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Based on this morbid example, the philosopher Byrne analyses different theories on moral law. Undoubtedly everyone has some kind of sense of morality, but those ideas often differ greatly. Some say, for example, eating meat is ok, others reject this idea. That is why Byrne, like many people before him, started wondering where we know from what we ought to do or ought not to do? Are there biological causes for this patterns of thinking, comes this knowledge from God or do these ethic rules don’t exist at all?
One theory assumes moral to be natural feature. Byrne explains there are a lot of natural facts that lead logically to moral behavior (e.g.: the water is hot> hot water hurts the baby> I do not want to hurt the baby) Unluckily, this theory does not always work in practise, since facts do not necessarily motivate people to do or to not do something. Smokers, for instance, know the fact that they will die earlier because of that unhealthy habit, which does not convince many of them to quit smoking. Therefore, the assumption moral laws just haven’t been described by scientists can’t be right.
I, personally, was very fascinated by John Mackie’s theory that there are no moral rules. People just believe there are, which is why they behave accordingly. That, of course, is highly agreeable, since those imaginary rules make people better and improve the social life in general.
I loved reading this article, since I am absolutely interested in philosophy and even more on the existence of moral laws. He sums up a lot of ideas about moral and comments on them, that is, sometimes in a very confusing way. What made his text a little hard to understand is that he uses language like mathematicians use numbers and formulas. That is whyI had to reread some passages to get the meaning, but nevertheless I was impressed by all those sophisticated ideas.
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