"I am not an animal!"
I can now answer the question of whether recidivist criminals need to think that there is nothing wrong with committing the crimes they commit. They can indeed think that they are doing the wrong thing, but can comfort themselves if they practise a relative morality. Killing child molesters in prison is the expression of a relative morality. It means that even criminals have got standards of right and wrong to which they adhere, even if these standards are below those of so-called decent people.
Of course, this same principle can apply equally well to the hypocrites at your science fiction society. They may not practise the absolute morality of killing themselves in the spaceship plummetting to earth, but they would still practise some kind of morality relative to pure evil. For example, they would still feel guilty after they had landed the ship, knowing that they had caused the deaths of everyone on earth. It would, after all, say something much worse about them as people if they felt no guilt at all, because at least this way they have a conscience, whereas if they felt no guilt, then they would have no conscience.
I think this means that in some ways you have to accept their hypocrisy. For example, one can argue that you practise the absolute immorality of eating meat, but the relative morality of not going out and torturing a small animal, or suffocating a gerbil for your sexual pleasure. This relative morality comforts you in the thought that you are not an animal. Furthermore, I think that, in your original goal of avoiding hypocrisy, you were really wanting some kind of comfort that you were not an animal... in which case, you have now found that comfort. But you have done it without bashing the original hypocrisy that the bastards at your science fiction club displayed.
Nevertheless, if that is absolute morality, then normal human beings simply cannot be expected to take it seriously as worth living up to. That seems at least to suggest the question of why the standard of absolute morality should be so high. After all, why couldn't such a high standard be a supererogatory standard, over and above the call of duty, that becomes more significant because it is not a duty? One could, after all, agree that extreme self-sacrifice was a good thing without requiring that it be the only right thing to do in various situations. What purpose is served by setting the standards of morality above those of common viable practice? I am not here arguing that the standards of morality should be consistent with common viable practice, but it at least seems curious that they should be set so high above viable practice as well. This is one of the questions addressed in The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright. I will therefore now go back to reading that book primarily instead of The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
Of course, this same principle can apply equally well to the hypocrites at your science fiction society. They may not practise the absolute morality of killing themselves in the spaceship plummetting to earth, but they would still practise some kind of morality relative to pure evil. For example, they would still feel guilty after they had landed the ship, knowing that they had caused the deaths of everyone on earth. It would, after all, say something much worse about them as people if they felt no guilt at all, because at least this way they have a conscience, whereas if they felt no guilt, then they would have no conscience.
I think this means that in some ways you have to accept their hypocrisy. For example, one can argue that you practise the absolute immorality of eating meat, but the relative morality of not going out and torturing a small animal, or suffocating a gerbil for your sexual pleasure. This relative morality comforts you in the thought that you are not an animal. Furthermore, I think that, in your original goal of avoiding hypocrisy, you were really wanting some kind of comfort that you were not an animal... in which case, you have now found that comfort. But you have done it without bashing the original hypocrisy that the bastards at your science fiction club displayed.
Nevertheless, if that is absolute morality, then normal human beings simply cannot be expected to take it seriously as worth living up to. That seems at least to suggest the question of why the standard of absolute morality should be so high. After all, why couldn't such a high standard be a supererogatory standard, over and above the call of duty, that becomes more significant because it is not a duty? One could, after all, agree that extreme self-sacrifice was a good thing without requiring that it be the only right thing to do in various situations. What purpose is served by setting the standards of morality above those of common viable practice? I am not here arguing that the standards of morality should be consistent with common viable practice, but it at least seems curious that they should be set so high above viable practice as well. This is one of the questions addressed in The Moral Animal, by Robert Wright. I will therefore now go back to reading that book primarily instead of The Logic of Scientific Discovery.
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