Parental rights amendment sounds good
UNCRC treaty sounds good
Neither of those options are that great/other
Yeah cause every time I go to costco(or anywhere for that fact) and see horrible little children abusing their powers over their parents cause it isn't social acceptable to give them a love tap doesn't give me any hint. I've meet plenty of parents who keep telling me how they can't gain any control sometimes and when I mention spankings or whatever they get scared and talk about social services taking their children away if they did that.Originally Posted by Syme
Yep, anecdote, just as I suspected.
In order to draw meaningful conclusions about human behavior on a large scale, you need meaningful evidence, which is going to be produced by research in fields such as sociology, behavioral psychology, and so forth. In order to support the particular conclusion you are trying to advance here, you would need evidence establishing, or at least suggesting, a causal link between parents' willingness to slap/smack their children, and good behavior. It isn't enough to just say "When I'm in costco I see kids acting horrid and I conclude that it's because their parents won't smack them". That's baseless conjecture. You are presuming, without reason, that the poor behavior of the kids is a result of their parents' unwillingness to smack them, and could be rectified if that unwillingness went away.
Last edited by Syme; 04-26-2009 at 10:55 PM.
Not unwillingness, if you are unwilling to discipline your kids in anyway, then in my opinion you aren't strong enough to be a parent. Social acceptability is what I'm looking for. Some people don't think it's ok, but I don't think it is any of their business. I don't condone abuse at all, there is a fine line you can cross when trying to raise you kids with that method. If you want to raise your child with verbal rather than physical discipline, that is up to you, but I believe that it should be acceptable either way.
Last edited by Nick2.1; 04-26-2009 at 11:03 PM.
Ah, okay. Sorry then. I thought you were saying that kids' bad behavior nowadays is specifically a result of parents who won't spank or hit their kids. I do agree that discipline in general obviously has a lot to do with it; there is certainly no shortage of evidence that kids' behavioral problems only get worse when their parents are unwilling to discipline them at all.
Wha? Really? I don't really keep up with what's in vogue among ethical philosophers... could you back this claim up somehow? It seems to me that the fundamental premise of moral relativism is pretty ironclad. I'm very surprised to hear that it's become passé. There is no God or universal metaphysical law out there saying "murder is wrong", it's just something that societies decide to agree on for obvious reasons. If you don't agree with moral relativism, where do you think that objective moral truth comes from? You must believe that there is some form of moral truth that exists outside of, and independent from, humans. What is it? It is a god or spiritual entity? Is it some invisible law woven into the fabric of the universe?
Last edited by Syme; 04-27-2009 at 08:56 AM.
It's generally agreed upon (by me as well) that morality, well defined, is not up for interpretation. When you have a definition of "morality" as something like "the objective to serve the best interests of all beings with interests", which I think is a pretty good one, then all that is debatable is "what is best".
That means, in cases where something is best, there is no relativism to morality. Moral objectivism doesn't require something outside of humanity to "decide" or "dictate" what's right. That's the point; what is right isn't decided, it's discovered.
Moral relativism halts ethical debate entirely. It doesn't just stop it, it prevents it and cancels it out. If there is no Right, then there's just opinions, and everyone's opinions have equal weight, from you to your neighbour to the members of Al Qaeda. Moral relativism prevents me from meaningfully making a statement like "torturing babies is wrong", and hence I find it completely objectionable. No matter what any society says, torturing babies is wrong.
It sounds to me like you're just saying that moral value judgments are clearly defined within any system of thought that assumes clearly defined moral value judgments. Sure, if you have a definition of "morality" such as that one, there's little room for debate within that definition. But why is that definition of morality any better or more valid than anyone elses' definition of morality? Where did it come from? Didn't someone just make it up because it sounded good to them (the very definition of subjectivity)?
In this system you describe, objective moral certitudes may be "discovered", but they are only being "discovered" within the context of a system of thought that defines what morality is in the first place. You aren't discovering moral truth in an absolute or universal sense, only discovering what is morally true under Jem's Personal Conception of Morality. That's fine as far as it goes--a given moral idea may indeed be objectively correct within your moral framework--but this doesn't mean it's objectively true in any larger sense. It's really just descriptive of your moral thought. "Apples are better than oranges" is objectively true within the framework of a system of thought that defines apples as being better than oranges, because it correctly and objectively describes what that system of thought says about apples and oranges; but it isn't objectively true outside that system of thought. Likewise, "torturing babies is wrong" may be objectively true within your own framework of moral thought, because that statement is objectively consistent with your definition of morality, but it's still not objectively true in any larger sense, because your framework of moral thought, or your definition of morality, is itself subjective. To claim otherwise, you must assert belief in some larger moral truth that exists outside us--again, whether it's God, or some universal metaphysical moral law, or whatever. Otherwise all moral definitions and all systems of moral thought are all just things that people dreamed up.
This sounds like an appeal to consequences to me. I want you to explain WHY torturing babies is objectively wrong. Not by arbitrarily constructing a system of moral thought that says torturing babies is wrong and then saying that "torturing babies is wrong" is an objectively correct moral statement with that system of moral thought, but by actually explaining why any system of moral thought that condemns baby-torture is objectively more valid than a system of moral thought that doesn't. With all due respect, I suspect that at the bottom of it all, your aversion to baby-torture is based entirely on an instinctive or emotional or visceral revulsion towards the idea of torturing babies, which is fine and dandy (I feel the same revulsion towards the idea; it means we aren't sociopaths), but also definitely subjective.
Last edited by Syme; 04-27-2009 at 11:21 AM.
Well, once the concept of morality is thought up, you've got to define it so that it makes sense. You can have a definition of morality as "that which fills the pockets of the rich with more money", which makes sense, but it doesn't make sense as a definition for morality, because nobody thinks of making the rich richer as moral. The concept of morality is about making the world a better place for the creatures capable of having interests -- or at least it is now that we've grown past (hopefully, philosophically speaking) religious ideals.
There are a few definitions of morality, but they all concern how we should behave at their most basic levels. (Except value ethics, which I don't really understand.) Come up with the should that makes the most sense, and it's something like we should behave according to the interests of all creatures capable of interests (I REALLY need a less clunky term there, so I'm going to go with "beings"; I don't know if that's correct but it's what I'm going with). Why? Because it's in all beings' interests! Why is that moral? Because what else could "moral" be? What else makes sense? If morality is about the best possible world, what possible world is better than a world that is good for every being's interests?
Morality is a concept made up by someone. But it's a concept that really only makes sense one way, and that way is not relative.
I keep coming up with almost-metaphors, but none is apt.
I'm arguing that only one definition of morality is coherent, and if we follow it, it leads to very certain, definite places. However, it's very subtle, and often convoluted, so those places are sometimes hard to find, and they'll sometimes go against conventional wisdom and/or our intuitions... much like science. You can call plenty of different things science, but only one conception of what science is really actually makes sense.
It was, because I got incredibly lazy, and you're much, much better at this than I am.
And I wanted to make my point to people like Mr Troy, but I can't, because he's repeating the same things at me.
Jesus, Mr Troy, I get that some cultures find certain things to be moral, but what I'm saying is that that conception of morality doesn't make sense; it is flawed, incoherent, or simply meaningless. No matter what orthodox Muslims/Jews/whoevers think about the way they treat their women, it is immoral.
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