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From: ma187er@sdccsu3.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.philosophy
Subject: Re: absolute value systems
Message-ID: <743@sdccsu3.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 13-Jun-83 02:32:18 EDT
Article-I.D.: sdccsu3.743
Posted: Mon Jun 13 02:32:18 1983
Date-Received: Tue, 14-Jun-83 04:59:13 EDT
References: amd70.2421
Lines: 33



      It is not nessecarily true that ALL value systems are subjective.
There are certain values that we all have as a human animal in the
company of other human animals. It's a very bad idea to have a value
system that dictates that you should kill people you don't like as
animals with such traits are lousy survival risks and will eventually
die out. So some values are ingrained in us at an early age, because
they must be universally obeyed by all members of the group for the
group as a whole to survive. In fact, if you look at the ten
commandments  carefully, you will find that many of them are pretty
basic rules that all homo sapiens must follow to form a cohesive
group that is a good survival risk. (Note that this is not meant to
be a plug for religion- I'm personally an agnostic.)

      Good ole Darwin made a wonderful point when he hypothesized that
Man had developed a brain to make him the most versatile animal and
thus the best survival risk, because we used our brains to come up
with a set of rules by which to live that made us the best survival
risk. The rules aren't quite hard-wired in, and so we can change them
if we need to. However, some of these are very basic and are followed
or obeyed by all rational members of society- like the universal
value that murder is wrong.

       Ah well, I shall stop here and let you all flame me for what I
said wrong.


		      Not afraid to take the definition of "value"
		      into my own hands,


					 Jack of Shadows.