IFeelFree wrote:joefromchicago wrote:IFeelFree wrote:Perhaps they were. However, acting morally requires the ability to have certain emotional reactions.
That's getting very close to a circular argument. In effect, you argue that a person must have the capacity to act morally in order to act morally, and you can tell if a person has a capacity to act morally by the fact that he acts morally. That argument, however, just proves itself -- it means nothing.
I said nothing about our ability to "tell if a person has a capacity to act morally". Please don't put words in my mouth.
Not putting words in your mouth, just saying what you are arguing
in effect. You have no evidence for this "innate moral sense" except your own subjective "hunch" (which even you admit isn't evidence, except maybe for yourself) and the fact that people tend to
act morally.
You say that "acting morally requires the ability to have certain emotional reactions." You may believe that because you just
feel that it's true, but
I have no reason to believe that unless you come up with some sort of empirical evidence or logical proof. And the only evidence you can come up with is the fact that people, in general, tend to act morally. But that can't be evidence for an "innate moral sense" or a capacity to act morally, since you presuppose the existence of that innate moral sense as the basis for acting morally. In effect, then, you are begging the question: an innate capacity to act morally is necessary for acting morally, and you know that because people tend to act morally.
That's pretty bad, but your position actually gets worse, since you admit that
some people don't need the innate capacity in order to exhibit a particular behavior. You've said, for instance, that some people who ride bikes don't have the innate capacity to ride bikes, so presumably it's possible that some people who act morally don't have the innate capacity to act morally. Who these people are and how we can distinguish them from the people who have the innate capacity to act morally is a mystery that I think even you can't solve.
IFeelFree wrote:"Lying is wrong" is indeed an abstract moral principle. Its not referring to a particular act of lying, it is a statement about lying in general.
No it isn't, because you admit that there are some exceptions to this rule. In any event, "lying" isn't an abstraction and "wrong" isn't an abstraction, so how is "lying is wrong" an abstraction?
IFeelFree wrote:Then, by implication, if I'm not a weirdo, then my decision to factor subjective feelings into my decision making is not weird.
No, that doesn't follow. If you're not a weirdo, then the only thing we can conclude is that you are something other than a weirdo. Your argument, on the other hand, may still be totally wrong.
