Kevin's Watch

The Dreaming wrote:My point is that morality developed because when we live in higher population densities, we NEED to follow specific ethical codes to live harmoniously. Our needs *stem* from our biology of course, even if we never evolved to live in cities of several million people. Like I said, we have taken control of our own development. We developed morality because we have the astounding ability to control our environment. Instead of waiting for biology to instill us with a new set of imperatives, we developed rules and morality, to efficiently and harmoniously fulfill our needs as well as possible. Such enormous population densities make certain concepts *inevitable*.

That's what I'm driving at. Mankinds self-driven development works like nothing in nature, but our needs were tuned by the environment that developed us. We have changed that environment WAY too fast for biology to keep up, so we made the changes ourselves. That's what rules are for.

What I'm driving at is that morality is as natural as anything else we need to survive, like a sex drive. Though we constructed it ourselves, we constructed it out of necessity. We are "developing" to a higher state of harmony with ourselves and our environment. Though opinions can differ, what we are driving for, what we are intending to do *with* our rules is universal, natural, and above all true.

OK, excellent post. I think you've got a very valid point here. We did construct it out of necessity.

That only goes to show though that everything is moral or immoral only within our social context. In other words, it's only wrong to kill people because we decided it was. And we decided it was because it made communal living impossible unless we forbade it.

Dunno about the "true" part though...

--A

Did Newton discover the laws of motion? Or did the laws of motion discover Newton? Newton's formulation of the laws hardly created them. I feel like humanity and morality continually discover each other.

I DO lean towards secularism. My beliefs in the unknowable are my business. Reason and observation lead to certain inevitable truths regarding the nature of the universe, and they cannot be denied. (Well, they can, but it's entirely futile)

Morality can too easily be something else depending on the creating forces. The laws of motion are pretty constant as far as we know. And they apply to everything. Morality doesn't, or their wouldn't be "immorality."

--A

The Dreaming wrote:Did Newton discover the laws of motion? Or did the laws of motion discover Newton? Newton's formulation of the laws hardly created them. I feel like humanity and morality continually discover each other.

I DO lean towards secularism. My beliefs in the unknowable are my business. Reason and observation lead to certain inevitable truths regarding the nature of the universe, and they cannot be denied. (Well, they can, but it's entirely futile)

You're kind of making my point here.
There is an enormous difference between discovering laws that have always been in operation and 'inventing laws because we need them'.
This post, which I am much more inclined to agree with, seems to somewhat contradict your previous post (the idea of inventing morality). The problem of death kind of forces us to continually "re"-discover truths. But the truths are always there. It is we who are not.

I'd be more interested in commentary on Lewis (above), though. He is far more articulate and brighter thinker than I am.

[Edited to emphasize my main points.]

But if this is so, then we might have been conditioned to feel otherwise. "Perhaps," thinks the reformer or the educational expert, "it would be better if we were. Let us improve our morality." Out of this apparently innocent idea comes the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its "ideology" as men choose their clothes. Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, overarching Germans, Japanese, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If "good" and "better" are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.

The idea that we can’t create values is demonstrably false. What I mean is, it is contradicted by the evidence. People DO create their own values. This isn’t a “fatal superstition.” If people couldn’t create their own values, then the Nazi example he gives wouldn’t be possible. Just because the values of Nazis are abhorrent doesn’t mean that it was impossible for them to create those values in the first place. That kind of reasoning is the moralistic fallacy: reasoning from what should be (in his opinion) to what is.

Nor is there any requirement for me to respect Nazi values simply because I recognize their ability to create them. That’s another false assumption. My recognition of the competancy of the Nazis to create values has no bearing on my judgment of those specific values. That would be like saying I can’t judge a song as one I don’t like, while simultaneously recognizing it as an original composition. The composer's ability to create it is completely independent of people's opinions of it. Lewis is wrong. There doesn’t need to be a universal song-judging criteria in order for me to pick and choose songs I like. Or to compose them myself. He’s appealing to our prejudice that we all dislike Nazi values. He’s pretending like this is a universal judgment (disliking Nazi morality). But he’s forgetting that there are a lot of people who like Nazi values. Namely, the Nazis themselves. If their ideology was universally bad, then why didn’t they recognize that “fact?”

