You might be aware that Earth’s iron interior generates a magnetic field that compasses obey. That field has been known to shift. It is shifting now, and might even flip flop as it has many times. If it were to flip, then your compass needle would direct you to some place in the Southern Hemisphere instead of to an area around Bathurst Island in the Northern Hemisphere.
Do you think you have a moral (or ethical) faculty? You know, something deep inside enables you to distinguish among behaviors as being either “good” or “evil.” Do you have that? Do you have a “moral field” that guides you as the magnetic field guides a compass needle? If so, do you think it, like the magnetic field, can shift?
The question is not irrelevant to your (or my) life. Here’s an example that Joseph Butler gave in 1873. Let’s say you see someone suffering from an injury caused by another person. Do you feel concern? Pity? Empathy? Sympathy? Would your feelings (or the degree to which you experience them) change if you find out that the sufferer is not a victim but a bad guy who was injured during an assault on someone else? You’ve seen YouTube videos that show “bad guys” getting their comeuppance. How did you feel about their suffering injury? You’ve read the stories of home invaders being shot and even killed by those whose houses they invade. How do you feel?
Do you believe, as Butler does, that “we are constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration, which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery” (pp. 307)?* In short, are you inclined toward sympathy for “good guys” and disinclined from feeling for “bad guys”?
Got one more for you: What about Robin Hood? What if someone takes from another through treachery, violence, or injustice, and gives what is taken to someone else, depriving the former of happiness while ensuring the latter of happiness? Is there any moral “constituent” that makes you reject the behavior or its result?
If you argue that “It’s always the context that matters,” are you arguing that there is no deep-seated moral compass and that all moral compasses point toward poles that can shift?
*Butler, Joseph, The Analogy of Religions, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, To Which Are Added Two Brief Dissertations: I. On personal Identity.—II. On the Nature of Virtue., Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1873. The quotation comes from the second dissertation.
Do you think you have a moral (or ethical) faculty? You know, something deep inside enables you to distinguish among behaviors as being either “good” or “evil.” Do you have that? Do you have a “moral field” that guides you as the magnetic field guides a compass needle? If so, do you think it, like the magnetic field, can shift?
The question is not irrelevant to your (or my) life. Here’s an example that Joseph Butler gave in 1873. Let’s say you see someone suffering from an injury caused by another person. Do you feel concern? Pity? Empathy? Sympathy? Would your feelings (or the degree to which you experience them) change if you find out that the sufferer is not a victim but a bad guy who was injured during an assault on someone else? You’ve seen YouTube videos that show “bad guys” getting their comeuppance. How did you feel about their suffering injury? You’ve read the stories of home invaders being shot and even killed by those whose houses they invade. How do you feel?
Do you believe, as Butler does, that “we are constituted so as to condemn falsehood, unprovoked violence, injustice, and to approve of benevolence to some preferably to others, abstracted from all consideration, which conduct is likeliest to produce an overbalance of happiness or misery” (pp. 307)?* In short, are you inclined toward sympathy for “good guys” and disinclined from feeling for “bad guys”?
Got one more for you: What about Robin Hood? What if someone takes from another through treachery, violence, or injustice, and gives what is taken to someone else, depriving the former of happiness while ensuring the latter of happiness? Is there any moral “constituent” that makes you reject the behavior or its result?
If you argue that “It’s always the context that matters,” are you arguing that there is no deep-seated moral compass and that all moral compasses point toward poles that can shift?
*Butler, Joseph, The Analogy of Religions, to the Constitution and Course of Nature, To Which Are Added Two Brief Dissertations: I. On personal Identity.—II. On the Nature of Virtue., Philadelphia. J. B. Lippincott & Co., 1873. The quotation comes from the second dissertation.
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