I don't know where you are going with this, but if you are asking my personal opinion I think it should be illegal and generally is immoral for someone to steal other people's money to get high on meth. I think the desires and life outcomes of meth-addicted thieves should be included as morally valuable in our moral thinking, not sure if that counts as "accommodating" them. I don't think our desires are enough to morally justify an action if that is relevant.

I’m not suggesting society supplicate to the desires of the drug addicted thief, no. Our conventional approach of attempting to get our drug addicted thief to suppress his destructive desires is insufficient. Our morality needs to evolve to where it approaches this problem by helping this person gradually bring forth all his desires and integrate them. And I’m not suggesting talk therapy.

This is the role religion is supposed to assume but has been unable to successfully. As a result, so much of the moral conversation ignores the darkness at the bottom and instead focuses at a more manageable level (the hypothetical level, societal level, legal level, etc).

There is a moral baseline towards ourselves, as we take care of ourselves but if we go more or less crazy. If we apply it to others also, other than what is good for us, depends on the mystery of compassion.

This would be similar to subjecting consequentialism to deontological constraint. A consequentialist may deny that killing an innocent is always wrong if the consequences are better and the deontologist disagree, this is a pretty fundamental question in moral philosophy. The never to be crossed line is just a deontological constraint.

Socially? Sure. It is constructed naturally between social beings.

Personally? Sure. It would seem that any social being who isn't a literal psychopath would believe there should be one.

Do you know anybody how hasn't changed their moral beliefs over time?

I have yet to find two people that I could lock in a room, ask countless question of various moral situations, and get identical responses. That would be objective.

Then you misunderstood, the question was never "do you believe all your morals are absolute?", it was "do you think there are moral lines that should never be crossed?".

As for the last objection, even the most ardent believers in objective morals would generally agree that people's perception of morals differ.

A strict version of utilitarianism says it is always wrong to not do the action which maximizes pleasure. This would count just as much as an absolute moral baseline as the more specific universal rules you find in deontological systems.

I think there is an existential question here, about what counts as my genuine thoughts about morality. On the one hand, I have many moral beliefs and goals to which I consciously assent. On the other, I'm a fallible human being whose actions are guided by all sorts of more or less mysterious causes, only some of which seem to be these consciously assented to moral beliefs. A Christian would say I have a sin nature that inclines me towards selfishness, short-term pleasure, and triviality, and that the purpose of a moral and spiritual life is to bring it more in line with these moral beliefs. So are the revealed preferences of my actions my actual "moral" values, or are the ones to which I consciously assent my genuine values?

Your analogy ignores a crucial distinction. Economic models are descriptive, ethical models are normative. In fact, many moral theories assume that humans generally don't have the right moral values and so take as a central task the project of changing your moral baseline to become congruent with what is actually moral.

All I know is legality does not equal morality (marijuana, abortion etc).. so morality is relative. The 10 commandments is close to a moral baseline. So ya I’ll stick with Moses on this one.

I don't think we should ignore shame or guilt as moderating variables of ethical behavior, they do after all tell us something about the potential for future behavior. But at the end of the day actual actions matter more. It's nice if the guy who steals my car has regret, because it increases the chances of rehabilitation. But my car would still be stolen.


To an extent that is true about the purest academic models (or perhaps "principles" would be a better word). Much of economics is applied with normative elements however. Keynesian economics not only tells you of the mechanisms behind boom and bust cycles, but also how the state should proceed to prevent them.

But it is true that ethical models are rarely predictive or descriptive, but imagine an economic policy that went down a similar route. We'd have very legitimate grounds to question its application.

So curiosity is an impetus for gaining knowledge about morals and baselines. Why did that happen? Is curiosity a moral baseline?

I don't believe in morality.