161–170 of 464 posts
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If you had to qualify it with "most", then it isn't universal. Moreover, I don't think morality is what applies only to your friends.
Well the qualifier could be the writer’s way of stating that he or she lacks knowledge of every society. After a brief search I can find no society that approved of stealing from peers.
I've read that Chomsky can be pretty nasty to his debate opponents, but he's amazingly congenial in this video. It really makes me wish I could spend hours and hours chatting with him. I've run across a handful of philosophers: Chomsky, Peter Kreeft, etc. who can stay really chill during a debate. It's seems like a superpower for keeping discussions productive.
His debate opponents seem to be pretty nasty with him and come out the gate swinging. Why blame him for doing the same?
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No he definitely made the claim. He was quoted saying “tales of holocaust in Cambodia were so much propaganda.” He went on to say that refugees were making up the stories to please the west. It’s in the 1977 article on his own website. Chomsky apologists never seem to be able to admit that he carried water for the worst regimes of the 20th century. To be clear there are nearly 24,000 confirmed mass graves accounting…
Due to little info coming out of Cambodia at the time, from what I read, Chomsky said he underestimated the immensity of the genocide, not that he denied it. Later he acknowledged it, you make it sound he's some sort of Holocaust denier. Funnily Chomsky gets a lot more flack for incorrectly assessing the gravity of the Khmer Rouge killings in the late 70s while the US foreign policy which was intstumental in keeping…
What is meant by moral relativism in this case I think is merely that morals do not come to us handed down by God or Nature as Chomsky claims, but are a constant choice made by people over a potentially infinite range. But to assert that the morals don't come from God is not to say that morals are not valuable or worth having.
As Foucault puts it, "What is good, is something that comes through innovation. The good does not exist, like that, in an atemporal sky, with people who would be like the Astrologers of the Good, whose job is to determine what is the favorable nature of the stars. The good is defined by us, it is practiced, it is invented. And this is a collective work."
1. http://www.critical-theory.com/read-me-foucault-interview-in...
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Some interesting responses here but imo these sound like "worse" but not "far far far worse" conditions to me. A war where lots of people are being killed exploded maimed raped generationally ruined or traumatized - is really horrible either way. It sounds like Russia has somewhat worse intentional practices than us but I don't see what the us did as okay in any sense.
Russians on their TV openly argue for killing "every Ukrainian". The fact we are even arguing about this is the best evidence that morality is relative...
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Well the qualifier could be the writer’s way of stating that he or she lacks knowledge of every society. After a brief search I can find no society that approved of stealing from peers.
People from which it's okay to steal aren't peers.
“You believe stealing is wrong, but if your family was starving and could not afford bread, wouldn’t you say it’s okay to steal a loaf to feed them?” - A.J. Darkholme
etc.
The basis of a morality may start with a simple set of propositions. Life ensures that the unknown unknowns that you encounter morphs them into an ever-evolving ruleset.
"...even if you’re the most extreme cultural relativist, you are presupposing universal moral values. Those can be discovered.”
And as a linguist, he himself should know best that language usage here matters. What do we mean by "discovered" or "universal moral values" anyway. Clear all that up first before trying to eliminate moral relativism with a broad brush.
There almost certainly isn't a universal moral code. For every abominable act you can think of - murder, slavery, even genocide -, we can find examples of human groups that glorified them, usually by evoking religion, group affiliation or a mix of both.
If there is a universal moral code, we can never know it for certain. Moral knowledge, as well as all other kinds of knowledge, is always open to criticism and being proven wrong. But nevertheless we can make moral progress, just as we make scientific progress. We can find good explanations for why killing and enslaving people is wrong, even whilst we can point to countless examples where killing and enslaving people…
It's weird to hear Foucault described as "amoral" when he himself claimed to be a moralist [1]. What is meant by moral relativism in this case I think is merely that morals do not come to us handed down by God or Nature as Chomsky claims, but are a constant choice made by people over a potentially infinite range. But to assert that the morals don't come from God is not to say that morals are not valuable or worth hav…