Golden rule = treat others as you would want to be treated. I'm not really a philosopher(in fact, I consider philosophy a mental affliction that prevents people from attaining meaningful relationships or jobs), but that seems to me the best standard for determining right and wrong.
"How should we act?"
"There is no proper way to act."
"..."
"..."
"So how should we act?"
I fail to see the point of humoring philosophical dead ends.
You can't answer the question "How should I act?" until you answer the question "What am I trying to accomplish?". Moral relativism is nothing but the observation that the answer to the second question differs from person to person, and from culture to culture.
Morality is a concept. There is no true definition of what is right and what is wrong. My morals and your morals differ because we live in different environments. They are traits we pick up and embed into our subconscious based on a strong positive or negative effect from an event. In short, right and wrong exist, but vary from person to person.
Although subscriptive absolutism is a fantasy, judgmental absolutism is valid. In other words, if Adam and Steve value the same thing (x), then there will be an absolute right[x] thing to do in any given situation, and Adam and Steve can legitimately argue about what the right[x] thing to do is.
Moral relativism at that "judgmental" point is fallacious. Moral relativism is true at the "subscriptive" point, while absolutism is true at the "judgmental" point when given a subscription.
Does the research indicate this? I don't think the debate of nature-nurture has been resolved (yet), i.e. what role each plays in the value attributions of a human individual. And this leaves room for quite a substantial degree of cultural relativism.
Doesn't matter. If it's culturally inculcated in us, then cultures developing in parallel have arrived at the same "conclusion": it's convergent evolution on the memetic scale, and if anything, it says more about the essential non-arbitrariness of these behavioral codes. It certainly gives us more reason to believe that the Martians will, if social, have something recognizable as a morality.
Where value comes from tells us nothing about what we should value. In other words, there are two options:
1) The yellow sphere is filled in rationally.
2) The yellow sphere is filled in irrationally.
If the former, you run into an infinite reference problem unless and until you concede to the latter at some point. If the latter, value proceeds from mere happenstance -- there is no transcendent absolutism.
Correct. Ish. I wouldn't call the design process that led to human moral consciousness "mere happenstance"; we value the welfare of our fellow man for non-transcendent but nevertheless non-arbitrary reasons.
Golden rule = treat others as you would want to be treated. I'm not really a philosopher(in fact, I consider philosophy a mental affliction that prevents people from attaining meaningful relationships or jobs), but that seems to me the best standard for determining right and wrong.
Actually, it's pretty crappy. I would like everybody to give me all their money. Should I give all my money away?
The funny thing is that a negative Golden Rule - "Do not treat others as you would not want to be treated" - does work pretty well for most people. I'm pretty sure that however morality works in the end, it's basically negative, a code of prohibitions rather than obligations.
Morality is a concept. There is no true definition of what is right and what is wrong.
This is correct as far as it goes, but similar to saying "There is no true definition of what is a cat and what is a dog." For us as English speakers to understand each other when we ask the question "Is this right?", we have to have a common reference for what "right" is.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Correct. Ish. I wouldn't call the design process that led to human moral consciousness "mere happenstance"; we value the welfare of our fellow man for non-transcendent but nevertheless non-arbitrary reasons.
Nonarbitrariness is nonetheless happenstance unless we're introducing teleology.
Does the process to make something "absolute" is defined as we give value and qualities to it?
We don't have a goal until needed and "absolutes" are certain for the group or individual who so accepts it.
If so morality exists and it doesn't.
Then moralities exist and the arbiter could be anything/anyone?
If so what's the purpose of this? meh...
This topic is pretty meh. Is like all those other topics on intangible subjects and ideas. We could be here an eternity trying to define something and die first without ever coming up with a conclusion.
I'm going to sleep...
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- Lack of common sense is like the common flu.
I'm jumping in late, here. Moral relativism has always made sense to me. If any one of us was born in a Viking culture, we would have no problems with killing and plundering other civilizations. Because of our own morals, we can look at that culture and see it as barbaric. And, no doubt, they would look at ours and see us weak. This has always made sense to me. Obviously, cultures evolve and diverge, spawning new sets of morals along with new cultures. Highroller's argument about how moral relativism being defined culturally is wrong just because someone can rebel against the moral structures that are in place in that culture actually provides a good point for how morals are defined culturally. If nobody could rebel against the moral code in their culture, then we wouldn't have different cultures would we?
