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What is 'Right' and 'Wrong' in this world?

Discussion in 'Chit Chat' started by Spacewalker, May 3, 2015.

  1. Spacewalker

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    Do you think there is something like 'right' and 'wrong' in this world?

    As far as I have noticed or experienced there isn't. It doesn't matter what you do. The 'universe' doesn't judge. It's only humankind that made up those terms. What seems right to one human seems wrong to another. So whatever you do, it doesn't matter. You just have to do something and keep going.
    I was thinking about that for some time because my mind couldn't figure out a 'right' solution for sth. I thought there had to be this one perfectly right solution. I hope you can follow my thoughts. It's all a bit messy. So yea, and one day I just figured, there is no such thing as 'right' and 'wrong'. It makes everything a lot easier, to me.

    Any thoughts on this?
     
  2. CuriousLiaison

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    I would agree that right and wrong are human constructs. The universe doesn't care. Right and wrong are ideas that we needed to evolve in order to live together. It would be absurd to judge other animals by human morality, because they haven't had the same morality wired into them.

    I would generally say that there are two types of reasoning for judging things as right or wrong. The first is that we consider altruism to be good, while selfishness is bad. I think that this is on the whole a good thing for people to believe. Without a widespread belief in this, society would barely function and life would be pretty unpleasant. Although it's worth noting that encouraging others to be altruistic is itself selfish. If I encourage other people to be nice to other people, I stand to benefit from that.

    The other reasoning for considering something to be right or wrong is because of custom, tradition, or because a god arbitrarily announced that something was right or wrong. On the whole I'd say that that was a much less good reason for judging something right or wrong.
     
  3. AKTodd

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    As you say, 'right', 'wrong' and 'morality' are just imaginary constructs with no real connection to the physical laws the universe runs on.

    Primarily they are used to (hopefully) create a fairly stable and cohesive society, although an argument can be made that arguing from a position of enlightened self-interest will get you the same thing (or better) without all the useless timewasting spent on jumping through moralistic hoops to try to connect societal operating principles to the fundamental nature of reality.

    Todd
     
  4. Camel

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    'Do no harm' is probably a good starting point, or 'do unto others as you would be done unto'. I mean, I would not like to be murdered, robbed, tortured, basically treated as a non-person, and I think it is right that I don't murder, rob, torture etc other people. I don't think they are subjective, but objective, and based an the fundamental dignity of the human person. The relativism of 'they are just human rules, the universe doesn't judge' can justify cannibalism, concentration camps and the gulag.
     
  5. MisterTinkles

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    So, you think just murdering someone for the hell of it, is just an illusional construct of humanity? There is no wrong or right to that?

    There is no right or wrong to letting someone starve to death while you eat? It's all a misconception of the universe?

    There is no right or wrong to some psychopath raping, torturing, and murdering small children?
    Thats just something "that is"?




    Jesus Christ! That is some fucked up shit.
     
  6. AAASAS

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    There is no real right or wrong, there is only harmful and non-harmful. People are altruistic so we value non-harmful actions, but in nature being harmful can be beneficial. Orangutans regularly patrol their area and kill and other orangutans they find in the area; to protect their food supply. Bears kill bear cubs and then re impregnate the female so that their offspring lives on. Dolphins have been observed killing for fun, same with orcas.

    Humans used to ; in ancient Greece and Rome I think, throw weak new borns off a cliff because their genetics were considered inferior.

    Living with a right and wrong, just makes life more pleasant but it certainly is not the only characteristic that humans have, we can be horrible, and nature is horrible by our standards.

    Humans abort babies; kill our own young, simply for the fact they don't "want" one or it would be an inconvenience, our governments allow the sale of tobacco to continue despite how destructive it is; it's killing both my parents, we also kill eachother in the numerous wars going on; the west killed 100,000's of innocents during the Iraq and Afghan wars that were going on not too long ago. We are just fucked, and the funniest thing is Westerner's actually are supportive of their military, the military is disgusting to me. I don't even care if I offend, i don't think the military is something that should be protected, and military members are not heroes in my eyes. To me they're taking tax payer money to support murder.

    We also mass slaughter life; animals, for the continuation of our life. This is something that actually bothers me, but it's life, it's how it works, and it just doesn't fit humans view of an "ideal" world.
     
