There are objective facts about how to live, call them what you will. Or, maybe you’ll say there aren’t. If there are, then it’s not objectively wrong to be a mass murderer. Do you really want to go there into full blown relativism and subjectivism?
Seriously: Morality is in the brain. Murder is “wrong” because I, and people sufficiently similar to me, don’t like it. There’s nothing more objective about it than any of my other opinions and desires. If you can’t even agree on this, then coming here and arguing is hopeless—you might as well be a Christian and try to tell us to believe in God.
Well stated. And I would further add that there are issues with significant minority interests that staunchly disagree with majority opinion. Take the debates on homosexual marriage or abortion. The various sides have such different viewpoints that there isn’t a common ground where any agreeably objective position can be reached. The “we all agree mass murder is wrong” is a cop out, because it implies all moral questions are that black and white. And even then, if it’s such a universal moral, why does it happen in the first place? In the brain based morality model, I can say Dennis Rader’s just a substantially different brain. With universal morality, you’re stuck with the problem of people knowing something is wrong, but doing it anyway.
You seem to be assuming that “morality” is a fact about the universe. Most people here think it’s a fact about human minds.
(ie we aren’t moral realists, at least not in the sense that a religious person is).
Yes, morality is objective.
I don’t want to argue terminology.
There are objective facts about how to live, call them what you will. Or, maybe you’ll say there aren’t. If there are, then it’s not objectively wrong to be a mass murderer. Do you really want to go there into full blown relativism and subjectivism?
Well, that’s just like, your opinion, man.
Seriously: Morality is in the brain. Murder is “wrong” because I, and people sufficiently similar to me, don’t like it. There’s nothing more objective about it than any of my other opinions and desires. If you can’t even agree on this, then coming here and arguing is hopeless—you might as well be a Christian and try to tell us to believe in God.
Well stated. And I would further add that there are issues with significant minority interests that staunchly disagree with majority opinion. Take the debates on homosexual marriage or abortion. The various sides have such different viewpoints that there isn’t a common ground where any agreeably objective position can be reached. The “we all agree mass murder is wrong” is a cop out, because it implies all moral questions are that black and white. And even then, if it’s such a universal moral, why does it happen in the first place? In the brain based morality model, I can say Dennis Rader’s just a substantially different brain. With universal morality, you’re stuck with the problem of people knowing something is wrong, but doing it anyway.