Hi Mark, Mark: > In my opinion, a > culture cannot be wrong about what is moral because it creates the morality, > does not interpret it.
Steve: If I follow you correctly, your position is that morality is simply a matter of agreement with a particular society. The only sense in which we can say anything about the morality of stoning homosexuals is that societies forbid it and others demand it. Neither Harris, Pirsig, nor I subscribe to this sort of relativism. Our claims about morality can have truth-value and be as objective as our scientific claims. The fact that there is no broad agreement on morals does not mean that there is no truth of the matter. It just means that at least some people are wrong. There is more cross-cultural agreement on the belief that cruelty is wrong than on the truth of evolution. But amount of agreement or diagreement is irrelevent to whether or not there is in principle an answer to moral or scientific questions. Morals aren't asserted to be objective in the Platonic sense of existing independently of human experience. They are not ontologically objective, but moral truths can be epistemically objective in the sense that when making such judgments we are not lying to ourselves, not overly biased in favor of personal interest, etc. Such scientific objectivity is not understood as not having values but as valuing reliable chains of evidence that lead us to good conclusions. This scientific objectivity can be applied to studying morals--determining what we ought to do so as to maximize wellbeing in a given set of circumstances. Best, Steve Moq_Discuss mailing list Listinfo, Unsubscribing etc. http://lists.moqtalk.org/listinfo.cgi/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org Archives: http://lists.moqtalk.org/pipermail/moq_discuss-moqtalk.org/ http://moq.org/md/archives.html
