If some barbarian space-faring race blew up 10,000 healthy villages is that moral or immoral, is it that good or is that evil?
An emotional appeal to reason.
We slaughter billions of lives, daily, to maintain our human populations on this planet.
All value-judgements are in reference to an objective.
Only life has objectives - intent.
What does life value the most?
Its own survival and propagation - propagation being an extension of survival.
What is good is what benefits survival. The determining objective is survival.
But men can place something above survival. That’s another topic.
Now let us proceed to morals. Good/Bad.
Some species, including our own, has adopted a cooperative reproductive and survival strategy.
Survival is still the objective, only now it is dependent on a group.
But a group requires the sublimation or repression of individualism…in order to facilitate an effective cooperative unity.
So what are morals?
A set of naturally selected behaviors that facilitate harmonious cooperation.
Good is what maintains group stability and harmony; what is evil is what disturbs it.
Man, then, encodes these behaviors as Divine Rules…or a Golden Rule.
as moral systems…and then makes amendments to facilitate the emergence of more complex social systems, requiring even more individual self-repression.
Which group’s health takes priority? Can’t say because its subjective?
No, it is objective…the environment determines what traits are advantageous and which ones are disadvantageous.
Subjectivity is how a living organism tries to understand what is objectively true.
Not all subjective perspectives are equal.
What if a group is optimized to have very low health, like some pests that bathe in filth and live short?
Yes…and we can also imagine a group that practices pedophilia, and considers it healthy and moral…
What determines if this is so?
Nature…environment.
Our morals evolved to reflect what nature has determined to be advantageous.
A group practicing transsexualism or or homosexuality or pedophilia would not survive for long, would it?
What about something more obvious, what if some galactic space vermin goes around hoarding all the resources, causing poverty and decay on every planet they visit, while everyone around them rots. Are they good or evil?
Again…what is the objective of determining a value-judgment.
From their perspective, what they do is good, but not from yours.
Who is right?
Both…and neither.
The environment will determine whose stately is more advantageous.
if the environment is open ended, then the outcome will be different form an closed environment.
In a contain ed environment creating animosities may backfire.
so, good/bad has to do with effectiveness and efficiency, relative to an objective.
The objective’s quality is determined by the environment.
If my objective is equality, then the goodness of my intentions will not determine their success, because my objective might be naive and idealistic…and not aligned, in harmony, with natural order.
When most people die their soul leaves their body and moves upwards into space.
Ha!
An Abrahamic…
Gods…as the ancients defined them, were anthropomorphic representations of natural forces.
All value judgements, like good/bad, are relative to an objective.
Different objectives create conflicts in defining these concepts.
But not all objectives are created equal.
What determines the attainability of an objective?
Nature, or the cosmos…reality…call it what you will.
Existence.
Subjectivity is not equally valid…it is so in relation to an objective reality.
Existence is independent form all subjective interpretations, appreciation, of it.
we gradually awaken to our existence, and then try to make sense of it.
And that’s what philosophy is.
Making sense of it…objectively.