Hi Steve, When you state "Our claims about morality can have truth-value and be as objective as our scientific claims." are you talking about some definition of scientific objectivism?
Marsha On Oct 18, 2010, at 1:24 PM, Steven Peterson wrote: > 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
