I would like to say that humans themselves defined right or wrong. Like, without the definitions of right or wrong by humans, it wouldn’t be wrong to do something bad like robbing a bank or killing people. There is no right or wrong humans have just defined right or wrong. Anywhere else in the universe there could be civilizations that don’t even have any laws.
It depends what you mean define
Our morality is unique to humans but we dont “just” define it. Its not arbitrary.
Some animals have a sense of fairness and amongst chimpanzee and bonobo there are basic social arrangements.
Some behaviours like murder are considered immoral in all human societies.
I agree that humans make their rules, but I’m not sure how any civilization could exist without them. It’s hard for me to imagine.
Without humans, there wouldn’t be any banks to rob.
Humans are not absolutely unique in having rules; hierarchical animals have ‘rules’ about who eats first, for example, who gets to mate, and so on. I don’t know when our species moved beyond this simple level of rule-making into more elaborate and formal rules to a system of regulated right and wrong. It was probably during our many millennia of stone-age hunting-gathering, before we starting settling down around 12,000 years ago (give or take 15 minutes).
The bright, acquisitive, inventive animals that we are need rules and regulations to live together even somewhat peaceably. Without enforced rules, our self-centered drives are just too disruptive. By internalizing rules and regulations it became possible for us to form ever-more complex societies composed of ever-larger numbers of people. Even so, we still have a lot of conflict on a person-to-person level as well as on the group-to-group level.
Yes, but. There are murders and then there are deliberately caused deaths that look a lot like murder which are thought to be just fine. Murder the right people at the right time and you get a medal. In 18th century England, people were hanged for stealing bread. Justice in one sense, murder in another sense. In this past year, two unarmed people were murdered in Minneapolis by immigration enforcement personnel. “No, no,” the Administration said. “Strictly self defense.” You know, a man with a smart phone can cause all sorts of mayhem. This kind of social anarchy has to be stopped. So you just shoot the guy.
1 Like
Yes, I understand your point. Morality and power are contested
The more we learn about animals and their cognitive capacities and social lives, the more intolerant we become to cruelty against animals. It’s an example of how we discover what’s right or wrong.
Isn’t this a fairly standard, average person’s understanding of how morality works? In our largely secular Western world, it seems that it is mainly religious folk who maintain morality is founded in some form of transcendence.
Moral realism is continually debated in these threads.
If right and wrong are human-made, does that mean you can go out and shoot children for your own amusement (assuming there were no laws agaisnt it)? What do you think follows from this idea?
1 Like
Huge can of worms.
So that’s two separate assertions.
There is no right or wrong.
Humans have just defined right or wrong.
So how about this: where did we get the idea of right and wrong to then define it? What made the term “good” useful?
Or the question might be, now that we have defined it as an essential feature of inter-personal relationships in a group community, is right or wrong something we can each define for ourselves or is there something about the very notion of right and wrong that places it in the shared space between us, in the world? In other words, now that we’ve bitten the fruit and know good and bad, are we stuck dealing with rules and objective right and wrong, or can society function where everyone has to decide for themselves what is right or what is wrong? In other words, if right and wrong isn’t constructed into an objective measurement, like a scale can show “this weighs 100 pounds for everyone on the earth”, is there any use at all to measuring personal opinions about right and wrong? I don’t get to say “here is 100 pounds of grain” and hand you a little paper bag with a pound in it, and similarly, I don’t get to steal a gun and shoot a random person and say “I did a good thing today by stealing and killing”.
So what does it mean to say “there is no right or wrong”? Are you saying there is no 100 pound measurement of grain, or are you saying there is no difference between calling the grain 100 pounds and pointing out a little paper 1 pound bag, because that’s what I personally call 100 pounds?
So things that are defined are not real?
Do we define right and wrong, or do we recognise it? Do you view an action and compare it to your definition and conclude that it is right? Or do you just see it as being right?
It’s wrong to conflate rules and laws with adjectives such as right or wrong because rules and laws can be either right or wrong.
2 Likes
Why should we belief that rightness and wrongness are reducible to non-objectivity? You say they are just whatever we want them to be, but what’s the argument for that?
