Why be good?

[henryp]

Simon Moon

What I am asking is: what is the BASIS for objective moral behavior? Where does it come from?

If some feel that they have already answered, my apologies; however, I re-phrased my OP based on a quick scan of a few responses.

I will try to get through all of the posts as quickly as time permits. Sorry for the delay.

The objective basis for moral behavior is reality.

Morality is all about the well being of other humans (or sentient beings). Moral behavior increases the well being of other humans, and minimizes the harm to other humans.

I'm sure we can all agree on the following points:

1. We all live in the same reality, subject to the same physical laws.
2. We all have very similar physical bodies.
3. Because of this, we can extrapolate that what is harmful to my well being, is almost assuredly harmful to the vast majority of other humans' well being.

We just don't care.  We don't care about the well being of the vast majority of other humans.  That's just reality, and it's been made evident time after time after time after time.  Even now, we like our dogs more than most other human beings.  We like our TV's more than most other human beings.  We like taking a nap more than we like most other human beings.


We have no real preference to the life or death of some kid in china.  It just doesn't matter to us.  And why should it?  Because they have opposable thumbs too?  

For example: life is preferable to death, health is preferable to disease, freedom is preferable to slavery, comfort is preferable to discomfort, etc.

From there, all it takes is a modicum of empathy and rationality to understand that harming others well being is not advisable, since there is always someone in society with more power than you that has the ability to harm yours. 

As I said earlier, you've switched from right and wrong, to an issue of practicality.  Now the question is am I willing to risk X to get Y.  That's an entirely different idea than morality.