Hermagoras
Posts: 1260
Joined: June 2007
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More on Jack's decency and, well, other stuff. BarryA responds | Quote |
JK writes, ?So from this understanding of human nature and of the human condition both reason and emotion tell us that we should care about others.?
I grant that reason (always) and emotion (sometimes) tell us we should care about others. That is not the important question. The important question is, on what ground does the materialist choose to be guided by reason and good emotions instead of bad emotions such as envy, lust and malice? Again, from a strictly logical point of view, it is quite simply inescapable that the true materialist (i.e., a materialist true to his beliefs and not living on our culture?s rapidly dwindling store of Judeo-Christian moral capital) bases all of his decisions on pragmatic grounds, for to him, by definition, there are no other grounds upon which to base a decision. |
I'll just note a couple of points here. First is the predictable evocation of reason and logic, as though theism were based in those things and as though Jack's well articulated emotional claims were meaningless. (This makes the earlier evocation of Nietzsche ironic -- should I say unwittingly? Whoops, I just did.) Second is the notion of pragmatism. Now, I would grant Barry's point in a broad sense, that is, morality is relative. I happily embrace the label of relativist. Hell, I'm even a postmodernist. But as Barbara Herrnstein Smith says, all politics is local, but sometimes the local includes the whole world. In other words, I think that everybody makes moral decisions in relative terms, all the time, including the absolutist. From my perspective, it's not the relativist's morality that needs explaining.
And third: the pettiness of the responses is most striking.
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"I am not currently proving that objective morality is true. I did that a long time ago and you missed it." -- StephenB
http://paralepsis.blogspot.com/....pot.com
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