Friday, December 18, 2009

On deriving morality from first principles

1. You are not special.

2. Therefore, hypocrisy is bad; the same rules should apply to you and to others.

3. Therefore, the golden rule.

4. Therefore, the rest of liberal ethics.

Conservative ethics [the difference] has some extra bits that may not be derivable quite so easily. Being quite liberal myself, however, I'll stop here.