Dear All
In response to my statement
> There are
> degenerative brain diseases that human cannibalism transmits but this is a
> practical rather than ethical problem.
Adam Gottschalk replies
>Excuse me, Mr. Kirby, the above statement is too illogical and unfounded for
>me to let it pass. So _you_ decided that human cannibalism presents merely
>practical problems, no ethical ones?
I was trying to say that there may be good practical reasons to avoid
cannibalism but they do not contribute much to the ethical question. I did
not say that there are no ethical problems in fact we could probably agree
that cannibalism raises a huge array of ethical questions. What the
question came out of (in my mind) was previous discussions on the list
about foundationalism and the idea that there may be absolute moral
principles. Saying that non-cannibalism is self evidently wrong is to
assert that moral axioms, foundations or absolute moral truths exist and
that non-cannibalism is one. This I could accept but would then have to
worry about context. If the axioms are not always true (in a plane crash or
shipwreck for example) are they really axioms. For every axiom we might
need a never to be completed list of get out clauses to take account of
special circumstances. What value then in axioms? as we might need weigh up
each fresh circumstance to check whether special circumstances are in play.
This is not so dissimilar to approaching each circumstance without any
axioms at all.
If we accept that cannibalism is wrong (not too difficult I agree) do we
not have to ask why is this true? If the answer is "to stop the
self-destruction of the species" then this is as practical an answer as
"to prevent degenerative brain disease". If it is becasue the eating of all
meat is wrong we need to establish the "truth" of that. Unless we treat
that as a foundational belief which is not open to discussion.
Kind regards
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