The answer to this question will vary. Some people are moral realists and hold that moral facts are objective facts that are out there in the world, these people believe that things are good or bad independently of us. Moral values such as goodness and badness are real properties of people in the same way that rough and smooth are properties of physical objects. This view is often referred to as cognitive language. Those who oppose cognitivists are called non cognitivists and they believe that when someone makes a moral statement they are not describing the world, but they are merely expressing their feelings and opinions, they believe that moral statements are not objective therefore they cannot be verified as true or false.
Of the remaining criteria we might consider, only sentience―the capacity of a being to experience things like pleasure and pain―is a plausible criterion of moral importance. Singer argues for this in two ways. First, he argues, by example, that the other criteria are bad, because (again) they will exclude people who we think ought not be excluded. For instance, we don't really think that it would be permissible to disregard the well-being of someone who has much lower intelligence than average, so we can't possibly think that intelligence is a suitable criterion for moral consideration. Second, he argues that it is only by virtue of something being sentient that it can be said to have interests at all, so this places sentience in a different category than the other criteria: "The capacity for suffering and enjoying things is a prerequisite for having interests at all, a condition that must be satisfied before we can speak of interests in any meaningful way" (175).
However, even she had to admit that these special laws won't deter the criminals who practice these violent acts. Murder is murder and regardless of motive if the intent to kill exist, no law is going to prevent
The organization needs to consider how its activities will influence others and good results. In the detailed analysis it alludes to organizations who sidestep the law by offering the items independently and later join them to make the item that is illicit, despite the fact that this could be viewed as lawful it is just a terrible good decision. It is ethically wrong to settle on a decision to ensure one gathering of individuals while disregarding the wellbeing of an alternate, which is precisely what happens at the present time
From this Moore claimed that it is impossible to derive an ‘is from an ought’. This criticism became known as the naturalistic fallacy. In addition to this G.E Moore claimed that naturalism was not able to stand up to the open question argument. ethical naturalism claims to be based on moral facts, it would therefore seem logical that these facts should stand up to scrutiny. Yet, if we observe that pleasure is good, we should be able to ask is good pleasure.
... We cannot know whether the murderer on death row suffers more than his victim suffered; however, unlike the murderer, the victim deserved none of the suffering inflicted. ... Although penalties can be unwise, repulsive, or inappropriate, and those punished can be pitiable, in a sense the infliction of legal punishment on a guilty person cannot be unjust. ... To regard the
In the hard determinist’s judgement, this feeling of freedom is an illusion. (Pereboom, 2009:324). Another argument against hard determinism would be if it were true we could not be accounted for when it comes to our actions, therefore we could do a morally wrong act and if it was determined then we would could not to blame, we did not have the free will to do that act it was determined to be done anyway. Also if we do a morally good act should we be praised for this? Hard determinists would say that it was not our free will that chose us to do this good act we were determined to do it anyway.
People also have the ability to think morally for themselves so morality is relative to someone’s point of view. The main point favoring the cultural relativism argument is that if there are no moral principles, then the principles can only be relative to culture. If someone were to express their opinion about the morals of a culture that they didn’t agree with, including what the culture already believed to be right, then that person would lose the argument without any question. This can be easily disproved because in one culture, not every person is going to have the same moral judgments about what is right or wrong and people can establish objective moral principles. A culture also can’t think of them as having the power to decide which is right and
However, other people may disagree with this and believe that a deontological ethical system is not defensible because it cannot encourage human beings to act morally, as they will not gain enough satisfaction out of doing so, as they would in a teleological ethical system where the ultimate end or goal is human happiness. People may say that it can be hard to keep to deontological ethics when we cannot see how they will immediately benefit us, making teleology much more appealing. In my opinion deontology can be defended because deontologists do not judge actions by their consequences, this is a positive aspect of deontology because it does not allow people to do bad things to secure good consequences, if we really consider human happiness, at first it sounds appealing and simple. However, if all actions were done to secure human happiness then many evil deeds would be permitted, for example it may secure a psychopath with maximum happiness if he can rape and murder women and children. Therefore teleology would permit this as it would maximise the psychopaths happiness.
Moral Relativism cannot and does not accept the idea that an objective moral system exists. If it did, you could evaluate other ethical systems meaningfully. A moral relativist would ask such questions as ‘what do we mean by wrong?’ when making a decision on something deemed wrong. Relativism is in direct contrast with absolute morality that is deontological, referring to looking at the action in itself. A moral relativist would believe that there is no definite set of rules that apply universally.