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Kyo · 10-10-2003, 08:12 PM

The difficulty with discussing morals is that we have no absolute standard from which to operate. Because I do not believe in a sentient higher power (read: God), for me there does not exist any authority to dictate what is truly 'right' and 'wrong.' It is obvious to anyone who has experienced real society that the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are as intangible and transient as you, and your environment, choose to make them.

In other words, how do you prove that something is 'right' or 'wrong'? As with many other types of proofs, we must introduce conditions - under what system are we determining right or wrong? Through whose perspective are we looking? For what reason are we judging? In other words - is society judging our actions, or are we assessing our own moral worth?

To clarify, let's go back to the claim I make in the previous post - that it is impossible to prove that killing is wrong. The first problem, of course, is, killing under what circumstances? Some people believe that killing is always wrong, some people that killing is justified under certain conditions, such as self-defense. For the purposes of this discussion, however, this point is fairly irrelevant and we can resolve the problem by simply limiting our discussion to killing for the sake of killing, with nothing at stake. In other words - if I kill you for no other reason than I felt like killing you, just for fun, or because I was bored, can you prove to me that what I did was wrong? I say that you cannot. This is because nobody has the moral authority to determine the morals of others. Force of arms, threats of incarceration and death, are not moral authority, but physical authority. Even if you punish me for killing someone, there is no way that you can tell me absolutely that what I did was wrong.

So rather than saying that theft 'only seems moral,' we should instead say that theft may be moral to some people, under any circumstances. The concept may be hard to swallow, but morality is just that kind of animal. If for some reason a person could really believe that theft is moral (perhaps if they were brought up in some fantastical society where theft was normal), then it would be moral to them regardless of what anyone else believed.

A corollary to all of this, or perhaps the conclusion, is that morals are highly conditional - who you are, where you come from, and what circumstances you are currently in are all major factors in determining your moral judgment. Two people in the same situation may come up with completely different ideas of what is 'morally correct.' The same person in two different (but related) situations may draw opposite conclusions for each situation. We will answer your theft question as an example. Normally, theft is considered to be wrong - I am confident enough that the people who are reading this were all raised with backgrounds similar enough that they all consider theft to be wrong as a general rule. Given that, each person might differ on when theft could possibly be acceptable. Some may say that theft is never acceptable, for any reason. However ... would you also say that killing is never acceptable? If so, consider a situation that brings these two into conflict - you must steal, or you must murder. In this case, is theft morally correct? Is killing morally correct? Or are both still morally wrong?

As for laws ... well, I've already discussed that twice in this thread alone. Suffice to say that they are a mechanism for government - a method to control people's actions by force for the benefit of society, hopefully, but more often for the benefit of those who are in power and wish to remain there. A law can directly contradict the morals of anyone and everyone it affects and still remain a law - because laws do not deal with 'right' and 'wrong.'

10-10-2003, 08:12 PM	#19 (permalink)
Kyo Crazy	The difficulty with discussing morals is that we have no absolute standard from which to operate. Because I do not believe in a sentient higher power (read: God), for me there does not exist any authority to dictate what is truly 'right' and 'wrong.' It is obvious to anyone who has experienced real society that the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are as intangible and transient as you, and your environment, choose to make them. In other words, how do you prove that something is 'right' or 'wrong'? As with many other types of proofs, we must introduce conditions - under what system are we determining right or wrong? Through whose perspective are we looking? For what reason are we judging? In other words - is society judging our actions, or are we assessing our own moral worth? To clarify, let's go back to the claim I make in the previous post - that it is impossible to prove that killing is wrong. The first problem, of course, is, killing under what circumstances? Some people believe that killing is always wrong, some people that killing is justified under certain conditions, such as self-defense. For the purposes of this discussion, however, this point is fairly irrelevant and we can resolve the problem by simply limiting our discussion to killing for the sake of killing, with nothing at stake. In other words - if I kill you for no other reason than I felt like killing you, just for fun, or because I was bored, can you prove to me that what I did was wrong? I say that you cannot. This is because nobody has the moral authority to determine the morals of others. Force of arms, threats of incarceration and death, are not moral authority, but physical authority. Even if you punish me for killing someone, there is no way that you can tell me absolutely that what I did was wrong. So rather than saying that theft 'only seems moral,' we should instead say that theft may be moral to some people, under any circumstances. The concept may be hard to swallow, but morality is just that kind of animal. If for some reason a person could really believe that theft is moral (perhaps if they were brought up in some fantastical society where theft was normal), then it would be moral to them regardless of what anyone else believed. A corollary to all of this, or perhaps the conclusion, is that morals are highly conditional - who you are, where you come from, and what circumstances you are currently in are all major factors in determining your moral judgment. Two people in the same situation may come up with completely different ideas of what is 'morally correct.' The same person in two different (but related) situations may draw opposite conclusions for each situation. We will answer your theft question as an example. Normally, theft is considered to be wrong - I am confident enough that the people who are reading this were all raised with backgrounds similar enough that they all consider theft to be wrong as a general rule. Given that, each person might differ on when theft could possibly be acceptable. Some may say that theft is never acceptable, for any reason. However ... would you also say that killing is never acceptable? If so, consider a situation that brings these two into conflict - you must steal, or you must murder. In this case, is theft morally correct? Is killing morally correct? Or are both still morally wrong? As for laws ... well, I've already discussed that twice in this thread alone. Suffice to say that they are a mechanism for government - a method to control people's actions by force for the benefit of society, hopefully, but more often for the benefit of those who are in power and wish to remain there. A law can directly contradict the morals of anyone and everyone it affects and still remain a law - because laws do not deal with 'right' and 'wrong.' __________________ Sure I have a heart; it's floating in a jar in my closet, along with my tonsils, my appendix, and all of the other useless organs I ripped out. Last edited by Kyo; 10-10-2003 at 08:16 PM..