What's So Great About Ushas?

Jeff Wilson · 11 Jul 2008, 18:23 · from 2008-July.txt.gz

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From: jwilson at io.com (Jeff Wilson)
Date: Fri, 11 Jul 2008 13:23:17 -0500
Subject: (urth) What's So Great About Ushas?
In-Reply-To: <3e1fa2e90807110822v1af7e335jcf9087e2426e62ce at mail.gmail.com>
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Message-ID: <4877A515.5050706 at io.com>

Paul B wrote:
> On Fri, Jul 11, 2008 at 3:10 AM, Jeff Wilson <jwilson at io.com 
> <mailto: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 <mailto: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.

There's Wolfe's answer to the problems of pain and evil right there: God 
has the infinite and unfailing moral judgment to decide when people 
should suffer or die, and it's good that he does so. (There's no 
question of them not suffering or dying, because mortals have to suffer 
and have to die by definition, it's just a question of when and where.) 
When someone inflicts the suffering or death for selfish reasons, it's 
not just pain but evil, but it can still further the plan of the Increate.

> 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.

The details of how much the varied parties are each responsible for the 
destruction that happens and the destruction that is avoided are murky.

> 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? 

I coined the phrase in analogy to racial segregation, the idea that 
different races can't / shouldn't share completely in a common social 
system; "separate but equal" being the ideal. Ergo, moral segregation is 
   to say that human and aliens can have separate but equally moral values.

It's not moral relativism in that the actors are differentiated by 
biology more than sociology. There is no surmountable difference in 
viewpoint, because there are viewpoints that humans and aliens *can't 
share*. I believe humans can have moral absolutes that should apply to 
every person, but I don't believe those absolutes will apply to every 
alien. The whole reason for the word is to express the concept of 
"profoundly different".

-- 
Jeff Wilson - jwilson at io.com
< http://www.io.com/~jwilson >

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