Determining What's Wrong

[Truth OT]

It's wrong to kill innocent children.
It's wrong to rape.
It's wrong to take things that do not belong to you.
It's wrong to oppress others by taking away what we term their human rights.
It's wrong to bully people.
Yada, yada, yada.................

So many things are considered as wrong and have been so some time that I'd venture to say most of us have seemed to fall into the pattern of thinking that assumes certain actions as innately wrong and we rarely use our critical thinking skills to point of to ourselves and our societies the reasons certain things are considered and accepted as wrong.

[Boots]

I am beginning to come to the conclusion that it is wrong to 'outsmart evolution.'  Certain medical advances, for example, extend the lives of humans whose genes should not be passed on.  Sparing lives for sentimental reasons, at the expense of future generations of the species, is wrong IMHO.

how's that for bucking the system?   

[Hatter23]

It's wrong to kill innocent children.
It's wrong to rape.
It's wrong to take things that do not belong to you.
It's wrong to oppress others by taking away what we term their human rights.
It's wrong to bully people.
Yada, yada, yada.................

So many things are considered as wrong and have been so some time that I'd venture to say most of us have seemed to fall into the pattern of thinking that assumes certain actions as innately wrong and we rarely use our critical thinking skills to point of to ourselves and our societies the reasons certain things are considered and accepted as wrong.

Logic and critical thinking have nothing to do with right or wrong. Reason is about eliminating errors. To use an analogy, your morality and emotion are how you decide where on the map you want to go; logic and reason are about finding the most efficient, quick, and safe route to get there.

[LoriPinkAngel]

Is this a meta-ethics thing?  The following is an excerpt from the book I have been reading 501 Things You Should Have Learned About Philsophy

Consider the following scenario.  Your spouse is dying, and can only be saved by a drug that is sold for $20,000 in a single store. You cannot possibly afford this, so you go to the store owner and ask whether you can pay in installments.  He refuses, despite the fact he would make a large profit on the drug if he accepted your terms.  You are so desperate for the medication that you consider breaking in and stealing it.

Would it be morally permissible to steal this drug to save your spouse's life? 

[Boots]

Is this a meta-ethics thing?  The following is an excerpt from the book I have been reading 501 Things You Should Have Learned About Philsophy

Consider the following scenario.  Your spouse is dying, and can only be saved by a drug that is sold for $20,000 in a single store. You cannot possibly afford this, so you go to the store owner and ask whether you can pay in installments.  He refuses, despite the fact he would make a large profit on the drug if he accepted your terms.  You are so desperate for the medication that you consider breaking in and stealing it.

Would it be morally permissible to steal this drug to save your spouse's life?

I believe it depends on how one defines "morally permissable."  Some may say it is impermissable to cause another person harm, period endof story--in which case no, it is not permissable to steal.

On the other hand, some may say that a "greater good" (saving a life) outweighs a "lesser evil" (stealing), ergo stealing in this case is morally permissable.

on the other OTHER hand, some may say that unintended consequences are important to remember.  Maybe the shopkeeper has one last vial of this medicine left, and stealing it will deprive him of the monetary means to care for his 12 children--is saving 1 person's life more important than saving 12 childrens' lives?

*shrug* I dunno, I never studied this stuff in college.   

[Graybeard]

Our purpose here on earth is to produce more of ourselves. This is the mission of all living things: we are no different. Our route to achieving this goal is individual but governed by overarching imperatives: food, shelter, health, opportunity to breed, protection of your genes in the offspring. As we accept that birds can build nests without being taught so we should accept that we are not [wiki]tabala rasa[/wiki] but do have innate drivers.

What you have described above is a mixture of emotion and imperative. Coldly seen in the light of brutal survival of the fittest:
 
If your children are starving, then innocent children who have food might have to be killed.
Rape uses your daughter to promote unwanted genes and may prevent her from reproducing with the “chosen” genes.
Theft is a development of agricultural society, it is not innate. Hunter-gatherers did not have personal possessions[1] but might see as theft another tribe hunting on their land. Again this is the survival of your genes.
In taking away others’ “rights”, it is necessary to ask, whose "right" is it, if it disadvantages me, and who established these “rights”? Revolutions have happened because the rich thought that they had a “right” to what was theirs at the expense of many others being unable to immortalise their genes.
Bullying can be seen as a reaction to idiocy, inefficiency and/or actions not conducive to the betterment of a society in which unity is important and in which your genes are required to survive.
Yada, yada, yada................. and the rest of those who oppose Nature's unforgiving and unfeeling pathway to the betterment of society.

Some things are innately seen as being wrong[2] And there is nothing anyone can do to change that across the board.

It may be possible to change some actions from being seen as wrong by educating people in considering why there are grades of right and wrong so as to avoid the unwanted results of over-enthusiastic and dogmatic implementation of what is innate but again, there is no way at all of educating all of the world’s people.

1.	I stand to be corrected but the Inuit and various tribal people have a common store of goods that all may use and thus “theft” is not possible.
2.	As a matter of grammar (and I hate to do this) nothing is wrong innately – whatever is “wrong” was not born, and thus cannot be “innately” wrong. As I say, it is possible for things to be innately seen as being wrong