    #6 AAASAS, May 3, 2015
    Last edited: May 3, 2015
  7. Spacewalker

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    @Mr.tinkles: Yes, exactly. I didn't say I liked that but that's the way it is in my opinion.
    A human being, well educated with morality would say yes that is wrong. From humans point of view its wrong. But if u leave this out, there's no wrong or right.

    @AAASAP: I totally agree with you. Although I think military can be helpful in rare occasions.
     
  8. Camel

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    AAASAS - in fact, in antiquity unwanted children were not 'thrown of cliffs'. They were exposed. That is, they were not killed (which would have been seen as wrong) but left to die (ie left to their fate, to the gods. Ancient myth is full of stories of such children being rescued. Romulus and Remus, the supposed founders of the City of Rome, being amongst them).
     
  9. Meadowlark17

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    Personal perception.
     
  10. Camel

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    What?
     
  11. Jellal

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    OP has the technically correct idea about right and wrong.

    Morality is basically contingent upon your upbringing and how much you build empathy toward others into your worldview. How far will you go to help another? Would you forfeit your own life? Or do you consider that excessive? If the idea of someone starving is awful to you, will you refrain from eating? Will you fast for the sake of the starving ... or will you even think of them once, as you eat? How "good" or how "evil" are you because of your actions? Once again, it's relative, depending on your station/career, the values you were taught during your upbringing, and whether or not you live in accordance with those principles, or others you hold true to on your own.

    Good and evil are not hardwired into us. We act in a certain way, others perceive us in their own way, and it's up to us how we see ourselves. The reason that people in this world often turn to acts of supposed "evil" basically boils down to the conditions they grew up under, their own life experiences, and how they ended up responding and adapting to specific modes of thinking. And a lot of the time, their "evil" acts may be viewed as "good" or at least "understandable/relatable/defensible" by people who have experienced similar conditions and reacted to the stimuli in the same way.

    If you think it's fucked up, I'm sorry to say, but it's always been the way of the world. The world is imperfect, and we humans are products of our imperfect environment. We're born into a world shat upon by ages of war, slavery, rape, torture, fear, a grotesque circus of pain and death. Humans were always pulling the strings. Of course this is going to perpetuate future generations of humans whose actions may be perceived by some as "wrong."
     
  12. Gandee

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    While I kinda understand OP's point if we view things from a metaphysical non-human being standpoint, but we're not nor we can ever be. I'm with Tinkles on this.

    The whole "moral is purely a human construct" sounds so pretentious to me with the way that concept is thrown around like something insignificant. Why do we even care what the universe cares (or doesn't care)?! We only have each other.
     
  13. HunGuy

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    My definitions for these concepts are:

    RIGHT is what is beneficial for me either directly or indirectly.
    WRONG is what is detrimental for me either directly or indirectly.

    All of it is just a matter of viewpoint.
     
  14. antibinary

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    They are a social construct, albeit a pretty necessary one.
     
  15. TENNYSON

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    I'm never going to believe in moral relativism, which everyone here seems to be espousing. I don't believe things like "well, honor killings are just their culture, so we should respect it". It may be their culture, but their culture is effed.

    Most actions that we define as "immoral" violate the Golden Rule. Murder, rape, stealing...these are things you don't want done to you or people you care about, thus you don't do them to others. Cultures around the world agree on this.

    Even morality as defined by religions will adhere to this for the most part. However, there are some actions that don't fit. Why is it necessary for many religions to define homosexuality as "immoral"? If you claim morality comes from the Bible, even then no one is clear on where homosexuality stands. Some will say it is inherently immoral, and certainly going by Old Testament evidence, it was once considered immoral enough to be worthy of death.

    I believe there is an absolute morality out there and all religions attempt to get at it, but that doesn't mean one religion has it completely right. For example, most religions probably don't discourage the death penalty, but I personally believe it's immoral. The same goes for torture. But I think many claims to absolute morality are simply people elevating their own cultural or personal morality to absolute status.

    What is it about homosexuality being immoral that is somehow superior to systems of morality where it isn't considered immoral?
     
  16. CuriousLiaison

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    I didn't say that those things weren't wrong, just that "wrong" is defined by humans according to innate codes of behaviour that we have evolved in order to live with other humans. Almost everyone would agree that the things you described were wrong, so we're probably not going to need to argue over any of them.

