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morality


what are my opinions on morality



morality is a context specific emotion.

as a human system, i might value certain things different from what a dog might. what i value may be different from what you value, due to the differences in our childhoods, the values we were raised with, the religions in our area, the scientific discoveries we were aware of. the ideas of what we call, 'good' and 'bad' are specific to our location in time and space, the language we speak, and the particular history and selective pressures of our existence as humans on this planet.

i would label myself as an emotivist. emotivism says that moral statements are expressions of emotion. under emotivism, the moral statement, "murder is wrong", is analogous to the statement, "ew murrder". this is because it is impossible to escape the confines of a emotionally directed moral complex. we need to be able examine why we think certain things are "wrong" and certain things are "right". "why is murder wrong?" "why is life valuable?" "why do you believe life is valuable?" "why do you trust your religion?"

from a emotivist's perspective, the moral claims we point at eachother are expressions of our context specific emotions. i live the current context of...
non of these contexts are impartial to the movement of time. go back 1.4 million years and the molecular configuration we would call "human being" did not exists. we have we have our ansestors. what did they value? was it the same; diffrent? go back 5 million years, what did those ancestors value?

systems of absolute morality



systems of morality have a danger of making moral claims that become extremely questionable with future perspective. especially if said moral system claims to be absolute and unchanging. think of the Christian bibles uncomfortable lack of a verse that says, "Slavery is always bad! Never engage in slavery!"

the more we deconstruct these evolved emotions, the more we deconstruct what it is to be a evolved ape. the human setric ego of life and care becomes a equation of our evovled desire, not of some high order good.

relativism and moral interactions



when i've explained this relativistic perspective to people, a lot of the time i'll get told is, "well then this means we can all do whatever we want! i should feel the right to say that some one who kills is a bad person!" one way of dealing with emotivism is to apply the updated golden rule, "do not do to others as they do not want done unto them." just because you are ok with something does not mean someone else is. maybe you love being pushed into a pool and swiming out. that does not mean that you should push someone in a wheel chair into a lake. if someone says something is painful, don't do that to them.



Emotivism, God, and Homosexuality - Morality Debate with Singer, Swinburne, and Frazier
Exactly How Charlie Kirk got SCHOOLED by a Cambridge Student