How can we know the morality in these cultures developped separately from other cultures? What if the typical core tenets originated in one ancestral 'culture'?
You can't take convergent evolution for granted. It could be divergent with the basic principles remaining the same due to being quite fit.
Again, doesn't really matter. It's precisely the fitness of the basic principles that I'm drawing attention to here.
And the important part is: if these morals are memetic, they are much more easily changed. Your argument about universal principles among humans would be an appeal to tradition. If you encounter a culture that disagrees with one of your stances, you can't appeal to their genetic moral laws, for they don't exist. All you have is your memetic laws, but those obviously differ. That's the problem moral relativism poses right there, though there are multiple possible answers to it.
Missed the point. Memetics and genetics are just different media for natural selection to act on. Whether our moral code is a result of biology or culture, it has taken on a certain natural form due to the selection pressures of life as a social sophont.
I'm pointing out that penguins are streamlined because that's objectively the best shape for what penguins do, and you're objecting that we could modify penguins into different shapes. We could, but they would be worse shapes.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
A: "Universal moral standards exist."
B: "No, there is no right or wrong."
A: "And why are you pointing this out to me?"
B: "Because what you've said is false."
A: "So you are saying that a person ought to believe that which is true?"
B: "..."
If you read what I wrote I said it wasn't inconsistent... However you opened yourself up to some obvious criticism. You just said you had no problem with the example I gave. Which means if God came down and started raping people, you would be fine with that.
The criticism being opened up to being: "I don't like your morality so it must be wrong." If an actual God (proven to be such etc etc etc) actually came down and did something most people considered wrong, I think it would be time to reconsider what we call "moral".
I don't really have a problem with you not agreeing with my view that morality is necessarily either defined by God or non-existent. I think it would be awful presumptuous for us to say "Hey, you! All-Knowing God! You're WRONG!" I also don't see any way for morality to come into existence, or have any meaning without a God.
(The bold part is bold to help depict my personal viewpoint, not meant as yelling or whatever.)
I think it would be awful presumptuous for us to say "Hey, you! All-Knowing God! You're WRONG!"
And how could God demonstrate to us that He actually is all-knowing?
I also don't see any way for morality to come into existence, or have any meaning without a God.
Do you see any way for human life to come into existence without God? Because morality, at least in its rudimentary essentials, is intrinsic to any sort of coherent society. Imagine a collection of people who believe that it is "right" to steal, murder, lie, abandon their children, etc. It is plain to see that they would self-destruct in a matter of moments. "Survival of the fittest," as applied to human society -- and that is the only way possible for humans, collectively, to live: in society -- means that people necessarily sustain a certain minimum threshold of moral behavior... or they cease to exist.
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Love. Forgive. Trust. Be willing to be broken that you may be remade.
A: "Universal moral standards exist."
B: "No, there is no right or wrong."
A: "And why are you pointing this out to me?"
B: "Because what you've said is false."
A: "So you are saying that a person ought to believe that which is true?"
B: "..."
What am I missing here, blink?
Equivocation on the meaning of "ought". It isn't always moral.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
This is what I mean about not speaking English. Try "axiology". EDIT: Or just "rationality".
Axiology's pretty good. Rationality is entirely different, though.
The reason why I conflate ethics with axiology in my metaethics is because there's no crisp, functional distinction between the two. I'd rather improve English than dance around its idioms.
The criticism being opened up to being: "I don't like your morality so it must be wrong."
No, I never said that. I am just saying the consequence is you would be fine with rape, provided your god OKed it. I think a large number of people find that morally abhorrent. That is my only point. I am not saying anything other then I consider that immoral.
If an actual God (proven to be such etc etc etc) actually came down and did something most people considered wrong, I think it would be time to reconsider what we call "moral".
I think it would be time to be very, *very* afraid. Just because this thing was super-powerful doesn't mean I need to start thinking rape is cool.