Right and wrong are ethical notions. They can be treated as synonyms of good and bad. Good and bad are central ideas of morality. Here is a general moral argument
- x has feature f
- Feature f is good/bad
- x is good/bad.
f can be a) pleasure, etc. b) virtuous, and so on.
For example, let x = vegetarian and we can see that f = doesn’t cause suffering, which can be stipulated as goodness. Hence, vegetarian is goodness/vegetarian is right 
How do I see this? Right and wrong will always have a defined meaning; good and bad, just and unjust. These terms are what unite them into significance. Also, if it has no definition would the concept even exist? Meaning would it be relevant to say to something “this is bad” or “this is good”?
When you said, “it wouldn’t be wrong to do something bad like robbing a bank or killing people.”, you did in fact defined it into different meaning. This is because we can switch the words around into different form but having it mean the same thing. We can say; it would not be right to do something good like x y and z. The fact you said it wouldn’t be wrong is reason to say it is defined. Therefore it is in definition.
One insight I have is in a perspectival aspect. This may seem obvious but we all have our own views on what is right and what is wrong. To further dive into it, I possibly don’t believe there is a set rule on what is right and wrong. This is due to the diverseness within society. How about we say this; we see on the newspaper a mass genocide has erupted into the publics mind. Some can or perhaps will say, “oh no, this is horrible, just horrible!” Others can possibly say the opposite of this, “this is really good, wonderful.” What I’m really getting at is one can see this as wrong/bad, the other see as its the right/good movement to happen. This applies to simply everything we set our eyes on that we can say this is good or this is bad.
It can go down into something further, perhaps can be considered absurd. Let’s assume the paragraph above (pp3) is correct. So we know that everyone will see everything differently in there on perspective of right and wrong. Now what may be the cause to this can perhaps be due to the weather being stupidly hot, you are angry, the shirt you are wearing is white, or even the fact every single person on this earth, even animals (us too) that are territorial with there set of rules are all different, have this difference in perspective and personality, it can be due to our cells that make up our body. How our cells continue to change and grow and die. We essentially never stay the same person and this causes our perspectives on everything (in this case right and wrong) to shift.
This all may just sound like common sense but it just occurred to me, don’t bash me lol.
Agree with the “subjective but not arbitrary” consensus.
On aliens specifically, I think morality is mostly about social behaviours. And, accordingly, I think the line of what is considered good or bad will depend a lot on how social the species is.
And whether they are, from our perspective, more benevolent or more evil than we are, they may not have moral dilemmas in the way that we do. We have moral dilemmas because of conflicting instincts; we are very cooperative in many ways, but also tribal and warlike and individualistic in others.
It may be that this is the sweet spot for evolving advanced intelligence. But if not, ETIs might not be able to relate to the concept of moral dilemmas at all (I tend to think advanced ETIs will likely engineer their own instincts, but I mean even in their evolutionary past they might not have had moral dilemmas).
1 Like
Shakespear said, “there is no right or wrong, but thinking makes it so.”
The question becomes, why do we think about right and wrong, rather than what is right or wrong.
What’s right for me becomes wrong for me as soon as someone else does something harmful to me.
It’s unfortunately not so obvious when we do something wrong to ourself. Self-undoing is never obvious and may affect others in some way, most of the time.
I also think each species has more or less it’s own rules, otherwise survival would not be possible.
Right and wrong, good or bad, light and dark are all confusing terms and archetypes - in the end it can be reduced to, safe and unsafe. Right and wrong sounds like sin, and are abstract concepts that don’t communicate the intent clearly and causes confusion.
To me it boils down to safe and unsafe, rather than right or wrong.
There is no ultimate right and wrong, it is based on a lesser-deduction of the subjective, or morality.
If we’re being moral, what’s right is good, and what’s wrong is bad.
We implement morality to increase performance grade.
It’s wrong if it’s a poor performance, and right if it’s a good performance.
If we don’t implement morality, there is no right or wrong.
Goodness, means there are rights and wrongs.
In all fairness, morality is easy-mode(a stabilizer), there’s a more advanced way to ensure goodness.
It’s called philosophy.
This is why philosophers discuss the category of absolute good - independent of who exactly is thinking about good.