I think you may have put your finger on the problem there. At the core of my moral position, there is a strong utlitarian streak. You're going to have a hard time convincing me something is more if it (broadly speaking) decreases happiness and increases pain. And I'm really not prepared to give up utilitarianism simply because I can't justify that axiom (lack of justification being inherent in axioms). Fundamentally any God who does not embrace utilitarianism in some form is, in my view, an evil God who can go take a flying leap. That may make ethical debate difficult for people who don't share that core belief, but I'm not sure I'm terribly interested in such debate, since it seems unlikely we would find much in the way of common ground. This is what I mean when I say that if someone can't tell me why something is good or bad, I'm not terribly interested in their opinion.
I generally subscribe to a positive existentialist view of morality, by which I mean I act as though there is no externally imposed higher morality, but this is the most awesome possible state of affairs. It means that we are able to work out for ourselves what good and bad means flexibly in response to the changing universe around us. I think that this is why I find spiritual axioms to be so problematic - I don't find the conservatism it promotes to be particularly utilitarian.
Now philosophically it might be possible to say that my world view is built on a foundation of sand, but that doesn't really change my need to have one. It's regrettable that there will be people I can't engage in constructive debate with due to lack of common ground, but I can't really see anything I can do to bridge that gap.
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Date: 2013-05-23 11:07 pm (UTC)I generally subscribe to a positive existentialist view of morality, by which I mean I act as though there is no externally imposed higher morality, but this is the most awesome possible state of affairs. It means that we are able to work out for ourselves what good and bad means flexibly in response to the changing universe around us. I think that this is why I find spiritual axioms to be so problematic - I don't find the conservatism it promotes to be particularly utilitarian.
Now philosophically it might be possible to say that my world view is built on a foundation of sand, but that doesn't really change my need to have one. It's regrettable that there will be people I can't engage in constructive debate with due to lack of common ground, but I can't really see anything I can do to bridge that gap.