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The Gilgo Beach Serial Killings
The bound bodies of four women are found along a desolate stretch of beach. Disturbing new details about the architect police say is a serial killer. "48 Hours" correspondent Erin Moriarty...
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We all appeal to a moral code beyond ourselves whether we admit it or not. Especially when we feel we are the victim.. We may rationalize that someone else has a different standard, or that groups have different values, but when we are personally wronged we appeal to a moral code beyond individuals or the group we are in.
People will tell you that slavery is wrong, even if the society that the person is a slave in, says it is legal. We recognize that what an individual or group says is right is not authoritative and we appeal to some standard beyond them. When the Nazis killed Jews, they did so in a system that said it was OK to do so. However, people appealed to a law greater than that one to condemn what they were doing. Last week Democrat politicians refused to support a bill to provide a newborn who had just survived an abortion access to immediate medical help and to be able to go to a hospital for live saving care. While these politicians have blinded themselves to how wrong that is, most people believe it is wrong to kill a newborn child or to intentionally deny live saving medical help to her.
In studies with dogs and monkeys, when an animal is given a treat, it will compare what it is given to what others are given. If it is given something less valuable than the others it will respond negatively. It intuitively understands that it has been treated unfairly.
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Only 20 percent? That's lower than I would have expected.
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Slavery is not wrong "just because": slavery is wrong as a consequence of recognition of intrinsic human autonomy. It is not some ethereal moral concept humans somehow intuitively "feel" is right, but a consequence of centuries of intellectual inquiry, debates and experiments. And it is exactly the society that think and learn from history and their own experiences, as opposed to appealing to some "beyond", that ultimately succeed. You have South Korea that has embraced freedom and progress, and you have North Korea that has hold on to traditions and values founded on nothing but desire to preserve stability.
Someone who believes that something is wrong because of something coming from the outside of human consciousness is making an error. Not everyone who believes that slavery is wrong has a ground to stand on, and people can come to the right - or, at least, to the benevolent - conclusion through wrong - or malevolent - reasoning. One can appeal to human intuition (that demonstrably misfires in many cases), or "god" (that does not provably exist), or tradition (that is equivalent to surrendering to the mediocre), or responsibility before the collective (where it comes from, no one has ever explained) - and all of these arguments are wrong and the conclusions derived from them logically unfounded.
Morality is absolutely subjective, but not arbitrary. It is much like preference between apples and pears: whether apples or pears taste better is subjective, but it is not arbitrary, and every person can determine which it is for themselves. Whether slavery is wrong or not is a question of preference, but for the given individual the preference can be determined - and if the critical mass of people has the same preference, then it becomes a part of the societal culture. Furthermore, one can make an argument that slavery is wrong for everyone who thinks logically, just like pain is unpleasant to everyone even though some may derive a strange pleasure from it at the same time. But even that does not make slavery objectively wrong, it simply makes it universally wrong, which is not the same thing (I would guess that every human who has ever lived preferred the taste of chocolate to the taste of dirt, yet objectively there is no such thing as something tasting better than something else, for taste is something an individual experiences and cannot share with others).
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The basis of morality is subjective because it inevitably requires buy-in. Whether the moral basis is human flourishing, well being, or an absolute rule maker (lol), if someone doesn't accept it, it is useless as a standard. Arguments can be made for why one standard is better than another, but ultimately if it doesn't allow humans to continue living together it isn't going to work very well.
Once we agree to a standard, then we can go about measuring actions against that yardstick. We can even make objective assessments. Eg. "Does slavery increase human flourishing, well-being, or please God?" If "yes" it is objectively moral according to that particular standard.
Long story short: morality has a subjective basis we can use to make objective assessments of actions
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In chess, we accept a set of rules of the game and then make objective judgements within that set, such as, "This move loses by force if the opponent plays perfectly". There is nothing in the Universe that suggests that chess has to have exactly these rules, and one could easily come up with a new game by, say, removing the en passant rule - but, given the rules, one can objectively assess quality of moves, subject to practical limitations given by our inability to calculate every possible variation and "solve" the game.
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Most people in the western world already regard the killing other human beings as morally correct in certain situations.
In in the western world it is considered that citizens killing other human beings for personal reasons is utterly wrong and offenders are severely punished. But killing officially for the benefit of the group is not only acceptable, it is behaviour guaranteed to bring great honour upon the killer if he is a member of the armed forces. One person killing another is considered justifiable when done as an act of self defense, or in the defense of another human being who is in mortal danger of being killed. Also, at least more than half of western people think the executions of the worst kinds of human predators is not immoral. So too, the killing of offenders by police officers in certain situations is also considered a killing for the good of the community. In addition, prison officers may shoot to kill offenders who are attempting to escape custody.
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When one says "torture is wrong" all they are doing is showing how they feel about torture ; only two types of statement can make genuine truth claims empirical statements "it's sunny outside " this can be verified by sense experience then we have analytic statements "all bachelors are single" these are true on account of the meaning of the words.
Moral statements do not fit into either category they cannot be true or false as they only express emotions ' boo to torture ' or 'hooray to truth telling' this is the Boo/Hooray theory of morality or commonly called Emotivism.
It makes perfect sense to me, although like every so called moral system it has its critics
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Stephen Woodford (1:40) - morality is objective and relativistic.
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