coyote
"I will probably get blasted for this, but this is just the way I think. I determine right and wrong by how it feels inside me. It's not logical or rational, but it's fairly consistent."
You are a very fortunate person if emotions are consistent for you in making moral decisions. My emotions vary widely and my gut reactions do too. I find myself questioning my impulse reactions afterward and wish I could have given more thought to the situation. I think my way through morality better than I react.
One of the reasons I love the original Star Trek is that each of the 4 characters represented certain qualities:
* Spock was logical with no emotion.
* Bones was emotional.
* Scotty was the science/technology techie who was more at home in an engine bay than with people.
* Kirk was the rational one. Kirk was capable of putting the logical mind together with the emotional mind and the technical mind and acting rationally. Kirk was the only one who could effectively lead and consistently made the best decisions.
These fictional characters separated different personality profiles and made it easy for us to identify with them (Even if we didn't consciously understand why). Kirk represented the ideal synthesis of emotion, logic and science/technology.
I think it is safe to say that we all have some Spock and some Bones and some Scotty and some Kirk in us. We all have a different mix of those 4 and that is one reason we view morality with different eyes.
I may have more Spock in me and less Bones than you do. I used to want to be Scotty but my life expereinces have tought me to take science/technology slowly and with much thought. New ideas to me require careful consideration and analysis and I'm skeptical unless the new idea can be demonstrated as demonstrably superior to the old.
Does this make me a crotchety old fart? I'm not really all that old.
