Being fully rational requires taking stock of the whole. To focus exclusively on good (or bad) is to make a partial judgment. To deny the Enlightenment's responsibility for anything bad after, say, 1750 while giving it credit for everything good thereafter is a double standard.
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Heh. We certainly care about those close to us. But caring about people people we have never met is a very modern and far from universal trend.
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Yes, this doesn't detract from the fact that empathy strongly informs Y drives our moral sense as social mammals. Those who don't have empathy, eg psychopaths, very often don't have morality or have difficulty with it.
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Sure, I agree. My point (which I perhaps could have made better earlier) is that universalist ethics defy human nature and demand moral arguments that transcend scientific facts.
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This is still part of the response to the hypothetical scientist who doesn't know this? It seems like everyone in the conversation knows this.
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But, look, the conversation went there because some people were questioning that. And saying that some of our evolved moral sentiments are enough to expand morality.
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Well, they're all we have. We can only do morality to the extent that we conceive of morality & this has been shaped by our evolution as social mammals. It's a human thing tho some other social mammals share rudimentary forms of empathy, reciprocity, fairness etc.
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Yes, it's true. But you also have to choose among them to conduct yourself. That's why you have "the better angels of our nature". You also have the worse angels of our nature. So, you can't just follow them indiscriminately.
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That's what the discussions are for, yes. Was anyone arguing for following them indiscriminately? I thought the difference was over whether our evolved morality was enough to explain why we set moral premises & then seek facts about how to implement them.
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