I don't really have a problem with you not agreeing with my view that morality is necessarily either defined by God or non-existent. I think it would be awful presumptuous for us to say "Hey, you! All-Knowing God! You're WRONG!"
See I find it problematic when you can possibly reconcile rape as kosher. I think that is downright dangerous. That same justification is exactly how a suicide bomber thinks it is good to go blow people up. After all: God commands it.
I also don't see any way for morality to come into existence, or have any meaning without a God.
Why does meaning require authority/arbitration through power? That step has never been justified.
The reason why I conflate ethics with axiology in my metaethics is because there's no crisp, functional distinction between the two. I'd rather improve English than dance around its idioms.
That smells suspiciously like a continuum fallacy.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
That smells suspiciously like a continuum fallacy.
I'm waiting for someone to tell me that when I say "I consider waterboarding a kind of torture because there is no crisp, functional difference between it and commonly acknowledged forms of torture."
I'm waiting for someone to tell me that when I say "I consider waterboarding a kind of torture because there is no crisp, functional difference between it and commonly acknowledged forms of torture."
Parallel sentence: "I consider ethics a kind of axiology because there is no crisp, functional difference between it and commonly acknowledged forms of axiology." Which is a much weaker claim, one I don't dispute. And since I very much doubt you'd say that all torture is waterboarding, you're really not doing your case any favors with this analogy.
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I guess a better analogy would be cougars versus mountain lions.
The difference is that there are few if any English speakers who would say "This animal is a mountain lion and not a cougar" or "That animal is a cougar and not a mountain lion"; the usage is dialectical but congruent.
Regardless, I don't actually completely conflate ethics and axiology. I conflate ethics and axiological decisionmaking.
Are you saying you call "ethics" the decisionmaking process itself, rather than the normative framework behind the process, or the philosophical discipline exploring the framework?
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Vive, vale. Siquid novisti rectius istis,
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Resolved:
There is a Higher moral authority than man, be it a God or a "Natural" moral code, therefore morality is not subjective but objective and there is a "correct" view of what is right and what is wrong.
Yes. I agree with that, but I can't offer a defense of my views, since I'm not a moral philosopher; I'm an undergraduate computer science student. Nevertheless, I can give it a go. I am a moral realist. According to the Wikipedia summary, moral realism "is the meta-ethical view which claims that: 1) Ethical sentences express propositions; 2) Some such propositions are true; and, 3) Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion." So basically, on the moral realist view, there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a moral proposition is true, and the truth of a moral proposition has nothing whatsoever to do with what you and I think.
Since I can't really defend the view, I'll tell you what I like about the view. In simple terms, it vindicates my conviction that in a debate, somebody is right, and somebody is wrong. Either anal rape is moral, or it's not. It doesn't become moral when two rapists get together and have a moral argument and agree that anal rape is moral. Nor would it become moral if we put it to a vote of the majority of citizens in a nation.
What I also like about moral realism is that it gives us a grounding to criticize backwardness in other cultures (like almost all Islamic societies); if it turned about that a moral proposition A is correct, and if culture X believes A is actually incorrect, then culture X is backwards in the question, if not in general.
Help has come in the form of a bit of basic algebra. I feel that it'll shed some light on your problem here.
Basically:
S + T = W
...S in this case stands for 'spam' and the T stands for 'light trolling'. And the W? That stands for 'Warning'. I love math. -- {mikeyG}
What I also like about moral realism is that it gives us a grounding to criticize backwardness in other cultures (like almost all Islamic societies); if it turned about that a moral proposition A is correct, and if culture X believes A is actually incorrect, then culture X is backwards in the question, if not in general.
While this is true, it doesn't take into account that even though many cultures have ideals about what is moral their societies on the grand and on the small scale don't always follow those ideals.
Take, for example, the way the western world came into power: subjugating and destroying the native inhabitants. Non-western people don't forget this, and in them it will twist the objective moral standpoints. That is to say, we've made precedents about what is moral, but first we broke them. We have tens of thousands of years of civilization to look on and learn from, but instead the nature of the heads of government make it such that a causal morality exists pancontinentally.
