Oh yes, I understand this as practice, but I still believe it’s wrong (not that I know what’s right, but I digress). If it’s all relative, it’s ALL relative. How relative do we allow morality to become? For instance: is it alright for one social group in the US to do something and wrong for another to do the same thing? Why not? That’s just a microcosm of something being wrong in the US but not in China and us allowing it because, as you said, it’s all relative.
In practice, yes, everything is relative, but for someone to say something is right or wrong, it has to be right or wrong for EVERYONE, EVERYWHERE, or it’s not really right or wrong, is it? It’s just one particular rule for one particular place.
The rub is, however, that once someone becomes convinced of a particular school of ethics or some fundamental or universal truth (such as Christianity or Niestczhe), they have to convince the world that their relativism is wrong. That’s why everything IS relative: there are thousands of competeing schools of thought concerning morality, vying for supreme domination, setting up their little enclaves around the world. What’s right here (a country founded in about 50% enlightenment theory and 50% Christian ethics, I’d say) is not necessarily right in Saudi Arabia (with their monarchy and Islamic morality).
I realize I sound contradictory in saying that everything isn’t relative but in practice it is; allow me to clarify. Morality in the world, as it stands, is relative; depends on where you’re born, how you’re raised, etc. For someone to hold a particular ethos, however, they can’t believe everything is relative; it doesn’t portray conviction in their ideology. If I believe Christian morality, for example (and when I say Christian morality, I don’t mean to denigrate; there is a long-standing philosophical tradition of morality founded in the belief in God, Jesus, and the rules They gave for living), then I can’t say Christian morality is right in America but the rest of the world is fine with whatever they have; I would have to believe that Christian morality is right regardless of geography and culture.
My right eye has a different perspective on my nose than my left eye. My two eyes are quite capable of having different perspectives on this monitor screen, although it can be brought into focus, merging the two perspectives smoothly into a single one that makes sense out of the overlap and gains depth perception from the minor differences. If I go out walking tonight and the stars come out (bright ones, since I’m in Manhattan :)), my two eyes see them identically and their meaning seems objective and uninfluenced by position and context.
Actually, my nose is no less “objective” in its appearance than the stars, though. The difference lies with the difficulty in getting my eyes to focus on my nose and to see the right eye’s “truth” and the left eye’s “truth” as a unified noncontradictory whole. It is easier with the monitor because my two eyes are a little bit removed from the thing they are comparing, and it comes automatic with something so far away and alien to my own circumstances as the stars.
Moral reality is probably “objective” in some sense but we’re too immersed in the subject matter to easily reconcile the different experiences and perspectives to get more than intermittent focus.
Here are my answers to your questions:
Q1. By what process do you distinguish evil from good?
A. By thinking, real thinking.
Q2. How do we know that hurting cute kittens is bad?
A. By thinking if I were a cute kitten and someone is hurting me would I like it? So, let’s everybody not hurt cute kittens in order that should others think me to be a cute kitten they would not hurt me. And let’s all call that bad, meaning not to be done; otherwise if you do it, everyone will be angry at you and do something to you, to teach you to not do it again or to disable you from doing it again.
Q3. If it is all culturally determined, where did the earliest ancestors come up with their ideas of good and evil?
A. As soon as they dawned upon the conclusion that if we all abstain from actions that would compromise the preservation of another in his biological life and in its wellbeing, all of us would be better off. And that became a very important indispensable part of their culture.
Q4. Is it all just relative, an action is bad if the society says it’s bad, and good if society says it’s good?
A. Yes, it is all relative, but relative does not mean arbitrary. Remember that: relative does not mean arbitrary.
If you are the only being in the universe, you will not have to occupy yourself with good and evil. But as soon as there is another being in the universe, then you have a society; and you two have to come to an agreement how to exist together in a manner that both of you will continue to exist and to exist well. So you both call any action that will so much as compromise your wellbeing evil, and good any action that will at least contribute to the wellbeing of one of you but at the same time not to the detriment of the other.
Eventually you have a group, then a community, then a nation. And you meet other groups, communities, nations. So your ideas – meaning by ‘your’ all the interacting groups and communities and nations – come to common agreements on what to abstain from which will harm the life of each other and life’s wellbeing and what to do to preserve life. You call that to abstain from, evil; and that to do in order to enhance life and its wellbeing, good
Then you realize that non-human living things, animals and plants, and even inanimate beings like rivers and oceans and mountains, and skies, and suns and planets, and stones, and minerals, and chemical elements and substances will have to be included in the definitions of what is good and what is evil in their handling, use, consumption.
Q5. Is there any universal good and universal evil?
Yes, there is, as universal as we all, all groups, communities, nations, the whole world and the cosmic universe can come to agree to observe among all ourselves, as regards what is good and what is evil, as we have defined in the above answers to your questions.
My own question: Where does God come in here?
God is also a member of the groups, communities, nations; but He is in actual practical involvement in the issue of good and evil represented by peoples claiming to speak for Him – and that’s the only way and means by which He is involved.