If the Nazis didn't create their values themselves, who created them? Satan? Is he really going to blame this man-made travesty upon some boogiman under the earth? That's the only conclusion we could come to, if the Nazis didn't create their "abhorrent" values themselves. In other words, to accept Lewis's logic, I have to believe in invisible supernatural agents. Which isn't logical at all.

[This was the rest of my post, above, but I felt it watered down the force of my main point, and I feared no one would get to that after reading all this. So here's the rest of my response to Lewis, if anyone is interested.]

Thus studied, his own reason appears to him as the epiphenomenona which accompanies chemical or electrical events in a cortex which is itself the by-product of a blind evolutionary process.

This is not my position, and it’s not necessary for subjectivism. Whether or not consciousness is an epiphenomenon has nothing to do with the subjective nature of values. In fact, if consciousness is an epiphenomenon, then values must be, too. And then not only are values an illusion, but so is the will. If we have no will, then values being subjective is meaningless.

His own logic, hitherto the king whom events in all possible worlds must obey, becomes merely subjective. There is no reason for supposing that it yields truth.

Several things wrong with these two statements: logic and values aren’t the same thing. And besides, nothing about the nature of consciousness affects the nature of logic; logical relations are ideal and independent of subjectivity. And logic certainly doesn’t dictate anything in the world.

The scientist has to assume the validity of his own logic (in the stout old fashion of Plato or Spinoza) even in order to prove that it is merely subjective, and therefore he can only flirt with subjectivism.

Again, no one here is saying that logic is subjective. He is absolutely correct to doubt the subjective nature of logic (called, “pyschologism”), but that has nothing to do with morality.

There are modern scientists, I am told, who have dropped the words truth and reality out of their vocabulary and who hold that the end of their work is not to know what is there but simply to get practical results.

Here he shows that he doesn’t understand the difference between “relations of ideas” (i.e. logic) and “matters of fact” (i.e. truth and reality). Determining that logic isn’t subjective, does not lead one to discard “truth and reality.” Nor does it lead one necessarily to pragmatism.

The modern view is very different. It does not believe that value judgements are really judgements at all. They are sentiments, or complexes, or attitudes, produced in a community by the pressure of its environment and its traditions, and differing from one community to another. To say that a thing is good is merely to express our feeling about it; and our feeling about it is the feeling we have been socially conditioned to have.

Yes, I agree with this position. Values aren’t logical deductions of pure reason. They are feelings, wants, desires, and sentiments. Howver, while social conditioning determines the values of weak, unimaginative, uncreative people, this isn’t a necessary component. Strong, creative people can choose their own values.

rusmeister wrote:

The Dreaming wrote:Did Newton discover the laws of motion? Or did the laws of motion discover Newton? Newton's formulation of the laws hardly created them. I feel like humanity and morality continually discover each other.

I DO lean towards secularism. My beliefs in the unknowable are my business. Reason and observation lead to certain inevitable truths regarding the nature of the universe, and they cannot be denied. (Well, they can, but it's entirely futile)

You're kind of making my point here.
There is an enormous difference between discovering laws that have always been in operation and 'inventing laws because we need them'.
This post, which I am much more inclined to agree with, seems to somewhat contradict your previous post (the idea of inventing morality). The problem of death kind of forces us to continually "re"-discover truths. But the truths are always there. It is we who are not.

I'd be more interested in commentary on Lewis (above), though. He is far more articulate and brighter thinker than I am.

I'm trying to walk a middle way. We invented morality, but we invented it through reason. Reason is the path to truth. Our reasoning however, is not always equal, and can lead to some different expressions of the same basic truths.

Morality is a word with a tenuous definition. I would like to think of it as a personal expression of basic truths of how to treat each-other. We can call these basic, mathematically reasonable and axiomatic truths something else. How about Ethics?

The desire for Equity and Harmony. The importance of Empathy. The Circle of responsibility. These are truths which exist in our minds alone. (That doesn't mean they cant be truths!)

