Sunday, November 11, 2012

Best Guesses

As people do not have objective knowledge about what is right and wrong, they must base their ethical systems on a combination of reason and intuition.  Mass intuitions are, except in a few specific circumstances, presumably more reliable than individual intuitions.  This does not mean that mass intuitions, or mass beliefs, are fool-proof - it is entirely possible that every single person in the world could believe something false.  The past provides evidence that this is extremely unlikely, however.

It is also entirely possible that trees are pancakes and dogs fly around with jet engines.  This is also extremely unlikely, and relatively few people dispute that one may safely act on the assumption that what one observes is roughly equivalent to reality.  It seems no less justifiable to incorporate mass intuition into one's code of ethics.  In the end, all 'knowledge' is based upon certain unprovable assumptions - why must ethics be any different?

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