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bioemerl  ·  3409 days ago  ·  link  ·    ·  parent  ·  post: My thoughts on the Syrian refugee crisis

    You already believe it. Watch:

This is going to be interesting...

    So what? Who cares about autonomy, liberty and freedom of speech?

I do, of course.

    If there is no right and wrong, then you wanting to uphold those values is completely arbitrary.

Assuming I am an actor whose decisions and actions are based only on the idea of doing what is "right" or what is "wrong". Also assuming that "right" and "wrong" are defined as "things I think should be done" and "things I think shouldn't be done".

In reality, I am a selfish actor. I make decisions that, in the long term, will benefit me. If I truly cared about helping pain or fixing the world, I would be donating lots of money to africa and living a fairly humble life of farming food with low impact to the environment, not living a consumerist life where I will likely end up working in an office and buying lots of excessive computer equipment.

    You seem to value objective, absolute truths, I presume? So let's throw away these values since they have no grounding in reality and truth.

Free speech being upheld means I continue to speak freely. liberty means I have liberty. Why throw away a way to get something I want?

    So surely you can't think that way so you must place at least some value on ideal that are beneficial for humanity as a whole

Society puts pressure on us all. It tells us to act certain ways, to stay in line. Society depends on the actors within it following rules, to take hits for the benefit of the group. It benefits everyone if we follow this standard, and I have to assume, as I am a single actor, not in control of others, that my actions must be taken as to attempt to make the world where I benefit most.

That world, through my action, will be one where I follow the guidelines laid out by society. The things which are mandated, and so on.

These guidelines, these "morals" are not strict, they are not concrete, they are not objective. They are not right and wrong, but instead simply me acting to make the best world for myself. If that best world was to be made another way, that is the direction I will take.

If that best world was created by going back to eras similar to those existing in the middle east, where women are expected to fit their role of being in a home with a husband, where slavery is a thing, and so on, then I would likely be here arguing with you why slavery is OK, justifying it with a thousand different reasons. I would give you a thousand reasons why women should be in their home serving their husband in the natural order. Go back a few decades and you will see people discussing things in ways we couldn't imagine today. Lincoln himself had speeches where he spoke of how slavery is bad because it causes indirect oppression of the poor whites.

We do it today for our consumption of meat. We do it for our abuse of the environment and use of fossil fuels. We will do it tomorrow for something else as well, and the day after tomorrow will have yet another topic of controversy. Perhaps the excessive use of fusion power reducing the time before heat-death, or the oppression of martians.

That's because those things aren't "moral" in the empathetic sense, but they are moral in the "we do what is best for us" sense. Each generation what is moral or immoral changes. It isn't a definite category.

This is why you can't argue something based on "This is moral" because if a thing is moral is purely a quick term for "this is what we should do for these reasons". If you want to argue a point, argue those reasons, not a sense of right or wrong.

This is what I mean when I say morality, right and wrong, do not exist. Not that there is not a "right" and a "wrong" thing, but instead that what is right or wrong depends on who you are, and where you are standing. What those in the middle east see as right and wrong are fundamentally different than what those in the west see as right and wrong.

    That means, any action that aligns up with your value is a good action.

What if I valued murder and the destruction of humanity?

    Sure. You're absolutely right, but at the very least you have admitted to saying that a goal, and therefore good/bad actions which are measured against it, exists and you have reasons for choosing that good over another.

So morality is:

There is a goal

Actions are measured as to how they effect that goal

Except most people do not see morality like that, they see morality as a definite set of things that are good, things that we should discover that are in this set, and perform. They see immoral actions as things inside a different set of actions, and things we have to discover and not perform.

"Do this because it is moral" is an argument that X falls into objective set Y, and as a result X should be done.

I am arguing that no objective set Y exists, and as a result, that form of argument to morality, the argument for an idea of right and wrong, do not exist.

Consider what I said originally:

    They are shallow, emotional attempts at getting someone to follow a cause simply because the way they were raised to see what is right and what is wrong. Do not simply say "we should do this because it is right". There is no such thing. Give an argument.

It is clear, here, that when I say morality, it does not mean as you defined it above.

    Thus you do believe that a good and bad exist, regardless of whether you think that good is the right one.

If I didn't believe a good and bad existed, I would take no actions, as I would make no decisions. This essentially is an argument that "Because we chose between two options in making a decision based on the things we want, morality exists".