What's So Great About Ushas?

Paul B · 11 Jul 2008, 15:22 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: pb.stuff at gmail.com (Paul B)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 11:22:59 -0400
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
In-Reply-To: <48770757.5000204 at io.com>
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	<4876B32D.5050508 at io.com>
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On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com> wrote:

> Paul B wrote:
>
>> Sure, moral relativism can solve any ethical difficulty, if by "solve" one
>> means "circumvent".  However, the reason it might be less interesting to
>> pursue here is precisely due to the nature of the author whose worlds, in
>> all likelihood due to his personal beliefs, have mentions of absolute Truth
>> and hence an absolute Morality to boot.  The Increate or the Outsider or
>> what have you is not compatible with moral relativism.
>>
>
> Would you agree that it can be good for the Increate to do something that
> it would be evil to be done by a man?
>
> --
> Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
> < http://www.io.com/~jwilson <http://www.io.com/%7Ejwilson> >
>

Okay, I think I understand what you're getting at.  My own beliefs don't
matter that much, but I'm certainly willing to entertain the notion that in
Wolfe's books this sort of thing is possible, it certainly does fall into
the purview of the Problem of Evil.  Christians usually don't take this to
mean that moral relativism exists, rather saying that God is a moral
exception.

However, as far as the destruction of Urth goes, this doesn't have much bite
simply because it's not the Increate that destroys Urth, but fleshy beings
like us.  You would have a hard time making the case for a
theologically-based moral exception for aliens the same way that one is made
for God.

Now this is unimportant, but I don't understand why "moral relativism", a
well-established term meaning the opposite of moral absolutism, is
inapplicable to nonhumans while something called "moral segregation", is.
If anything, it would seem relativism would be much more compelling with
nonhumans around.  Is "moral segregation" a term in use by alien
psychologists?

Paul
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