for people's unwillingness it would have worked just fine may be true, but it doesn't mean much in the world as exists. If slaves accepted their status, slaveholding societies would be perfectly viable also, but they don't and they aren't.
So, then, the question is why don't they accept such societies? Pure pragmatism? A sense of universal morality? Something that only appears to be a sense of universal morality, but is in fact based on pragmatic principles produced over millions of years of evolution?
Guess which one appeals to me ;)
I wasn't worried. I figured, it was Memorial Day, and you were probably a keynote speaker. (ba-DUM-BUM, *dingg*)
The consensus view is that most people agree with me in not wishing to be harmed. Therefore, we define causing pain to others as being off-limits, by defining the causing of pain to others to be "wrong".
What we have here is a failure to communicate.
If you accept, a priori, that life and human existence has some grand meaning, then your argument makes sense. But if it is not the case that we are particularly special, the rationale for morality in this sense falls by the wayside.
Our existence may not be for any "grand"er purpose than to give us an opportunity to experience existence. But either way, this gets us back into the "Where did morality come from?" routine. Not that that isn't a worthy question, but it's not necessary to answer that question in order to know that it exists.
And it's interesting you should say that my argument would make sense if there was some deliberate purpose to our existence beyond ourselves - that Univ* wants us to live. Why would you say that that would validate my argument? Put another way, why would we be morally obliged to conduct ourselves in the way that Univ* demands? And if you can accept that we would be so obliged, why couldn't we be obliged to simply treat each other right, without worrying about all that other dazzling stuff?
Saying that if not for people's unwillingness it would have worked just fine may be true, but it doesn't mean much in the world as exists.
It means plenty. It means that if there were such a society that could rationalize itself into accepting that, you would then seem to be bereft of basis for saying that it's wrong. Well, I would still say that it's the wrong thing to do to those targeted for liquidation, regardless of how much their surviving neighbors would approve.
Guess which one appeals to me ;)
Do I get a lifeline?