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What Is Moral And Ethical?

steve_bank

Diabetic retinopathy and poor eyesight. Typos ...
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For us athesist who reject a moral absolute based in a god, what makes something immoral and unethical?

Murder is illegal. What makes it unethical or immoral?

What makes stealing immoral and unethical?

Who or what and on what basis is something deemed immoral and unethical?
 
Most situations are pretty easily resolved by don't do onto others as you don't want others to do onto you. (It needs to be in the negative form like this because just because you like to be the recipient of something doesn't mean everyone does.)
 
We call something "good" if it meets a real need that we have as an individual, as a society, or as a species. Life implies needs. The most obvious needs are at the base of Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs. These needs animate living organisms to seek food, water, clothing and shelter, etc. If there is something we really need to survive, then it is objectively good if we have it and objectively bad if we don't. This also makes the "right" thing to do situational. While it is objectively good to give a glass of water to the fellow dying of thirst in the desert, it is objectively bad to give that same glass of water to someone drowning in a swimming pool.

A moral person has good intentions. Kant pointed out that the only virtue that is good in itself is a good will. All other virtues can as easily be used for evil as well as for good. For example, a courageous person may rob a bank as well as march in protest of police brutality. But a person whose other virtues are led by a good will, that intends the best good and least harm for everyone, would normally not rob a bank.

An ethical person follows the rules. This is usually good, as helps us all to pursue good, for ourselves and others, in an orderly way, by common agreement. Rule systems include things like mores, customs, manners, rules, ethics, and laws. The moral person seeks to provide a moral code of ethics, one that serves the goal of moral intent.

Moral judgment would look to the consequences of two different rules or two different courses of action in terms of the benefits and harms that are likely to result from them, and then choose the rule or action that produces the best result for everyone.
 
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