Morality Decreasing With Time?

Easy enough to amend. Statement redacted to read:

quote:

---

There are no absolutes except this one.

---

The trouble with you absolutists is, you think we've never heard these arguments before. Do you really think that's the case? That we're all like "law of non-contradiction! Shit, you've got us there!"C'mon. That's sophmore philosophy. Amateur hour. Ethics 101. You need to bring your A game here, not the smart-sounding sophistry you used to seduce freshmen in coffeehouses. (I'm just sayin'.) If I decide to punish him, from what basis are you going to tell me I can't? What you forget about moral relativism is, it works both ways. Maybe there's no objective basis to punish a criminal, but there's also no objective basis to conclude that it's wrong to punish a criminal without an objective basis for doing so.Get it? I don't have to conclude that a criminal did something wrong in order to justify punishing him for it. I (or rather, society) simply needs to determine (democratically, perhaps, or by another method) what we think deserves punishment and what doesn't.

No, the statement is true and non-contradictory. Just because there's one absolute doesn't mean there are any others. Really? Because to assert the existence of absolutes, but fail to provide even a single example, is what seems odd to me. If there are absolutes... what are they? I didn't really feel "stung." I was able to defeat that line of reasoning in seconds, after all. Uh, actually it looks like you completely avoided addressing my argument.

We don't know that there are any, though. There are simply physical values that seem arbitrary in our models and aren't observed to change.That may, or may not, mean they're constant. They could be derivative values, or not constant at all. Are you seriously claiming to have "defeated" me with an argument that I rebutted and that you haven't yet defended? Any response whatsoever to my argument about relativism.Edited by crashfrog, : No reason given.

But this is just meaningless nonsense. What does that have to do with anything? Australia and Africa aren't universal absolutes; they're arbitrary names given to two different continents. (Of course, if you were standing inside the Nairobi embassy in Sidney, you would be in both Africa and Australia at the same time.) May or may not was what I said, actually. And, yes, I can refute your argument by showing that what you claim is known, actually isn't. What hasn't ever changed? That's 100% false anda misrepresentation of the content of my post. Again, 100% false. My post contained two major arguments, both of which you've now claimed don't exist. But here they are, for your edification:

quote:

---

Easy enough to amend. Statement redacted to read: There are no absolutes except this one.

---

and

quote:

---

If I decide to punish him, from what basis are you going to tell me I can't? What you forget about moral relativism is, it works both ways. Maybe there's no objective basis to punish a criminal, but there's also no objective basis to conclude that it's wrong to punish a criminal without an objective basis for doing so.

​

Get it? I don't have to conclude that a criminal did something wrong in order to justify punishing him for it. I (or rather, society) simply needs to determine (democratically, perhaps, or by another method) what we think deserves punishment and what doesn't.

---

It's the second, especially, that you've given no meaningful reply to. You've just now tried to say that I didn't actuallly write that material, but that's an obvious fabrication. The message has not been edited or redacted in any way. Right about what?

The relevance of your statements to the topic at hand. I literally can't for the life of me understand how your statements contitute a response to anything I've written. If you find them personally meaningful, that's great, but you need to understand that you've communicated absolutely nothing sensical to me. You've completely misunderstood, then, what sort of absolutes are under discussion. Arbitrary names for arbitrary land masses - "land mass" itself being an arbitrary designation for a certain collection of atoms. (The collection itself also being arbitrary.)Nothing absolute here. Aliens would have their own terms for the land masses, or they might not even percieve the relevance of masses on a planet. We're talking about absolutes - things that are the same no matter who or where you are. That's not the case in your example. And since I didn't say any of that, it sounds like you're misrepresenting my arguments again. How many times do I have to ask you to stop doing that? Our desire to do so, as I already told you. What's stopping us? (And what's stopping you from understanding and addressing this amazingly simple point?) That moral relativism, contrary to your assertion, doesn't mandate that criminals go unpunished. There's no reason not to punish criminals under moral relativism, because there's no reason, aside from will, not to do anything at all.

That actions speak louder than words, which is why a Lawful Good Human Paladin, a Chaotic Neutral Elf Ranger, and a Neutral Evil Half-Orc Rogue can all be in the same party. At the end of the day, the villagers aren't going to be concerned that the Paladin fought the goblins for the glory of Heironymous, the Ranger fought them to impress the mayor's daughter, and the Rogue fought them for treasure and the thrill of killing.That the goblins were exterminated from the surrounding hills and will no longer steal cattle and harass travelers is sufficient reason for the villagers to laud the adventurers as heroes. That someone did the right thing for the wrong reason might make them a bad person, and potentially someone to watch out for in the future (because a habit of doing the right thing for the wrong reason pretty quickly becomes doing the wrong things for the wrong reason), but it doesn't make their actions morally wrong.

Yeah. Honestly I find the bi-axial alignment system from Dungeons and Dragons to be a really great tool for clarifying the morality of actions and attitudes, as well as the difference between the moral value of an action and the ethical value of an action. (For the mundane - D&D describes an alignment as one of nine values along an x-y grid - Lawful/Neutral/Chaotic on one axis and Good/Neutral/Evil along the other.)Jayne from Firefly is probably neutral evil.

She's right, Buz. Only someone deeply ignorant of history would make the statement you made. Since time immemorial, there have been matriarchal societies, societies that had no concept of murder or societies that allowed killing, societies that practiced gay unions. Every kind of society, proving that there are no universal morals beyond those that economic actors spontaneously develop. And they've all been talked about on this forum, so it's pretty obvious you haven't been paying attention, I guess.