Quote:
Originally posted by Tyrone Slothrop
Because we persuade each other and the better reasoned position slowly wins out. You see a microcosm of this on the board, in the fact that no one is still insisting that the WMD are in Syria, or that Hank increasingly accepts that the President lied to get political support for his war.
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OK - but how does one reason out morality? It seems to me rather that we share universal ideas of right and wrong and then explain how different policies conform to those universal ideas. Like I said before, we all seem to agree that the well being of the Iraqi people is important. Some people argue that the war, on balance, has made the Iraqi people worse off. Some people argue that on balance the Iraqi people are better off because of the war. But why should we care about the Iraqi people in the first place? Or the debate on affirmative action. One side argues that affirmative action helps African americans improve their situation, where other people argue that affirmative action actually makes African Americans worse off (by increasing prejudice and making people assume they are less qualified in their jobs etc.) but everyone seems to agree that African Americans need to be better off. Why?
