Presents the author’s view of the best current positions on certain core philosophical and psychological problems. These positions together suggest a skeptical or nihilist perspective modified by evolutionary psychology and contemporary philosophy that embraces our desire to live as best we can and the relative and psychological reality of values, free will and other phenomena while recognizing limitations on their foundations and our understanding. Readers may want to start with the first entry. - Marc Krellenstein (personal info here)
There is no successful chain of reasoning that has been offered as to why we must adopt any fundamental moral obligation or value over another, or any at all…the very concept of an objective moral truth that commands obedience is, to use Mackie’s term, ‘queer’ (1977). That people often do or seem to act this way is clear, as it is that many values and behaviors are shared and others are not. But there is no knock-down argument we can offer someone who believes deeply in a fundamental value we do not share, or in its greater importance than another value (cf. some arguments over abortion that set the sanctity of any form of unique human life against the right of control over one’s own body). The variation in moral beliefs across people/cultures and time (despite attempts to rationalize such differences) argues against the possibility that, despite their queerness, there simply do exist common moral obligations (this is Mackie’s ‘argument from relativity’).
(It might be argued that the belief that there are no absolute foundations is itself an absolute foundational belief. It may be foundational but, rather than absolute, it is an observation that no rational argument has established such values, and it leaves open at least the possibility that an argument could be offered that proves otherwise.)
(Revised December 31, 2009)