Primal

I notice that most moral systems take a holistic/universal approach, i.e. they look for some ultimate universal good or evil and then work downwards. But life contains too much variation for this, and hence the approach ultimately flops. Reality is composed of material bits, life dna, the mind individual nerves, not some overall spirtual force.

I was wondering if anyone else though a more reductivist approach would be more constructive. That is instead of looking for a higher-universal principle one looks at pieces within raw experience and tries to identify what is "good" or "bad" as pieces of that experience. Hence instead of there being one good or one bad, there are many different bits thereof, with the overall right or wrong decision apealing not to a universal principle but to an aggregate of underlying bits. This would be an opposite approach to morality, instead of justification via some grand principle we have a justification of every paticular moral claim in itself which taken together are the justification of some grander principles.

This viewpoint would avoid the problems of a holistic need for something universal, while at the same time avoiding relativism via not making moral systems equal to every subject,a matter of choice or epistemically equal.

The approach would thus start with "raw data" of morality, the fact that we seem to experience certain sensations we call "morals" and then promote explanations and derivitatives from them. Each "bit" would then be aknowledged as qualitatively different and as to why we have them would remain unanswered at the purely philosophical level, much as why we have different emotions at all. We don't study emotions via a top down approach, we don't start by producing something like a categorical imperative and then conclude that "thus we have love,pain and fear". We start with the fact that we have love pain and fear and then seek explanations as to why in anatomy,chemistry,cognitive science and evolutionary studies. I think morality, as an aspect of human nature, should be much the same way. Instead of starting with the categorical imperative and conclude "thus murder is wrong", we start with the fact that "murder is wrong, rape is wrong, saving lives is moral" and use that to establish more general principles later on. The ultimate justification for morality would thus not be a justification of some universal principle, but raw data.

This allows for variation as fact, not arbitrary choice. To me it doesn't matter for example whether a cow eats grass and I eat meat. That doesn't mean diet is relative. Likewise it is not of any consequence that someone else may see murder as right while I see it as wrong, I am what I am, and they are who they are. And if there is some unresolvable difference: well that's life. Nowhere is it written that for something to exist it must be uniform. Though a realistic study of human nature, i.e. the nature of and why we have certain raw feels, will look at history, society overall etc and aknowledge general patterns and mechanisms.

Questions or comments?

Dr. Retard

Rawls, for example, would be kind of with you. He says to use individual moral observations (or whatever) and general principles both, and have them fight it out in a process of moral reflection until you reach reflective equilibrium.

And I suspect there are others with you all the way: start with the individual judgments and then derive the over-arching principles.