Rules like, the "Though Shall not bear false witness against thy neighbor" are rules we have designed to try and express these ideas. Its like how a program that can render a circle calculating pi to the 100th decimal place is a construct that represents the idea of "Circle". Is the rendered circle a "Circle"? Well, not exactly. But its a hell of a lot better than drawing one on a chalkboard with your bare hands.

And those Rules cannot always perfectly express these ideas earlier. The Rule I cited earlier, it's a pretty damn good rule. We all like it. But it is not a perfect guide for behavior. It's not hard to think a situation that makes the situation a little harder for us to decide what is right. Say, for example, a friend of yours has been put in front of a committee accusing him of being a communist. If it becomes known that he truly *is* one, his reputation is ruined. You receive a subpoena. Is lying under this circumstance wrong?

The Dreaming wrote:We invented morality, but we invented it through reason. Reason is the path to truth. Our reasoning however, is not always equal, and can lead to some different expressions of the same basic truths.

I agree that we invented morality, but I do not agree that we invented it through reason. Nor is the plethora of different moral codes due to people using "bad reason." Reason--logic--is universal. People couldn't have messed up so much that they distorted the universal rules of logic.

People invent morality, often, to protect themselves. For instance, killing is bad. Stealing is bad. There is nothing in logic, no rule or principle, which dictates that humans should have or deserve protection. This comes from a primal, selfish, emotional place. People trying to control a world that is out of their control. Reason has nothing to do with it. It's all emotion.

There is nothing in the rules of logic that tells us how to eat our food, which kinds of foods to eat, what kind of clothes to wear, how to style our hair, whether or not to have sex without a piece of paper saying it's okay, which day of the week we shouldn't work, etc., etc.

And most importantly: there is nothing in the rules of logic that tells us which god to worship (the most important moral rule of any religion).

And lastly: reason is certainly not the path to truth. Many truths are human truths, and they transcend logic.

Morality is a word with a tenuous definition. I would like to think of it as a personal expression of basic truths of how to treat each-other. We can call these basic, mathematically reasonable and axiomatic truths something else. How about Ethics?

It doesn't matter what you call it--there is absolutely nothing "mathematical" about it. If you can show me the math of ethics, I'd love to see it. Go ahead.

The desire for Equity and Harmony. The importance of Empathy. The Circle of responsibility. These are truths which exist in our minds alone. (That doesn't mean they cant be truths!)

I've already addressed this in a post up-thread: there is nothing universal about Equity and Harmony, even if you capitalize them. You can have a perfectly legitimate moral system without those concepts. The kind of morality you're describing is a slave morality. There are also master moralities. Of course the slaves are going to view the master moralities as evil. That's just because they are powerless and weak. Masters view slave moralities as evil because they are weak. (I'm speaking both metaphorically and literally.)

A distorted view of the universe can certainly lead to false reasoning. If I believe that sacrificing the sun god is going to dramatically improve our harvest, It is perfectly acceptable to make a human sacrifice to him. It will be for the "greater" benefit of society, and the person sacrificed gets automatic salvation anyway.

We believed slavery was acceptable because we did not consider slaves fully people. (Constitutionally 3/5) The great leaps in our moral sensibilities come from expanding the circle of moral responsibility to cover a wider amount of humanity. It's development, and not arbitrary. Someone came along 2000 years ago and said things like "love thy enemy". A radical concept. You yourself have passionately defended statements that assume a universal desire fore equity and reciprocity. If you can tell me a system of morality. (An actual, official system for a working society) that doesn't rely on these concepts, I will be very very surprised.

But morality isn't expressed socially. It's expressed individually. And every individual expresses it differently, and in varying degrees from non-existant to rigidly extreme.

--A

The Dreaming wrote:We believed slavery was acceptable because we did not consider slaves fully people. (Constitutionally 3/5) The great leaps in our moral sensibilities come from expanding the circle of moral responsibility to cover a wider amount of humanity. It's development, and not arbitrary.

