Careful analysis of the burial mounds in Ohio show the Indians that were there when encountered by the first European American were not "native Americans." They had wiped out the first groups of homo sapiens that had an extensive civilization on in Ohio. [Look up the Hopewell civilization.] In any case, I think a deep study of the history of Ohio helps to get a more balanced picture of the American Indians than the overly romanticized versions. This goes back to the basic problem of all news reporting and all history. History is the art of getting people to become outraged at sad events. They way this is done is not by only by lies, but by reporting half the truth. [And sometimes by lies.]
People playing loose and fast with truth in fact gave me motivation to spend more time on Math and Physics. If I am going to spend time on study, I would rather that it be something I can depend on its veracity. [I also will try to learn the Avi Ezri of Rav Shach because even in subject like Torah, there is an objective right an wrong. This is because morality is objective. The best defense of this idea you can see in Michel Huemer on why he does not follow Ayn Rand. [And that bit of writing by Huemer is a masterpiece.] But the idea of objective morality is well defended also in Hegel, and in the Kant Friesian school of Leonard Nelson and Kelley Ross.]
Here is a proof of objective morality by Huemer (Reason, Objectivity, and Goodness):
(1) There are moral propositions.(2) So they are each either true or false. (by law of excluded middle) (3) And it's not that they're all false. Surely it is true, rather than false, that Josef Stalin's activities were bad. (Although some communists would disagree, we needn't take their view seriously, and moreover, even they would admit some moral judgement, such as, "Stalin was good.")(4) So some moral judgements correspond to reality. (from 2,3, and the correspondence theory of truth).(5) So moral values are part of reality. (which is objectivism)
[Huemer gives also a larger sort of defense that you have to paste together. That is: There are universals. Moral principles are universals as applied to ethics. How do you know universals exist? Here is a proof by Huemer: ."..yellow is a universal. It is something that lemons, the sun, and school buses, among other things, all have in common. Yellow is 'abstract' in the sense that it is not a particular object with a particular location; you will not bump into yellow, just sitting there by itself, on the street. Nevertheless, yellow certainly exists. Here is an argument for that:
1. | The following statement is true: | ||||||
2. | The truth of (Y) requires that yellow exist. | ||||||
3. | Therefore, yellow exists. Some philosophers (the 'nominalists') say that the only thing multiple particulars have in common is that we apply the same word or idea to them.(54) Here is an argument against that:
|
I should add that moral principles are what Kant calls Synthetic a priori. They can not be derived by the five senses. That is Hume's law he can not derive an "ought" from an "is". But not all knowledge is derived by the five senses; The idea that we can is "Empiricism--roughly, the idea that all 'informative' knowledge, or knowledge of the mind-independent, language-independent world, must derive from sense perception". Here, is a better-known counter-example to empiricism. {Laurence BonJour } Nothing can be both entirely red and entirely green. How do I know that? Note that the question is not how I came upon the concepts 'red' and 'green', nor how I came to understand this proposition. The question is why, having understood it, I am justified in affirming it, rather than denying it or withholding judgment.
