IcyMonkey wrote:
Good and evil are nothing more than social constructions...
How is it that historically isolated societies come up with such strikingly similar understandings of good and evil?
Rae wrote:
If something is based on faith, it is based on what an individual believes without "scientiftic and rational" support, and thus us abstract and contrived.
I agree with your premises, but you're assuming that all knowledge has to be scientific, which I'm interpreting as empirical. Also, let's dump "faith" because it connotes religious faith... knowledge is often considered "justified, true belief" with the "justified" part being the most contentious aspect.
A point I tried to make earlier (mm... possibly not even on this thread, oh well) was that there has to be some initial axioms of good and evil and that they're known a priori. Another way of putting this is that to form a coherent justification (which is necessary to know *anything*) you need to use some other pieces of knowledge, which in turn require more knowledge, etc.
This is a fancy way of saying a conclusion rests on premises which are in turn conclusions in their own right. (I'm leaving out knowledge derived from inductive reasoning...) Anyway, knowledge of what's good is one of those most basic pieces of knowledge and I think you get that for free when you acknowledge your own existence.
I don't really care what psychologists think. It's a wonderful form of medicine, but is not a replacement for philosophy.
Rae wrote:
I'm playing devils advocate Clay, so don't attempt to take anything out one me.
I know that was addressed to Clay, but on the odd chance I do come across as sounding excited, it usually means a poor edit... I usually write something more forcefully and then tone it down after reading over it.