While I agree that it's better that we abolished slavery, that's probably because I'm not one of the powerful people in charge of this planet. We still have slavery, to an extent. It's just now disguised in taxes. Liberals want to increase our amount of servitude to the government, and I'd like less. But what would I want if I were in charge of all those tax dollars? I wonder.

You yourself have passionately defended statements that assume a universal desire fore equity and reciprocity. If you can tell me a system of morality. (An actual, official system for a working society) that doesn't rely on these concepts, I will be very very surprised.

I have never defended statements that assume a universal desire for equity and reciprocity. However, I personally value equity and reciprocity. I'm not disagreeing; I'm not saying these are bad things. I like them. But they aren't universal. And just because there isn't an "official system for a working society" that doesn't rely upon these concepts doesn't mean that these concepts are universal. There can be individuals who have their own morality that disregards the good of the society. Usually, society hunts them down and imprisons them, but this doesn't make their values universally wrong . . . only wrong in view of the society. There are other perspectives besides this collective view.

[Edit: after taking a second look at Av's post, I think he said it more succinctly than I did. Good job Av!]

Malik23 wrote:[Edited to emphasize my main points.]

But if this is so, then we might have been conditioned to feel otherwise. "Perhaps," thinks the reformer or the educational expert, "it would be better if we were. Let us improve our morality." Out of this apparently innocent idea comes the disease that will certainly end our species (and, in my view, damn our souls) if it is not crushed; the fatal superstition that men can create values, that a community can choose its "ideology" as men choose their clothes. Everyone is indignant when he hears the Germans define justice as that which is to the interest of the Third Reich. But it is not always remembered that this indignation is perfectly groundless if we ourselves regard morality as a subjective sentiment to be altered at will. Unless there is some objective standard of good, overarching Germans, Japanese, and ourselves alike whether any of us obey it or no, then of course the Germans are as competent to create their ideology as we are to create ours. If "good" and "better" are terms deriving their sole meaning from the ideology of each people, then of course ideologies themselves cannot be better or worse than one another. Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.

The idea that we can’t create values is demonstrably false. What I mean is, it is contradicted by the evidence. People DO create their own values. This isn’t a “fatal superstition.” If people couldn’t create their own values, then the Nazi example he gives wouldn’t be possible. Just because the values of Nazis are abhorrent doesn’t mean that it was impossible for them to create those values in the first place. That kind of reasoning is the moralistic fallacy: reasoning from what should be (in his opinion) to what is.

Nor is there any requirement for me to respect Nazi values simply because I recognize their ability to create them. That’s another false assumption. My recognition of the competancy of the Nazis to create values has no bearing on my judgment of those specific values. That would be like saying I can’t judge a song as one I don’t like, while simultaneously recognizing it as an original composition. The composer's ability to create it is completely independent of people's opinions of it. Lewis is wrong. There doesn’t need to be a universal song-judging criteria in order for me to pick and choose songs I like. Or to compose them myself. He’s appealing to our prejudice that we all dislike Nazi values. He’s pretending like this is a universal judgment (disliking Nazi morality). But he’s forgetting that there are a lot of people who like Nazi values. Namely, the Nazis themselves. If their ideology was universally bad, then why didn’t they recognize that “fact?”

If the Nazis didn't create their values themselves, who created them? Satan? Is he really going to blame this man-made travesty upon some boogiman under the earth? That's the only conclusion we could come to, if the Nazis didn't create their "abhorrent" values themselves. In other words, to accept Lewis's logic, I have to believe in invisible supernatural agents. Which isn't logical at all.

Malik, I almost know better than to even respond to you. But for the sake of the audience...

You seem to have completely missed his point about the necessity of an overarching standard by which we all universally judge the Nazis. If your supposition were probable, then there would be literally all kinds of "moralities" pointing in all directions of the compass, certainly at least most of them, based entirely on human convenience. This universal judgment of Nazi fascism indicates that this is simply not so; that there is decisive evil, and by inference, decisive good. Your comparison of music to morality is therefore casuistry. Things that are truly a matter of taste can run the full spectrum; things like morality in fact do not.