So, those peoples claiming to speak for God have got to agree among themselves and with the rest of mankind what they would want to accept as regards what is to be abstained from for being harmful to life and its wellbeing, and what is to be done to enhance life and its wellbeing; which is what we all will call evil and good.
Now, may I please invite us all to pass from determining the good or evil of hurting cute kittens to how good or evil is the war against Iraq, on the basis of what you want to think to be your criteria of good and evil, which might be different from mine.
For my part, I judge it to be evil because as I said earlier:
**
I challenge you all here and all dopers to apply your criteria of good and evil and pass on a judgment on the war against Iraq, in less than a hundred words: good or evil.
Here are my answers to your questions:
Q1. By what process do you distinguish evil from good?
A. By thinking, real thinking.
Q2. How do we know that hurting cute kittens is bad?
A. By thinking if I were a cute kitten and someone is hurting me would I like it? So, let’s everybody not hurt cute kittens in order that should others think me to be a cute kitten they would not hurt me. And let’s all call that bad, meaning not to be done; otherwise if you do it, everyone will be angry at you and do something to you, to teach you to not do it again or to disable you from doing it again.
Q3. If it is all culturally determined, where did the earliest ancestors come up with their ideas of good and evil?
A. As soon as they dawned upon the conclusion that if we all abstain from actions that would compromise the preservation of another in his biological life and in its wellbeing, all of us would be better off. And that became a very important indispensable part of their culture.
Q4. Is it all just relative, an action is bad if the society says it’s bad, and good if society says it’s good?
A. Yes, it is all relative, but relative does not mean arbitrary. Remember that: relative does not mean arbitrary.
If you are the only being in the universe, you will not have to occupy yourself with good and evil. But as soon as there is another being in the universe, then you have a society; and you two have to come to an agreement how to exist together in a manner that both of you will continue to exist and to exist well. So you both call any action that will so much as compromise your wellbeing evil, and good any action that will at least contribute to the wellbeing of one of you but at the same time not to the detriment of the other.
Eventually you have a group, then a community, then a nation. And you meet other groups, communities, nations. So your ideas – meaning by ‘your’ all the interacting groups and communities and nations – come to common agreements on what to abstain from which will harm the life of each other and life’s wellbeing and what to do to preserve life. You call that to abstain from, evil; and that to do in order to enhance life and its wellbeing, good
Then you realize that non-human living things, animals and plants, and even inanimate beings like rivers and oceans and mountains, and skies, and suns and planets, and stones, and minerals, and chemical elements and substances will have to be included in the definitions of what is good and what is evil in their handling, use, consumption.
Q5. Is there any universal good and universal evil?
Yes, there is, as universal as we all, all groups, communities, nations, the whole world and the cosmic universe can come to agree to observe among all ourselves, as regards what is good and what is evil, as we have defined in the above answers to your questions.
My own question: Where does God come in here?
God is also a member of the groups, communities, nations; but He is in actual practical involvement in the issue of good and evil represented by peoples claiming to speak for Him – and that’s the only way and means by which He is involved.
So, those peoples claiming to speak for God have got to agree among themselves and with the rest of mankind what they would want to accept as regards what is to be abstained from for being harmful to life and its wellbeing, and what is to be done to enhance life and its wellbeing; which is what we all will call evil and good.
Now, may I please invite us all to pass from determining the good or evil of hurting cute kittens to how good or evil is the war against Iraq, on the basis of what you want to think to be your criteria of good and evil, which might be different from mine.
For my part, I judge it to be evil because as I said earlier:
**
I challenge you all here and all dopers to apply your criteria of good and evil and pass on a judgment on the war against Iraq, in less than a hundred words: good or evil.
I concur with furt: it’s been done to death. This is a philosophical discussion, not a political one.
Plus, as I said previously, I have no idea what should constitute good and evil. It’s especially hard applying my sham of a morality to Iraq as there are good and evil points to the war.
But I will say that the basis for the justifications for war (WMD, despotic dictator, etc.) are relativistic; those same arguments could be leveled against China and North Korea and we haven’t gone to war with them. Yet.
To me the war itself is an occurence…neither good nor evil. I heard claims that I could neither substantiate nor debunk. The lies told were evil, the truth good. Other than the Iraqi information minister’s reports, I don’t know what was truth and what were lies. 47 words.
zwaldd ‘I knew it, you think my ass is too big in this dress, you bitch, and to think of all those times …’
Seriously though, our society tends to rely on several lies and half truths as an aid to polite inter personal communication. I don’t necessarily think that is a good thing. But it does mean that the ocasional lie can be better than the truth. “Yes, Santa will be coming down the chimney tonight, if you’ve been a good little boy.”
(I don’t think crossing your fingers and thinking ‘well he hasn’t been good all the time, ergo what I said was not factually a lie’ will cut much ice.)
But to show that something is good or evil, it seems people always base their arguments on universal ideals… people for the Iraqi war never argued “might makes right”, and those against never said “to hell with the suffering Iraqi people, survival of the fittest and luckiest.”
If I were a bettin’ man I’d wager that there is a universal sense of justice for the human race, though some people are born without it or are very good at rationalizing it away when convenient.
(and by the way factually untrue is not a lie, trying to hurt someone with untruth is)
