Erm, that ain't a vote for subjectivel wrong. It is completely wrong. It not just morals but plain consideration.

> avogadro wrote:

> they might be trying to dispute my claim by laying the blame on society for making the victims believe that rape is wrong and its the society's fault people are traumatized by rape

in some societies they actually say/ portay rape cases as it being the victims fault, that they had it coming, either by things labelled as "behaving in an immoral way" or just assuming there must lie some sort of fault with them, making the men/man rape the woman

maybe they didn mean to say they agree with that, but mebbe they meant to say that there actually are people who think like that,

and that therefore one could argue that the morality there is defined by the society in question, becoz it is a society acting as a whole there, on something other people would deem inappropriate, and assuming that that opinion comes from an individual view/assessment of the issue

> V.Kemp wrote:
> You just repeated that you don't think it's essentially wrong.[]...<

Ok [w00f!], let me spell it out for you nice and clearly:

Rape occurs in nature.
Rape is natural.
Does this mean rape is right? I believe rape is wrong, as you should know from my REPEATED statements.

Now if you cannot accept that my words mean what they mean then fine, but do not even attempt to dictate to me what I mean to say. Go play your stupid 'troll game somewhere else.

However, morality implies that we ought not do something. There is no way you can empirically/scientifically justify an ought, and so consequently justifying morality in its traditional form is impossible.

But you can say that as biological organisms, we strive for certain ends, and morality serves in large part as a mechanism for realizing them. It is an instrumental or practical development. This seems to provide an answer to subjectivist arguments that morality differs from place to place and time to time, because with different conditions different morals are needed. For example, in eskimo culture it's important for them to kill their old in order for them to survive, while that condition is not present in others that do not kill their old.

Eh, I'm a kind of Consequentialist. While Utilitarians say that the consequences decide what we ought to do, my position is that there is no scientific way to justify an ought. However, we can observe that people make moral judgments and a common pattern for those moral judgments are the consequences that affect a society. Clearly, a society can't survive and prosper if murder and theft is the rule.

The problem is when we run around and say that nature has these mighty laws, and that there is an imperative to follow them. It sounds a lot like religion when you do that. Relativists assert that it's all opinion. So if you think rape is right, then it's right. If you think it's wrong, then it's wrong. However, that doesn't solve anything either because obviously that's not how it works. Society's don't just form a consensus on subjective opinions and democratically issue that as their moral law. They're totally forgetting about the minority in power, and the pattern of morals having a practical benefit to that society given its political, economic and social conditions in the time their morals were first developed.

To contrast myself from Relativists, I don't consider morals as resulting from a consensus or just personal opinion. Rather I see them as a resulting from of a society's economic, political, and social conditions to serve the desired outcomes of the people living in that society. Yes the morals sometimes unequally benefit those who exercise power, but others like no theft or murder benefit everyone. Secondly, we can judge the actions of others. We can't do so because of some rules that exist in nature (that's [w00f!] religion), but rather we can due to our biological programming (e.g. murder ----> *scream*) and the practical benefits they may serve (e.g. no pork ----> food is scarce and pigs are an inefficient food source).

So Kemp, I want a moral theory that is empirically testable. The ones that name an ought and a principle to decide what we ought to do are not empirically testable and are just as irrational as religion. If I asked you to prove that we ought to do x from an experiment, you would not be able to. I'm assuming you agree that experience or observation should be our guide to what we believe, yes?

utilitarians are idiots, you benthamite

> V.Kemp wrote:
> ? I was quoting you. That's dictating to you what you said?<

If you were simply quoting me, quoting my view that rape is in no way acceptable, rather than _telling_ me what I think, then why are we having this conversation?

> V.Kemp wrote:
> You made statements repeatedly that it's wrong because society says so.<

Yep, and I believe it is wrong as a result of social conditioning even though it is quite evidently a naturally occuring thing.

> If you're going to cry and contradict yourself, rather than take back statements you clearly say now you do not believe, don't bother responding to me.<

What exactly are you talking about? Is your whole "argument" is based on that damn mistake? Oh dear...
You seem to misunderstand: That was a genuine mistake, if you don't believe me then ask someone for their opinion, ask someone else if they think it was a mistake... or are you that desperate for an argument, a slanging match?

Like me!

would that be a good thing or a bad thing for him to do? XD