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ekiM · 05-08-2007, 02:21 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by accrede

At some stage in any moral framework created by humans, assumptions and value judgements have to be made surely?

I think the issue is with the word 'created'. A lot of perfectly respectable philosophies think that morality is not created by anyone, man or god. They think that a framework that describes what actions are moral or immoral exists, independently of any rational being to follow it, or perhaps created simply by the existence of rational beings as a necessary consequence of their existence (as opposed to being constructed BY those rational beings).

Now, does a moral framework always require assumptions to be made? "It depends". Immanuel Kant (a thiest) claimed that his theory of Categorical Imperitive was derived from pure reason. Plato and Aristotle believed morality was universal. Ayn Rand claimed Objectivism was derived purely from reason. John Locke claims humans have natural rights which are not granted either by God or by man to himself. John Stuart Mill's utilitarianism rests on the fairly non-contraversial assumption that happiness is good. Hobbes' contractionalism says that a moral action is one which a rational and unbiased observer would approve of. I could go on... the point really is not to argue for the correctness of any of thse but to show that there are a lot of moral theories that claim not to make any assumptions..

Note that I'm not endorsing any particular one of these philosophies here, I'm simply pointing out that there are very well argued positions that claim morality is objective.

To subscribe to any moral philosophy one has to state something like"I believe this moral philosophy to be correct". Maybe this is an example of making assumptions, too..

Quote:

Originally Posted by accrede

Hmm, I might need to read a few of those links, got any ones specific to this issue?