Relitivism

[ShrowdedPoet]

This is a statement of opiniona nd ideals, without facts or reasoning to back it up. The stated purpose of this thread was philosophical debate - make some.

Stop attacking Inkedu because he is not going about the debate in the same fashion you would. The rightness and wrongness of murder is a perfectly valid example of relativism, and just because his posts have been frustrating you doesn't mean that they are flat out wrong, or that you have the right to tell him to stop posting.

Play nice por favor, or thread will be locked.

I was not telling him to stop posting I was telling him I'd like the thread to go back on topic.  I thought that was what you were supposed to do when you saw it getting off topic.  Sorry, I just won't say anything else.

[Trieste]

Ok, I'm pretty sure it started with you, Inkedu, trying to debate the rightness or wrongness of murder.  Drop it.  This is a discussion of relitivism.  GT was just using murder as an example as I was just using the existance of God as an example.  Hitler has nothing to do with the discussion of relativism unless we're discussing his stance on it.  I want the thread back on topic please and thank you!

That's the part I was referring to ... though I'm sure you meant to steer the thread back on topic, it came off as an order to just leave it alone, stop debating, etc.

What about cultural relativism, Poet? Or what would be another good example, if you wanted to get off of the murder example? I brought up incest and marriage earlier... and I think there have been other topics that are less extreme...

[Apple of Eris]

I just wanted to point out that Killing != Murder (that's does not equal). Murder is a legal term, meaning the unlawful killing of someone. Lawful killing is a different term entirely.

So if you're going to debate 'murder' you are debating the 'unlawful killing of a person' however, if you are talking about 'justifiable homicide' it is NOT murder because, it is lawful killing.

So maybe you all should just debate the same thing?

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Oh, and I'd like to point out, that grass is not green on the sub-atomic level. And it is not green to beings that do not see in the visible light spectrum or to those that do not see in color.

The answer to the old zen koan who is he who makes the grass green, is us. :)

[Inkidu]

This is a statement of opiniona nd ideals, without facts or reasoning to back it up. The stated purpose of this thread was philosophical debate - make some.

Stop attacking Inkedu because he is not going about the debate in the same fashion you would. The rightness and wrongness of murder is a perfectly valid example of relativism, and just because his posts have been frustrating you doesn't mean that they are flat out wrong, or that you have the right to tell him to stop posting.

Play nice por favor, or thread will be locked.

Thanks Trieste.

[calamity]

I'll add in:  There really is no right and wrong, there are degrees of acceptibility.

I wanted to touch on this statement, also, because it delves into the issue of language.  If something exists somewhere on a scale of acceptability, are you suggesting that there is an objective slider, here?  If we were to replace "wrong" with "unacceptable" and "right" with "acceptable," have we really done anything except use different words to say the same thing?

If you mean that acceptability is relative, which I suspect you do, then how can we make moral decisions?  There must be some objective truth buried beneath all of the semantics - Kant would say that it is the Categorical Imperative.  There are many things I disagree with Kant on (such as the idea that lying is never morally permissible), but the Categorical Imperative seems to basically be right:  "Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law."  It's a statement that requires some philosophical thought to truly digest, and I would recommend that anyone interested in ethics read Kant's Groundwork of the Metaphysics of Morals for a deeper understanding.

Morality is not a simple thing.  It is complex and difficult and there are many mistakes to be made along the road of moral reasoning, but that hardly means that it isn't a worthwhile journey.  Relativism is dangerous.  As long as we all say "everyone is right," nothing can be truly accomplished.  There is no world in which everyone agrees with everyone else; if there were, Thomas More would never have had to write Utopia.  Disagreement over moral issues is what allows us to interact with the world and with each other - without discourse that considers certain truths objective, we can take no action.  We can't move forward.