right and wrong

waves

can we explain why some things are REALLY right or wrong?

starfish

on this page

Most people consider some things are really right or really wrong. Here we consider where our ethics and morality come from, whether we can trust our sense of right and wrong, and whether evolution can explain all we believe about ethics.

In the clues section, we look for clues to the answers to the big questions of God and meaning in life. Each topic discusses the facts and arguments believers and unbelievers use to support their viewpoint - a world of philosophy and ideas in just a few pages!

Everyone says things like "It's not fair!" or "You shouldn't have ..." Sometimes these are just expressions of personal frustration or hurt, but often we think we're saying something true about life. We are making real moral judgments. We don't expect to get it right all the time, but we really do believe that some human behaviours are wrong.

If we didn't believe that, war crimes trials would have no basis in justice. We really do believe that rape and torture of civilians, and ethnic cleansing in war, are wrong. Likewise we believe that paedophiles preying on the young and defenceless is deeply wrong.

And it is not just us. There are many variations in what different societies believe is wrong, and ethical beliefs change over time, but there is also much that is common (see references).

War may or may not be morally justifiable in different societies and circumstances, but indiscriminate killing is considered wrong in most cultures. We may have different views about property ownership, but few think that indiscriminate theft is acceptable.

Even the fact that we argue over the ethics of, for example, euthanasia or racism, indicates that we generally all share the ethical view that some behaviours are wrong, and that we can argue the truth about them.

Where did this moral or ethical sense come from? There seem to be two possible views.

evolutionary ethics

Some people believe that our ethics are pragmatic conventions that have evolved to enable human society to function. Some behaviours do not assist the survival of our species or our culture, so we develop sanctions against those behaviour patterns and reinforcements of patterns which tend to assist survival or the smooth working of society. Thus ethics are strictly utilitarian.

".... morality is a social construction. At its core is the idea of mutual obligation .... willingness to take the rights, needs and welfare of others into account, on the assumption that they will do the same for us." Hugh Mackay

But this raises difficult questions.

why should I?

Why I should obey these ethical codes if I can see an advantage for me? What if others don't play their part and treat me well? What if I don’t care about the survival of my culture or species as much as I care about my own well-being or benefit? (Deep down, who does?) Ethics are generally meant to provide an incentive for people to do "right", but the long term good of society provides little incentive for many!

And there are practical outcomes of holding such a view of ethics. In cities in the western world, people seem to be becoming more disconnected from each other and less likely to accept the prevailing ethics or laws. Road rage, corporate and social security fraud, and a loss of a sense of community may be examples.

In Australia in 2003, the government was accused of deliberately lying over some emotive issues relating to the invasion of Iraq and Australia's reluctance to accept entry of refugee boat people. Regardless of the truth of the situation, the alarming thing was that the majority of Australians seemed to be unconcerned about whether the government told the truth or not, as long as they agreed with its actions.

what would evolutionary ethics look like?

Do we really want an ethic based on "survival of the fittest"? If a person or a society is genetically pre-disposed to murder or rape because those things give an evolutionary advantage, clearly we do not want our ethics to support that predisposition, but to oppose it.

Logically, a utilitarian view of ethics leaves us with a choice between each of us choosing, perhaps arbitrarily, our own personal ethics (with no-one else in a position to criticise our choice), or defining ethics merely as whatever results from human evolution. "Whatever is, is good." Professor William Provine: "Naturalistic evolution has clear consequences .... no ultimate foundation for ethics exists..."

Philosopher Bertrand Russell recognised the dilemma. In a letter, he discussed how such a view of ethics would deal with issues raised by Adolf Hitler, the holocaust and the Nuremberg war crime trials. He wrote:

"I do not myself think very well of what I have said on ethics. I have suffered a violent conflict between what I felt and what I found myself compelled to believe .... I could not bring myself to think that Auschwitz was wicked only because Hitler was defeated, but the ghosts of [other philosophers] seemed to jeer at me and say I was soft."

So it seems that seeing ethics as being a result of natural selection leads to conclusions we would generally be unhappy with.

or else ....

The alternative view is that right and wrong are as fundamental to the universe as the laws of physics (except we are not compelled to obey these 'laws'). And if there are 'true' or 'universal' ethical standards, how did they arise?

Theists argue that only the existence of a moral God provides ethics with the authority we instinctively give them. "If God doesn't exist, everything is permissible." (Dostoevsky)

As we have seen, many atheists do not believe in objective ethics. However others do believe in objective ethics, but believe this doesn't require a God.

Although right and wrong vary so much over time, and from culture to culture, there is enough in common to argue that the problem is at our end - when we try to avoid difficult or unpalatable aspects of morality. The principles seem to be clear, but we work out the details differently.

one thing we can surely conclude......

We will continue to make ethical judgments, as we deal with significant social issues such as racism, environmental protection, the rights of the poor, war, climate change, or genetic engineering, and more personal issues such as marriage and divorce, child rearing, personal relationships, guilt and forgiveness.

We will continue, but on what basis? If we continue with only an evolutionary or utilitarian basis, people will be inclined more and more to disregard ethical behaviour if they can see personal advantage The only way out of this dilemma seems to be to believe that ethics has a 'higher status' in the universe, arguably originating with God.

Most people seem to have a bit of an 'each-way bet' - they believe in random evolution but also meaning and human-ness, without being that much concerned whether these two views can logically go together.

Some atheists are offended by this argument, because it seems to them to infer that they are not ethical. But in fact the opposite is true. This discussion assumes that most people, atheist or theist, have an ethical sense which they recognise and follow on many matters - but questions whether an atheist's belief is consistent with that behaviour.

my personal opinion

I firmly believe in the truth and importance of ethics, as I think most people do. I cannot believe that the clear certainty we have that some things are just wrong is compatible with a random, chaotic universe. I feel this is a most compelling argument against a purely materialistic view of life. Bertrand Russell's dilemma is a dilemma for all of us!

what do you think?

Do you believe strongly in the truth of ethical judgments? (If you have strong views on such matters as warfare, genocide, pedophilia, human rights, government corruption, etc, then it is safe to say that you probably do.) Do you feel the need to have a logical explanation for why ethics are true, and if so, do you feel your current beliefs provide that explanation?

I hope you have found this brief discussion interesting and challenging. You may wish to make a comment about ethics on the forum, or check out a few references used in writing this.