[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
It is not a lack of morality, but a different view of morality. Nazi Germany represented certain moral views. They were just different views than ours.* Same for the Ancient Romans. Or the Spartans. All these societies had moral views. They were not amoral. They are immoral from our moral position.** But, our society would probably be seen an immoral by a Spartan.
- I am assuming you don’t agree with a lot of the Nazi moral views.
** Just assuming again.
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And what moral decision of yours inspired you to add the annotations, eh? I think it’s another one that I don’t agree with.
I will concede that one can assess the moral views of a given culture. Now, do you think that every law held by those cultures was aligned with those moral views? From the littering laws to the murder laws? What does a Nazi littering law look like?
[QUOTE=Two and a Half Inches of Fun]
And people have to make decision between things like greed and altruism. The question of how greedy and how altruistic to be is a moral question.
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But, people don’t have to make a decision, until somebody actually raises the moral question to them (or they think of it themselves). They can just start greedy or altruistic, and carry on that way blithely. They can even decide not to worry about the moral considerations of their actions at all.
I believe that your presumption that all decisions are assessments of morality is incorrect. Most decisions can be construed as moral decisions (though your response to the example about ice cream demonstrates that sometimes it’s a heck of a stretch) but in reality a good lot of them are made without moral considerations having anything to do with it. Pragmatics, expediency, laziness, tradition, habit - there are a lot of roads to Rome, and you can’t assume that everyone in Rome took the road marked “moral consideration”.