Cute little example of amoralism. Oh sorry Lilburne !! You don’t want me to call you an amoralist (despite the fact that you are one) because…what ? You think it’s ‘unfair’ or something ?
No, it is because I am not one.
“Moral nihilism must be distinguished from ethical subjectivism and moral relativism, which do allow for moral statements to be true or false in a non-objective sense, but do not assign any static truth-values to moral statements.”
You must have a distinctly brutish and simple-minded us-them mentality to characterize as an “amoralist” someone who hates the state for being evil from the bottom of his heart.
But slander away, Juan. I don’t really mind, since hardly anybody here seems to take you seriously.
That is an interesting scenario. I would agree that it doesn’t make sense for someone unable to feel disgust ought to feel disgusted by something. Their eudaimonia would then have different requiremets (or, tragically, they may not even be able to truly flourish). However, I think that this is mostly beside the point.
I agree on the agent-relativity of value. However, I don’t think that empathy is the guide to morality; reason is, specifically practical reason.
Why ?
Moral statements are true or false in a non-objective and irrelevant sense, correct.
Not sure what ‘static’ is supposed to mean, but in practical terms moral subjectivism is no different from amoralism.
If you accept the agent-relativity of value, then how can you not accept the notion of something being ethical and not ethical at the same time, which is made possible simply by the possibility of there being two different evaluating agents?
By the way, I’m not slandering you. I’m simply drawing the logical conclusion of your position. And even if I was slandering you, that’s just your subjective and wholly irrelevant judgment.
Remember the gospel : justice is ‘agent-relative’.
What is an ethical and what is not ethical depends on the specific circumstances of an individual’s natural end. However, given that we are all human beings, and it is possible to talk about a general human nature, there are some things that are and aren’t ethical for everyone. For example,aggression undermines individual autonomy, which is a precondition for everyone’s flourishing, and thus aggression is wrong for everyone (this is only part of the reason why the NAP holds as a universal human ethic, but I digress).
It wouldn’t be irrelevant if my entreaty engendered enough fellow-feeling in you to want to do right by me. That’s the way inter-subjective moral relations work. Unfortunately, you are a 37-year old child, so any such feelings are overwhelmed by your untrammeled spiteful inclinations.
I suggest you drop the rhetoric and try some clear thinking instead. Justice is agent relative…and meaningless. I see no reason for your whining.
Italics are my writing except within the quoted passage and footnote below from Rommen’s book. Yes this is long, so, obviously skip it if you don’t want to read it.
yes this is arbitrariness and I’m not slandering you Lilburne but when it comes to law, arbitrary law is known as legal positivism (which is grounded in natural law but dismisses it’s own grounding but no type of institutional law can rid it’s own foundation, even positivism has to reach into natural law from time to time to decipher courses of actions; good book on the history, the contributions from various people, and ideas of this, I’m suggesting to anybody, is "The Natural Law".)
An excerpt from the book (Rommen’s emphasis; he was also critical of others as will be noted below which thereby signals to me that various philosophers contribute a natural law or positivist inclination but where this will finalize is not settled it would seem, in other words, I have more to learn):
"Both ways of thinking result in the rejection of the theory of natural law. Yet there exists between them a significant difference. The skeptics, agnostics, and utilitarians sought definitely and completely to undermine and destroy the very idea of natural law. The historical school of law, on the other hand, launched its attack rather against the antihistorical, abstract thinking of the age of rationalism. It leveled its guns against that passion for constructing systems out of the whole cloth of abstract reasoning which was so typical of the natural-law theorizing of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries and was at the same time so destructive, as appears in the excesses of the French Revolution, which appealed to the idea of natural law in justification even of its most wanton injustices. This school of law was antirevolutionary and antirationalist, but it was not, like the agnostic school of thought, antimetaphysical.
It has been pointed out that the forces which would destroy the hold exercised over men’s minds by the idea of natural law were already germinally contained in John Locke’s empiricism. Locke began with a certain distrust in the power of human reason that was only slightly neutralized by his philosophically rather inconsequential confidence in practical common sense. The point has also been made that Cartesian rationalism, with its conception of the human intellect as practically angelic, contained within itself a fall of the angels by leading to relativist sensualism. In the philosophy of David Hume (1711–76) these forces became mature. “Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them." Reason fails us, but only in order that nature herself (reason and nature are now opposed; no longer is reason the dominating element of human nature) may step into the breach. What, then, is this “nature”? It is the passions, the propensities, and an assorted bundle of perceptions.
