Quote:
Originally posted by john_cramer
Uhh, that's cognitive noise, there. "What 'society' finds acceptable or unacceptable" is either so vague as to be without meaning, or you've just DEFINED morality for us.
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Well, for the sake of argument, I'm a moral relativist, so I'll push this point. You see, 50 years ago, it was against laws all over the South to marry against your race. If morals defined the laws, then the morals have changed (as indicated by the change of law), and there is no objective unchanging standard for morals. Therefore, laws are not defined by morals, but rather by what society finds acceptable or unacceptable. Morals don't even really enter the argument. If you wanted to, you could say that that society found inter-racial marriage to be "immoral," even. Ultimately, the highest form of life is man -- there is no force outside of humanity who determines what is or is not moral, so as humanity's ideas of morality change, laws simply reflect that, and ultimately have no relationship to anything you might refer to as an objective standard of morality.
How's that? I'm doing my best to pass for a postmodern humanist.
Dan