Thursday, June 18, 2015

Mavrodes' moral argument

Mavrodes' argument from the queerness of morality. 

Here

1 comment:

DougJC said...

"“If the world is Russellian, then Russellian benefits and losses are the only benefits and losses, and also then we have moral obligations whose fulfillment will result in a net loss to the one who fulfills them.” This is what Mavrodes finds “queer,” or weird, or strange."

I don't see why this is necessarily strange. We can look at bee hives and see that individual bees constantly perform actions that are a net loss to the individual. This is easily understood by considering the bee hive a "superorganism" with all net loss/benefits collectively applied to it rather than to individuals. Humans in a Russellian world could likewise understand moral obligations in terms of the net gain and loss to the superorganism: the family, tribe, group, nation.