Quote:
Originally Posted by PepsiFree
Sure you can. Humans do it all the time. We always have. There's really no being arbitrary outside of an academic view of things.
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Yes. There is. This is an argument against making sense in its most basic form. Logical consistency is something to strive for. If a belief is morally right, it's morally right in all cases, without exception. This should be obvious - you can't say, for example, that capital punishment is morally wrong, so we're not going to hang Bob, but go ahead and hang Jim.
If your argument is that human beings are generally pretty bad at reasoning clearly, I've no argument, but if you're suggesting that this means anything for how we should approach these questions, you've fallen into the naturalistic fallacy.
Quote:
Originally Posted by RougeUnderoos
"Hey, we have a bridge named after a guy who caused some harm, I think we should change the name and it would be really easy to just change the sign."
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Right, which is why we immediately go back here:
Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
It's only a problem if you think there should be general principles regarding these things. If there is, then we have a lot of renaming to do.
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You can't have your cake and eat it too. If you want to say that the rationale for this is that it's wrong to honour someone who held views we now see as abhorrent, you've got to live by that principle. If you just want to change the bridge name because it's easy enough to do and will please some people, that's a different story.