Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.1 6/24/83; site umcp-cs.UUCP Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!cbosgd!ihnp4!mhuxn!mhuxr!mhuxt!houxm!mtuxo!mtunh!mtung!mtunf!ariel!vax135!timeinc!phri!pesnta!amd!vecpyr!lll-crg!gymble!umcp-cs!mangoe From: mangoe@umcp-cs.UUCP (Charley Wingate) Newsgroups: net.philosophy Subject: Re: Premises,Premises,Premises,... (is good logical?) Message-ID: <530@umcp-cs.UUCP> Date: Fri, 5-Jul-85 01:31:32 EDT Article-I.D.: umcp-cs.530 Posted: Fri Jul 5 01:31:32 1985 Date-Received: Tue, 2-Jul-85 05:34:26 EDT References: <1110@pyuxd.UUCP> <809@teddy.UUCP> <1124@pyuxd.UUCP> Organization: U of Maryland, Computer Science Dept., College Park, MD Lines: 30 In article <1124@pyuxd.UUCP> rlr@pyuxd.UUCP (Rich Rosen) writes: >> >>>Everyone on this planet thinks the best morality is based on good. >> >>>The problems occur when you ask each of them to define good. [ROSEN] >> What about the Hell's angels. >> Their morality seems >> to be based on doing what is 'bad'. [LARRY KOLODNEY] >Ask them. Bad to you. I'm sure it's perceived as perfectly all right > to them. And that's the point. Well, I think you have to ask the question of why THAT "good". My feeling (and one generally supported by psychiatric work) is that they live in reaction to what other people call "good". The reason why they approve of their own behavior is in fact because it is "bad" (i.e., someone else's bad). If you are going to construct a theory of pure moral relativism, you are going to have to face up to the fact that people do not hold to moral systems in a vacuum. I choose to follow a "liberal christian" sort of morality for a number of reasons; some are concious decisions, and some are subconscious. A decision to do something simply because someone else thinks it is wrong is clearly different from a decision to do the same thing because you think it is right; in the first case, the actor might very well disapprove of the act himself. It is well established that people do in fact do things which they themselves hold to be morally wrong. Therefore, I think that the case of "hell's angels" is much less clear cut than Rich seems to think it is. Charley Wingate umcp-cs!mangoe