From: fudley (fuddley@fastmail.fm)
Date: Wed Jun 16 2004 - 22:20:48 MDT
On Wed, 16 Jun 2004 13:28:21 -0400, "Randall Randall"
Randall Randall <randall@randallsquared.com>
> supposing the existence of morality which has
> physical consequences like, say, gravity,
Even in the unlikely event that morality turns out to be a force of
nature I’d feel no more obligation to do what it says than to do what
gravity says and always keep my feet on the ground.
> humans will turn out to have no ability to measure the
> morality of an action?
Even if morality is objective I would not feel bound to follow its
precepts because the probability of those physical consequences
corresponding to something that would make me happy are purely random.
Of course objective morality might say I shouldn’t care if I’m happy, or
it might say I should care, I don’t know and I don’t care what it says.
> The term "objective" presupposes evidence, and therefore, a "reason".
Believers in this concept claim there is evidence that morality exists
outside the individual, they do not offer a reason you should follow
this morality.
Objective morality is related to ultimate good and it is supposed to be
the end to a long chain of "why" questions, you don't ask why you should
do good. The religious take the "why" chain one more step and say
"because God want it that way" but you must never ask "why should I do
what God wants". The entire objective morality thing is downright
medieval.
> "People have nothing to do with it" is a specific hypothesis
> about an objective morality,
Well, I concede there may be some things nearly all people try to avoid
because it makes them unhappy and some things most people try to embrace
because it makes them happy, but wait a minute, there is a word for that
sort of thing, subjective.
> and your confident assertion that this is so contradicts
> your assertion that no such thing exists.
My confident assertion is that if objective morality exists it is of
absolutely no interest to me, but I’m a libertarian, if you want to run
you life by what that silly little meter says be my guest.
> All your arguments work equally well to 'prove' that there
> is no such thing as an objective temperature.
I like some things and dislike others and will act to maximize one and
minimize the other, and the reading on the ridiculous meter will not
change the consequences of those actions in the slightest under any
circumstances. However if the meter registers temperature not ethics and
it reads 100 degrees below zero and my action is to walk around in a
Speedo there will be consequences regardless of my subjective estimate
of the temperature.
John K Clark
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