Quote:
Originally Posted by Pokerlogist
Secular "morality' since it is an an experimental construct. Can ever be valid valid without a religious or God basis?
You moved the quotes from secular to morality but if the use of quotes goes along with the question about validity than I think I understand. I'd imagine the answer to your question depends on what you mean by validity, which could be a pretty long conversation. The question seems to imply you doubt the possibility of a valid secular morality (given your understanding of those terms). If that's so, could you describe why?
I could give an answer using my own understanding but I'm guessing I'd just be interpreting all the relevant terms differently from you. As a very rough approximation, I think the simplest way of describing the validity of some moral claim is by grounding it in cultural legitimacy, and I wouldn't distinguish "secular" from "religious" morality in that regard. This is mostly descriptive: moral claims only possess normative force (or legitimacy, or validity) when they are actually recognized as such by people, who are also the only agents of their enforcement. That's highly relativistic, but it has the benefit of being an accurate description of what morality really is in practice.
I also think a somewhat less relativistic view of moral validity is possible if moral precepts can be grounded in universal aspects of human nature. That is, to begin with, the existence of human concern about morality reflects the fact that humans are inherently social and we naturally have certain prosocial and cooperative motivations. So it might make sense to view moral precepts which are harmonious with those aspects of natural human behavior as having more validity than precepts which don't. But I think that is also observable to some extent, despite obvious cultural variation. There are common themes to moral views across cultures because morality has to do with humans' social behavior, and there are structural similarities in our social lives across most cultures, e.g. with concern for kinship, the need to cooperate to meet material needs, retributive and distributive justice, and so on. I recently made a
book review thread in SMP discussing some of these themes.
So that might help you understand how I'd outline an answer to your question, but I'm still curious about how you see validity. I could write more about forgiveness, but I might do that separately, and later