Unravelling the Sorites Paradox: Help needed!

[ocuinn]

I need help in a debate I am having with an atheist. All replies will be greatly appreciated…

I said:

But you know this debate will go nowhere because you have no source of morality only yur own subjective opinion. It is pointless because you will never admit tht morality exists outside us so what possible motivation would you have for endorsing a course that teaches parents how to raise children as moral individuals?

The atheist then replied:

Firstly, if you claim to that there is an absolute morality then perhaps you would be so kind as to unravel the Sorites Paradox for me, you can find it at plato.stanford.edu/entries/sorites-paradox/, or if you want a condensed version:

"We have the following 2 premises;

1. at age X, it is morally permissible to do Y. At age W it is not morally permissable.

1. in an arbitrarily short period of time, an individual is sufficiently similar to his/her previous self for any changes to his/her self to be negligible

however from these two premises, induction leads to a moral permissability to do Y at any age. Such a method does not account for cumulative change, and yet it appears logically pretty sound. The obvious premise to attack is (2) - and to argue that even in an arbitrarily short period of time an individual is sufficiently affected so as to alter the considerations as to the moral permissibility of Y. However as t (time) gets smaller, this argument gets increasingly strained. Is there truly a moral planck level divide? One could possibly attack (1) from some kind of libertarian perspective - insofar as it implies a permissive/non-permissive dichotomy dependent upon the state - but not from a moral absolutist perspective."

As far as your argument that I should not care about morality because it is not subjective, this is akin to saying that I should not care about art as that is subjective too, yet I feel no pressing need to emulate the futurists and burn the Louvre. Another objection I have to your argument is that by encouraging others to lead a moral life my own life is improved as a society in which we all obey a set of moral laws is in my opinion prefrable to an anarchic dystopia in which I would probably get mugged, raped and killed the second I set foot outside the door, although possibly not in that order. A third objection is that when I do moral things I feel good about myself, I like to feel good about myself and so I continue to do moral things; whereas if I were to do immoral things I would almost certainly be filled with self-loathing, which I must confess does not sound that pleasant to me.

I have a lot of research to do in order to answer this guy. That is why I am appealing for all the help I can get from my fellow Catholics.

Thanks in faith!

AP Quinn

 

[ricmat]

I need help in a debate I am having with an atheist. All replies will be greatly appreciated…

I said:

The atheist then replied:

I have a lot of research to do in order to answer this guy. That is why I am appealing for all the help I can get from my fellow Catholics.

Thanks in faith!

AP Quinn

And obviously the tortoise beats Achilles as described here.

 

[dylanschrader]

Why believe that the age of a person changes the morality of an action?

 

[LilyM]

Why believe that the age of a person changes the morality of an action?

That’s what I was thinking - the only real effect age has is to change the way we treat the person who does the action, not the morality of the action itself.

For example a 12-year old who steals a car is equally guilty as a 40-year old. But we wouldn’t put them in jail together. Not because we view the action differently, but simply because jails are violent places and any 12-year-old would be toast. So we might put them in a juvenile facility with children their own age.

 

[dylanschrader]

That’s what I was thinking - the only real effect age has is to change the way we treat the person who does the action, not the morality of the action itself.

For example a 12-year old who steals a car is equally guilty as a 40-year old. But we wouldn’t put them in jail together. Not because we view the action differently, but simply because jails are violent places and any 12-year-old would be toast. So we might put them in a juvenile facility with children their own age.

There’s also a difference between the morality of the action–an objective fact–and its subjective imputability.