The Nazi argument is not universally applicable to all people who were in that system. You can't paint all Nazis with one brush. Obviously there were varying degrees to which people killed the inner voice of conscience within themselves, and there were people who questioned, and heroically or foolhardily opposed the methods and aims of the leaders, sometimes at great or total cost to themselves. People today who want to repeat those mistakes are in precisely the same position - they are not evidence of an "ability to create morality".

You don't HAVE to believe in invisible supernatural agents - just concede the possibility that that could explain it. As Chesterton put it, it is not a choice between mysticism and reason (as you seem to hold it now) - it is a choice between mysticism and madness (regarding things we cannot possibly know logically). You are right to insist that faith cannot be ultimately proved by logic alone. You are wrong if you think that the only things that can be are things that we can know logically.

If the Christian thesis is true, then the values were not 'created' - they are intrinsic to what the Creator IS. I don't need fantasy theories that Satan 'created' them.

He’s appealing to our prejudice that we all dislike Nazi values.

Also, the assumption in the word "prejudice" is that we have judged beforehand; without sufficient knowledge - I would suggest that that is far more applicable to your attitude toward Christianity than to our knowledge of the Nazi regime. There is nothing in the Nazi regime that would transform our understanding to say that they were just misunderstood well-meaning people - we know enough about them to be able to speak of "postjudice"; but there certainly is the possibility that learning one more thing could transform how you view faith.

Hrm, thats why I always go for Slavery instead. Nazism is too low hanging a fruit.

Regardless, what it comes down to is a belief in truth or a disbelief in truth. I don't think it is possible to deny truth. Certainly, there *are* degrees of truth. Some lies are closer to truth than others, after all. I'm not necessarily convinced that perfect *knowledge* is possible, but I am certain truth exists. A greater understanding of the universe grants us more than simply knowledge of the physical universe. It allows us to see situations with greater clarity. It allows us to judge more correctly, wisdom is necessary for morality!

Despite superficial imperfections, we all have the same needs. It is the clarity with which we understand the universe that renders differences in beliefs and ideologies. Different people understand different things. Different cultures understand different things.

If you can't find truth in the physical universe, you aren't looking hard enough. Denying truth, embracing relativism and existentialism is jumping to a conclusion before all the facts are in. Not only is it a premature conclusion, it's an empty and ultimately weak conclusion to the nature of the universe. There are plenty of perfect, unequivocal, undebatable truths in science. Is it so hard to believe that there is a perfect way for us to live in harmony with each other?

Morality can't be individual. It's just impossible. Morality is entirely about *relationships*. It is about how we connect and interact with each other. Saying you can't judge someone's behavior is as silly as judging a person the instant you see him. Flaws in a persons interaction with his family, his peers, his tribe, his nation, his species, his world, can and must be judged. Just because morality is created by man doesn't mean it isn't based on reason or logic or wisdom. Wisdom decrees that some behaviors are ultimately destructive to harmony. The problem is that societies are massive and nigh incomprehensible systems, all we can formulate is an approximation.

The crazy thing is, approximations are a flavor of truth just as E=MC^2 is. Using an understanding of the underlying need for morality, we fabricate something to express it as best we can. A rule, a law, a more. Just as anything we engineer built to perform in acceptable margins of imperfection, our moral guidelines are built to form within an acceptable margin of imperfection.

Rules exist for people who don't understand the reason rules exist. Wisdom leads us to a greater understanding, allowing someone to defy convention and lead us closer to moral truth. People like Zoroaster, or Christ, or Ghandi.

Of course morality is individual. Everybody sees, experiences and applies it on their own, to other people. In a society whose morals unequivocally repudiate murder, the morality of the person who murders is not that of other members of his society.

But he might believe that there is nothing wrong with what he does. His moral frame of reference, for whatever reason, is seperate from any others.

--A

Avatar wrote:Of course morality is individual. Everybody sees, experiences and applies it on their own, to other people. In a society whose morals unequivocally repudiate murder, the morality of the person who murders is not that of other members of his society.

But he might believe that there is nothing wrong with what he does. His moral frame of reference, for whatever reason, is seperate from any others.

