Is there really a right and a wrong?
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Is there really a right and a wrong in our lives, in how we make decisions?
In my last post, I asked people. I put up a poll and 80%, 69 people voted yes they believe there is a right and a wrong. Five people (6%) voted “Absolutely not!”, and the last 14% were undecided.
I found that fascinating.
Considering I have written a lot about murder, I am not surprised by the answers. And yet I am very surprised.
In my younger years, I would have argued with you vehemently that there is a right and a wrong, but I have seen otherwise lately.
We live by many rules and laws in our society that guide our choices in how we act in life. These, in simple terms, define what is acceptable in our society and what is not.
For example, it is not acceptable to steal from people, harm, injure or kill them. But we still do kill people in society, right? We still implement capital punishment in the U.S. and other countries. We have “moral” justifications as to why we shouldn’t do it, but then there are times when we believe it is okay to do it. And people argue both sides of that debate–that we should kill and that we shouldn’t kill.
We believe in the laws because they protect people. They give people the right to life, liberty and in some places the right to pursue happiness. Each country, however, has different values.
Some people find they are guided by right and wrong by their religious values, by their belief in God, and other people decide right and wrong based on their internal value system, or a system of compassion.
But how do we truly know what is right and wrong? Can we ever know?
If I decide something is right for me, how can I say it is right for you?
What guides you in making that determination? Who is the ultimate determining factor of the “right” decision?
We all have different beliefs and values.
I used to think there was a “right way” for someone to do a task, behave, respond, etc. if they cared about me. Now I am not so quick to make a judgement. Now I realize, there is my way and their way, and neither are right or wrong. There are just two possibilities.
This change in my paradigm has greatly opened up the world I live in. It’s more beautiful and more lovely than before. It’s not near as black and white. It has changed my relationships considerably, too.
I do believe in protecting life, giving people equal opportunity, fostering safe environments and being compassionate, but those are my beliefs on right and wrong. What are yours?
If this concept is new to you, here is some interesting reading for you.
Ok, I read that article and it is going to take a while to type out my response, but I have a few problems with the way a number of things were framed. I think the view was too black and while in a few places, and too narrow in others. I also agreed with a number of things. More later….
I may not have presented the best argument and this argument is not mine. It’s the argument of moral ethics and philosophy. It’s very old. It is by no means new…
Here is a page from debate.org: http://www.debate.org/opinions/does-right-and-wrong-truly-exist
This is a long, long, long, discussion. Long. These are the topics of Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. When I was young and discussing these things in Philosophy 101, I determined that I might be a relativist. Different strokes for different folks, and it would always depend on the circumstance. Is killing wrong? What about if you had to push a person into a train, but it would save a thousand? A million? Or what if the person was in the way of a train and you could pull him out of the way, but then those thousand people would die? Most people wouldn’t push the person, but wouldn’t rescue him either.
I’m less a relativist these days, but still somewhat. There is something important to convictions where situations shouldn’t matter. Yes, I feel it should be a little bit of both. I don’t apply my values or morals to other people, but I am aware of how we differ and keep that in the back of my mind if a situation where that knowledge is useful.
I once heard politics is applied ethics. I find this interesting.
This is how I’ve come to be more accepting of others’ views.
Hot topic: Abortion (not starting a fight here) I’m also being simplistic.
One side values a woman’s control of her body.
One side values a life at the very start of it.
Now that’s not to say people who don’t support a woman’s right to chose the decisions about her own body care about life, anymore that people who believe life starts at conception don’t believe a woman should be control about the decisions concerning her own body. They just value one thing more and have a difficult time seeing why others don’t see it their way too.
AND THEN the irony at lest to me, is the same people who are pro-choice which arguably is taking a life are generally against the death penalty, and the people pro-life are usually the ones in support of capital punishment. Now I understand there are different rationales for both, but that’s what they are–rationales.
And in politics, I find we can go down the line in topics and see the irony and the conflict in just about every hotly debated topics. Tobacco and marijuana laws. One side supports legalization of one, and would like to ban the other everywhere, and the other side wants the continued ban of one (marijuana), but would love to still have big tobacco around. It’s frankly absurd.
Great comment. I never heard any of this in college. I wish I did. I know there are three ways in which people determine morals. Can you explain them in simple terms?
Oooh, I’m interested to hear these. I’m going to take a stab at it off the top of my head without thinking much about it just because I’m curious.
1. Impact on others
2. Impact on self
3. Outcome
Would rescue. Oops my bad. They would save the person from the oncoming train, but wouldn’t push into it for the same result
There are two main ideas in philosophy related to ethics or morality:
Objectivist – there are objective observations that lead to objective ideas of morality that are true or false. Ideas of morality are based upon objective truths, much like the Earth goes around the Sun, no matter what country you live in or whatever your beliefs are.
Subjectivist – ideas of morality are all relative. There is no true or false, no right or wrong, except depending on the circumstances, much like in my country we drive on the left, but in your country you might drive on the right.
(A third much weaker stance I have seen is emotivist – ideas of morality are not true or false, nor are they contextural, they are only based on our emotional expresssions. eg. That is disgusting therefore it is immoral or that person makes me feel good so they are a good person.)
You have to be careful with philosophy because it is a primary. Politics naturally comes from the prevalent philosophy of Ethics that is in society, so to change society through politics is limited at best. The politicians went to the same schools and through the same education systems taught by the same professors that have taught the teachers that imbibed the standing philosophy. So if you change one politician for another, what change have you really made? The same underlying beliefs/philosophies are there.
You have to be careful with philosophy, because it is a primary. Paul mentioned politics comes from the philosophy branch of Ethics and that is natural because how can you relate to people if you don’t know what is the right or wrong way to do it (Ethics). What seems like a small difference to us has serious implications in philosophy – and this carries across into general society. Science arose in large part from the rediscovery of the philosophy of Aristotle who said we can understand reality by using our senses and our reason. This fuelled the Golden Age of Islam when Aristotle’s works were first rediscovered moulding in a cellar in Syria. And the eventual translation of Aristotle’s works in the West gave birth to Science and the Renaissance.
Whew! Lots of knowledge you have there, Brent. I could certainly study this much, much more!
If you believe in subjective morality there are follow on implications. One of the main arguments against subjectivism is how do you explain the development of morality that seems to occur over time? For example slavery is considered immoral although at one time it was normal for people to hold others as slaves.
As Brent said, morality is either objective or subjective (either there are things that are wrong for all times, places and people… or what is wrong depends on person, time or location). Let’s assume that morality is subjective. What are the consequences of that belief?
If morality is subjective and each person decides for themselves what is moral, then we must also drop all moral judgements of others. If we don’t drop all moral judgements of others, then we show that we don’t even believe our own philosophy and therefore it must be a bad and false philosophy. Consider the implications of this idea: We can no longer say that rape is wrong; for each individual gets to decide for himself and some might think rape is right and good. And we can no longer say that child abuse is wrong, for it depends on the individuals to decide this for themselves. And we could not even say that Hitler was wrong. We could not say that it was evil for Hitler to kill 6 million Jews… at most we could say that we didn’t like it. Is this really what we think? Is this really what we believe?
We must, then, conclude that morality is objective.