Quote:
Originally posted by quiet
i don't agree with the idea of absolute right and wrong. i'm a existential post-modernist. wheeee.
but i certainly don't feel like getting into it here. don't feel like arguing for days/weeks on terms and definitions - before an argument is even started...
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Unfortunately, since you didn't keep your mouth shut (figuratively), your desire not to debate seems rather insincere. Ethics and aesthetics are philosophical siblings: both are "value theory." Let's take an easy to understand example from aesthetics. If there is an absolute aesthetic at work, it makes the idea of an absolute ethic more plausible.
A researcher for Psychology Today wanted to do a study to show that aesthetic judgments are merely culture-bound and not based on anything objective.
So, he tried to prove the opposite. The problem turned out to be: he succeeded (in proving the opposite). Here's how it worked:
He identified a bunch of different and distinct cultural groups and then through research discovered a master in each group. The art forms were varied: a mask-maker from Africa, a painter from New York, a sculptor from Fiji, a sword-maker from Japan, and so on (these are made-up examples, because I read this article years ago).
He had each master submit two example of the art form he worked in. One was to be a masterpiece, the other to be a competent but fairly pedestrial example.
Then it gets interesting: He asked each artist to look at all of the examples offered by the other artists and to decide which one was the masterpiece and which one was just a passably good example.
He was shocked to discover absolute unanimity across cultural lines. I.e., the sword-maker from Japan could tell which painting was best, the painter could tell which African mask was best, and so on down the line.
The conclusion appears inescapable: in the arts, an absolute seems to be at work. Not God, perhaps, but something along the line of a platonic form maybe. Perhaps the result was mere coincidence, and I'd love to know if anyone has since tried to duplicate it.
The one thing I can tell you as someone who, at 55, has been an artist and made a living from aesthetical enterprises for his entire life is this: It doesn't surprise me at all. I find that if someone has good taste in photography, he/she probably has good taste in everything from painting to writing to music. Clearly, something crosses not only cultural lines, but the various media as well.
How does this relate to ethics? In ethics, it seems something similar is at work. Maybe it's biological (ingrained in us through evolution and heredity) or maybe it's due to some metaphysical reality of some sort. The one thing I can't seem to deny is that we all believe that some things are not just wrong in a relative way, but are REALLY wrong, and in that feeling, the word REALLY reveals that we are referring to some sort of REALITY and not merely an opinion.