Innate wrongness

[Captain Chaos]

If you are not squeamish, check out this video:

Older Woman Kissing Younger Girl - Google Video


The last clip might just wig you out.

I would call that beastiality, and say "wow, how friggen warped" - but they just call it a funny scene for a game show.



The Romans were more than happy to conquer and kill, and pat themselves on the back for doing so.


Some parts of Indian and Chinese society have practiced infanticide.



So, my question is this:

Is there anything that is truly innately so wrong that no culture will accept it?

[Osborn F Enready]

This is to general Chaos.

For any action, any one you can name, I can find at least some people who will take offense to it.

People are to individual to be collectively defined by "right and wrong" if it goes outside our common threads, individual rights.

[Jack]

Is there anything that is truly innately so wrong that no culture will accept it?

It doesn't appear so. Cannibalism would perhaps be the ultimate taboo, yet it was practiced widely in the Old World and even into recent times. Outside of social constraints, I don't see anything that might be considered universally unacceptable.

[Captain Chaos]

I thought about child molestation, but then there is both ancient Greece, and, supposedly, some aspects of traditional Hawaian culture.

Maybe torture?

I mean, there is wife burning in India - does torture get much more pointless than that.


If the human species was put on trial, I would hate to be the defense attorney.

[Athena]

Quote by: Captain Chaos If you are not squeamish, check out this video: Older Woman Kissing Younger Girl - Google Video The last clip might just wig you out. I would call that beastiality, and say "wow, how friggen warped" - but they just call it a funny scene for a game show. The Romans were more than happy to conquer and kill, and pat themselves on the back for doing so. Some parts of Indian and Chinese society have practiced infanticide. So, my question is this: Is there anything that is truly innately so wrong that no culture will accept it?

Children and parents having sex with each other appears to be the only thing that is universally considered wrong. There is only one know violation of this taboo. There is an African tribe that hunts rhinos, and tolerated fathers having sex with the daughters. The reasoning for this is, hunting rhinos is very dangerous, and it is believed when the father has sex with his daughter, it increases his strength. In this case the good of increasing the father's strength, makes the universal taboo an acceptable practice.

All cultures have taboos. A taboo is something so wrong that one should even think about it. In most cultures cannibolism is considered taboo, and under no circumstances is one human being to eat another. Occasionally this taboo is brought into question. For example, when people are starving to death and their only hope for survival is eating the flesh of those who died first, is it wrong to eat the dead? Mind you, there have been occasions when entire families have been stranded, and the elders wanting their children to survive have told them to eat their bodies if they should die first. Unless we have had such an experience, I do not believe we know what we would do in such desparate circumstances. I am only sure I would want my children to survive.

The taboo against cannibolism is not universal, and has been practiced by a variety of people, often with religious sanction. That is, it can be reasoned that canniblism is a good thing, desired by the gods.

[Jack]

I believe even Noah had sex with his children. So I still go back to saying that there doesn't seem to be any human activity so outlandish that it can't even be conceived that someone would do it. Everything we seem capable of has been allowed in one culture or another sometime in history.

[Jimmy the Pro]

I believe as soon as we find something innately wrong, some person or some action will come up and the impacts of such will be so significant that we can no longer consider it innate.

Simply, as long as we put in such a manner to say that society has to "agree" it is innately wrong is the point where dissent will always appear. Negative comes from any action just as positive. If we didnt see both sides of the issue, no matter how illogical cannibalism is, we would not think in a deeper sense then we do now.

[Lullaby Chainer]

Quote by: ldmaniac If we didnt see both sides of the issue, no matter how illogical cannibalism is, we would not think in a deeper sense then we do now.

How is cannibalism illogical? :eek:

[Jack]

society has to "agree" it is innately wrong

Society may decide to allow or disallow innate behaviors, but I don't believe the any innate behavior is of itself "right or wrong". Anything innate is natural. Once expressed, society may have an opinion on its practice. It may be detrimental to society and be called bad or outlawed. But anything innate is at its root natural and neutral.

[Captain Chaos]

I have to agree with Isherwood.

I cannot think of anything that seems so wrong that no culture could accept it.


I even thought about the death of humanity...

But, then, much of Christian culture eagerly awaits Armageddon and the Rapture.



sigh.

[Blef]

Murder, killing people for reasons other than self-defense, is natural too, but it is also innately wrong. Murder denies someone their right to self-determination.

This has nothing to do with whether or not society approves of murder. Society once approved of slavery, but this did not make slavery right. And there is nothing in the natural universe that is unnatural, so that consideration is irrelevant.

