One of the most common mistakes is assuming that political opponents are ignorant. If only they had the right education; consumed the right media; or had the correct experience, they’d surely see things properly. The error is believing that we arrived at our values through reason. Values like hierarchy or equity are adopted by a complex process of disposition, emotion, and experience. Reason may be a component of this process, it may be a value unto itself, but it cannot support values.
Even simple moral claims like “it’s wrong to steal” cannot be supported by logic. Give it a try and you’ll come up with arguments like: “stealing is wrong because it harms the victim”. But you’ve not solved the problem, just pushed it back a step because now you have to defend the claim “it’s wrong to harm”. You cannot use observations about how the world is to calculate how it ought to be. Justifying moral claims with other moral claims dooms you to circular reasoning and infinite regression.
For those of you clever enough to argue deontology or utilitarianism, I’ll point out that these systems are ethical. Only concerned with how one should behave; helpless to prove something just or wicked. The moral principles of deontology and utilitarianism are assumed, not proven. Both systems will endorse ridiculous, intolerable, and outrageous actions in particular circumstances.
Objective morality probably doesn’t exist and has never been justified.
I started a shitstorm when I said that all extremists are the same and listed white supremacists, Nazis, PETA, and vegan extremists. The vegan extremist brigade came for me. There were only about a dozen of them and they were weak and malnourished so I survived.
They believe that they are absolutely morally superior and that that superiority, no matter what their cause, justifies their abhorrent and antisocial behaviour.
I’m not even a vegan or a vegetarian. I eat so much meat but honestly they are morally superior to both of us.
You lumping them in with Nazis is a coping mechanism. It’s also pathetic
I’m sorry that you don’t understand my point.
Extremists all believe that they are somehow superior. White supremacists believe that they are racially superior. Christofascists believe that they are religiously superior. PETA and the vegan extremists believe that they are morally superior. Each of those groups believes that their imagined superiority justifies anything that they do. Their beliefs and actions are different but the wrong thought is the same.
I understand what you were trying to say. It’s just silly and well wrong. Vegans have never tried to justify any atrocity on the scale of what the White supremacists or christofascists have.
Having an opinion that’s extreme or different from others doesn’t make you bad. That’s a silly thing to think. What makes you bad is doing bad things. Sure, people that do bad things need to justify them to themselves. I agree there.
However what large-scale atrocities have vegans or vegetarians committed that makes you think that they are like these other groups? If you don’t have an answer for that, you’re saying something silly and stupid.
Do you see it’s a two-part thing? Horrible atrocity plus internal justification. All you have on vegans is that they have a different morals than you. They’re not using those different morals to justify atrocities. Understand?