CSflim

Maybe the current digression should be placed in a different thread? After all, we may not want to de-rail this one.

Regardless, I'll carry on, and give my views.

In my opinion 'right' and 'wrong' don't exist (for the purposes of this discussion, we should you use the words 'right' and 'wrong' to refer to morally right and wrong, Correct and Incorrect or True and Untrue should probably be used in the place of factually right and wrong this, just to avoid confusion.)

I believe that the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are socially constructed ideas. But this does not set out to trivialise such things. They are social constructions, but they are *very important* social constructions!

Take 'money'. Money doesn't exist, it's a social construction...and a very important one at that. Without it, our society (as we know it) would undeniably collapse. If everyone woke up tommorrow morning and fogot about the concept of money, then money would cease to exist...all we would have is such things as bit of coloured paper (cash) and numbers stored on computers (bank balances).

Same thing with morality. If everyone forgot what morality was, all we would have remaining is rules, and written laws.

The analogy goes further.

What is the price of this vase? How much money is it worth? What is the TRUTH in this matter?

Well ultimately, the vase is worth as much money as a person is willing to pay for it! In other words there is no fact of the matter, there is only an opinion.
Similarly with morality. Is euthenasia moral or immoral? Ultimately there is no fact of the matter, there is only opinion.

Now, for the most part, we can agree on how much things are worth, and what things are moral.
We would all agree that raping someone is "wrong". Similarly we would agree that $X is a reasonable price to ask for a television.

Yet how much is this antique vase worth? Not a lot to me...I know nothing about antiques, and have no interest in it, yet to a collector such a vase may be worth a huge amount of money. Which one of us is CORRECT? What is the fact of the matter. Of course, in this example we can see that the question is meaningless:
Is the universe right-side-up, or upside-down? Again the question is meaningless...there is no fact of the matter.

So where did the ideas of 'right' and 'wrong' come from?
Well they come from experiences we have. When we do something 'wrong' we have feelings of guilt, and when we do something 'right' we have positive feelings...we feel good about ourselves.

Why do we eat? Why do we avoid damaging ourselves?
We eat to avoid the unpleasant feelings of hunger, and to seek the pleasant feelings of contentment. We avoid damaging ourselves to avoid the disagreeable feeling of pain, and to seek pleasure.

But that is only begging the question...why do we really eat? What is the purpose of eating?
Ultimately me need to eat to survive. Evolutionary speaking, having the feeings of hunger/fullness is a positive disposition to survival. Similarly with 'moraliy'. We need an unspoken set of moral-like social rules in order to be able to function together as a social group. There are great survival benefits to working in a group, so social behaviour is a good thing for natural selection to exploit. Hence our internal 'moral' feelings.

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