On Mon, Sep 16, 2013 at 3:30 PM, Carrol Cox <[email protected]> wrote: > raghu writes: "To me that would mean abstractions like justice, but Carrol > has been known to reject such moralizing notions." > > Some day I might try a lengthy response, but I don't have the time now. > But > I want to suggest a test of sorts for Raghu. > > I ask: why is rape immoral? > > Raghu will reply: Because X. > > I will respond: Why is X immoral. > > He will have to say Because of Xprime. > > I will say, Why is Xprime immoral? > > And so forth. Try it. >
Yeah, I know you have got to start from somewhere. You can't start with "cogito ergo sum" and deduce "X is immoral" from it. So what? I don't know why you think this is so profound or why it presents such difficulties to you. I have no trouble starting with something like "it is wrong to cause pain and suffering to other beings", or even the Christian notion of "do unto others ...". There is a lot of sociological research that suggests that some of these notions are widely shared across different cultures, different parts of the world etc. See e.g. the work of Dale Miller: http://faculty-gsb.stanford.edu/millerd/documents/Disrespectandtheexperienceofinjustice.pdf https://www.stanford.edu/dept/psychology/cgi-bin/drupalm/dmiller Not only that, I find these concepts quite satisfactory myself and I am not at all troubled by the fact that they cannot be inferred logically from a blank state. The question is why does it bother *you* so much? -raghu.
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