Your brilliant argument has convinced me. Oh wait, that was just gas, I’ve passied it now.
It’s a dumbass question. Put some more meat around it and I’ll answer it.
I should comment on one issue several posters have raised–the existence of different wes and theys within one over-arching we. For example, NY citizens and CA citizens are both in the we of US citizens, but they are a we and they of state citizens. So, if CA does sometging that NY doesn’t like, NY citizens can say it’s not OK because they did it, even though they are part of a larger we, and this is perfectly consistent with what I’ve said above.
Is it okay if I torture your parents if I feel they are “they”? Just as you stipulate it’s okay to torture people who aren’t “we” because they’re “they”. Why is being “they” so dehumanizing?
Is your argument so weak you won’t answer my simple question?
Nothing does. I think that “moral objective value” is a meaningless term. You might as well be asking me which floopies I think are the floopiest–it’s just nonsense.
The problemhere is you don’t realize that it’s a stupid question.
Let’s recap this thread. Some posters were saying that if the US tortures people, then the US can’t say it’s wrong when other countries torture people. I said, no, we can say that what they do is wrong and what we do is good simply because we are we and they are they, and looking for objective meaning in “good” and “wrong” is fruitless and worthless.
So, applied to your awkward question, if you torture my parents, I can say that’s not OK even if I in turn torture your parents because we (my family) are we and they (your family) are they. I don’t have to go find some objective moral argument that justifies my action–the fact that we are we and they are they is all the justification necessary.
Great rand rover so assuming we all become sociopaths and followed your creed what’s to stop someone from torturing your family? It’s only wrong to you remember, you’re family is someone else’s “they”?
Tell me, how would you feel if your daughter was kidnapped, say in her early teens and held in “their” [del]torture[/del] enhanced interrogation camp where she was water boarded and possibly threatened with gang rape?
Would your response be closer to “I don’t like it” or “Those monsters! How can they do this evil?!”
That’s the whole fucking point. We have morals not just out of a sense of empathy, or “I don’t like it”, but because they protect us, just as our observance of them protects others. We discourage ourselves being tortured by not being spineless hypocritical evil torturing fuck wits.
That’s not why we have morals–that’s why we have laws and police (to protect members of our society from each other) and militaries (to protect our society from others). I think the reason we have a concept of “morality” is that people like to elevate their preferences to something that everyone should prefer.
Sure, if my daughter were tortured, I’d have some choice two-dollar words for those who did it (which may include “evil” and “immoral”). But those words still don’t add up to anything more than “I don’t like them or the action they did.”
When you look at an action, you are the one that determines whether it is immoral or not. The immorality or lack thereof is not an objective characteristic of the action. Same as when you look at a painting–you determine whether it is beautiful, its beauty is not an objective uality of painting. If no sentient beings existed, it would be impossible to measure some quality of a painting and determine whether it is beautiful.
Isn’t it very convenient for you to have morality be a meaningless term, when moral people are considered virtuous, and not one person on this board would consider you a person of high morals?
It seems disingenuous and self-serving that you think this way…or maybe the lack of belief in morality is part of the causation for why no one on the board considers you moral? It’s a chicken or the egg.
Hehe–speaking of elevating one’s preferences to something everyone should prefer, you are elevating your opinion of me to something everyone agrees with (which is even worse–you skip the should and go straight to the is). I guess you called your pal Zogby and performed a survey of SDMB members?
Although I think the term “morality” is meaningless, there are of course actions and ways to order socety that I prefer. I just don’t attempt paint my preferences as anything but that.
Yet you have no problem with that happening to a 15 year old boy because he’s “them”. Doesn’t matter that he’s a kid, just like your kid. That gut wrenching outrage you defend.
Morality is provable as an instinct. Simple fact is someones conscience doesn’t haunt them when they do something they’d prefer not to do, but it does haunt them when they do something that’s immoral by their own standards.
Luci, if you’d put the bong down for a minute, I think you’d find that many people still think that morality is objectively determinable (despite that conversation we all apparently had). Some of those folks are right here on this very message board.
I’m so glad I have courts in appropriate jurisdictions to tell me what words mean and to arrogate concepts to themselves over which they have complete rights. I should have been a judge.
Not in my town. This is surely because, as Rand tells us, we have laws to protect us from each other that are completely independent of our false ethical beliefs.
Well, when people say “it’s torture,” I take that to mean they are saying “violative of the laws against torture.” But if you just want to think they mean that it’s “torture” in the abstract, just for purposes of the meaning of that word, and not in any legal sense whatsoever, and only as they themselves define it, then that’s OK too, I guess.
But I know what you are getting at–the idea that laws are informed by morals, that people enact laws that reflect their morals. Well, I’d say that people enact laws that reflect their preferences about how others behave. If you want to call those preferences “morals,” then that’s fine, but you should realize there’s no objective reality to them.
