This depends on what one means by an obligation. If, in regard to any particular moral conflict, it could be determined – and then unequivocally demonstrated – what the most rational reaction is, then if people want to call themselves rational human beings they would be obligated to react appropriately. But that’s not the same thing as saying that they are obligated to react that way. For whatever personal reason they may choose to react differently anyway.
In regard to, say, the behaviors you choose with respect to the burgeoning coronavirus calamity. The narcissistic sociopaths may still act only in regard to their own perceived self-interest. Period. Fuck being rational like everyone else.
Thus if a God, the God, your God was in fact demonstrated to exist beyond all doubt, would not a rational human being be obligated to worship and adore Him? Assuming some measure or human autonomy is reconciled with His omniscience.
[b]On the other hand, over and over and over again, I acknowledge that this too is just an existential reaction on my part. I may well not be thinking this all through correctly. So, in places like this, all I can do is to note how I do think it all through “here and now” and note the reactions of others.
Just like you.[/b]
For those folks who study the coronavirus, those scientists and medical professionals trying to figure out its origin, what it is capable of, how it infects, how it spreads, what might contain it, how a vaccine can be created to stop it…does rational and irrational thinking come into play for them? Is there a more logical and epistemologically sound manner in which to share their information and knowledge with the world?
Well, suppose philosophers and ethicists had access to the same sort of rational information and knowledge. Suppose they were then able to share that with the world in terms of how people react to the virus, in terms of how the politicians and law makers and government officials ought to create policies that channel human behaviors in their communities so as to be in sync with the most rational possible world.
Says who, you? Based on what…your assertion that there is fact an objective morality derived from whatever manner in which you connect the dots between that and God. And thus that stealing per se is necessarily, essentially, inherently a bad thing. Like, say, Communism?
No, I wish only to point out the dangers embedded in a world in which the moral and political objectivists gain access to power in any particular community and are able to enforce only their own conclusions regarding human behaviors with respect to the coronavirus.
Only their own means and ends count. The right makes might folks.
Only [of course] for some of them this would revolve not only around infectious diseases, but around all other conflicting goods as well. It’s always their way. Period. With respect to, among other things, race and gender and sexual preferences and ethnicity and religion and abortion and gun ownership and the role of government and animal rights.
One or another rendition of religious or ideological or deontological or natural law.
Only, unlike other pragmatists who champion democracy and the rule of law, I am not able to think myself out of feeling profoundly “fractured and fragmented”.
The part that the objectivists [and even some pragmatists] wish to avoid at all cost.
Uh, maybe even you?