'How can you tell if this full stop "wrongness" is occurring?' Well, I get why you would ask this, but that's an extremely strange question; I sense false assumptions in there somewhere.
Yes, "wrong, full stop", otherwise known as wrong. That's what the word 'wrong' means in English. I had to create terms because you are (what seems to me) pretending you 'have no need of' any judgement-words whatsoever.
You, I presume, and I don't kill people in the normal course of a day, e.g. because they have something we want. I think that would be wrong. So does almost everyone, the religious & spiritual traditions etc. It's based on natural feeling, and also on what makes for human flourishing.
"Because not everyone agrees on what is right and wrong, there can be no such thing", you seem to be saying. If not everyone agrees on who is most beautiful, that means there's no such thing as beauty?
The way you talk of 'values' came in, I believe, with Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean relativism. There's something profoundly macabre about talking the way you do, in spite or because of its all-levelling blandness. I'm very curious about your influences in learning to speak and think like that - who are they? (You have to be very smart indeed to not understand good and bad, right and wrong.)
Say there's a guy who does go around killing people on the slightest pretext. You don't think there's anything wrong with that, he just has different values, (yours are no better) and that's normal?
I think that way of talking as if everything, from whether murder is ok to what music I like to listen to, is on an equivalent plane of 'values', erases essential and major distinctions, to say the least.
So..for example, I can't imagine you would be interested in thinking about or discussing what broad direction your society/town/institution should be heading, because no direction would be better or worse than another? Or if you have a preference, well, so does everyone else.
You have sympathy for those terrible singers (whoops, there's no bad singers?) on American Idol when they say, in answer to the judges' "You're terrible!", "That's just your opinion"? But there are better opinions and worse. Better and worse reasons for judgments and interpretations, etc.
Well, I still feel the way you're talking is ultimately incoherent, and that underneath it you hold the common sense view, even if I've not managed to break through yet. At least you won't let yourself say that you understand this, or anything at all, better than me. :-) But it seems you do think you have a better understanding of what we're talking about than I do. It seems you think I, and almost everyone, are wrong to believe in objective morality. But you can't say that, so...most people just have different values to yours?
I notice you again say 'in any cosmic sense'; before it was 'all sentients in the universe'. The way everday language is used offends some sense of due human modesty in you, or something? Maybe it's from thinking that everyday language presupposes a God's eye 'view from nowhere'. Well, I get that, I realize there's no right or wrong out there except inside creatures' brains.
If a stranger were to come up and punch you in the face, you wouldn't think it was, uh, wrong? How about if someone killed your girlfriend for the fun of it? Replying "That's fine, you just have different values" wouldn't sound more enlightened, it would insanely brainwashed.
>I don't believe those with values different from mine are "wrong, full stop" or "evil, full stop."< You thought I was saying that? Well, with that word 'values' putting everything in one basket, from ice-cream to murder, I can see how would be possible to reach conclusions such as yours, and talk that way. It does seem there's a faulty argument or two somewhere though.
There's so much strawman nonsense in this comment I don't even know where to begin.
I don't go around murdering people because doing so would harm the society I live in and care about, i.e. harm things I value. I support stopping people from murdering for the same reason. I don't have to believe in some kind of naive "wrongness" to take a position on something.
Your position is that a simple and intuitive sense of "wrong" is easily derived. So let me know if abortion is "right" or "wrong." Should be easy to do, right?
People will come down on drastically different sides of that issue, and neither will be correct in an objective sense. It will depend on their values and moral matrices.
To be honest, I don't have a lot of hope I'll get anywhere with you. This comment makes you seem like a retard.
"Be civil. Don't say things you wouldn't say face-to-face. Don't be snarky. Comments should get more civil and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive.
When disagreeing, please reply to the argument instead of calling names. "That is idiotic; 1 + 1 is 2, not 3" can be shortened to "1 + 1 is 2, not 3."
Please respond to the strongest plausible interpretation of what someone says, not a weaker one that's easier to criticize. Assume good faith."
Yes, "wrong, full stop", otherwise known as wrong. That's what the word 'wrong' means in English. I had to create terms because you are (what seems to me) pretending you 'have no need of' any judgement-words whatsoever.
You, I presume, and I don't kill people in the normal course of a day, e.g. because they have something we want. I think that would be wrong. So does almost everyone, the religious & spiritual traditions etc. It's based on natural feeling, and also on what makes for human flourishing.
"Because not everyone agrees on what is right and wrong, there can be no such thing", you seem to be saying. If not everyone agrees on who is most beautiful, that means there's no such thing as beauty?
The way you talk of 'values' came in, I believe, with Nietzsche and post-Nietzschean relativism. There's something profoundly macabre about talking the way you do, in spite or because of its all-levelling blandness. I'm very curious about your influences in learning to speak and think like that - who are they? (You have to be very smart indeed to not understand good and bad, right and wrong.)
Say there's a guy who does go around killing people on the slightest pretext. You don't think there's anything wrong with that, he just has different values, (yours are no better) and that's normal?
I think that way of talking as if everything, from whether murder is ok to what music I like to listen to, is on an equivalent plane of 'values', erases essential and major distinctions, to say the least.
So..for example, I can't imagine you would be interested in thinking about or discussing what broad direction your society/town/institution should be heading, because no direction would be better or worse than another? Or if you have a preference, well, so does everyone else.
You have sympathy for those terrible singers (whoops, there's no bad singers?) on American Idol when they say, in answer to the judges' "You're terrible!", "That's just your opinion"? But there are better opinions and worse. Better and worse reasons for judgments and interpretations, etc.
Well, I still feel the way you're talking is ultimately incoherent, and that underneath it you hold the common sense view, even if I've not managed to break through yet. At least you won't let yourself say that you understand this, or anything at all, better than me. :-) But it seems you do think you have a better understanding of what we're talking about than I do. It seems you think I, and almost everyone, are wrong to believe in objective morality. But you can't say that, so...most people just have different values to yours?
I notice you again say 'in any cosmic sense'; before it was 'all sentients in the universe'. The way everday language is used offends some sense of due human modesty in you, or something? Maybe it's from thinking that everyday language presupposes a God's eye 'view from nowhere'. Well, I get that, I realize there's no right or wrong out there except inside creatures' brains.
If a stranger were to come up and punch you in the face, you wouldn't think it was, uh, wrong? How about if someone killed your girlfriend for the fun of it? Replying "That's fine, you just have different values" wouldn't sound more enlightened, it would insanely brainwashed.
>I don't believe those with values different from mine are "wrong, full stop" or "evil, full stop."< You thought I was saying that? Well, with that word 'values' putting everything in one basket, from ice-cream to murder, I can see how would be possible to reach conclusions such as yours, and talk that way. It does seem there's a faulty argument or two somewhere though.