I generally tend to avoid the "language war" threads for 3 reasons: 1. No one is really right or wrong. 2. Not much gets accomplished. and 3. It really doesn't make that much difference anyway.
Debates about favorite colors, on the other hand, should be strongly encouraged. Blue is definitely the best one.
Your point that not much is accomplished by such discussions is definitely what usually happens. But it isn't what must happen. There are rational ways of discussing these subjects which can lead to knowledge creation and agreement.
The reason I'm posting is basically that I think people are a little too quick to give up, and if they tried to discuss seriously a bit more, they might find it sometimes works. Especially if they are careful to ignore the bad replies they get and only reply to the other people who are also taking the discussion seriously.
Well, yes and no. There's only a truth to the matter if you can get people to agree on a premise. Two libertarians who adopt the same premises can have a meaningful debate with each other. They'll agree that there can only be one consistent position -- so if they disagree on what it is then one of them must be mistaken -- and set about trying to figure out which of them holds the fallacy. But if you pit a libertarian with the premise of self-ownership against a communist with the premise of "property is theft", nobody is going to accomplish anything because neither will view the other's argument as relevant.
This is the myth of the framework. See Popper's book by that name:
http://www.amazon.com/Myth-Framework-Defence-Science-Rationa...
Besides the issue of whether productive debate is possible across frameworks, there is also your (possibly accidental) assertion that what premises people believe affects what statements about reality are true (beyond statements about who believes what). That's solipsism.
None of the statements in question have to do with reality, only with abstract ideas. Libertarians believe that property ownership is a right; communists believe that it is an offense. Neither of these assertions is empirically testable.
If the debate is about what policies will make us wealthier rather than what policies are ethical, then that's a different matter. But in that case, both sides are sharing the common framework of utilitarianism.
Which policies are ethical, with "ethics" rightly construed, is also a matter of fact. Morality is about how to live, and it's not a religious concept. The notion that morality is (and must be) religious is unfortunately a bad, religious idea, that (oddly) most atheists still believe.
Just to get started, we can consider which lifestyles do and do not accomplish their own internal goals. Lifestyles that do not are bad ways to live -- they are "immoral". We don't have to use moral terminology; that isn't important. But whatever you call it, there are objective facts about how we should or shouldn't live.
And there's better than that. You can take a very wide variety of goals, and examine how to achieve them. And you can find common points -- certain ways of life are good for achieving many goals, while others are not. These common points, which make people powerful and able to accomplish things in general, are an important, useful, and objective find the field of morality.
That needs the caveat that we only mean goals you actually intend to accomplish. We don't mean vague goals, and we definitely don't mean the sort of goal you would be happy to partially achieve -- in that case, the real goal is just making progress towards ... your "goal". (It's the same word, but it's a different concept than the one I mean).
Back to your points, you say that even if you fail by your own standards, you might help others, and the net effect of your life may be positive. That's absolutely true. However, it'd be even better (more moral) if you did the same actions, but had wiser goals, which those actions were achieving. Then you'd help others, but also consider your own life successful.
Then, there is a the problem of heroism, which is defined by a person's courage to pursue a noble goal even if its achievement is very unlikely.
Finally, by your definition, I could be one of the most moral people by making my goal "do whatever I want." Everyone is always doing whatever they want, at least at some level. This would pretty much render all talk of morality pointless. But, I suppose I'm being too literal with your definition.
I'm definitely not claiming consistency of this sort is the only criterion of morality. Only that it's an important and objective one.
I don't mean to be a tease, but if I say too many things at once, I won't be understood as well. On the other hand, threads here go stale fast (usually in under a day), so I'm not sure how to ever get very far in explaining, here. By contrast, on another forum, I am in a thread that has been going for 4 years. And it's only 180 comments long -- so around 1 comment per 8 days.
I'll keep posting here if anyone replies. Or contact me, curi42 on AIM or curi@curi.us
So for depth, my best idea so far is to link longer, external writing. Here are two things I wrote about morality which explain my views a bit more:
However, at this point I have to veer into territory considered "religious," because such a claim requires at least an element of non-materialism to make sense of our moral intuitions.
At any rate, my views are not rigorously defined enough, and I'd benefit from critical, constructive discussion. I'll check out your links and see if I can participate.
I don't think there is any such thing as 'human nature', though I do think there is a lot of complex knowledge in cultures that achieves some of the same practical results.
I don't think the purpose of morality, or life, is to maximize happiness. I suspect maximizing happiness is consistent with the right way of life, if you understand enough, but I don't think it's the best way to look at things, and I think it makes it harder to see the answers.
In general, ideas don't need foundations. "You can't justify that," is not a valid criticism. This includes moral ideas. So if you have a "moral intuition", or think a common sense notion of morality makes sense, but can't justify it perfectly, I don't think that's a problem. It may be a sign of religion, but not a bad one.
The correct way to look at ideas is not to seek justification, but instead to compare them to rival theories. In other words, ask, "Got a better idea?" If there is no rival theory, then criticism is sort of useless. It can help us notice we'd like a better theory and find places to look for new ideas. But without a rival theory to compare with, we can't see which theory seems truer, or which stands up to criticism better, and can't abandon the current theory.
The ideas about foundations and justifications here were best explained in published work by Karl Popper, and also somewhat by David Deutsch (but more to come, he should have a new book out within 2 years). They are not especially popular, but in my judgment they actually make sense, unlike all the rival philosophies.
If you read Popper, be aware that he never wrote much applying his ideas to morality or education. He wrote a lot about science, and about communism and historicism, and also about certain (bad) schools of philosophy, but also explained epistemology in abstract.
Guess that's long enough for now. For what it's worth, I like fielding (non-hostile) questions in these areas.