Your point is something that is irrelevant? I don't think you mean that. Talk of mutually agreed arbiters (sounds like a person) and giant rulers in the sky is what's beside the point. Their lack of existence is what's beside the point, because they are not required for us to be able to say that something is wrong. All we need is an understanding of language, reasoning ability, and human feelings.
1) someone betrays us out of meanness, we have a human feeling about it
2) We understand what the word "wrong" means, because we understand how words get meanings and know that the definitions can't be made up by someone with no regard to that
3) We see that given the meaning of wrong and how we felt earlier, that person was wrong and we would be too if we did it
Fill in all of the other things that all of the non-sociopathic people with intact reasoning skills and an understanding of language agree on...eg killing our children for fun.
btw, as a pre-posting this note, my sincere belief is that you are simply using language incorrectly, nothing about sociopathy or reasoning skills. You can see how our disagreement stems from you defining morality differently. Yours seems to be "things taught by a childs parents" while mine generally follows the above framework. I think even rules that are told to children they learn through that experience. Don't you? Don't you think you have the ability to break away from a cultural rule that offends your senses and reason?
The point was simply that some moral conclusions are based on facts about the world that even you would agree can be wrong...and that people will often stop believing their conclusion in that case. You were painting with too broad a brush.1 is wrong if you can provide him with evidence to counter his reasoning that jews were "the problem", but it would not obviate his underlying anti-semitism. You would not counter his anti-semitism, I think that animosity runs deaper than macro-economic explanations.
But some of them are wrong. You are claiming that people (including you) can't be wrong about these things. But all you offer as an argument is repetition of the claim that they disagree, in gussied up language. You equivocate a lot, for example:My point is that while we may have the moral fact that the holocaust was "wrong", others didn't -and don't. Why? Simply because they have a different moral scale or valuation -that could be to do with acceptance of the methods of genocide for use against a perceived enemy, or anti-semitism. This is what makes it impossible to assume that morality is uniform accross cultures. While you've picked an extreme example, I'm sure cultures could and have existed where murdering children for fun is acceptable.
I'm also not saying that everything is ok to me as long as its cultural! Rather, while I or you might disagree with something, it could well be ok to someone else because their culture tolerates or values it. Furthermore, because that agreement/disagreement is based on culturaly determined values, it is not a matter where there is an absolute measure of truth to either position -so neither party is legitimised in simply saying that the other is "wrong".
"I'm sure cultures have existed where murdering children for fun is acceptable"
Disregarding the fact that this is a bizarre claim to start with...it would never have been acceptable. Accepted is the word you are looking for--it just states a fact about how people treated it. The word you used says that not only did they treat it that way, they were not wrong to do so.
You say that moral facts are things that someone can "have", but would be more appropriate for beliefs. Facts are something you know. Two people can have contradictory beliefs but they can't know contradictory facts.
You talk about "different moral scales" which implies equal validity (like celsius vs fahrenheit or something) when in fact all we have again is disagreement.
You say we can't assume that "morality is uniform across cultures" but here you are using morality in the descriptive sense--all you are saying once again is that people disagree. This says nothing about morality in the prescriptive sense.
You say it could be "ok to someone else...because their culture values it" which implies that it is alright for them to believe it, but all you say is that they do in fact believe it.
Oh and one whopper of a falsehood at the end where you claim the disagreement is based on cultural values. How on earth do you think our conception of morality has changed so drastically over time? It's because we base it on our feelings and reasoning.
Basically at this point I'm just going to say, believe whatever it is you want to believe but talk about it plain language. Say "culture A believes one thing and culture B believes another" ok? And then if you want to argue that neither can be right, do so, don't fiddle with the English language to avoid it. Morality is something about which there are no facts, this is a claim you are making. Widespread disagreement is not evidence that there are no facts. You have to explain why words don't mean what the fluent speakers of the language say they mean--how they have a secret philosophical true meaning. I hope at least that even though you still disagree you can get that you aren't really arguing, just stating basics with a heavy dose of implication.
At least then our posts will be shorter
Speak for yourselfIn the case of the holocaust, don't you think the victor has set the moral argument, and that had the victor been different, our views on the holocaust and Adolf might be rather different than despisal?
They would have to have a hardcore indoctrination program to achieve a significant amount of people around the world believing what they did wasn't wrong. You have a scary view of the power of culture over the human mind. Are my views about the hiroshima bombings set by the fact that the US was on the winning side? How about the bombings of dresden? Japanese internment camps? How does the world feel about that today?
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