> It appears your approach is rooted in conformity to popular opinion, though that could justify practices like slavery if widely accepted
If it appears like that you should read what you replied to a little closer...
You're confusing not wanting to dissect the most basic tenants of your morals, with not being willing to dissect morals: I'll gladly debate the trolley problem with you, which involves killing people. But if in isolation you just ask "why do you think killing is bad", I'm not going to engage unless you have some complicating factor. I consider something that basic as an amoral (not immoral!) concept.
Similarly I'll debate the complex topic of slavery, but not the isolated basic concept of "a human owning another is not good". That still leaves room for someone to claim "well yes slaves were bad but the benefit was X and that outweighed the bad", but now we at least have some basic floor that we can start having infinitely more thought provoking discussion.
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What I just described is why you're more likely to grow as a person with a moral floor.
Instead of getting trapped debating concepts we all have the most sense of self attached to and least mental plasticity on, you can have meaningful debate on higher level subjects of morality underpinned by those concepts. With dialectic thinking you're able to independently consider not just the opposing argument, and what underpins that argument.
So now you considered the opposition to your underpinning, but you've done so with none of the inherent emotion and ego that would have been attached to directly debating that underpinning.
Not being willing to outwardly debate is not the same as not being willing to think on if you have strong dialectic thinking skills, and _that's_ where people need to start focusing on to get past the widespread division growing in society.
If it appears like that you should read what you replied to a little closer...
You're confusing not wanting to dissect the most basic tenants of your morals, with not being willing to dissect morals: I'll gladly debate the trolley problem with you, which involves killing people. But if in isolation you just ask "why do you think killing is bad", I'm not going to engage unless you have some complicating factor. I consider something that basic as an amoral (not immoral!) concept.
Similarly I'll debate the complex topic of slavery, but not the isolated basic concept of "a human owning another is not good". That still leaves room for someone to claim "well yes slaves were bad but the benefit was X and that outweighed the bad", but now we at least have some basic floor that we can start having infinitely more thought provoking discussion.
-
What I just described is why you're more likely to grow as a person with a moral floor.
Instead of getting trapped debating concepts we all have the most sense of self attached to and least mental plasticity on, you can have meaningful debate on higher level subjects of morality underpinned by those concepts. With dialectic thinking you're able to independently consider not just the opposing argument, and what underpins that argument.
So now you considered the opposition to your underpinning, but you've done so with none of the inherent emotion and ego that would have been attached to directly debating that underpinning.
Not being willing to outwardly debate is not the same as not being willing to think on if you have strong dialectic thinking skills, and _that's_ where people need to start focusing on to get past the widespread division growing in society.