Re: On the Origins of Morality: Supernatural, Biological, ...

Re: On the Origins of Morality: Supernatural, Biological, ...

I’m not sure I fully understand what you’re saying.

I agree that statements don’t establish truth, but describe it. But atomic statements are still relative to the intended meaning of the person who stated them. If you said “This tulip is red” I could disagree and say “no, it’s green.” How would we resolve our disagreement? What does the word ‘red’ mean to you? Can we be sure it means the same to you as it does to me? What if its colour was what you called red, and 50% of humanity was on your side, but 50% was on my side in denying its redness? To what authority would we go to settle the matter? Which statement is true and which is false?

I don’t understand this sentence: “The argument that objective morality is an abstraction is surely wrong because the very language you use to abstract it must be communicated by those you are extracting it from.” What do you mean? Everybody uses abstractions all the time, e.g. the word ‘human being’ is an abstraction of the characteristics of all specific human beings walking about. It’s not platonic, it’s the way the human mind works. To say “This is a telephone” imposes an abstraction onto a concrete object. How else are we supposed to communicate or think?

On the Origins of Morality: Supernatural, Biological, and Relational Possibilities By: Jacob (99 replies) 21 March, 2009 - 03:10