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| Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' (1444765) | |||
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Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'' |
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Posted by New Flyer #857 on Thu Jul 27 08:00:35 2017, in response to Re: Editorial: ''De Blasio's Subway Follies'', posted by Nilet on Wed Jul 26 21:51:28 2017. From my dictionary, it just says morality is about the distinction between right and wrong behaviour; the dictionary hardly comments on why a particular behaviour is right or wrong.Right, because it doesn't know why. It appeals to no authority on that. But not knowing why it is right or wrong to do something does not change the fact that it is right or wrong. This is still far from "getting people what they want." What do you mean by "objectively right?" What is the right thing to do: the right thing, independent of popular opinion, animalistic desire, selfish wish. . .that there is a right thing to do and it should be done. For example, you seem to be of the opinion that it is the right thing to set up your traffic system if it can be ascertained as the optimal one for minimizing not getting people what they want. That seems to be what you think is objectively right. I do not necessarily agree. In the traffic control metaphor, the traffic circle is "the world." The whole point of the metaphor is that it contrives a simple "world" to explain principles that can be universally applied. Then the metaphor fails. I do not think of the world merely as a bunch of random people trying to get their way. And even if that's all the world was, there is no baseless transcendental reason why anyone should be trying to help these people get their way (keeping order and helping me try to get my own way being ultimately meaningless affairs). An update to make the ruleset more perfect requires at least supermajority assent, and when it occurs, governments adopt it for the simple reason that any democratic government will pass a law with near-unanimous support. Again here you are talking about practicality for governments. People change opinions and so the government follows suit. But what if people's opinions are wrong (bad) and the government knows it? Wouldn't it be the role of any conscientious governor to put a halt on things? In that case the government is acting on its own accord, not according to the "transcendental." By "transcendental" do you just mean "what people want?" Because that would be another source of difficulty in our mutual comprehension. In fact, the whole point is that a rational person would willingly yield their desires to maintain a system that grants their desires more than the alternative and eagerly tear down a corrupt system that privileges certain individuals (eg, those in government). So? Does this have anything to do with rights being transcendental? Or morality being transcendental? I'm aware of the history of revolutions against government. Are you saying that people in aggregate getting what they want equals those transcendental rights? That would basically be your opinion, that the transcendental rights are strictly meant to get people what they want, even if what people want in aggregate is bad for them? This is far from the definition of "right and wrong" I'm accustomed to in morality, but more just "keeping the government respectable" which has nothing to do with morality. If you found yourself alone in a world with no other people, where your actions could never affect anyone but yourself, would anything you do be considered morally good or bad? Yes. Morality transcends governments. Morality transcends me too. This is our breakdown point in conversation. All you are worried about is people getting what they want. I concern myself with much more than that because I know that people can very well land in better places (and I'm not even talking about afterlife) by not getting what they want. Someone all by himself in the world can look back a few hours and say "I should have done x while I was at y because x would have been the right thing to do back there. . ." that would be a moral statement, even though nobody else was involved. What does "objective goodness" even mean? Under your view of "objective goodness," is it possible for an action that doesn't affect any other people to be good or bad? I argue that the vast majority of actions done in the world affect other people, even if nobody witnesses to them. When you act, your own behavior patterns can and often do become modified by virtue of your own actions. You then become a different person when next exposed to someone else, thus having an effect on them, positive or negative. This is how fads develop, for example, or things once thought horrible become tolerable in society so quickly. The only way I can see your scenario developing is if I really am the last person in the world. In this case, my conduct will only affect myself, if this world is all there is. I would have to be sure that there are no future people who it could affect. And still, yes, I could be making life as a whole (even if I'm the only one around) better, objectively, or worse, objectively, through each of my actions. My actions have objective "rightness" and "wrongness" even then - it's just that I'm the only one who stands to benefit / suffer from the world's movement toward or away from objective goodness. Except, of course, under the incredibly rare circumstances where the alternative is worse. So what would those circumstances be? Even one such circumstance means that murder is only "relatively" bad, which implies that I need to back up my opposition to murder with other explanations regarding when murder is good and I can't just let it stand on its own. |
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