So, I’ve been chatting with my buddies lately, and it’s turned into a bunch of debates about right and wrong. I think I have a pretty solid moral compass, I’m not bragging haha, but most people I know can’t really explain why something’s right or wrong without getting all circular or contradicting themselves.
So, how do you figure out what to do? No judgment, just curious. I’ll share my thoughts below.
Thanks!
Edit: Oh, all you lil’ philosophers have brought me a cornicopia of thoughts and ideas. I’m going to take my time responding, I’m like Treebeard, never wanna be hasty.
I think you might be approaching this in the wrong way. There is no objective right or wrong when it comes to ethics. Life and humans are simply too complex to create simple, objective rules that would be interpreted in exactly the same way by a decent number of humans for a reasonably complex situation. And you don’t even have to include ethical dilemmas for that, like deciding whether to shoot down a plane hijacked by terrorists or interrogating a kidnapper via torture.
Nonetheless, many homogeneous groups get to a decent degree of ethical alignment, and asking people for their ethical rules or guidelines is an interesting question to get inspiration and to find out how others try to navigate the complexity of the world. Just don’t expect these rules to be objective.