On the small scale: people trying to exist within their society. Well, socioeconomically, the poor are more likely to be criminals. Why is this? Because you live in society. Society is one of the grand machines of the western world: its charge is to make the common man walk towards wealth by dangling a carrot. Those who try this and don't succeed, do things that they know are wrong because it needs to be done to get what they want and need.
This doesn't make what's right and wrong subjective. We do what we think is best; those of us who recognize that other beings have certain rights try to do what is best to as many of those beings as possible. But in the current state of things, this certainly isn't everyone.
While this is true, it doesn't take into account that even though many cultures have ideals about what is moral their societies on the grand and on the small scale don't always follow those ideals.
Of course not, but to say that people don't follow their own rules is not to say that the rules do not exist or that they have no value. I believe that there are some universal rules that apply to all people. It is that sense in which I am a moral realist and moral universalist.
This doesn't make what's right and wrong subjective. We do what we think is best; those of us who recognize that other beings have certain rights try to do what is best to as many of those beings as possible. But in the current state of things, this certainly isn't everyone.
I've added emphasis here, because that's what it comes down to. The West has a brutal, oppressive history, and we should acknowledge that. In fact, it's ongoing. When the US supports Israel and doesn't seem to criticize much of anything it does, it sends the message that we hate Arabs and want them to suffer and die. However, the fact that we break the universal moral rules that should bind us does not mean that the rules have no value. In fact, our return to the rules would give them more value.
Notwithstanding our history as oppressors in the world, it is still true that in the West, we believe in and tend (mostly) to uphold more correct moral propositions and fewer incorrect ones than other parts of the world. In the West, you can be gay, and that's all fine. You can even have a parade and make social authoritarians angry. In most of the Muslim world, being gay is punishable by prison, flogging, or even death. I suspect we don't even need to get started on the rights of women.
Now that I think about it, is your snag coming from a belief that we have to be perfect or perfectible for moral propositions to have any meaning?
Help has come in the form of a bit of basic algebra. I feel that it'll shed some light on your problem here.
Basically:
S + T = W
...S in this case stands for 'spam' and the T stands for 'light trolling'. And the W? That stands for 'Warning'. I love math. -- {mikeyG}
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Golden rule = treat others as you would want to be treated. I'm not really a philosopher(in fact, I consider philosophy a mental affliction that prevents people from attaining meaningful relationships or jobs), but that seems to me the best standard for determining right and wrong.
You can't answer the question "How should I act?" until you answer the question "What am I trying to accomplish?". Moral relativism is nothing but the observation that the answer to the second question differs from person to person, and from culture to culture.
Moral relativism at that "judgmental" point is fallacious. Moral relativism is true at the "subscriptive" point, while absolutism is true at the "judgmental" point when given a subscription.
Doesn't matter. If it's culturally inculcated in us, then cultures developing in parallel have arrived at the same "conclusion": it's convergent evolution on the memetic scale, and if anything, it says more about the essential non-arbitrariness of these behavioral codes. It certainly gives us more reason to believe that the Martians will, if social, have something recognizable as a morality.
Correct. Ish. I wouldn't call the design process that led to human moral consciousness "mere happenstance"; we value the welfare of our fellow man for non-transcendent but nevertheless non-arbitrary reasons.
Only one of us will be speaking English.
Actually, it's pretty crappy. I would like everybody to give me all their money. Should I give all my money away?
The funny thing is that a negative Golden Rule - "Do not treat others as you would not want to be treated" - does work pretty well for most people. I'm pretty sure that however morality works in the end, it's basically negative, a code of prohibitions rather than obligations.
This is correct as far as it goes, but similar to saying "There is no true definition of what is a cat and what is a dog." For us as English speakers to understand each other when we ask the question "Is this right?", we have to have a common reference for what "right" is.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Nonarbitrariness is nonetheless happenstance unless we're introducing teleology.
No, we will both be speaking English. We will just be valuing different things. "Moral majority" is not redundant.
We don't have a goal until needed and "absolutes" are certain for the group or individual who so accepts it.
If so morality exists and it doesn't.
