Whatever brings you into compliance with the beliefs that you hold as a result of your experiences as filtered through your perception.
If you look at what is valuable, then it will lead to why it’s valuable.
If you think that, then look at the examples again. Are people stuck on railroad tracks, sick, or stranded in the best position to take care of themselves? Quite clearly not, because the question is about whether you would save them, or not—when it’s relatively easy for you, and they can’t.
You said that you value what’s yours more than the same thing if it’s another person’s. I asked you why. And you have not said why. You have just kept repeating what you originally said. You haven’t done this for the questions, either. Unlike me, you are pretending like you have.
Ignoring you is of utmost value. 
That someone can actually imagine the two not intimately intertwined [existentially] out in the world of actual human interaction speaks volumes [to me] regarding the disconnect between “serious philosophy” and, say, human existence. It approaches the domain of RM and James Saint’s sacrosanct definitions.
Admittedly, I do have a lot of ambivalence regarding this. I can become entangled in my own assumptions.
For example, throughout human history, arguments have gone back and forth regarding the use of capital punishment. There was a time when it was used against folks who committed crimes that most of us today would argue do not warrant such an extreme punishment. Now, as a moral nihilist, I do not believe it is possible [objectively] to make distinctions between behaviors that [necessarily] either do or do not warrant execution. But I think there are behaviors in which more reasonable arguments can be made to warrant it – behaviors like murder or rape – as opposed to other behaviors like littering or spitting on the sidewalk.
Reasonable because much less damage is done to someone if you throw a candy wrapper on their lawn as opposed to stabbing them to death. Just as aborting a human zygote can be made to seem more reasonable [to most of us] than killing a new born child.
But, true, essentially, objectively, necessarily, universally etc. any execution can be rationalized. But, again, this seems more likely to be rooted in the reasons of dasein rather than in reasons all individuals must subscribe to or be deemed irrational.
Anything can be rationalized. All it means to “rationalize” something is to give a reason for it. ANYTHING CAN BE RATIONALIZED.
That doesn’t mean that any reason is as good as any other. I.e., it doesn’t mean that any moral view is rational. Some reasons—as you’ve acknowledged—are better than others. (You acknowledged that when you said capital punishment might not apply for a kid littering a candy wrapper).
Even if you give a reason for something, it doesn’t mean it is rational. There may be better reasons against it.
But anyways, I’d like to keep the focus on the questions. If you are a moral skeptic, or a moral nihilist, that’s fine… but the purpose of the thread is to evaluate different morals. So, if you think morals don’t exist, or something, it’s probably not the best thread for you.
If you have plans to eat out one night, but by staying home you could create a worldwide egalitarian dream, do you order the steak or the lobster?
Do I have a moral duty to clean up after people who get themselves stuck in railroad tracks? Or so I have a moral duty to the society to allow this dude to cut himself from the gene pool? It seems like you’re telling me that I should intervene in the affairs of others and that I should assert myself over them and try and make them comply with my view of what’s moral. I don’t do that kinda stuff von. I don’t tell people what morals or ethics to have.
Clean up after them? It wasn’t part of the question that they’re there because it’s their own fault.
Why not?
What interest me though is rationalization as a psychological defense mechanism. The reasons that we give here are more subjunctive — entangled in emotion, libido, id, instinct, will etc… And both consciously and subconsciously. In other words, to what extent can the rational mind [with its logic] become disentangled from all that in order construct an epistemologically sound distinction between what is true objectively and what is more reflective of a subjective point of view. It seems to have little difficulty with regards to, say, the laws of nature. But with regards to what interest me – identity and value judgments – considerably more.
But are they “better” necessarily? Or because an overwhelming preponderance of folks [the consensus] would claim this distinction is patently “obvious” or just plain “common sense”. I don’t see how the ethicist can demonstrate it to be true objectively. Here [among other things] I broach the folks for whom “ought” resolves soley around ego…or around the will of God. And then we go around and around in circles again. That’s why I go looking for other possible arguments. Or, sure, maybe someday I will come to accept yours.
Who would be so foolish as to argue that morals don’t exist? My contention is that however different the morals might be the “evaluation” can only employ the tools of philosophy up to a point. The rest is rooted subjectively/subjunctively in dasein…or, perhaps, in the evolution of mind itself.
The stock on ignoring me has gone up six points in the last few days.
What’s happened to you recently, Stuart?
You seem to be so much more bitter and aggressive than even a few months ago.
That’s fine, but it’s not what this thread is about. For something like that, you can go to the psychology forum, or a thread on psychology.
You.
That’s what you do every time you walk into a thread and say, basically, “there are no better or worse answers”. The only way there would be no better or worse answers, was if there was no truths about morality to be had. If you are not explicitly saying that, it is what you are implying. And you are demanding that someone show you that there is truth in morality. But that’s not the point of the thread. The thread assumes that there are right and wrong answers in morality.
I’m no longer a nihilist, that may explain a lot. My bitterness comes from the knowledge that by stepping out of my nihilistic death spiral, survival for one such as me is still very doubtful. I’ve known the ‘cruel world’, as one in a box knows how cruel it is to be in world where one can live in a box (better to die). But, it seems that soon I’ll have to face the ‘cruel world’, without even the base comforts of a box; where aggression is a necessity. Yes, I embrace it; by nature I must, but I don’t embrace it with humor in my heart. Perhaps that’s because it wouldn’t be a shared joke, being I’ve found nearly no one who isn’t rushing towards enclosures.
Again, this is the sort of thinking that entirely misses the point regarding just how entangled these things become “out in the world” of actual substantive human interaction. In particular, when distinctions are raised regarding contexts in which we are asked to speculate regarding what we might choose to do and how that can come into conflict with what others choose to do instead. In other words, the reasoning involved when the conjectures pertain more to what we “ought” to do…
As I noted above I am curious to hear other arguments defending “objective” or “essential” or “universal” or “metataphysical” value judgments.
“Better” and “worse” here revolve [in my view] around historical and cultural narratives, around individual experience and dasein, around contingency chance and change. And, most importantly, around the argument I make regarding the limitations of logic in extracting alleged objective truths from within the full gamut of human subjunctive reactions with respect to particular contexts—hypothetical or otherwise.
Oh, sorry. Like coming across a thread in which it is assumed that God created the earth a few thousand years ago is no place to suggest this might not be true at all.
But where in the OP is this assumption about morality made?
Great. I recommend Alistair MacIntyre’s After Virtue, anything by John Stuart Mill, or some of G.K. Chesterton’s essays just to mix it up.
What are you now?
Are you like a hermit crab who has abandoned his shell and is looking for a new one?
It’s to be assumed in any Mo thread.
Alas, another embarrassing exchange comes crashing down. 