“Our Morality: A Defense of Moral Objectivism”
After our recent ‘Death of Morality’ issue, Mitchell Silver replies to the amoralists.
This [to me] is merely a description of any of hundreds of particular human communities in which members have more or less reached a consensus regarding the right things and the wrong things to do. Predicated on one or another combination of “might makes right”, “right makes might” or “moderation, negotation and compromise”.
My own argument doesn’t kick in until 1] the rules of one communitity come into conflict with the rules of another community or 2] within the community someone decides that the rules should be changed.
Then what in regard to “moral objectivism”?
In other words, instead of embracing or enduring the “law of the jungle”, where the strong and the powerful always prevail, we come together and, in a civilized manner, create a set of rules that more or less sustain the interests of those own and operate the global economy. The historical advent of capitalism. They sustain what they deem to be permissible or not permissible behaviors. In accordance with what sustains their own interests. Until the Communinists came along and insisted that other behaviors were more consistant with the advent of scientific socialism.
So, okay, how does the author here go about determining which behaviors ought to be permissible such that everyone is able to agree that this constitutes “objective morality”.
Still, which of these “other philosophers” have been able to intertwine their intellectual contraptions with the world of actual human interactions out in a world still bursting at the seams with conflicting goods?
As for the “soft sciences”, what have they managed to pin down with regard to our ubiquitous moral and political conflagrations? What constitutes “the most acceptable rules” in order to ensure fairness and equality among those dealing with an unwanted pregnancy, or mass shootings, or the immigration quagmire.