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Most people will claim to have absolutist morals. They will say that it is wrong to kill someone and that ends do just justify means. What becomes interesting
by Periodic 16y ago
Most people will claim to have absolutist morals. They will say that it is wrong to kill someone and that ends do just justify means. What becomes interesting is that almost anyone will display circumstantial morals if confronted with a trade-off like this. The interesting question is at what point do their morals change and why.
- lhorie 16y agoMy theory is that "killing = bad" is a default canned answer that society says is "correct" and people don't really think about what-if-I-am-faced-with-a-tricky-life-or-death-situation scenarios since these scenarios are not realistic to begin with. I'm not very convinced that the assumption that people have a fixed moral system is correct. It doesn't make a whole lot of sense (evolutionarily speaking) to optimize for some abstract ideal consistency rather than fitting into a group. As far as living in a society goes, telling your social circle that you shun all forms of human killing is one thing, actually making a life-or-death decision when there are tricky caveats is completely different.