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Desired by whom? If you don't class genocide or rape as a moral action, you have led yourself into a circular argument: a moral action must be desired by a moral person, that is a person whose actions are moral...….
The Nazis had a huge parliamentary majority. "Death to the infidel" is believed by millions, some of whom consider rape to be their prerogative. "Stone the Catholics" is a moral imperative for many Protestants. You can't claim that any of these offensive groups are in conflict with the Universal Moral Standard until you have defined the UMS, so we are still in a circular argument!
I consider this topic as a spinoff of my previous subjecthttps://www.thenakedscientists.com/forum/index.php?topic=71347.0It is split up because morality itself is quite complex and can generate a discussion too long to be covered there.
Still circular! You have now defined a moral rule as one that is not immoral!Samuel Johnson's definition of a net as "a reticulated assemblage of holes separated by string" was absurd but at least it was linear.
human sacrifice to appeas gods, caste system, kamikaze,
Quote from: hamdani yusuf on 21/05/2020 08:53:23human sacrifice to appeas gods, caste system, kamikaze,None of these assumptions has been falsified. The sun still rises over Essex even though virgin sacrifices are no longer possible, but that may be because the gods were sufficiently appeased by the few that our ancestors were able to find. The caste system persists, despite being outlawed. Kamikaze did exactly what it was intended to do - sink American ships with a kill ratio of hundreds to one, which is why it is still practised by idiots.
The main idea [of the ideal observer theory] is that ethical terms should be defined after the pattern of the following example: "x is better than y" means "If anyone were, in respect of x and y, fully informed and vividly imaginative, impartial, in a calm frame of mind and otherwise normal, he would prefer x to y.[1]This makes ideal observer theory a subjectivist[2] yet universalist form of cognitivism. Ideal observer theory stands in opposition to other forms of ethical subjectivism (e.g.moral relativism, and individualist ethical subjectivism), as well as to moral realism (which claims that moral propositions refer to objective facts, independent of anyone's attitudes or opinions), error theory (which denies that any moral propositions are true in any sense), and non-cognitivism (which denies that moral sentences express propositions at all).Adam Smith and David Hume espoused versions of the ideal observer theory. Roderick Firth laid out a more sophisticated modern version.[3] According to Firth, an ideal observer has the following specific characteristics: omniscience with respect to nonmoral facts, omnipercipience, disinterestedness, dispassionateness, consistency, and normalcy in all other respects. Notice that, by defining an Ideal Observer as omniscient with respect to nonmoral facts, Firth avoids circular logic that would arise from defining an ideal observer as omniscient in both nonmoral and moral facts. A complete knowledge of morality is not born of itself but is an emergent property of Firth's minimal requirements. There are also sensible restrictions to the trait of omniscience with respect to nonmoral facts. For instance, to make a moral judgment about a case of theft or murder on Earth it is not necessary to know about geological events in another solar system.
"x is better than y" means "If anyone were, in respect of x and y, fully informed and vividly imaginative, impartial, in a calm frame of mind and otherwise normal, he would prefer x to y.
For instance, to make a moral judgment about a case of theft or murder on Earth it is not necessary to know about geological events in another solar system.
Your ideal observer has chosen x. Ask him why he chose x. "It is better for.....me/you/humanity/the environment/the economy..." At some point he has made a choice of beneficiary. Every animal is ultimately in competition with some other individual or species, so no decision can be universally beneficial. Morality is unavoidably arbitrary until you place a decision in an agreed (but equally arbitrary!) wider context.
Just a few more layers, and we will indeed be looking at volcanoes in Ursa Minor.