Quote:
Originally Posted by Willravel
Break the social contract and you're unethical. It's a mob decision.
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I wouldn't call it a "mob decision," but there is something to the invocation of the social contract. And these days, the social contract is not just local, it is international, and increasingly global.
You may be able to say that everyone acts from their own perceived ethicality, but that doesn't mean their actions are ethical. There are social norms, cultural norms, and I might even argue for a very limited kind of absolute morality. There can be a big difference between what we say constitutes our actions, and what the rest of the world says. And we're not always right. The idea that the individual has no responsibility to the community or to any of his fellow beings is, to my mind, insupportable.
A serial killer might well have a well-thought-out explanation for why their arguments are rational and ethical. Doesn't mean they aren't nutty as Christmas fruitcake, and it doesn't mean their claim of ethicality holds any weight whatsoever.
I'm pretty much willing to say, for example, that murder is wrong. Anytime, anyplace. Notice I say "murder," and not "killing," which might potentially be justifiable. I mean killing someone without justifiable provocation, and with malice aforethought.
I'd say there are a handful of other things that are inevitably wrong, or invariably right. But for the most part, yeah, I'd rely on the social contract. What we, collectively, decide as a society is tolerable, constitutes a general foundation of ethics.