And, are they really all that relative? I’d argue no. Many people claim that since each culture defines its own value-system, Right and Wrong must therefore be completely relative.
If they are completely relative, how do we still manage to live with each other?
So here’s my key argument:
Even if you want to believe that right and wrong are purely relative, you must admit that in real daily life, it does not matter. We have laws that tell us what we can and cannot do. You won’t get to far arguing that, “relative to you, murder was ‘Right’”.
So my point is: How did humanity ever manage to establish the laws in a manner that everybody agrees with certain basic principles? For example, In very few countries is murder or stealing not agianst the law. It could generally be said that universally, murder is “wrong”.
Do you understand my question correctly? I’m having difficulty in expressing it effectively…sorry.
Although there’s lots of different cultures and whatnot it seems to me that people across the world have emotional response to similar stimuli. There aren’t people from upper China that experience “XYZ†emotion that none of us can relate to, so that means that everyone is reacting pretty closely to the same stuff. I recall reading that people blind from birth show many of the same types of body language as sighted people. That leads into my belief that people are a kind of organic robot.
So, it could be that all of the various prohibitions that humans have about behavior resonate with us on a very basic level, and that might mean that they are “right†for us.
Two points. First, murder is not “universally wrong”; in some places (cultures) it is not merely right, it is required. The Orestia plays, for example, are about a conflict of values that rise when there are two conflicting cultural values that Orestes must satisfy.
Second, how any particular cultural convention arises is really not so difficult as you are making out to be. The short answer is that in systems that are not previously constrained, behaviors tend to cluster over time into habitual patterns – i.e., the individuals repeat behaviors that were “successful” in the past, by whatever definition of sucess the individual is using. There is nothing transcendental about these conditions or these behaviors.
It might well be that the very common prohibition of killing seems universal because all societies that didn’t have it killed themselves off, and therefore did not perpetuate the system that didn’t have that rule – i.e., evolution. So what you are looking at may be an “emergent” rule of human societies.
Or not.
Part of your confusion seems to me to rise from not yet having refined your question into something you can actually work on. For example – you seem to be assuming that “right” and “wrong” are transcendental and categorical qualities, but you are looking at cultural relativist propositions that do not assume right and wrong to be transcendental and categorical qualities. Your objection seems to be that societies cannot work unless right and wrong are transcendental categories, while the cultural relativist claims that societies work only if right and wrong are not transcendental qualities.
For example, you wonder why, if right and wrong are completely relative, how it is that we “manage to live with each other.” The answer to that conundrum is that deciding what the relative values are is how we manage to live with each other. See? The two parts of your assumptions don’t fit together.
So my suggestion would be that you need a better understanding of what cultural relativists mean when they say that right and wrong are relative. The fullest solution to this would be to read Thus Spoke Zarathustra by F.W. Nietzsche – a difficult read but one that will reward you for many years to come. This books is essentially the starting point for all 20th (and now 21st) century notions of cultural relativism – and many other things, as well. Thus Spoke Zarathustra (Also Sprach Zarathustra) is a very dense philosophy presented in the form of fiction.
Like you, I have big problems with the moral and cultural relativist position; it seems to me folly to suggest that, as you say, murder can be relative. No one being tried for murder in the West would ever get away with the excuse that murder is relative.
But to your main point. You say that “it could generally be said that universally, murder is “wrong”.” The problem with this is in the accepted meaning of universally, which does not allow for any generallies or most of the times. To take a very practical view, therefore, since there are a few countries which do not condemn murder and stealing, it cannot be a universal principle. So I am increasingly coming round to the view that no propositions or moral proposals are universally true, despite my opposition to the hard relativist position.
People have probably simply realised that if no one is supposed to kill anyone else it benefits the majority of people this way. The individual realises today that if murder is illegal their children and spouses and their own selves are going to have a chance to live longer. I have lately started to change my attitude towards murderers, though. In the beginning I thought oh my…how can anybody kill anyone else??? But…sometimes people kill other people emotionally. There are not really laws against this. So the destroyed person feels so hurt and helpless that he or she decides to commit murder. Look at Eileen Wournos… From personal experience I can tell all of you that sometimes people just try to destroy you for no reason. And you are helpless…everyone is just trying to make your life hell and you just can not get away from these people. You are not crazy but they are and it just kills you inside.
