ravi wrote:
>
> > look, here's where you are indeed being facetious ;-). i think its
> because you believe, as in mathematics, that providing an alternate
> scenario, however unlikely/unimaginable, disproves your opponent's thesis.
>
> but the reality is that in order to come up with rules and theories in
> ethics, we have to start somewhere
Yes, we have to start somewhere -- but in action (i.e., given social relations) NOT any principle. Principles emerge from social activity rather than exist prior to it. Suffering is a bad thing rather than a good thing ONLY because there has developed from our practice a rough and ready agreement on this. We begin with struggle, and theory summarizes, articulates, the material results of that struggle.
It is not universally accepted that suffering as such is evil. Many people think that someone who rapes and murders a child should himself suffer. Others think only that he should be prevented from hurting anyone else. And we could argue about this for centuries merely in terms of principle abstracted from practice and not get anywhere. Large numbers of people believe that the U.S. should be forced out of Iraq. That is going to involve all sorts of suffering for 100s of thousands -- millions including friends and relatives of those who suffer directly. Quite a few million around the world did what they could in 1991 and 1953 (solidarity with Mossedegh) to prevent that suffering, but now it can't be prevented for more suffering would result if u.s. presence there went on. But there is no Principle floating in the air or in mental space that can lead to that judgment. It is something that has come out of the practice of 100s of millions over centuries. So many of us now share the derived principle -- derived from practice, not theory -- that the u.s. must be forced out of Iraq, come what may.
What justifies it is our solidarity and work to make it happpen.
Miles is not being facetious in the list. He is quite correct. There is no a priori principle that one should not base one's opinions on one's dislike of skinny people.
Wherever and whenever we find outselves we are always already enmeshed in a web of social relations (human activity). There is nothing outside that activity to justify or condemn anything.
Carrol