Uan aa Boa wrote:Bombadil wrote:It's less made up because it can be judged on outcomes. We might argue whether spanking a child is moral. I might say the primary aspect is to steal security from the child, you might argue that a child misbehaving steals from a parents right to an orderly family. I might retort that the primary aspect to the individual is morally worse than the secondary aspect to the family in this case and research showing that spanking children leads to poor outcomes support my view.
This is a very flexible use of the word "steal." If in addition to stealing security its possible to "steal from a right" so that any infringement of a right can be recast as theft then you probably will be able to describe a whole moral system that depends on stealing as its fundamental concept, but only at the cost of considerable vagueness. With what metric are we to compare the theft of security suffered by a spanked child with the theft of the rights of a parent with a misbehaving child? If you're going to answer that with an appeal to empirical data on real world outcomes then I'd suggest that you're moving towards a principle of "do what works" that is the very antithesis of absolutist morality (and all the better for it - no criticism there). To do that, however, you must have a pre-existing idea of what constitute "good" outcomes. If "good" in this sense is defined with reference to stealing being the absolute moral consideration then your justification becomes circular. If not then stealing actually never was the fundamental consideration in your moral outlook, since you're then settling moral questions with reference to some other criteria.
Yes, yet the simplicity of the maxim and the vagueness of its applicability is what makes it so strong. Evolution works on 'survival of the fittest', I might quibble and say 'survival of what survives' but all things being equal it works given a very wide variety of environments. What works in the Sahara does not work in the Amazon, yet the maxim remains.
Beyond that, this maxim has, arguably, lead to the inherent good of survival in that a species has arisen with the best chance of the overall survival of all. Homo Sapiens, give its awareness of the consequences of its actions is better than, say, ants that would destroy all to its own destruction given its lack of awareness.
Awareness has arisen from the simple precept of 'survival of the fittest'.
I'm highly aware this is arguable and that with that awareness has led concurrently to the awareness of technology that ensure total destruction but I've seen algae destroyed ponds, the wipe out of red squirrels.. homo sapiens is both the greatest threat but also the greatest opportunity for the species to survive, along with others.
So the vagueness of interpretations, flexibility to environment and yet solidity of the absolute maxim of 'do not steal' continues to work for me as a prism for absolute morality.
Absolute truth notwithstanding.
