Philosophical morality is derived from understanding natural law. This is an objective morality. There can be separate individuals, acting on differing sets of information, but the action is either moral or immoral, regardless of ignorance. 'Ignorance of the law is no excuse' is the familiar saying. Cannibalism is immoral. This can be understood due to the known negative outcomes. Some may be ignorant of this, but this is irrelevant to those who die of laughing sickness from eating human brains. The universe functions the way it functions, regardless of what we might believe about it.
It can be seen as similar to the Zen Buddhist concept of 'correct action'. The concept of 'sin' means, literally, 'to miss the mark', which implies a failure, intentional or not, and was not originally intended as arbitrary, mystical commands shouted down to us by an invisible super hero who lives in the sky. Instead, it was an attempt to observe the causes of negative outcomes, and codify the 'correct' action to take to bring about the desired outcome. Only by studying the dynamics of natural law, in the natural world, can the objective truth be discovered.
Is it though? How do you know? Can we know morality by understanding natural law?
So what you seem to be saying here is that there is an arbitrary natural law that dictates that cannibalism is immoral? This is akin to the arbitrary set of commandments that we must not blindly follow as the original author has put forth.
After all cannibalism is only immoral, as you assert, because of it's negative consequence. But a negative consequence does not make something immoral. If negative consequences did make something immoral then every single person on the planet would be considered immoral. You didn't study for a test, you fail. According to your negative consequence that is immoral. But is it really immoral to not study for a test?
Would you say that cannibalism among animals is immoral? Would you say that anything an animal does is immoral? After all they are simply following the natural law correct? So if cannibalism is part of the natural law how can that be immoral?
Here is a list of animals that are known to engage in cannibalism for a variety of reasons.
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Natural law is not arbitrary, physics is not arbitrary.
I am not a list of animals that engage in cannibalism. Cannibalism, among humans, has been demonstrated to have negative effects biologically, psychologically, and sociologically for a start.
You seem to be mistaking philosophical morality with religious morality. This is a conflation, used by priests historically, to confuse their subjects into believing that they, the priesthood, have the 'real' truth. There is nothing arbitrary about the natural function of the universe. Opinion has nothing to do with it. School testing has nothing to do with it. The word 'fail' is not solely used to describe the lack of expected performance at an arbitrarily created human test. If one walks along the edge of a cliff, with the aim of not falling, and fails to keep from going over, then correct philosophical morality is not achieved. Gravity is not arbitrary, and if the goal is to get somewhere, while not dying from a fall from a cliff, then the mark is set at not walking off the cliff.
Physical reality has no interest at all in human opinions, taboos, or justifications. No arbitrary human opinion will ever transmute a single atom, let alone mitigate the effects of misfolded proteins resulting from cannibalism in humans.
We must not confuse the state and function of the natural universe for the commands of humans or gods which no one has ever seen, or we may as well elect representatives from a pool of ghosts.
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Well thank you for the conversation but I think this conversation is over.
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What part ended it the logic or the facts?
I've had similar conversations with many moral relativists on Steemit, you do not strike me as one of those. This knowledge was a little weird to get my head around, given my deliberately stunted American public education all those years ago, but has been more useful in sorting out the truth of things than anything else I've learned before or since.
You do seem genuinely curious, not like the trolls I sometimes battle. Since you are done, let me leave you with this, the Trivium and the Quadrivium are an excellent place to start. Beware of the manipulations of the Trivium, for example the Neo-Platonists and the Prussian school. They altered it to create a theistic, authoritarian control mechanism, not to empower the individual with the knowledge needed to navigate this world ourselves.
Good luck. It's a turbulent world.
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