Murder is always wrong because the word “Murder” means an unjustified, unethical killing in the first place. The word contains a value judgement, in other words. Replace the word ‘murder’ with ‘killing’, and you will see that killing has not been considered wrong by all peoples in all situations, not by a long shot.
BMW-Guy
I don’t think they did. If humanity ‘established’ these laws at any point in the past, we wouldn’ have them anymore- they would have been lost when that civilization fell. If everybody agrees with certain basic principles, it’s because we couldn’t help it- it’s how we were made.
First of all, name a country in which murder is not listed as a crime by the country’s laws.
I could be mistaken, but I doubt it. People everywhere seem to despise murder. Or, they commit murder and call it something else. Even if you kill out of duty to your countries religious laws, you are still murdering.
If everyone truly lived like murder was not at all wrong, the world would be chaos. In no country will you be able to stand up and say, “I murdered someone, so thank me.”. If you kill under the pretense of religion or anything else, are you still not murdering?
This is what I meant by “universally”. But, I may have been generalizing too much.
There is much to say here.
First of all, the word murder creates certain
connotations, change the word to homicide creates
other connotations, its about what words we used.
Second, universal implies at all times during all situations,
yet the fact is many societies killed for many different reasons.
The Romans and the Incas come to mind as societies that practiced
what we would call murder.
What does a cop who kills a kid with a plastic gun get called?
Is he a murder or simply reacting to a possible threat?
Then we get to the whole justify homicide. Which say, yes, I kill
that person, but I was justified for whatever reason. We allow
so call murder all the time.
So if a cop accidently kills a kid because he thinks the kid has a real gun, is it murder or self-defence? It cannot be both. Murder and self-defense are not the same. One is justifed by the law, the other is condemned by the law. Civil society depends on us being able to make a distinction. Islam supposedly allows Muslims to, at times, kill infidels. But we cannot let the actions of a small group define what we are going to call murder.
Again, name a country in which the laws do not condem at least some form of killing of human life. If you can do this, you win.
EDIT:
I forgot this from Bill Patterson:
I have. Twice. I even own all of Nietzsche books. Of course, I disagree with a lot of his ideas, but I leave that to another thread…
BMW-Guy: So if a cop accidentally kills a kid because he thinks the kid has a real gun, is it murder or self-defence? It cannot be both. Murder and self-defense are not the same. One is justified by the law, the other is condemned by the law. Civil society depends on us being able to make a distinction. Islam supposedly allows Muslims to, at times, kill infidels. But we cannot let the actions of a small group define what we are going to call murder".
K: The problem here is your language. You paint murder this way,
and self-defense that way, when the line is really much thinner.
You are really gonna to have to work out the language issue here.
K:What is the difference between murder and self-defense?
The difference is what you spent on a lawyer.
The more you spend on the lawyer, the closer you get to self-defense.
BMW: Again, name a country in which the laws do not condemn at least some form of killing of human life. If you can do this, you win.
K: The real issue is not laws condemning murder, the issue, it is the
zig zag nature of these laws. Roman society had no issue with
slaves being murder, only it was a property issue for the Romans,
not a murder/self-defense issue. But kill a Roman pleb and you get
x amount of trouble, say 1-5 years, kill a noble and you get
death. Different standards for different classes.
Which tells me, it is not a universal issue, this idea of murder.
For example kill a cop and you are hunted down for the rest of
eternity, no matter what the reason. Try a “self-defense” defense
with the murder of cop and you will fry, self-defense is not going to
fly, no matter what you say. But it can be used in other cases.
The law zigs and zags depending on the circumstances.
Yes, but language has to do with how we see murder. The words and their attitude were invented to express how people feel about different types of homicide. The murders came first and then the words if we believe in evolution.
I think “murder” is a defined crime and means “illegal” killing, and in current jurisprudence we take the general principle to mean “unjustified.” But that simply places the problem at one remove: what is considered justified, and what not, is culturally quite variable.
I’ve periodically had discussions in university classes that turned on the word “assassination,” and it turns out that entire family of words is awfully hard to pin down.