    Other species evolve different ideas of what just feels "wrong". For example, marmosets will frequently abandon weaker babies to care for stronger ones. Caring for the weaker baby comes at a cost of time spent feeding the stronger baby, so if caring for both harmed their chances of either making it to adulthood, they would evolve not to think there was anything wrong in abandoning one. We don't consider it evil when an animal eats another.

    If someone thought that any of the actions above were right, I would need to persuade them by argument, probably with reference to a set of values that at some level I hold to be self-evident. If the person I am arguing with simply doesn't agree with those values, then I would fail to persuade them.

    This might be the case if I were talking to a psychopath (the principal defining feature of which is a view that the feelings of others aren't really relevant). Psychopathy is actually pretty common (I think about 1 in 125 Americans are psychopaths) but because acting with no regard to others would harm their self-interest in the long run, most lead relatively normal lives. But if I failed to persuade someone, I wouldn't change my view that any of those things were wrong.

    Actually the question of "Why be moral?" is an interesting one. You can either answer by saying "You just should." which doesn't answer the question, or you can say that it'll work out best for you in the long-run, which more or less destroys the idea of morality, if you're only being nice because it's good for you.

    I'm not a moral relativist. I don't think that we should just let everyone get on with whatever they think to be moral. But I would have to persuade them by argument. If they say "This is right because my god says so", then we may be at an impasse (unless I can convince them that that god either doesn't think that way or doesn't exist, or unless they can convince me that it does). But that's difficult (cf the debates about the morality of homosexuality going on all over the world).

    Even if there were a God, I would argue that he wouldn't be capable of prescribing morality. You get the question (called the Euthyphro dilemma) of "Is this good because God says so, or did God say this was good because it inherently was?"

    If it's the first, then God arbitrarily chose things and decided them to be good. He could just as easily have announced that killing children was good, and we wouldn't have had any reference against which to judge the pronouncement. If it's the second, then good and evil actions already existed before God told us what they were.

    I would instead argue that all God could do, is impose laws. We might get sent to Hell for breaking his laws, but that doesn't necessarily make them moral. A law can be moral or immoral. All you can do is hope that the laws are moral.

    I don't want to turn this into an argument about religion. Please take the God above to mean any God. In fact, most of those arguments were made by about 300BC. I wasn't making a point about his existence, just about the nature of morality.
     
    #16 CuriousLiaison, May 3, 2015
    Last edited: May 3, 2015
  17. Invidia

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    Believe me, when I philosophize about the fabric of reality and stuff like that, I go psycho funk and f*** sh*t up.

    But debate me about whether something I or people close to me have been through were not really wrong, but rather just a moral construct of my/our minds, I wouldn't like you anymore. Noone here has crossed that line, mind you.

    I couldn't care less about the evolutionary/psychological/whatever reasons why most people seem to know intuitively, deep down, that killing, raping, etc. etc. is wrong. I care that we do and that we should take care of each other.
    Gandalf and Tinkles got it right
     
  18. Phalange

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  19. AKTodd

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    The idea that it is 'right' or 'wrong' is an illusional construct of humanity. Is there right or wrong in it? Objectively speaking - nope.

    See above. Nope. The universe is an empty void with insignificant clots of matter floating around in it. It has no meaning or purpose or value. It has no mind (at least that we can see or at least not yet). So it can't conceive (or misconceive) of anything. One might as well speaking of starvation having something to do with the emotional state of the dirt under our feet.


    Basically, yes.

    I may not like that it happens and I may want to stop it from happening for various reasons, both rational and not. But my feelings on the matter are also just something that's been conditioned in me by society or maybe evolved in my species to help us get along together like a good like troupe of monkeys, and are of no more relevance or importance than the actions I'm disliking. My cultural values (And yours, and everyone else's) are not related to the physical processes that the universe operates on and have no higher meaning or value. We can choose to operate on them and consider them important. But that's just a convenient social construct, not some truth of the universe.

    You are, of course, entitled to your opinion. But, objectively speaking, it doesn't matter and the universe doesn't 'care'.

    Todd:slight_smile:
     
  20. Chiroptera

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    "But who's to judge,
    the right from wrong?
    When our guard is down,
    i think we'll both agree,
    that violence breeds violence,
    but in the end it has to be this way"
    [YOUTUBE]ZcpGIVbPYrI[/YOUTUBE]

    Right and wrong are social constructs, BUT i think that humans tend to act based on what we call "evil", and the rules we know are necessary to hold that natural violence back, so we can live in society.