The Crusades

Yes, Muslims invaded and occupied Christian lands, stopped allowing Christians to pilgrimage there ect. Christians made the attempt to take back their lands, succeeded once but the lands were retaken. After that it was a cultural/religious war still about taking back their lands and eliminating the enemy. All of this was self-defense.

It is terribly ignorant to attempt to understand this using hind sight. Not a single modern historian does that in any respect.

The First Crusade thus ended in victory. It was the only crusade that achieved more than ephemeral results. - Google Search

Your whole post here. #27 of the thread if this link does not work correctly is just an copy and paste.
Crusades: First Crusade — Infoplease.com
The Crusades
crusade: Definition, Synonyms from Answers.com

One must think you are physically incapable of doing more at this point.

I remember when I had my first beer.

I can reply to all of your post later, but why when you freely admit you are a Classical Utilitarian (you can't be an Rule Utilitarian because then you would still be an absolutist of sorts). Which by default means that any action (lying, stealing, killing) out of context do not have moral value. It is ONLY the outcome of said actions that give them a positive or negative moral value.

You're a moral relativist plain and simple.

Not only that, but you just said that morality is dictated by survival. That moral actions befit the survival of those committing said action.

The Crusades were all about the survival Christiandom.

Now I'm sure you'll come back with some lame and repetitive retort about it doesn't matter what they thought was happening. But since you, I nor they could judge the present with the same ability we can judge threats in hind sight, it does matter if you want to be intellectually honest.

Wow I've never seen such a long post end if fail so easily. Did you really think that through at all before you hit the submit button?

So I'd like to revisit this.

FF you say you are a Utilitarian right? Act or Rule?

If you are an Act then you are in fact a moral relativist. Because then its the results of the actions that determine if its a morally good or bad act. Yet the act out of context hold no moral value.

If you are a Rule, then you make rules that have a general positive outcome for the society that collectively agrees to follow them. Correct? Yet do to there being exceptions to the rule, new rules are made, allowing for the same act to in one case be legal, and in another care illegal (ie. Murder is illegal, but there exists justifiable homicide in self-defense, or as a punishment).

Regardless of which version of Utilitarianism you pick, it comes down to the fact that actions out of context hold no inherent moral value, it is only the context in which the action is taken that give it moral value. Thus morals are relative.

Moral relativity has a specific definition, merely believing that morals are not absolute is not enough to qualify one as a moral relativist. Moral relativism specifies that morals are relative TO THE CULTURE THAT HOLDS THEM. This part in all caps is the important part and it is what separates myself from moral relativism.

So you accept that actions out side of context have no moral value. And that the same action in different contexts can have opposite moral values correct?

We have also already established that there are a significant number of "moral choices" that have had their positive or negative value change over time and between cultures.

There is no escaping the truth of moral relativism.

Yes. However I will add that these "contexts" are circumstance specific NOT culture specific.

No we have not. You tried to establish that...but failed miserably.

Since it's an unfalsifiable position....you shouldn't presume there is a truth to escape in the first place.

GROUCH FAILED ATTEMPT x2

Excellent, morality is changing and situational based. How can a culture not be a different circumstance?

Slavery (18th century America and Europe vs post 1860), abortion (pre and post Roe V. Wade), death penalty, genocide (Relgious Wars, commands from the Bible and Koran) homosexuality (Biblical teaching vs. accepted Greek and Roman male bonding); even rape and incest.

Hmmm all moral issues that based on what culture (or sub culture or time frame) you are a part of posses different and changing moral values.

Since it is proved through near countless examples of cultural change, it would seem that you are continuing the trend of intellectual cowardice. Morality changes, it changes through time, through location, through culture, through events.

Culture itself is not a circumstance, culture may affect circumstances.

I could say the same about you. Bald assertions will get you no where.

Again bald assertions will get you no where. There is no debating that different cultures have differing views of ethics however there is ABSOLUTELY no evidence that it becomes true simply because we believe it so, in fact there is a plethora of instances that show that belief has no correlation with what is actually true.

