RE: Absolute Right and Wrong

From: gts (gts_2000@yahoo.com)
Date: Sat Nov 23 2002 - 23:17:03 MST


--- Lee Corbin <lcorbin@tsoft.com> wrote:
> gts writes
>
>> To say that, in your opinion, people "ought not"
>> be enslaved is to make a moral judgment that
>> slavery is wrong and freedom is right.
>
> I can see how you might at first think that it is
> the same thing. For one thing, you may be
> tempted to define it as such. Such a course is
> misguided...

If you think people ought to be treated one way and
not another way with respect their freedoms and
liberties then you have a moral belief about freedom,
Lee. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

I've had this discussion more times than I can count.
You are not the first moral relativist to come along.

> Bah. Are you ever bad at philosophy.

Normally I ignore blatant ad hominum, but this comment
is so way off the mark that I feel a need to address
it.

Back in the late eighties and early nineties I spent
three years moderating an online discussion board
called "The Philosophy and Religion Roundtable," a
bulletin-board style discussion group on an online
service called GEnie. We had about 1000 members. I
started as a regular nightly contributor to the GEnie
Philosophy and Religion board in 1986. Later I was
appointed to moderator and became an employee of the
online service. The original Philosophy moderator hadd
retired; the other customers had voted by an 80%
landslide that I should be given the honor of
replacing him as the moderator of their discussions
about philosophy (and religion and science and
politics -- the group was a lot like this one,
actually).

The GEnie service went out of business in the
mid-nineties when the internet became publically
accessible, but my interests haven't changed much
since then.

Does this little item from my resume make me Socrates?
No, of course not, but it does make your insult seem a
tad ludicrous.

-gts

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