Moral Realism

Don Loeb and Peter Railton take opposite sides on Bloggingheads for and against Moral Realism.

After being abused by a friends wife for being intense at a lunch we went to the other day for mentioning,TED talk where Arthur Benjamin does `Mathemagic' I being up `Moral Realism' with a certain amount of fear. Delving into the world of Philosophy and Ethics seems as far from layman's terms as you can get. I am of the school of thought that if you can't say it simply you don't really understand it.

The thing is maybe there are some things that you can't say simply because they aren't simple. But then, if you are talking about ethics that becomes problematic because morals are normally there as a set of rules for behaviour. Should people really follow rules they don't understand the reasoning for?

That aside... I still found the discussion interesting. My mind did wander at some stages when I got lost in the vocabulary that I didn't have a full grip on. This is not an unusual feeling for me.

I think the question boils down to a simple one...

1) Do you believe that there are a set of rules that everyone should obey irrespective of their cultural backgrounds or belief systems.

2) If the answer to (1) is Yes, should this be imposed on people even if they would rather act in a different way.

It is fairly new that morality and religion have been separated as concepts so that you can distinguish morality from divine will & divine punishment. If you believe that morality is simply God's will... then the discussion becomes more difficult. Since then the assumption is that God exists, and if she does, then you are right and there is no further discussion.

But if that is not your definition of morality, what is it? What is right and wrong?

In listening to this argument, I found myself agreeing more with the Anti-Realist that there is no factual morality. That believing this doesn't mean you can't have values that allow you to have ideas on how society can best co-operate, co-ordinate and how you can best allocate resources.

`best allocate' then becomes another question.

Yet there are certain things that I feel quite strongly I would like to believe are universal and moral facts. `Like to' because I feel like I would want certain beliefs imposed on others.

Probably my strongest feelings on this subject are around it being wrong to kill and rape.

I think it is incredibly difficult to actually pinpoint a basic idea of why something is wrong. Because it is? That is where the religious benefit comes in because you can just say, well... because God said so, argument done.

Maybe there is no answer but you can get nearer the truth?

The strongest argument I think is the one that there is in fact no `true' morality... but that by establishing rules that are consistent, we can work towards a better society. Perhaps not one society, but more than one with different sets of rules that you need to choose between. I do get the feeling that there may be different sets of consistent yet incompatible rules.

Already I fear I am falling into the trap that the clip I linked to did of wandering, rambling thought. so I am going to stop there.