I apologize for not arguing conventionally. I feel though, as if what I'm saying is not being understood in the spirit in which I mean it. . . as if our brains are wired differently.
They are .
Imagine, if you would, the perfect universal moral code. This code exists as an ideal. . . as an abstract. Obviously, this code is not designed to fit a culture, because then it would cease being universally applicable. When I mean universally applicable, I mean exactly that: Universally applicable.
Just to point out, there is no evidence that such a code exists nor logic to support it. But for the sake of a hypothetical situation...
As in, if we found humans on mars, whose culture, in no way, resembled our own. . . that this perfect universal moral code would apply to them in the same respect that it applies to us. I'm not saying that they would agree with the code. That's not what I mean by applicability.
Okay.
This code also is not something that exists within humans (as in, it is not an organic emotional reaction). It exists only in potential, in abstract, and it often violates our natural reaction. That is what I mean when I say the pursuit of morality is an intellectual one.
For such a code to exist, it must exist in two forms: Biologically, or spiritually (This includes via the hand of a god). Biologically speaking, morality is an adaptive feature, but morals themselves are not set. In short, humans are primed from birth to absorb moral concepts, but not to have those moral concepts set in stone. Consequently, no universal moral code seems to exist. After all, if you can give no logical support for god (Don't try, people better than us have tried and failed), and you believe that it is not biological, than you have a tooth-fairy of an objective moral code. In short, you have no way to prove it, define it, justify it, or show it to be worthwhile. You don't even know if it exists. It is merely something you wold have come up with off the top of you head. Tell me, how do you get around this inherent error? I ask not for the sake of a literary, rhetorical question, but because I am honestly curios. You seem dead-set in your views, and I would like to why, since it does contradict logic at turns.
I was born with a yearning for this code stamped into my subconscious, a desire to find objective morality a perfect moral standard. I am not claiming, by any means, that I hold such a code. . . only that I am in hot and constant pursuit of it.
A human such as yourself should be amoral and licentious Best way to pass the time. Though jokes aside, my personal code is a sort of hedonism kept in check via the doctrines of negative utilitarianism. To wit, I—myself and myself only—hold that it is moral to search for pleasure so long as it does not cause harm to others; that causing harm is in of itself immoral (Though personally justifiable). Not because I need something to keep my hedonism in check. Merely because I view it as more pleasurable to not harm people; ergo, negative utilitarianism fits into my personal brand of hedonism. This is the closest I can come to a moral code, and I assert it because of two things: One: It is clearly only applicable to me, and Two: I don't assume others should, or will follow it. Dido for any moral code in my view.
My knee-jerk reaction is to answer "Considering the subjective nature of offensiveness any conceivable act, no matter how harmless or even how beneficial could be potentially be viewed as offensive. Therefore, an objective moral code would not assign blameworthiness to the evocation of offense in another unless it is in direct violation of a higher moral imperative (through causal relationship)."
However, I would most likely conceed that "intentionally evoking offense in the pursuit of maliciousness" would probably fall under the evil of maleficence and under the objective framework be considered blameworthy.
However, I would most likely conceed that "intentionally evoking offense in the pursuit of maliciousness" would probably fall under the evil of maleficence and under the objective framework be considered blameworthy.
You could create, at most, an objective standard for morality. By this I mean that, if everyone grew up and was raised knowing what moral and immoral actions were, you could use that as an objective standard. Sort of in the same vein as how a certain length of measurement is kept universal by two notches on a certain platinum bar in a certain French bank. However in the case of morality, an objective standard does not mean an objective nature. Morality isn't objective. It is opinion influenced by sociological structure.