Moral Relativism: Good, bad...etc?

[Snowflake]

Heard from the radio this morning about the Christmas tree that the White House is going to have. I was thinking say five hundred years from now the trees are so rare and the human race's entire existence depend on it. Wonder if it would be deemed morally wrong to cut down trees for Christmas celebration. Of course that would not make the moral system of today that accepts the christmas tree tradition as moral and right as invalid, or would it? What about the moral system of the few people who consider it morally wrong to cut down trees for Christmas now?

[Kidlicious]

Snowflake,

No, it would not validate the system. Just because a moral system is accepted, doesn't mean it is true.

[Snowflake]

Now we are getting into the concept of true and false. Is it the same with good and bad, and valid and invalid? IMHO true or false is a factual judgement, and good or bad is a subjective judgement. Science deals with facts, and morality deals with subjectivity.

You can verify facts, but not subjective view points.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by loinburger
Which logic doesn't require any axioms/assumptions?

The axioms are necessary for turning the concepts into symbols. The concepts themselves contain everything necessary for the truth of the statements. "Green is green" is true because of the concept of "green" and "is". Now, when I type it out here, I need axioms to define the connection between the string of characters and the concepts in my mind.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Ned
Whaleboy, correct me if I'm wrong, but the "moral relativist" would seek to determine whether the taking of a possession of one person by another was immoral by first determining the context of the taking.

Not exactly. I think Whaleboy's use of "context" is misleading and imprecise. What he means by "in a certain context" is "assuming a particular moral system".

[Ari Rahikkala]

Discordianism

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Snowflake
Heard from the radio this morning about the Christmas tree that the White House is going to have. I was thinking say five hundred years from now the trees are so rare and the human race's entire existence depend on it. Wonder if it would be deemed morally wrong to cut down trees for Christmas celebration. Of course that would not make the moral system of today that accepts the christmas tree tradition as moral and right as invalid, or would it? What about the moral system of the few people who consider it morally wrong to cut down trees for Christmas now?

It wouldn't be a separate moral system that led to the conclusion that cutting down trees was wrong, it would be application of the first principles of the same moral system to different situations.

[Snowflake]

When there are two concurrent contradicting beliefs regarding the same subject (cutting down trees is right, or wrong), you can not say they belong to the same one moral system?

[Kidlicious]

Originally posted by Snowflake
Now we are getting into the concept of true and false. Is it the same with good and bad, and valid and invalid? IMHO true or false is a factual judgement, and good or bad is a subjective judgement. Science deals with facts, and morality deals with subjectivity.

You can verify facts, but not subjective view points.

I meant true and false as good and bad, but wanted to convey objectivity.

[Ned]

My wife came from a country where people could not own the land or the trees. Our first Christmas, she wanted to cut down a tree growing in someone's yard. You would be surprised, but it took me quite a while to explain to her why that was "wrong."

[Kidlicious]

Kuciwalker believes in the natual rights code. He is not a moral relativist. The same goes for everyone else who claims they are a moral relativist. Imran is a conformist. He believes that it is absolutely better to conform to the way the group believes. Even posters like Ramo prefer a certain code. For whatever reason though they want to be called moral relativists. No one can be a moral relativist. It's not even in our nature.

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Kuciwalker
The concepts themselves contain everything necessary for the truth of the statements.

The concepts don't have any truth value until they've been formalized as or derived from axioms. F'rinstance, the concept "A is not A" would be false under some systems of logic, would be true under others, and would be undefined under the rest. The concept may still have some meaning outside of an axiomatic system, but it won't have a truth value.

[Kuciwalker]

Originally posted by Snowflake
When there are two concurrent contradicting beliefs regarding the same subject (cutting down trees is right, or wrong), you can not say they belong to the same one moral system?

They wouldn't be concurrent. The underlying moral system is exactly the same. If some people happen to adopt the second principles as the first principles, then they've merely corrupted the moral system in which they claim to believe.

[Imran Siddiqui]

Kuciwalker believes in the natual rights code. He is not a moral relativists.

His personal moral beliefs have no bearing on whether he thinks there is a moral belief which is more 'valid' or 'true' than any other.

Imran is a conformist. He believes that it is absolutely better to conform to the way the group believes.

Uh huh... continue with your uninformed BS .

[loinburger]

Originally posted by Snowflake
When there are two concurrent contradicting beliefs regarding the same subject (cutting down trees is right, or wrong), you can not say they belong to the same one moral system?

Both statements can still belong to the same moral system -- most moral systems allow for degrees of indeterminism, since it's usually impractical to require humans to know everything about everything.