--A

The fatal flaw in your argument, Avatar, is that if morality isindividual, then his moral frame of reference is just as good as that of the society around him. Thus again, you can't speak of 'better' or 'worse', 'progress' or 'decadence'. Which is bull cookies to anyone who still has a smidgen of common sense.

I'm sure sophistry will quickly invent a new argument to circumvent common sense. We are desperate to justify our behavior and actions.

Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.

rusmeister wrote:The fatal flaw in your argument, Avatar, is that if morality isindividual, then his moral frame of reference is just as good as that of the society around him. Thus again, you can't speak of 'better' or 'worse', 'progress' or 'decadence'. Which is bull cookies to anyone who still has a smidgen of common sense.

No, incorrect. We can certainly speak of "better" or "worse" without waiting for an Absolute to tell us what to think. We can individually judge moralities. No one is saying that an individual's moral frame of reference is just as good as that of society around him. This is the point that you--and other Absolutists--keep missing. We are NOT saying that all views are equal. In fact, our view that the individual can make up his own mind independent of the collective wouldn't be possible if we thought all views are equal. The individual's opinion would be meaningless. In fact, we're saying the opposite: not all views are equal. All views being equal is the essence of Absolutism, the belief that all humans (if they were thinking "correctly") would agree. We're saying that not all humans agree, and the reason this happens is because there aren't Absolute standards. But this still leaves room for people to think that their view is better than others. In fact, this is the essence of individual morality: the fact that people can view their own as superior to others.

Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.

If the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, then how do we judge the measuring rod???

If you can compare individual morality, saying that some are more *right* than others, that implies the existence of an absolute reference point. Perfection isn't a destination, it's a direction. A perfect society is definitely impossible. That doesn't mean we cant get an idea of what a perfect society is and move toward it.

Absolutism doesn't have to be just black and just white. Black and white are abstracts usually, but that doesn't mean they don't exist. Even if they exist only in the mind, they still have an existance.

Malik23 wrote:

rusmeister wrote:The fatal flaw in your argument, Avatar, is that if morality isindividual, then his moral frame of reference is just as good as that of the society around him. Thus again, you can't speak of 'better' or 'worse', 'progress' or 'decadence'. Which is bull cookies to anyone who still has a smidgen of common sense.

No, incorrect. We can certainly speak of "better" or "worse" without waiting for an Absolute to tell us what to think. We can individually judge moralities. No one is saying that an individual's moral frame of reference is just as good as that of society around him. This is the point that you--and other Absolutists--keep missing. We are NOT saying that all views are equal. In fact, our view that the individual can make up his own mind independent of the collective wouldn't be possible if we thought all views are equal. The individual's opinion would be meaningless. In fact, we're saying the opposite: not all views are equal. All views being equal is the essence of Absolutism, the belief that all humans (if they were thinking "correctly") would agree. We're saying that not all humans agree, and the reason this happens is because there aren't Absolute standards. But this still leaves room for people to think that their view is better than others. In fact, this is the essence of individual morality: the fact that people can view their own as superior to others.

Unless the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, we can do no measuring. For the same reason it is useless to compare the moral ideas of one age with those of another: progress and decadence are alike meaningless words.

If the measuring rod is independent of the things measured, then how do we judge the measuring rod???

We must have blind dogmatic faith that our ability to reason is valid and that we are able to come to conclusions. Otherwise, we may not even think at all. Thus we use our reason to judge the measuring rod.

We are NOT saying that all views are equal. In fact, our view that the individual can make up his own mind independent of the collective wouldn't be possible if we thought all views are equal. The individual's opinion would be meaningless. In fact, we're saying the opposite: not all views are equal.

So far, so good.

Absolutism, the belief that all humans (if they were thinking "correctly") would agree.

This is where you get my position wrong. You use the conditional mood in regard to my position (what they would do) and then turn around and use the indicative mood (what they do do) for your position. (Being an ESL teacher of grammar helps see these things! )

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Moral_absolutism

Moral absolutism is the belief that there are absolute standards against which moral questions can be judged, and that certain actions are right or wrong, devoid of the context of the act.

