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How can you have your standard of "good" be external?
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External to what?
Also, I wasn't saying that *was* my standard of good; I was saying that it *fell into* the category of "good."
There may be other "good," I'm just mentioning one part.
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Would you say that ethics would be unimportant if you were the only man on an island. By your standard, they would be non-existent.
Also see my previous comment regarding axioms.
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Well, again, I was not attempting to give a general definition of ethics. I was giving one of my personal axioms. It's good to treat people well--that's something I take as an axiom.
On an island, I guess there would still be ethics of a kind: I would treat animals with respect? At least, those I wasn't having to kill for food.
By the way, technically I can take anything I like for an axiom. Just because one of my axioms follows from one of yours, doesn't mean I can't take mine as an axiom anyway.
I can even take a falsehood for an axiom, if I like...it just makes for a noninteresting system.
But certainly my "it's good to treat others nicely" axiom is simple and clear, and I see no reason why I shouldn't accept it as an axiom by itself. Are you arguing that there is a small set of even simpler axioms that immediately imply mine? Or that mine is just false?
I'd be happy to take others, if they're simpler or more powerful, so long as mine still follows as a theorem.
