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this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2023
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In this thread: people who have never taken a deep dive into the myriad forms of ethics and morality that have existed throughout history
Like, a whole bunch of the arguing in this thread boils down to "when does utilitarianism overrule moral absolutism" or "is it always the case that one should use deontology, vs consequentialism, vs virtue ethics"
These are really complicated questions that have been considered and discussed at great lengths and I see a lot of comments in here making statements assuming one or the other is absolutely correct, without addressing the underlying justifications for their personal ethical and moral convictions
I think you'll find that in every thread. Personally, I've taken much deeper dives into game lore.
This is what I absolutely love about sci-fi and fantasy. It lets writers kick about stuff that can be dry and boring if you go into it from the pure academic route, and it lets writers get around knee-jerk reactions to certain ideas by first fooling around with them in a neat fantasy or sci-fi universe.
Basically, it can make a lot of history and mythology and science fun, and once someone's into lore from a pure entertainment standpoint, then they start following stuff back to get the historical or scientific parts of it if they want to go deeper.
Well, you're missing out. There are some really interesting arguments out there for why we should or shouldn't behave in certain ways. I love that so many exist and none of them are objectively falsifiable, so you get to decide for yourself which to follow
That's the nature of literally every social issue.
Can you provide an objective, philosophical reasoning for why able bodied people should pay taxes to support disabled people?
That's something I fully believe in, but I'm not able to formulate any good arguments as to why I think it's the right thing to do. It's simply what I was raised to believe in.
I think it's important for us to recognize that most of don't actually have objective moral explanations to back up our values. For most of us, the values we hold are simply matters of belief in what's good, in much the same way a Christian believes in the good of God.
People consider their own lives to have value beyond their ability to produce wealth. Every individual has the expectation that if they were to become disabled or too old to work, they would receive assistance from society to help keep them alive. So you can try to form a moral argument about why caring for someone else is correct, or you can turn it inward and say that you expect to be taken care of if you get hurt and leave it at that. What's the point of doing all this work if your value ends when you can no longer work?
Because leaving it at that doesn't provide an external justification for my feelings. That's literally the exact problem I was trying to explain: people are more concerned about subjective internal opinions than they are with objective external reasoning.
I'm setting a reminder to come back to this when I'm at a keyboard instead of on my phone. Because yes, I can provide such an argument! Multiple, in fact! You might not agree with the foundational assumptions behind the arguments but that's the point of philosophical debate. It will just take some time to present the necessary ethical and moral framework that leads to the conclusion "we should pay taxes to help the disabled".
People have been working on those sorts of questions for generations upon generations. And we can answer some of them without ever using terms like "good" or "right".
Read my username as a poor phonetic spelling of a philosopher's name for a preview of what I'll say :D
I'm aware of that. My point was that most people are either not aware of those arguments or able to formulate them cogently.
I am not arguing that there is no such justification; I am arguing that most people have not educated themselves on such justifications, and as such their values are merely beliefs, and not objective truths as many people want think of their own beliefs.
Oh ok. I misunderstood your comment. We are on the same page then. Heh