Subject:
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Re: Essay on Emerson vs. Thoreau; civil disobedience
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Newsgroups:
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lugnet.off-topic.debate
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Date:
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Wed, 31 Jan 2001 22:06:38 GMT
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Viewed:
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359 times
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In lugnet.off-topic.debate, Larry Pieniazek writes:
> In lugnet.off-topic.debate, James Brown writes:
>
> Snip.
>
> > Might makes right is, simplified, the belief that force is the ultimate
> > arbiter of any conflict; in other words, that morality is external, and
> > derived from enforcement.
>
> I would not agree with the above definition, but rather offer this one instead:
>
> MMR is the belief that there *is* no morality. whatever you have the power
> to do is OK, with no objective standard to be held to whether internal or
> external. There are no rights to anything, everything is amoral.
Ok. I think that 'morality...derived from enforcement' and 'whatever you
have the power to do is OK' are equivalent statements, but that's just
quibbling.
> > Moral relativism holds that morality is ultimately a subjective belief, and
> > doesn't go any farther than that. There are derivations from and
> > consequences of that basic concept, but that's it, in a nutshell.
>
> I think maybe it's the very commonly cited consequence that you can't judge
> someone else's morality as inferior by an objective standard that I have an
> issue with, as that is unacceptable. But if it's an immutable consequence,
> then the premise is unacceptable as well.
That consequence does follow fairly directly, so I guess that's where it
fails for you, but why do you need/want to judge somone else's morality?
How is it relevant except as (one of many possible) metric(s) to judge how
much you want to interact with them?
And even given that there is a need or a desire to judge someone else's
morality, where is the objective standard you measure them against?
James
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