I said I wasn't going to post...
Aug. 18th, 2004 07:48 pmBut I need somebody to smack me into sense, and my sister isn't picking up the phone.
I'm almost done with my essay. I'm doing it on cultural relativism. He's already pre-written our outlines, so it's simple. At one point, we're supposed to explain "how a cultural relativist, like yourself, would defend cultural relativism against Rachels' argument (that the cultural differences argument is invalid because (example) it'd be silly to say there is no objective truth about the shape of the world just because two cultures say the earth is two different shapes). I assume he expects us to say that there's no reason to believe that moral truths are the same as truths about, say, the shape of the world... but he didn't realize that "myself" is crazy. I want to say that there's no reason to believe that all things MUST have objective truths! After all, if light can be both a particle and a wave depending on the observer, and Schrodinger's cat can be both dead and alive until you look in the box, why can't something be both right and wrong depending on the culture?
I'm not sure this is a good argument.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a stupid argument.
In fact, I'm positive that this will fail me.
But I want to say it anyway!
It's so cool!
And neat!
And it invokes physics!
Somebody hit me. Hard. Make me stop being crazy.
I'm almost done with my essay. I'm doing it on cultural relativism. He's already pre-written our outlines, so it's simple. At one point, we're supposed to explain "how a cultural relativist, like yourself, would defend cultural relativism against Rachels' argument (that the cultural differences argument is invalid because (example) it'd be silly to say there is no objective truth about the shape of the world just because two cultures say the earth is two different shapes). I assume he expects us to say that there's no reason to believe that moral truths are the same as truths about, say, the shape of the world... but he didn't realize that "myself" is crazy. I want to say that there's no reason to believe that all things MUST have objective truths! After all, if light can be both a particle and a wave depending on the observer, and Schrodinger's cat can be both dead and alive until you look in the box, why can't something be both right and wrong depending on the culture?
I'm not sure this is a good argument.
In fact, I'm pretty sure it's a stupid argument.
In fact, I'm positive that this will fail me.
But I want to say it anyway!
It's so cool!
And neat!
And it invokes physics!
Somebody hit me. Hard. Make me stop being crazy.
*thwaps conuly over the head with a trout*
Date: 2004-08-18 05:01 pm (UTC)Anyway, I like your essay idea. Are you going to mention the fact that you can't even be sure whether the round world OR the moral question even exists outside of your own head?
Re: *thwaps conuly over the head with a trout*
Date: 2004-08-18 05:07 pm (UTC)Re: *thwaps conuly over the head with a trout*
Date: 2004-08-18 05:21 pm (UTC);-)