Philosophy meme
Philosophy meme
Not sure why this got removed from 196lemmy..blahaj.zone but it would be real nice if moderation on Lemmy gave you some sort of notification of what you did wrong. Like an automatic DM or something
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272 comments
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Can't something be objectively immoral whilst simultaneously being something that some people like to do? Does the objective morality of any given action need to be linked to a specific groups preference?
Slavers liked to keep slaves but it didn't make them right to do it. Im sure the slaves didn't enjoy it. Objectively, it's morally wrong to gain from somebody elses loss. The fact that people are happy to do it doesn't affect moral objectivity.
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Objectively it's morally wrong to gain from someone's loss. So... winning anything? Schadenfreude? A profitable short position? Picking a penny up from the ground?
Anyway, the specifics aside... how do you arrive at the conclusion that it is objectively wrong to gain from someone else's loss?
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Winning anything? Is that always at someone elses detriment? Are you saying that because there are winners, there must always be losers? Because i would argue that winning something doesn't cost the ones that didn't win anything. We all started at the same point. As losers (or not winners), they have the same that they did before. Only the winner sits at a different state.
If my gain causes suffering of others, then even though i would be happy about my gain, it would still be wrong to cause that suffering to others.
Even animals have an understanding of morality. It is not limited to humans. Its just more pronounced and debated.
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Animals understanding of "morality" is extremely different to what we as humans understand as moral, and I'd argue that you can't actually ask them what they think is right or wrong, so you can't really know if their behaviour is based on morality or... well, anything else.
Regardless, semantics aside my primary question was how you arrive at the position that "gaining from someone else's loss is wrong" is an objective position to take... because I think that is just something you think is wrong.
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You're correct on your judgment but your opinion stems from a different social stance on the underlying issue.
(that sounded really pedantic and it was not my intention)
Morality is a human creation. By default, nothing is wrong or right, until a human mind, be it an individual or colective one, analyse it and evaluate it.
This does not mean you can not view something as being immoral while others do or understand it as not a moral concern. This difference of understandingb is what moves any subject into the moral/immoral spectrum.
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Im not sure about that. Many animals show a sense of morality. The difficulty, i think, comes from the need to ascribe morals to everything we do and to find nuance that confuses the fundamental tenants of morality. At a basic level there are some things that many animals other than humans inherently know are good or bad.
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Like what?
The capability, in other animals, to determine something as positive, negative or neutral only serves to demonstrate that we, humans, are only another organism built with previously tried and proved strategies, with a few added innovative add-ons.
Morality is a human creation and concern, built upon biological strategies previously developed and implemented in many life forms.
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There's a good amount of information on this article. Near the top, they list and cite instances where moral behaviour had been observed in animals. Where no apparent gain or loss occurs for the one behaving morally.
I understand your point of view, but you present as fact something that is currently highly debated theory. I try to posit only my views and opinions and try to avoid conflating them with facts.
I guess it's better to attempt to philosophise when dealing with our views on morality.
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"moral" and "morality" in that article is clearly a human construction, into which ties the notion of ethics, which is again a human construct
What is clearly pointed are several instances where selfless behavior was observed in diferent life forms, from birds to mammals, including primates.
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I think your confusing objective with universal. They aren't the same thing. You can have an objective truth that isn't universal. Let's use Euclidean and non-Euclidian geometry as an example, both have very objective truths, but they aren't the same or interchangeable.
The problem with saying slavery is universally immoral is that you label most everyone that existed prior to the modern era as immoral, because slavery was foundational across the globe in multiple cultures. Morality isn't useful if you can actually compare or contrast because even involved was immoral.
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272 comments