Moral Acts

[robvalue]

I'd say nothing is objectively "right" or "wrong", period. It's a simple contradiction in terms. These are value judgements, they can't be objective.

Do we both agree, in our opinion, that rape is "wrong"? Yes.

Can we agree on definitions of "wrong" which measure wellbeing in certain ways, so that rape is objectively wrong? Probably, yes.

But morality is complicated. It's really easy to take things in isolation. "Do I do [thing which almost everyone agrees is wrong] or not?" Well, no. Because almost everyone would say no. It's a tautology. It's still not objective, but it's simple. Objectively, there's no reason to care about what happens to anyone or anything.

Morality only gets difficult when you have to compromise. When outcomes conflict. When resources are limited. In other words, almost all the time. Of course we can not do unnecessary harm, but we do harm all the time just by existing, and how we measure that harm and go about minimizing it is not objective. We have to make decisions between two undesirable outcomes, very often.

A simple example: for some reason, either I rape someone or everyone on earth dies. Now there is a conflict of outcomes. Is it still immoral for me to rape the person?

Of course that's ridiculous, but people tend to go to rape because it's something people easily agree to. Morality is a massive grey area of value judgements, about absolutely everything. I couldn't codify my own morality even if I wanted to. I can make very vague statements of intent, but I know I don't even follow them all the time. I try to, but life is almost always about compromise.

Even if we agreed about rape, that's a corner case, and it leaves everything else up in the air.