Philosophy Now Forum

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treesforlife242 wrote: ↑Wed May 20, 2020 8:15 am Currently, there is no way to define if actions are moral.

Current day morality originate from the Bible’s basic rules, such as no killing and being kind. This is not based of logic, so how are we able to define good and bad.

For example take hanging and quartering, why do we define that as bad? My opinion is that the 18th Century people felt it wrong not out of sympathy as they were criminals. Rather they were looking out their own health. They felt, if they were in that situation they would want a quick death.
For example if they were caught in a criminal act they would want their suffering to be as little as possible, or they shouldn’t kill as it means someone might kill you.
Therefore, the definition of bad, is anything which would make your life quality worse.

Theistic morality from God is pseudo-morality, not morality-proper.

How does one know truth from falsehood?
To do so, one need to know what is the truth, knowledge and fact of reality.
To get to knowledge, one set up a system to cognize Justified True Beliefs. [JTB -Gettier noted].

How does one know right from wrong in terms of Morality?
To do so, one need to know what is the moral truth, knowledge and fact of morality within reality.
To get to moral knowledge/fact, one set up a moral system to cognize Justified True Moral Beliefs. [JTMB -Gettier noted].

Justified True Moral Beliefs can only be used as GUIDEs only and the individuals has to develop their moral competence to strive to act as close as possible to the GUIDEs.

Re the example in the OP.
The moral fact is;
"No human shall kill another human"
which is only to be used as a GUIDE only.

Being human, there will be humans who will kill other humans [psychopaths, serial genocidal murderers].

Because the moral fact,
"No human shall kill another human"
is the imperative objective,
the individuals and humanity will have to find solutions for future generations where are no humans with potential to kill at all, e.g. ensuring no one is born as a potential killer during his whole life even when subjected to vulnerable nurturing factors.

Being human, to achieve the imperative objective 100% would be unlikely. However the above strategy will ensure humanity achieve as close as possible to the imperative moral objective.
This strategy will definitely be more effective if humanity do not set imperative moral objective that are objective as justified from empirical evidence and philosophical reasoning.

As for the current and next generations, it is too late to deal with the inherent potentials of evilness, humanity will have find solutions using foolproof methods to rewire the mind of the evil prone, if not, rely on effective laws to deter or reduce killings from happening to the optimal.