Below are some selected quotes from the conversation, but you might need context to truly appreciate them so do check out the full discussion. Me, I feel like my head is spinning, but it has been enlightening just to observe the clarity with which they approach these questions.
From Robert:
If you don't believe that people are inherently valuable (you know, like they shouldn't be harmed or killed, in a general sense) then how does that inform your decision making process? Do you use the fact that you don't believe that people are inherently valuable as a basis for action?
If you do, then you are rational (consistent in your application of logic). If you don't, then maybe you are relying on your feelings for deciding what to do. In that case, maybe there's not an important distinction between what you feel, and what you believe.
Again from Robert:
I guess what I really believe is that "shoulds" are real, and that internal experience (unreliable as it is) is all we have to work with if we want to get to the "shoulds". I realize that many people won't see it this way, and I realize how many pitfalls there are on the path I've chosen (there's a long history of murder and evil justified by "shoulds"), but it's the best I can do. I'm willing to hear arguments for another way, but it will be hard for me to accept anything as sterile as: Just do what's in your own best interest, everything else is nonesense.
From Bob:
What makes humans special? When we talk about this "value" of humans, is it unique to humans? Do rabbits or algae have this quality? Is this an anthropocentric model of value? Why should that be so? Did these external, absolute rights and wrongs exist before humans existed? What did they apply to back then? Were they just sitting in the ether, waiting for humans to evolve? Will these ethics still "exist" after humans have gone from this Universe? To what will they apply then? Should tigers not eat gazelles? Is this a case for vegetarianism?
It's much simpler and more plausible to me to think that our minds and our bodies evolved over the millenia to have affinities and aversions to our sensations. If you find sabre-toothed tigers to be irresistibly cute, you probably won't survive to reproduce. Likewise, the weirdos who enjoyed harming people didn't survive long, and their kind got selected out.
Again from Bob:
I have a substantive background in the sciences, and I will tell you with delight that I don't think science explains or predicts much at all of human experience. I have never heard a satisfactory explanation of what consciousness is, let alone how it becomes seemingly coherently packaged within physical beings. I love science, but I am no more committed to it as a philosophy than I am to external, absolute moralities.