Hitting a defenseless person, is not wrong because we believe it is wrong, but because you are causing harm upon another. Your moral code is completely arbitrary and for this reason it is -- useless!

Nope. more bald assertions.

views of morality =/= actual morality

Just because someone thinks something is right, doesn't make it so. Views of morality change, but views of morality are not the same thing as actual morality.

We do not live in a fantasy land, what we believe is not true simply because we believe it is. I can give you an abundant number of examples of things that people believe that are not true, so why don't you go ahead and explain to me why morality would be the exception to this?

GROUCH FAIL ATTEMPT x3
Your fighting a losing battle grouch, even I can see this.

Culture itself is not a circumstance, culture may affect circumstances.

I don't think I have a lot to add here except agreement. Cultural relativism basically claims that there is no such thing as morality except for what a culture says, and therefore there is no independent basis upon which to judge those claims. Various forms of consequentialism offer precisely this basis. In short, this debate ended a while ago.

TC

What you quoted in agreement and what you state are two different things.

In general, Consequentialism (which Utilitarianism is a branch of) agrees with the statement that actions outside of context (and consequence) have no moral value. Its the context and outcome which give them a moral value.

To who, and what are you agreeing too?

What has value are consequences, and the consequences of an action depend to some extent on the context. For example, shouting "Fire!" might have no consequence if I do it in my car as I'm driving, while having entirely different ones in a theater or when commanding troups. The other thing context does is limit our options, so an undesirable consequence might be entirely avoidable in one case but the lesser of evils in another.

Now, what this has to do with cultural relativism, I don't know. Cultural relativism just says that morality is whatever a particular culture decides. This is not the same thing as consequentialism, and is largely incompatible.

Does that clarify my stance?

TC

Cultural Relativism and Utilitarianism (Utilitarianism being a branch of Consequentialism) go hand in hand. They are not the same, but they can work together and are hardly incompatible.

Cultural Relativism decides what is Good, Utilitarianism provides the method and framework for archiving the most of it.

You are mistaken. Cultural relativism denies the existence of a transcultural basis for morality, which is precisely what consequentialism provides.

TC

uh no...

Consequentialism - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Consequentialism refers to those moral theories which hold that the consequences of a particular action form the basis for any valid moral judgment about that action (but see rule consequentialism). Thus, from a consequentialist standpoint, a morally right action is one that produces a good outcome, or consequence.

That's the extent of basic Consequentialism.

Using Cultural Relativism, the culture makes its own determinations on what is valued as Good.

There is nothing over arching or unifying about it. Consequentialism and all its variations are little more than equations used to reach a positive moral action or judgment. It does nothing to establish a unified Good or Bad, culture does that.

If you disagree provide an example next time.

Then please, I implore you, provide an argument that would correct me.

No, you can have the same circumstance or situation in two completely different cultures.

And your only response has been "is so!"

I have given examples as well, even though you will only deny this. The difference is that my examples support my case your examples do not.

Attacking an argument instead of refuting it....this is all to common with you.

Truth of what?

That went completely over your head. The point was WHY hitting a defenseless person is immoral. Moral truths are not reached on consensus. No truths are reached upon consensus, so why would morality be any different?

Argument from ignorance.

Something isn't true simply because you are unaware of alternative explanations.

Once again. truth of what?

Address what I have said.

This is a sentence fragment. ^

Perhaps you want to finish this thought so I can respond to it!?

Which word did I spell incorrectly?

I have spell-checker so have fun finding a misspelled word. :thumbup:

Consequentialism, as such, is neutral about how we should rate one consequence above another.

Traditional formulations involve things like happiness, fulfillment, and so on, none of which are more than incidentally linked to culture.

Whether culture D thinks a particular consequence is desirable or not grants it no special authority, not even over members of its own culture. It's just another opinion that has to be evaluated according to its merits, if any.

The distinction between act and rule consequentialism is artificial. They're the same thing, applied to two different questions: What should I personally do? What social policy should we set?

Cultural relativism says nothing about consequences and does not need to be consequentialist in any way. In fact, a culture's code of ethics is more typically stated in deontological terms and can be quite apathetic about the context of decisions.