From palmer1984
Oct. 3rd, 2008 02:47 pmMy morality posts come along every so often (many archived in cartesiandaemon/tag/society and the abeyed series of posts Things I believe), but I generally find my understanding has shifted when I come back to questions of absolute morality. Thoughts I've proposed:
* The standard I would normally test things against is something like "is this the right thing for me to do in this situation"? I think most people could not define that in any terms more fundamental (no, not even with utilitarianism), but would have an intuitive idea that some things were and were not the right thing to do
* What I think of as my morality is a series of rules of thumb that approximate what I would think is right in a particular situation. (I'm not sure of that, it's something I've thought about. It's similar to what pjc said.)
* Morality is created by intelligent life, we might be able to agree a universal standard (I doubt it), but there's no fundamental property of the universe saying "THIS IS THE PURPOSE" the way there is saying "THIS IS GRAVITY". However, it typically behooves us to decide one and create it! (Obviously, many people would disagree, and say there was an inherent truth. I'd doubt, on the grounds that if it's unmeasurable...)
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* The standard I would normally test things against is something like "is this the right thing for me to do in this situation"? I think most people could not define that in any terms more fundamental (no, not even with utilitarianism), but would have an intuitive idea that some things were and were not the right thing to do
* What I think of as my morality is a series of rules of thumb that approximate what I would think is right in a particular situation. (I'm not sure of that, it's something I've thought about. It's similar to what pjc said.)
* Morality is created by intelligent life, we might be able to agree a universal standard (I doubt it), but there's no fundamental property of the universe saying "THIS IS THE PURPOSE" the way there is saying "THIS IS GRAVITY". However, it typically behooves us to decide one and create it! (Obviously, many people would disagree, and say there was an inherent truth. I'd doubt, on the grounds that if it's unmeasurable...)
( Read more... )