Then moralities exist and the arbiter could be anything/anyone?
If so what's the purpose of this? meh...
This topic is pretty meh. Is like all those other topics on intangible subjects and ideas. We could be here an eternity trying to define something and die first without ever coming up with a conclusion.
I'm going to sleep...
- Lack of common sense is like the common flu.
Helping unknown people and getting flame by them.
http://www.ebay.com/sch/guasus_lot/m.html?category=19115&cmd=ViewItem&ih=002&item=120914914666&rd=1&sspagename=WDVW&rt=nc&_trksid=p4340.l2562
My eBay Listings finishing in 15 minutes.
Again, doesn't really matter. It's precisely the fitness of the basic principles that I'm drawing attention to here.
Missed the point. Memetics and genetics are just different media for natural selection to act on. Whether our moral code is a result of biology or culture, it has taken on a certain natural form due to the selection pressures of life as a social sophont.
I'm pointing out that penguins are streamlined because that's objectively the best shape for what penguins do, and you're objecting that we could modify penguins into different shapes. We could, but they would be worse shapes.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
A: "Universal moral standards exist."
B: "No, there is no right or wrong."
A: "And why are you pointing this out to me?"
B: "Because what you've said is false."
A: "So you are saying that a person ought to believe that which is true?"
B: "..."
What am I missing here, blink?
The criticism being opened up to being: "I don't like your morality so it must be wrong." If an actual God (proven to be such etc etc etc) actually came down and did something most people considered wrong, I think it would be time to reconsider what we call "moral".
I don't really have a problem with you not agreeing with my view that morality is necessarily either defined by God or non-existent. I think it would be awful presumptuous for us to say "Hey, you! All-Knowing God! You're WRONG!" I also don't see any way for morality to come into existence, or have any meaning without a God.
(The bold part is bold to help depict my personal viewpoint, not meant as yelling or whatever.)
And how could God demonstrate to us that He actually is all-knowing?
Do you see any way for human life to come into existence without God? Because morality, at least in its rudimentary essentials, is intrinsic to any sort of coherent society. Imagine a collection of people who believe that it is "right" to steal, murder, lie, abandon their children, etc. It is plain to see that they would self-destruct in a matter of moments. "Survival of the fittest," as applied to human society -- and that is the only way possible for humans, collectively, to live: in society -- means that people necessarily sustain a certain minimum threshold of moral behavior... or they cease to exist.
Equivocation on the meaning of "ought". It isn't always moral.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I say that "ought" is always an ethical term.
... but I also bite the bullet and generalize ethics to apply to any decision toward goal-value, like "What screwdriver ought I use on this screw?"
This is what I mean about not speaking English. Try "axiology". EDIT: Or just "rationality".
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Axiology's pretty good. Rationality is entirely different, though.
The reason why I conflate ethics with axiology in my metaethics is because there's no crisp, functional distinction between the two. I'd rather improve English than dance around its idioms.
No, I never said that. I am just saying the consequence is you would be fine with rape, provided your god OKed it. I think a large number of people find that morally abhorrent. That is my only point. I am not saying anything other then I consider that immoral.
I think it would be time to be very, *very* afraid. Just because this thing was super-powerful doesn't mean I need to start thinking rape is cool.
See I find it problematic when you can possibly reconcile rape as kosher. I think that is downright dangerous. That same justification is exactly how a suicide bomber thinks it is good to go blow people up. After all: God commands it.
Why does meaning require authority/arbitration through power? That step has never been justified.
- Enslaught
That smells suspiciously like a continuum fallacy.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
I'm waiting for someone to tell me that when I say "I consider waterboarding a kind of torture because there is no crisp, functional difference between it and commonly acknowledged forms of torture."
Parallel sentence: "I consider ethics a kind of axiology because there is no crisp, functional difference between it and commonly acknowledged forms of axiology." Which is a much weaker claim, one I don't dispute. And since I very much doubt you'd say that all torture is waterboarding, you're really not doing your case any favors with this analogy.
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Regardless, I don't actually completely conflate ethics and axiology. I conflate ethics and axiological decisionmaking.