[Captain Chaos]

Perhaps I phrased my opening post wrong.

But regardless of that, I still believe that Isherwood is correct in saying that there is nothing that seems so innately wrong to us that some society will not find it acceptable.

[Epistemologist]

I don't think there is anything per se that a culture will not accept because there is no absolute wrong in the broader frame of reference. However, I think that if a culture espouses mass suicide i.e. all its members kill themselves, then the culture wouldn't last. Then again, that doesn't necessarily apply to cannibalism because in cannibalism only a few die for the sake of others.

So, absolute rights/wrongs only occur within a culture's intersubjective frame of reference. If we look to the broader frame of reference, though, that right/wrong is just relativistic.

[Blef]

Not true. There are things that are innately wrong. I already gave you an example. Murder. Social acceptance can't make it right. Why? Because no matter how you slice it, murder deprives another person of his right to self-determination.

Do you think people don't have a right to self-determination? How do you figure? Do they own themselves or not?

Self-ownership is axiomatic. It's the kind of premise that cannot be denied, because as soon as you attempt to do so, you must presume the condition is true that you argue against. Arguing that people don't own themselves is like proclaiming that you don't exist.

[Epistemologist]

No, self-ownership is not objectively axiomatic. When you say murder is wrong and self-determination is an inherent right, you're still thinking within the intersubjective frame of reference of your culture. Sure, in most cultures, murder is wrong, but that doesn't mean it's innately wrong.

Nonetheless, we'll always be thinking in terms of our way of life and will thus say that we have all these rights, but that's not what this thread is about. I could easily object to that self-ownership pseudo-axiom by saying that I'm merely a puppet in the universe. I don't necessarily agree with that, but we have no absolute, indisputable axioms.

[Captain Chaos]

I would say that murder is innately wrong. However, some cultures have still managed to overcome that innate wrongness, so that they perceive some forms of murder as right.

[Blef]

Quote by: Captain Chaos I would say that murder is innately wrong. However, some cultures have still managed to overcome that innate wrongness, so that they perceive some forms of murder as right.

A society that overcomes such wrongness doesn't make it not wrong by doing so. I presume you agree with that since you agree that murder is innately wrong.

State-sponsored homicide (human sacrifice, death penalty) are murder, so I agree with you. What other examples or specific cultures did you have in mind? I might want to add to my list of institutionalized atrocities.

[Blef]

Quote by: Epistemologist No, self-ownership is not objectively axiomatic. When you say murder is wrong and self-determination is an inherent right, you're still thinking within the intersubjective frame of reference of your culture. Sure, in most cultures, murder is wrong, but that doesn't mean it's innately wrong. Nonetheless, we'll always be thinking in terms of our way of life and will thus say that we have all these rights, but that's not what this thread is about. I could easily object to that self-ownership pseudo-axiom by saying that I'm merely a puppet in the universe. I don't necessarily agree with that, but we have no absolute, indisputable axioms.

OK, what is this thread about? Explain innate in your context. Give examples.

I'd point out that saying you are a puppet in the universe doesn't make it so. You objected to others who used the same line of reasoning to declare themselves gods of other universes. Make up your mind.

[Jack]

*unconditioned: not established by conditioning or learning; "an unconditioned reflex"
*natural: being talented through inherited qualities; "a natural leader"; "a born musician"; "an innate talent"
*congenital: present at birth but not necessarily hereditary; acquired during fetal development

wordnet.princeton.edu/perl/webwn

[Epistemologist]

Quote by: Blef OK, what is this thread about? Explain innate in your context. Give examples. I'd point out that saying you are a puppet in the universe doesn't make it so. You objected to others who used the same line of reasoning to declare themselves gods of other universes. Make up your mind.

An innate wrong is something that is absolutely wrong regardless of the culture or intersubjective frame of reference. I can't give examples because there is no such thing. For instance, murder might be wrong no matter what in the cultures you mentioned, but in some tribal culture, warranted murder is often okay. And as for the so-called axiomatic right to self-determination, even your culture denies it when it employs the death penalty.

I know that saying I'm a puppet doesn't make it so. I just said that to illustrate that simply saying you have an inherent right of self-determination doesn't make it so. It's only axiomatic within your culture, although even then it's questionable because of that example I previously mentioned.

Also, I don't see why you brought up that issue of God/Gods here; it's not explicitly relevant. Ultimately, I conclude that there is no innate/absolute wrong, although some cultures may share the same wrongs; there are, however, absolute wrongs within the cultures themselves, although in the broader frame of reference those wrongs are simply subjective.

I have made up my mind.