Does anyone own "The Moral Landscape"?

[robvalue]

Well I don’t know. Are you saying rape is categorically right or wrong, or not? I’m saying it’s a malformed question, with any answer being meaningless. I’m saying that if absolute right and wrong exist, it would make no difference to anything. They would be interchangeable.

To "show" that rape is "wrong", you have to define "wrong" very specifically, and then the whole of morality hinges on that definition. Since people have never been able to agree on a precise definition, which one should we use? Why should we use any of them? You seem to very much be assuming that the wellbeing of humans is an essential part of what is right and wrong, and that you’d discount any other definition.

Of course, it’s no coincidence that people do on the whole value wellbeing, because that’s how we evolved. But that’s just modelling our behaviour, it’s not doing philosophy. If we're making cases about objectivity and facts, then "wrong" can’t simply be to do with the preferences and comfort of a particular species on a particular planet. Who is to say what is right and wrong on a universal scale in general, and what would it even mean to try and define it?