- Do you see yourself as a moral relativist? Does your morality shift according to the situation? Why or why not?
- Is there a problem with moral relativism? Or is it a sensible, good way to live? Why?
- If you feel that there is some sort of relativism in your morality, how do you avoid applying the benefit of that relativism to yourself, and the cost to others? Or is that not an issue for you?
- Against the context of your morality, what if anything, does 'evil' mean to you?
- Is it a personal, relativist definition or an absolutist one, or can you not define it at all? Why?
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1. No, I'm not a moral relativist. I have my own set of things based on personal responsibility that I feel are either a choice I would make, or one that I would not. For me something like Abortion, is not a choice I would make, because that would be an easy way out of taking responsibility for having had sex and producing a child from that union. Either don't have the sex, or make sure it''s protected to prevent an unwanted child, but there is still the responsibility should something happen and a child is produced...thus I would take responsibility for my actions. Should I push this view on others? No. It's my own person view, and if others want to have abortions, then so be it.
On the flip side of that, I would kill someone in self-defense. I have no problem taking a life if that said life is threatening mine. It's survival of the fittest. And if zombies come...I'll have no problem killing people for what I need, or shooting zombies in the head.
2. I think it depends on if there is a double standard, which moral relativism implies. What's good for the goose isn't good for the gander. My morality doesn't change based on the external circumstances, it is grounded within my own code of ethics, based on the necessaries of living in a society, and within myself. For example, stem cell research, should we be producing embryos to cure people? I say yes. I don't see a slippery slope with that one, so long as it is regulated to not go beyond that point of growth. Growing full blow humans for transplants and other such stuff (like The Island movie) would seem wrong to me. Clones wouldn't be a commodity, they would be actual humans with actual feelings, and as such should be protected by the same laws that protect all humans. Embryos, before they are to the point of surviving outside the womb, are not, to me, classified as humans needing law protection. It is a clump of cells that could not survive outside the host.
However, what one person views as morality, is completely subjective according to their relative background and their perspective.
3. No, I don't feel I am a relativist. Most things are black and white, and the places that fall into the gray are made gray by our own feelings. Take for instance the ethical question I had in college class: A man's wife is dying from a disease. Another person has her cure but refuses to sell it to the man, or is offering it at such a high price the man can't afford it. The man has now broken into the place where the cure is and doesn't know if he should steal it or not. What should he do?
Here in lies the emotional connections. The woman this man loves is dying. He is willing to break the law by breaking into this facility, and now is torn as to if he should go on to break the law even more by stealing the cure.
Well, he shouldn't have broken into the facility in the first place. While the other man, unwilling to share the cure for less profit might seem cruel, he wasn't breaking a law. His cruelty doesn't give the dying woman's husband the right to break the law by breaking and entering and theft. Should the man let his wife die when there is a cure? Well, if he can't attain the cure, yes. But, most people's emotions would come into play and they would say no, he should go ahead and steal it since he's already broken the law. However, by breaking the law, he may have cured his wife, but now he'll be spending the rest of her days in prison, still without her. So where is the morality in that?
4. The only thing that is purely evil in this world is utter, remorseless cruelty. This could be anything from murderers, rapists, abusers, those types of people are evil because they harm others without remorse and in fact take pleasure in other's pain. That is evil. Even people who abuse and mistreat their pets, fall into this class. I want to cry watching those Animal cop shows on Animal Planet, and I can't believe people would do half the stuff they do to these poor animals...my animals are pretty darn spoiled.
5. I am neither absolute or relativistic, I am a realist. There are social norms and rules that need to be followed to ensure the safe living of all people within that society. There are personal responsibility rules set by each individual guiding their own moves through those social norms. And then there are exceptions to some rules, though most exceptions people see are based on emotional connections and responses (much like the ethical situation above.)
In most cases laws have a reason...Don't steal, not just because it's wrong, but because you are taking something that doesn't belong to you, and a person or company is out the money for that product. If it's a company, they must make up for that loss by cutting back hours, causing people to lose money or jobs, or they raise the prices of all their products to make up for the profits loss by theft. This in turn punishes all shoppers and employees for that company.
But then you have feel good laws, put in place by misguided politicans, like the Seat Belt laws. You have to wear your seat belt or get pulled over and fined $250 bucks, but it's for your own good. It's one of those laws that only impacts the person driving, it doesn't impact others like say Drunk Driving laws do. There is no good reason to have a seat belt law. You should be free to wear a seat belt or not. But this law wasn't really put in place for the safety of the driver, it was put in place to reduce the payouts insurance companys give for deaths and injuries caused by not wearing a seat belt in an accident. It has nothing to do with the wearer's safety, it has to do with money.
No smoking in bars...that's another one that is a stupid law. If there was a demand for non-smoking bars, then let people open them, don't put the law on to everyone. Bar tenders have a choice to work in a smoking environment or not, as do the people who go into the bars, they have a choice as well. If no one wanted to go to smoking bars, then they would go out of business and only non-smoking bars would make it. But the government took that option away. You can't open a "smoking bar" now, it's illegal (at least in many states.) That to me is a useless law and an example of the government overstepping it's bounderies into the land of commerce dictation. If there was a demand then there would be smoke-free bars open and doing well, and the smoking bars would be out of business...but that's not how it was, so they had to pass a law forbiding freedom.
I subscribe to freedom with personal resposnibility. While we are never fully free, we should be allowed to make some choices. And we should be able to make them with our own personal responsibility in mind. But as our culture in the USA is devolving, people have less and less ability to take personal responsibility thus the governmental rules imposed on everyone for those who can't take that resonsibility.