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judge the past by today's standards (quokk.au)
submitted 9 months ago by to c/philosophymemes
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[–] 1 point 9 months ago (5 children)

Your second paragraph seems to contradict your first paragraph? In my view, morality always comes back to what makes us humans (from an evolutionary viewpoint); and enslaving or killing people is, for the archetypical human, not acceptable. We continue to do this though, and that’s why discussions about morals keep on haunting us.

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  • [–] 5 points 9 months ago (3 children)

    "for the archetypical human"

    So moralist IS just popular opinion then?

    Deciding that the world should be some specific way, and that it remains true regardless of human thought, is kind of silly. The universe doesn't give a shit about morality or justice or any of it. It's all subject from a human perspective. Morality is always subjective.

    Some people have morals very different from yours but you would not call them bad. Others are very similar to you, but are undeniably evil.

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago (2 children)

    I see this from the viewpoint of an evolutionary biologist. Our egoism and altruism are coded in our DNA and in constant conflict. Moral rules are created to try to resolve this. So you’re right, on a universal level there is no right or wrong; but for primates there obviously is: right makes us feel good, wrong makes us feel bad.

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  • [–] 3 points 9 months ago (1 child)

    So is it morally right for a murderer to do what he does because it makes him feel good?

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  • [–] 0 points 9 months ago*

    Obviously not. The murderer may get a kick out of killing people ( although many murderers will deep down inside NOT feel good about it, they live in conflict with themselves). The societies witnessing the murder will be shocked (and this applies to any society, at any time, from the early hominids to nazi Germany) because deep down inside our “altruistic genetic make up” tells us murder is despicable. (Society will punish the murderer; either with a prison sentence or a death sentence. A death sentence is however also murder, and then a moral discourse starts: society will struggle to find the balance between our (genetically programmed) levels of altruism/ egoism).

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  • [–] 1 point 9 months ago

    Yeah so that's the thing, you assumed the morality I was referring to is objective. It's ALL subjective. There's no objective base outside of human desires and considerations to refer to, and climate disaster being comparable to slavery is a called shot on my part. Today's normal is tomorrow's evil and yesterday's mundane is today's exceptional because morality changes over time. Humans made it and they made it to concern the things they care about. That doesn't make them bad, but it makes them purely subjective.

    For that matter, "archetypical" anything as a concept outside of clinical psychology that hasn't seen the light of day since Plato's world of forms. Archetypes are invented by our brains. They have no sway or influence on reality past their social impacts, and what makes a thing archetypical is ALSO purely subjective.

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