A lecture on Natural Law

[Chris]

Seriously? Your whole premise is that mam has an innate moral sense. That means he just knows it when something is morally wrong.

What does "reasoning to truths" even mean? Anything?

Sorry you don't understand this stuff.

One uses reason to discover or establish truth. Reasoning to truth. Not so hard to understand.

Innate does not imply know.

And I'm not sure innate is the right word, I think that fits your dichotomy of innate vs learned.

I would say this moral sense of right and wrong is an attribute of man' reasoning and social nature. Again, reasoning.

[Chris]

A hundred and fifty posts in and you have finally figured out that this is what I have been saying since the first page.

Wow.

You wouldn't define what you meant.

But OK, so environment determines morality. That must needs be social or cultural environment. So again, morality so defined is not subjective as you claimed earlier. It's social and shared.

And it begs the question where or how do societies get this morality that it determines for you?

In short, what do you mean by you learned it?

[Crepitus]

Sorry you don't understand this stuff.

One uses reason to discover or establish truth. Reasoning to truth. Not so hard to understand.

Innate does not imply know.

And I'm not sure innate is the right word, I think that fits your dichotomy of innate vs learned.

I would say this moral sense of right and wrong is an attribute of man' reasoning and social nature. Again, reasoning.

If reasoning is what leads you to your sense of right and wrong what data are you using to arrive at your conclusions? You can't reason in a vacuum.

[Crepitus]

You wouldn't define what you meant.

But OK, so environment determines morality. That must needs be social or cultural environment. So again, morality so defined is not subjective as you claimed earlier. It's social and shared.

And it begs the question where or how do societies get this morality that it determines for you?

In short, what do you mean by you learned it?

Yes I have explained it over and over but you refuse to understand it because you don't agree with it. As usual.

[Chris]

If reasoning is what leads you to your sense of right and wrong what data are you using to arrive at your conclusions? You can't reason in a vacuum.

It apodeictic.

Like the principle of universalizability. See Lincoln's argument against slavery, post #123.

And to clarify, reason, right reason, as Aquinas put it, does not create morality but enables us to discover it, and is found in justifications and condemnations of the actions of others as right or wrong.

[Chris]

Yes I have explained it over and over but you refuse to understand it because you don't agree with it. As usual.

Post #s, please. Or provide a summary. BTW, I have said I disagreed. How can I disagree with something that is so far meaningless? Say something to disagree with.

[Axiomatic]

It's easy for modern people to condemn slavery from a world of abundance where it is practically never necessary anywhere. There were times when it was preferable, for the slave and the family out of which the slave was sold, to starvation. If you're a farming family of four in the fall and you know that you have enough food in reserve to feed three people through the winter, and you have a standing offer from Joe Blow Sargon to buy your youngest son for 20 pieces of silver with which you could double your reserves, your youngest son would become a slave or one of you would die.

That was reality for many people throughout much of history. The economically oblivious criticism of sweat-shops is a good analogy. Families with better options don't typically choose to have their children working in a sweat shop. We often find out, after meddlesome holier-than-thou progressives impose bans on primitive economies that are not yet equipped to bear them, that child-prostitution was next up on their list of options.

People didn't just wake up one day and, out of the clear blue, decide that this whole slavery thing just isn't aesthetically pleasing anymore. As with most change, there is a more meaningful explanation: Once economies advance to a point where necessary evils are no longer necessary, people, driven by a common sense of morality and justice end up putting a stop to the - no longer justifiable - practice.

[exploited]

Some people really struggle with the idea that their values are nothing more than personal prejudices and cannot be objectively validated.

Natural law is their attempt at rationalizing something that is entirely subjective and emotional. This attempt is usually for a sense of belonging and personal comfort. Anything to avoid looking into the abyss.