The difference is that there are few if any English speakers who would say "This animal is a mountain lion and not a cougar" or "That animal is a cougar and not a mountain lion"; the usage is dialectical but congruent.
Are you saying you call "ethics" the decisionmaking process itself, rather than the normative framework behind the process, or the philosophical discipline exploring the framework?
candidus inperti; si nil, his utere mecum.
Yes. I agree with that, but I can't offer a defense of my views, since I'm not a moral philosopher; I'm an undergraduate computer science student. Nevertheless, I can give it a go. I am a moral realist. According to the Wikipedia summary, moral realism "is the meta-ethical view which claims that: 1) Ethical sentences express propositions; 2) Some such propositions are true; and, 3) Those propositions are made true by objective features of the world, independent of subjective opinion." So basically, on the moral realist view, there is a fact of the matter as to whether or not a moral proposition is true, and the truth of a moral proposition has nothing whatsoever to do with what you and I think.
Since I can't really defend the view, I'll tell you what I like about the view. In simple terms, it vindicates my conviction that in a debate, somebody is right, and somebody is wrong. Either anal rape is moral, or it's not. It doesn't become moral when two rapists get together and have a moral argument and agree that anal rape is moral. Nor would it become moral if we put it to a vote of the majority of citizens in a nation.
What I also like about moral realism is that it gives us a grounding to criticize backwardness in other cultures (like almost all Islamic societies); if it turned about that a moral proposition A is correct, and if culture X believes A is actually incorrect, then culture X is backwards in the question, if not in general.
Help has come in the form of a bit of basic algebra. I feel that it'll shed some light on your problem here.
Basically:
S + T = W
...S in this case stands for 'spam' and the T stands for 'light trolling'. And the W? That stands for 'Warning'. I love math. -- {mikeyG}
While this is true, it doesn't take into account that even though many cultures have ideals about what is moral their societies on the grand and on the small scale don't always follow those ideals.
Take, for example, the way the western world came into power: subjugating and destroying the native inhabitants. Non-western people don't forget this, and in them it will twist the objective moral standpoints. That is to say, we've made precedents about what is moral, but first we broke them. We have tens of thousands of years of civilization to look on and learn from, but instead the nature of the heads of government make it such that a causal morality exists pancontinentally.
On the small scale: people trying to exist within their society. Well, socioeconomically, the poor are more likely to be criminals. Why is this? Because you live in society. Society is one of the grand machines of the western world: its charge is to make the common man walk towards wealth by dangling a carrot. Those who try this and don't succeed, do things that they know are wrong because it needs to be done to get what they want and need.
This doesn't make what's right and wrong subjective. We do what we think is best; those of us who recognize that other beings have certain rights try to do what is best to as many of those beings as possible. But in the current state of things, this certainly isn't everyone.
This is a Shivan Ampersand
Of course not, but to say that people don't follow their own rules is not to say that the rules do not exist or that they have no value. I believe that there are some universal rules that apply to all people. It is that sense in which I am a moral realist and moral universalist.
I've added emphasis here, because that's what it comes down to. The West has a brutal, oppressive history, and we should acknowledge that. In fact, it's ongoing. When the US supports Israel and doesn't seem to criticize much of anything it does, it sends the message that we hate Arabs and want them to suffer and die. However, the fact that we break the universal moral rules that should bind us does not mean that the rules have no value. In fact, our return to the rules would give them more value.
Notwithstanding our history as oppressors in the world, it is still true that in the West, we believe in and tend (mostly) to uphold more correct moral propositions and fewer incorrect ones than other parts of the world. In the West, you can be gay, and that's all fine. You can even have a parade and make social authoritarians angry. In most of the Muslim world, being gay is punishable by prison, flogging, or even death. I suspect we don't even need to get started on the rights of women.
Now that I think about it, is your snag coming from a belief that we have to be perfect or perfectible for moral propositions to have any meaning?
Help has come in the form of a bit of basic algebra. I feel that it'll shed some light on your problem here.
Basically:
S + T = W
...S in this case stands for 'spam' and the T stands for 'light trolling'. And the W? That stands for 'Warning'. I love math. -- {mikeyG}