Bazooka wrote:subgenius wrote:I propose that morality is developed from intrinsic notions of good and bad.
Is flying an airplane into a building good or bad?
I think you and I would say it was bad.
But not everybody would say it was bad.
Now which one is operating contrary to their intrinsic notion of what is good and bad, them or us?
Well, we would say "them" and they would say "us".
I guess that means notions of good and bad are not intrinsic.
you are confusing the subtleties and nuances of culture with the issue at hand.
Just because there are two seemingly different views of the same event does not mean that both of those views are correct.
However, both viewers in your example above share the same morality....fighting against evil and sacrifice for a just cause is "good".....senseless violence and the killing of innocent people is "bad".
Bazooka wrote:Let's say you were brought up as the eldest son of a wealthy cotton farmer in Alabama in the 1700's.
Would you find slavery intrinsically good or intrinsically bad?
Well, I think your upbringing would determine wether or not you viewed slavery as a good or bad thing, not some genetically inbuilt sense of good or bad.
again, you are depending on cultural nuances for the determination of good and bad. If we consider your example of slavery then we must consider that there is a deduction required for it to be "good"...which was the case for it to become "bad" today. (ironically, many consider the "thou shalt not steal" commandment to about slavery, to be correctly translated as thou shalt not kidnap - all the other commandments are "capital" crimes, the jews just experienced slavery, etc..).
So, if one's culture determined slavery was good then how did that come about? chance? luck of the draw? At some point there was someone, a lot of someones, who were not being raised with the idea of slavery being "good"...yet you are proposing that it was considered "good" and morally correct. So, how did this transformation begin? If slavery is not intrinsically good then it is not intrinsically bad either...which means it is a fad that can come and go...that its origins and implementation is based on something incoherent...something unpredictable....something easily lost in time if there is no "tradition" to determine that fad as being either bad or good.
so which is it? slavery is neither good nor bad, but rather just a matter of social convenience?...ok, then.
Or
consider slavery as being intrinsically bad...consider that as being determined by the fact that it is natural, it is intrinsic, it is a transcendent truth that every single human being considers it better to be free than to be a slave (all things being equal) - that is to say, if a human being is not raised, not culturally influenced, as a slave nor as a free person they would naturally be inclined towards freedom and not slavery - is that a reasonable proposition?
Did the culture of slavery have slaves being raised hopeful that they would continue to be slaves? Given the generations of the slavery tradition, why would any slave contradict their circumstance if all they had ever known, culturally, was slavery? How could you convince a single slave to have the desire to be free? Why would they have a desire to contradict the only life and circumstance they have ever known?
Bazooka wrote:Do you think Adolf Hitler's intrinsic sense of good and bad was the same as yours?
Yes i do think that, because knowing the difference between good and bad and choosing to do otherwise is not impossible.