: That's quite a statement deathy. I am not so sure one could say that we 'create' or 'choose' our morals on an individuakl basis. For one this would be a slide into relativism, for another it just does not seem to fit the reality of the situation. Lets get this clear, morality does not 'exist' as distinct from human culture, if all humans died, our morality would die, there is no god to Guarantee them, there is no existance for ideas without the material lives of humans- so where can our morality come from, except our society?
Now, I don't mean, your quite right to challenege this, we are individually free to choose our morality, I mean that we as a society are free to decide, upon the basis of our reason, and upon our aesthetic sense of being in the world, what our morality is and must be- hitherto all morality has been a construction by a ruling class to legitimise and justify its rule, what should replace it is with a social and democratic morality based upon social being as teh supreme good.
: Furthermore i do not think it is true that we in any sense do choose our morals. I do not think Mr Gort chose to be a bigot. Rather i would say it was more or less thrust upon him by forces beyond his control (ie his social integration amongst a certain group of bigots).
Exactly, one society chose, in a sense of a sort of aggregate transcendant abstraction of society, to develop a set of values by which to exist. Effectively, we should be able to consiously decide upon how we wish to live, as a society, and build our morals around that form of social being.
: I think it was Ronnie Dworkin who said that to justify morality one needs to subjec it to rational criticism (ie the critical morality as opposed to the positive morality) and that any morality that is based upon a gut instinct of repulsion or that was justified only because it was said by another (ie parroting) could not in any sense be a true justification of morality.
But of course, rationality is only valid from the point of view of the reasoner, on behalf of a specific mode of consciousness, hence it is better to say that morality is a matter for debate, than for internalised reason.
IMNSHO
None.
