Transcript The meaning of life

YPHI0002 - Culture, Value and the
Meaning of Life
Course web site:
http://philosophy.hku.hk/courses/200506/yphi0002
Lecture #2
Joe Lau Sept 2005
Two questions
What is the purpose of life?

Is there a creator?
How to live a valuable life?


Where do values come from?
Which values should we accept?
Facts vs. values
Judgment of Fact

A hit B.
Judgment of Value



It is wrong / right for A to hit B.
It is a good / bad thing that A hit B.
A should / should not hit B.
Quiz

“Many people think that abortion is wrong.”
The fact-value gap
Facts by themselves are not sufficient to
entail claims about values.
“Homosexuality / cloning is unnatural.”
“Homosexuality / cloning is wrong.”
“Many people don’t like X.”
“X is morally wrong.”
“There is no morality because
everybody is selfish.”
Do values depend on God?
“If God does not exist, then there are no
standards for right and wrong. Different
people would have different opinions
about morality and there is no way to
decide who is correct.”
The divine command theory
Values are given by
God’s commands.
What makes our
lives valuable is that
we live according to
the commands of
God.
“Doing X is good.”
Two exclusive and exhaustive positions
Doing X is good
because God
commands us
to do X.
So whatever God
commands is good.
God commands us
to do X because
X is good.
So X is good for an
independent reason.
The practical question
Whether or not values come from God, we
need to decide who the real God is.
We need to make use of our value system
to determine whether a purported God is
morally perfect.
Moral relativism
Nothing is objectively right or wrong,
good or bad.
Right or wrong is relative to X.

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Perspectives
Societies, traditions, cultures
Individuals
Bad argument for relativism
There is widespread disagreement about
morality.
Every action is good in some way and bad
in some other ways.
Are you a moral relativist?
Try this test.

http://philosophy.hku.hk/think/value/rel-quiz.php
Relativism and contextualism
Moral relativism
 “Right or wrong is a relative matter”.
Moral contextualism
 “Right or wrong depends on the situation.”
 So it is possible that some moral questions
do not have correct answers.
Discussion
Three kinds of objectivity.
About facts

There are more women than men here.
About morality

It is wrong to torture innocent babies just for fun.
About art

Mozart’s music is better than Britney Spear’s.