We in fact agree that people do not agree, and evidently you also agree that some views are "more equal" or more correct than others. The essence of Lewis's starting argument is the acknowledgement of a thing called "conscience" - it is a long-accepted word and concept universally acknowledged and the fact that we
a) feel pressures to behave a certain (moral) way (conscience)
and
b) we do not, in fact, behave this way.

Or, if you will, a small voice that tells us to do what we ought, and a louder voice telling us to do what we want.

From where I sit, your position says that no one is ultimately right, that people only think that they are right and none of them are actually right. Now we're back to the Nazis. Your position says that we cannot judge their actions. You can't cheer for any good guy or boo a bad gut in a film, because the bad guys simply use a different morality. Unless you come out and say that your morality is right and theirs is wrong, you cannot even think of 'good' or 'evil'. Once you do, you are on a slippery slope away from convinced atheism. (So I expect full and fierce defense of that dogma )

rusmeister wrote:We must have blind dogmatic faith that our ability to reason is valid and that we are able to come to conclusions. Otherwise, we may not even think at all.

No, we can think without reason. In fact, much of our thinking doesn't involve reason. We make emotional judgments, aesthetic judgments, intuitive leaps, prejudiced assumptions, etc. Very little reason is used in most of our daily thinking. Habit and bias plays a much larger role.

Thus we use our reason to judge the measuring rod.

Please give an example. Do you really use reason to judge your "absolute" standards? I doubt it. I simply think it is a false belief that your so-called "absolute standards" have anything to do with reason at all. If you can show me how, I'd be interested in seeing it. But I think you have a "blind dogmatic faith" (as you say above) in the reasonable nature of your absolutes, without every critically analyzing this belief at all. Kant tried to do this--to develop a morality that was universal in virtue of its logical foundation--but he failed because morality simply isn't something that conforms to rigid, absolute logical structures.

Absolutism, the belief that all humans (if they were thinking "correctly") would agree.

This is where you get my position wrong. You use the conditional mood in regard to my position (what they would do) and then turn around and use the indicative mood (what they do do) for your position. (Being an ESL teacher of grammar helps see these things! )

I'm not sure what you mean here. If, as you say in your post, Moral Absolutism is the belief that there are absolute standards, and these standards are judged by reason, then why wouldn't all humans agree on these standards if they were thinking correctly?

From where I sit, your position says that no one is ultimately right, that people only think that they are right and none of them are actually right. Now we're back to the Nazis. Your position says that we cannot judge their actions.

How do you connect those dots? Your conclusion doesn't follow from the premises. I can judge the Nazis. In fact, I DO judge them. So how do you explain that fact?

I don't need some super-referee consulting his rule book of Absolute Standards in order to make a moral judgment. I use my own standards and values. Just because I recognize that my own opinion isn't universal doesn't mean I can't have that opinion!

You can't cheer for any good guy or boo a bad gut in a film, because the bad guys simply use a different morality. Unless you come out and say that your morality is right and theirs is wrong, you cannot even think of 'good' or 'evil'.

I don't need "good" and "evil" to make moral judgments. All I need is "better" and "worse."

I DO say my morality is right theirs is wrong. But just because I say this doesn't make it true in any absolute sense. It's just my opinion.

Yet, I can still cheer for "bad guys" in a story even if they don't live up to my personal morality. I cheered for Angus in the Gap series. I'm guessing you did not. But if you didn't, then Donaldson failed at his narrative goal. And that leaves me wondering why you're even on a fansite for a writer who's goals are so antithetical to your own personal moral code that you can't cheer when the author wants you to cheer.

I don't think his views are as antithetical to this as you think. The first Chronicles, to me, always seemed a rousing defense of objectivity. Remember the fundamental question of Ethics?

And the fact that Angus comes out of the Gap undeniably *better* than he entered it points to an objective basis for morality. Once again, if you can EVEN put morality on a continuum from "bad" to "better" you are implying an objective basis for morality. What about him *makes* him better? Something is changing, what is it? Right and Wrong are nearly meaningless words. All we truly encounter is "better" and "worse". But by making those judgments, we are holding someone to universal objective standards, whether we are willing to admit to it or not.