David Hume, Moral Philosophy and Camming

 

I post on Twitter quite often. And every now and then, I'll get a comment on my post from someone or the other who feels the need to tell me that there's something morally reprehensible about camming, or that my attire is a breach of modesty, or anything similarly judgmental.

I'm not all that affected by it, but it does lead me to try to understand morality and moral philosophy better. I've found David Hume's treatise to be an excellent place to begin my inquiry.

Take the following observation by Hume:
Consider an apple. We look at an apple, and see it is red - - but in reality, that color red is our perception, and not necessarily an intrinsic quality of the apple (an acid trip is a good example of what the world looks like when the traditional relationships between object and representation are reconfigured). So when we say "that apple is red" we're applying our internally generated judgment "red" on the apple. The apple isn't red, we only see it as such. Animals with a different color spectrum probably see apples differently.

So according to Hume, morality is something generated, and not the intrinsic properties of other people or actions. Camming isn't intrinsically immoral, rather, the concept of immorality is a perceptual filter that's generated within the person who feels camming is immoral.

That gave me a lot of clarity on things - - the fact that, whenever people are quick to pass judgment on someone else, it actually says more about them, their mental-emotional schema, and their own blind spots, rather than the person being judged.

Now, this probably won't stop people from being judgmental, but hey, I got to check out a new book, and that's one of my favorite silver linings.

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