Well, Bill you do have a point. I admitt I have been a tad “wishy-washy” about being specific in my arguments. This, I’m confident, has done nothing but cause confussion over what particular point I’m attempting to make in my posts.
I suppose I’m trying to learn and discover for myself what my actual beliefs are regarding this topic.
Not to keep jumping from point to point, but here’s what I’ve concluded:
Religious Perspective:
There is no universally agreed on defintion here. Some religions condemn all killing; others encourage it (at certain times). The real question to be ask here is, “Is religion ever truly justified is killing (outside of that which is sanctioned by laws)?”.
Civil Perspective:
In a civil perspective of things, murder is only defined as “killing that is not sanctioned by the laws of a given country”. I’ll define killing as self-defense as “action(s) to prevent oneself from being mudered by eliminating only the most immanent of threats”.
Linguistic Perspective:
As TheAlderian has already pointed out, certain words carry connotations. Murder is usually sad with a despising or hienous tone; whereas “homicide” often (although this is my personal opinion) carries a more indifferent, impersonal tone. Both words mean the same thing, but are often used in different contexts.
[b]My Perspective:
At the very least, it seems that we are not born with an unexplanable passion to kill others. Perhaps this is because we all have a natural fear of death. Or, perhaps because we al subconsciously realize that socity cannot function if everybody is out to kill everyone.
At least this is how it seems to be. What do you think?[/b]
This was exactly the point I was thinking of when I was reading this thread, for a murder to be a murder it has to be unethical by definition. Ethics are defined by society and are therefore relative to that society. It is a mistake to judge another society’s ethics based on your society’s beliefes.
BMW-guy, your morals are your own beliefs, however, and are seperate but influenced by your society’s ethics. Universal morals are imposible because morals are always relative. Also morals do not have to be set in stone, killing may not always be “wrong” given the cicrumstances, but there will almost always be a conflict of beliefs.
I must speek my opinion, just like the rest of you.
Life, came from life, is for and from life.
Thought and feeling came from life,
and are for and from life.
When 1 thought or feeling is put above life,
and crushes self or others,
or damages self or others,
it is sin.
Law is against hypocracy of human thought and feeling,
in that it shall not turn on it’s creator (the living creature).
In ‘Danism’ “right” vs “wrong” are actualy relative to the eco-system and food chain(?), because there are the paracites and the preditors and the cancerious things that will hurt and weaken the “harmonious”.
name a country in which some form of murder is accepted. um…what about America and its death penalty? still boils down to murder however you see it. And the Arabian coutries chop your head off. An eye for an eye maybe but it is STILL MURDER. And I still say: murder might be wrong but some people do kill you on the inside. They get away with this unsentenced and you suffer. And what about crazy people? Can you really blame them for killing other people? They have a chemical imbalance that is not their fault. I know murder sucks and it is completely wrong, but I can understand why people do it.
I understand you truely.
Once people become too much of a problem, removal is the only solution, because they are just too far gone!
Its hard for humans to draw the line,
because understanding of others is so limited,
but surely if one destroys the other,
then they are a likely danger.
The people who kill you inside?
This is the secoret evil of psycological and emotional assult.
Evil and good can enter the body through toutch,
or through sound…
Many evil words come from your oposor,
escape and let go of the lie!
And if it is your own father or mother?
Then id only pray and loose sleep over thee…
because the child wants to break the vast chains of the perent’s evil,
instead of being strangled by it.
I’m not out to argue the ethical-ness of capital punishment. Regardless of what you think of capital punishment, it is not technically muder considering that it has been sanctioned by US laws. Murder is killing that is done outside of the laws. Both are the killing of another human-being. But only one is a true homicide.
BMW, you've just lost your point. Of course "killing that is done outside of the laws" is considered wrong in every country. If it wasn't considered wrong, it wouldn't be outside the law. The point they are making is the same one I am making- murder is a universal standard only because it's a weighted word- killing isn't murder unless it's wrong, so of course everyone, everywhere, considers murder wrong. You may as well wonder at the fact that everyone considers evil wrong. Yes, by definition. What's important is, the line between killing and murder varies all over the place.
