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by ido66667 1700 days ago
If you are looking for a proven moral system, there are none. The whole idea of human rights is a product of a certain culture (western europe and its dependencies) just like the Quran or the Bible. You can't really prove something is a human rights, much like you can't prove human rights are the 'correct' moral framework. So it's all opinions really.
3 comments
human_bean 1700 days ago
I would say that Robert M Pirsig made a pretty good case for objective morality with his Metaphysics of Quality. I had never agreed with the notion before (usually the arguments are religious in nature and require faith to accept) but it is the closest I've ever come to accepting objective morality as brute fact. At the very least it is compelling to indulge in and try out, can't say I've ever looked at things in quite the same way since I first finished Lila.
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bobthechef 1700 days ago
> If you are looking for a proven moral system, there are none.

What do you mean by "prove"? You can easily extend your skepticism to any body of knowledge. The empirical sciences ought not be given a free pass merely because of some unexamined (and incoherent) prejudice like scientism.

Everything can be said to be a matter of opinion, so that does nothing to clarify the subject.

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marginalia_nu 1700 days ago
This loops back to the question of what we mean when we say a moral statement is true, which is really the heart of what we are investigating.
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ratww 1700 days ago
A moral statement can be said to be true in a certain societal context, but not in absolute. To understand this truth you have to take into account the body of knowledge and collective experience of a certain society. In this case it's pretty much the entire world. If you ignore it, then yeah, the statement doesn't make sense, but it only doesn't make sense if you choose to ignore the most important part of the discussion and all its participants.

The bigger question here is: why does a moral statement can only be valid when it's valid in absolute? Why does it have to have a proof that's easy enough for a person that's willingly choosing to ignore knowledge?

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marginalia_nu 1700 days ago
Right, but doesn't that inevitably lead to nihilism? If all value systems are equal, then are any value systems meaningful?

Why do we assert that this-and-that is a human right in such a context?

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ratww 1700 days ago
Why would it lead to nihilism?
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