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Every one of them also had kidneys, but that's not an objective argument for the pre-eminent moral value of kidneys. There is an inescapable choice in choosing
by Emma_Goldman 4y ago
Every one of them also had kidneys, but that's not an objective argument for the pre-eminent moral value of kidneys.
There is an inescapable choice in choosing the grounds from which to reason out to an ethical conclusion - there is no self-evident starting point, hence the riotous confusion of moral philosophy over the last two millennia.
- yarg 4y agoIf you go back far enough, no they didn't. Kidneys evolved, mutative replication remains the source of life.
- Emma_Goldman 4y agoThere are lots of conditions of the possibility of life - biological, physical, chemical - but the real point is that there is no incontestable reason to think that the conditions of the possibility of life are the pre-eminent source of moral value. Kant argued from the conditions of the possibility of understanding to moral conclusions. Sarte reasons from the conditions of the possibility of existential personality to morality. Rawls reasons from the conditions of the possibility of morality to morality. My point is, lots of people make this move, in a much more sophisticated way than you, and none is obviously better than the other - or indeed any other form of moral argument. There is no self-grounding foundation from which to reason about morality. What incontrovertible reason can you give for starting from the conditions of the possibility of life, or indeed one particular condition, rather than any other place? You can't.