Posted: Wed Apr 18, 2012 1:39 pm
Kaelik - either I was phrasing that poorly/confusingly (which is possible), or you are dead wrong.
http://www.economist.com/node/8881470?story_id=8881470
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/healt ... brain.html
Seriously, the empirical evidence for a common, biological origin for basic human moral faculties - the notion of "fairness" chief on the list, but also the moral preference to inflict *passive* harm in favor of inflicting *active* harm - is so strong as to be overwhelming. At this point, disbelieving in a common biological component to morality is like disbelieving in evolution or a spherical earth.
Also, "dont hurt cute and helpless things". You really believe that this is something that humans have to be taught? There are contrary impulses in other mammals, and those impulses may exist in humans as well; the resolution of those contradictory impulses is probably learned/acquired/cultural. But saying that humans don't have an intrinsic sense of fairness is like saying that humans don't have an intrinsic sense of hunger; it's just wrong.
http://www.economist.com/node/8881470?story_id=8881470
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/healt ... brain.html
Seriously, the empirical evidence for a common, biological origin for basic human moral faculties - the notion of "fairness" chief on the list, but also the moral preference to inflict *passive* harm in favor of inflicting *active* harm - is so strong as to be overwhelming. At this point, disbelieving in a common biological component to morality is like disbelieving in evolution or a spherical earth.
Also, "dont hurt cute and helpless things". You really believe that this is something that humans have to be taught? There are contrary impulses in other mammals, and those impulses may exist in humans as well; the resolution of those contradictory impulses is probably learned/acquired/cultural. But saying that humans don't have an intrinsic sense of fairness is like saying that humans don't have an intrinsic sense of hunger; it's just wrong.