Moral Judgments

This is sheer beauty, Abshalom. Sheer beauty. Obviously these were normative behaviors within their cultural context. If not, the behaviors would certainly have died out or been proscribed. IOW, as "holmes' law" puts it, they were consistent. And here is where we start getting into the really interesting bits. I would submit that the Europeans were not, in fact, operating in a manner consistent with European (read Judeo-Christian) morality. This type of "murder for profit" would certainly be against their morals in their own culture, therefore the encouraging of this behavior in some other culture is inconsistent. Civil protection has nothing to do with it - we're talking morality here, not laws. Under the original Jivaro morality in which headhunting developed, the new emphasis is inconsistent: profit was not the motive for headhunting. So in that sense, it would be immoral in a Jivaro context. However, morality DOES change over time, and this provides a nice example of why "universal morality" is a nonsense term. I would probably say the new emphasis represented a new normative behavior - hence a new morality paradigm - and would be consistent. Obviously they didn't see anything wrong with the idea...The Europeans are merely compounding their error from point #2 above. Yes. It was consistent with the government's Euro-centric (or at least European-derived) cultural morality. Oddly enough, it appears the Peruvian and Ecuadorian governments were more consistent with Judeo-Christian morality than the European powers who are supposed to be the most civilized (just ask 'em, they'll tell you) nations on Earth.

However, a point in holmes' favor here would be that to objectively determine that "harm" is caused by any behavior you have to divorce that behavior completely from the socio-cultural context. I wish the discussion centered around anything but pedophilia, which has such tremendous emotional lading in our culture - and manifestly DOES cause harm in that context - however, this harm doesn't necessarily translate universally.There is a current exhibit at the National Geographic Museum's Explorers' Hall in Washington DC called "Passages". The exhibit is quite interesting in its own right, dealing with African tribal rites of passage. I can't remember which tribe (and if you think THAT inability doesn't piss me off - I was just there with the kids this weekend; age is a terrible thing), but the social structure of the tribe forbade physically adult males prior to the marriage passage rite associating with any adult female. The tribe thus encouraged adult-child relations - including sexual - between adult males and pre-pubescent females. These "girlfriends" not only don't suffer harm from the relationship, but actually sought out "boyfriends" whom they followed around and bonded to. I remember all this because of all the rites depicted in the exhibit, this one appeared the most alien to my worldview.All of this means that, objectively, psychological harm in and of itself can not be used as a universal basis for judging someone else's moral position because such harm cannot be divorced from the socio-cultural context in which it occurs. Which I think was holmes' point.

See? I don't ALWAYS disagree with you.

Well, absurd or not, his failure to adequately support his assertion tends to make it moot, n'est-ce pas? That's up to Tal to handle, I'd say. I don't disagree with you - we inhabit a fully-developed society with fairly stringent rules for normative behavior. However, after very careful scrutiny of holmes' posts on this thread, I have to say he has been trying to argue from the objective stance I pointed out (i.e., against moral absolutes). Of course, his purpose is obscure and I haven't been able to fathom it. Then again, I never claimed to be either a philosopher or logician. He twitted you and schraf when you fell into the same subjectivist trap that Tal did (IMO). IOW, it appears you ("you" = holmes, schraf and berberry) are arguing apples and oranges. In our shared socio-cultural context, both A and B can be "judged". However, that doesn't appear to be the arena in which holmes is making his points.Again, I have no clue why he chose to argue that way. But both you and schraf are arguing a specific case, and holmes is trying for a general one.My ten kopeks.

However, taken out of the given socio-cultural context and placed in another (i.e., ours, f'rinstance), it very likely would cause harm - exactly as various people have asserted in this thread by labelling it morally wrong. So I'd say it probably does, in fact, show that at least in the specific instance we've somehow gotten stuck on, harmful behavior - at least psychologically harmful behavior - does depend a great deal on culture. Remember, the whole argument started out about the moral equivalency of a simple (albeit sexual) kiss. I submit that this tribe's behaviors go way beyond a kiss. By your criteria (and mine, btw) based on our shared culture, this behavior is morally wrong. Outside of our world, maybe different story, yes?

I KNOW you disagree with that. The behavior isn't wrong because it does no harm in that cultural context - and in fact is considered normative. However, remember waaay back when the kissing example came up? All it was was comparing two boys kissing with an older (male) kissing a young child. Everybody IMMEDIATELY stated that A was morally okay but that B was morally wrong - and indeed condemned it as harmful. The entire point of my example was to show that this position was untenable. There is no inherent harm in the act itself taken out of context. Considering that this is the first time rape has been mentioned, I'm not sure what this has to do with my example - or with refuting my statement. I have no way of knowing whether rape is condoned, but from what I remember of the exhibit, it's likely a bad thing. However, the tribe also practices a number of rituals that we consider abhorrent in our society, such as female circumcision, so the status and position of women in that society is questionable in the first place from our standpoint. Do you agree or disagree that, outside of the use of force or coercion, sexual contact between adult males and pre-pubescent females is (at least potentially) psychologically harmful in our society?

I pretty much gathered that the folks who objected interpreted the kiss sexually, although that wasn't explicitly stated in the example given. The two boys being roughly the same age was also not explicitly stated in the example, although I admit the use of "boys" makes this a reasonable assumption. Which, of course, is why holmes was trying to avoid getting bogged down in specifics, I guess.

All right, let's drop this, eh? We're going to be talking permanently in circles if we keep this up. You disagree with my example, which was intended to cast doubt on the moral subjectivism being bandied about. Fine, I can live with that. OTOH, you haven't shown why this example doesn't apply - you just dismissed it. Fine, I can live with that, too. This is NOT a topic I'm all that interested in. I now regret bringing in what I thought would be an interesting example of a contrasting culture where our mores don't apply.