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The best way to explore morality is through thought experiments. Create a scenario and then apply moral rules to it to see if they produce outcomes that feel right (because there are no better alternatives). If they obviously fail that test, they're almost always wrong, but you'll be comparing them with some internalised method of judgement whose rules you don't consciously understand, so what feels right could be wrong. Correct morality depends on thinking the scenario through from the point of view of all the players involved in it in order to be fair to all, and if we consciously use that as our way of calculating morality as well as doing this subconsciously (where we generate a feel for what's right), the two things should be the same and will always match up.Thought experiments cut through the waffle, showing which rules fall flat and which remain in play. Once some rules have been rejected in this way, they shouldn't keep being brought back in - they've been debunked already and shouldn't be left on the table.
To me it is a human construct and therefore even if two people agree on some moral issue or other, how each of them see it going to be different. So I think putting a word like universal beside morality etc. is failing to understand what it is in the first place.
I'll recap my assertion into following points:1. There exists law of causality. Otherwise everything happens randomly, hence there's no point in making plans or responding to anything. In making a plan, a goal must be set, and some rules must be defined to respond to expected situations while executing it, so the goal can be achieved effectively.2. Moral rules only apply to conscious beings. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being is one of the highest priority moral rules, if not the highest. If someone can propose another moral rule with even higher priority, it is necessary to have at least one conscious being to follow it. Hence keeping the existence of conscious being gets back as the highest priority.
There is no special form of morality for humans - morality, when done correctly, is universal, applying to animals, aliens and to all sentient things. Any attempt to define morality which excludes some sentient things because they don't fit the rules of that system is wrong, as is any attempt that has a bias towards humans.
It's [homo sapiens] currently the only known form of conscious being who is self sustainable.
...nobody on these boards has ever, to my knowledge, offered a useful definition of "conscious" that excluded any other species of plant or animal.
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 13/01/2019 09:24:51It's [homo sapiens] currently the only known form of conscious being who is self sustainable. I thin you are using a very narrow definition of conscious and a very broad definition of self-sustainable. We survive by collaboration and exploitation, and nobody on these boards has ever, to my knowledge, offered a useful definition of "conscious" that excluded any other species of plant or animal.