> What planet do you live on? Of course avoidance of
> suffering is not a trump. Retributivists like me think
> that the wicked should suffer for thr crimes. But
> needless suffering? Imagine the following dialog:
>
> Q: What are you doing to that cat?
> A: (Fill in description of some dreadful activity that
> causes needless suffering).
> Q: What the fuck is the matter with you?
> A: Oh, I just like doing this. What's it to you? Who
> cares if I like to hurt cats for no reaaon?
This demonstrates what I hate about philosophy: strip all social context from moral behavior and decisions to generate simplistic examples that supposedly demonstrate how morality is not socially contingent. Of course if you remove any trace of specific social conditions or relations the values and morals will appear obvious (we just smuggle in our own standards to make sense of the example).
Let's get a bit more realistic: I sacrifice the cat as part of a religious ritual. Or I am possessed by a spirit that kills cats who are servants of malignant spirits. Or cats are carrying a deadly disease. When it comes to moral decisions and justifications, people are ingenious and creative!
It is necessarily true that people create moral standards in social interactions, drawing on tradition and knowledge generated by prior social interactions. Why is it so implausible that people engaged in different social relations, drawing on different knowledge, would create moral standards that differ significantly from our own?
Miles