Do we have a "sensus moralis" (SM)? Could not such a sense be publically
testable; eg: Paul sees a murder and explains it to Peter. Both agree
that it was wrong. Could this silence the ardent empiricists (by
preventing them special-pleading with regards to the "five senses") and
also the objectivists? Or is this just "inter-subjectivity?" But even if
it is, does the SM provide for objective identification of moral
principles?
Is the SM a gift from God, or the result of an evolutionary process?
Is it in a symbiotic relationship along with intuition and reason, or is
it intuition? What steps might we take to find out? Would a SM act most
regularly as a survival mechanism, or is it more likely a moral mechanism (teleologically)? What constitutes a survival gene?
Walking a straight line requires at least three processes: two
conscious - the use of muscles to move and reason to identify the line
-- and one unconscious -- the body's natural balancing mechanisms. Is
the identification of a moral truth similar? Perhaps, the SM identifies
or presents the most basic moral truth to our
consciousness unconsciously, and we then consciouslly reason to identify
particular instances to which the moral principle applies. Eg, SM tells
us justice (ie, the abstract) is a virtue, while our Reason tells us
that stabbing a man for mere personal enjoyment (ie, the particular) is
wrong.
...and so it goes...
Selasa, 24 Maret 2015