Hume’s dissolving criticism leaves no method for determining what is intrinsically good or bad in these passions and in the acts that proceed from them. Whatever may be the moral principles that guide our actions, they are not founded on objective truth and on reason. Indeed, they are not principles at all. They are only names, symbols for emotions, i.e., for feelings of pleasure and pain. What the earlier philosophers called natural law is but a common name conventionally agreed upon for moral sentiments of approval or disapproval. Thus the morality of an action is determined not by its conformity with reason but simply by the sentiment of approval: “Morality is determined by sentiment.” As a consequence, Hume defines “virtue to bewhatever mental action or quality gives to a spectator the pleasing sentiment of approbation; and vice the contrary.” The reason for such sentiments is not the intellectually apprehended conformity of the action with objective principles. Such a conformity supposes powers of intellectual cognition which Hume, in his epistemology, denies to the human mind. The single remaining explanation and ground of these sentiments is the usefulness of the action to serve human needs, as repeated experience shows. The sentiment of approval is a sign that the respective action is useful, either directly to self-interest, or indirectly, inasmuch as the action is useful for the preservation of society in its function as framework for the realization of self-interest, which ultimately is the sole thing that matters. Out of repeated individual experiences which evidence the utility of an action, arises the presumption of standards of behavior and the fixing of habits.
The moral law is far from being intrinsic and objective; even the utility of our actions is not an objective quality. It is consequently but a sum of societary conventions that are adapted to serve human needs and urges according to our experiences, which, however, may be superseded by different experiences at some future time. Thus the moral law has no basis in the intelligible rational and social nature of man… Hume rejects the fundamental conception of St. Thomas that being, truth, and goodness are intrinsically linked together (ens et verum et bonum convertuntur). For Hume, being does not appear to the human intellect as the true because man’s mind has no access to the thing-in-itself, to the essences or ideas of things. Similarly, being, which confronts theoretical reason as the true, cannot appear before practical reason and the will as the good to be realized, as the objective norm of human action. Conventions cannot, of course, claim intrinsic validity. Utility or usefulness, in addition to its inherently subjective slant, is a quality which changes with socio-political circumstances and with accidental and more or less arbitrary estimates of human needs."
I also thought this footnote in the book was interesting. It is a positive reference for Hume, but as noted the author of the book had some draw backs:
“George H. Sabine, op. cit., pp. 598–605, gives an enthusiastic exposition of Hume’s alleged destruction of the natural law. He candidly admits, however, that Hume’s destructive criticism of natural law stands or falls with his psychology and analysis of causation. But Hume’s psychology and analysis of causation flatly constitute an affront to, and a mutilation of, the human intellect. Cf., e.g., Celestine N. Bittle, O.F.M. Cap., The Whole Man, pp. 316–21, 540 f.”
And in this book any denotation of being “an affront to human intellect” or anti-rational, etc… inclines Rommen to place such a philosopher in the positivism camp due to the positivists emphasis on what Rommen notes as “will” whereas natural law Rommen notes is the unison of will and intellect. So even as Rommen points out the Natural Law camp had no need for an “is-ought” or as Rommen also called it “being-ought” arbitrary delineation possibly making it a historical strawman(?) that Rommen writing this in 1936 had recognition of. And as this passage notes, it wasn’t only Hume, but more like Hume was unintentionally set-up (in a sense literally as the intellect was being abandoned) to take the fall due to previous characters in this on-going philosophical play.
Amen. 3.5e all the way (and I do not say this merely because you’re my DM and hate 4e.)
4E is basically World of Warcraft + a ploy to make us buy expensive books all over again. 
Let’s not be too hasty to insult WoW that way. It’d be dysdaemonic.
Absence of level drain makes 4e awesome by default.
I never really saw level drain used a lot in 3.e, though.
It’s in print; it’s libel. [:D]
But wait, how can you universalize an admittedly subjective preference? What you’re saying makes as much sense as saying that because lettuce is good for you it is moral that everybody should eat it.
Because it isn’t subjective in all senses of the word. Flourishing is an objective natural end, but it’s specifics differ from person to person. There are, however, preconditions to flourishing that are universal to human beings.
I don’t know what you are studying at Uni, but I hope it is marketing.
Wombatron, you’re more knowledgable about this than I am, so correct me if I’m wront. But as I understand it the argument goes something like this, I have a final end which I demonstrate through action, choice or whatever else, this final end being my “human flourishing”. In order for me to acheive this end it is necessary that all actions of mine are uncoerced, therefore a free society is necessary for the flourishing of its members. However, I still don’t see why there is anything objectively (agent neutral) good about “flourishing”. Perhaps I want my flourishing as can be seen by the fact that I choose, but, this is just a subjective preference of mine, and as such can’t be universalized. In his exposition of the advantages of natural law, Veatch says that Kantians can’t really answer the question of “why” I ought not to act in a certain way, besides the trivial “because you just shouldn’t”. But I think the same can apply here, I mean, my liberty may be necessary for my own flourishing, but I don’t see why it should be the case that somebody elses liberty should be necessary for my own flourishing.