What makes murdering morally wrong?

@freemo I would add a fifth option: "because it's ugly". Meaning that to live in a reality where the willfull killing of thinking beings is justifiable is simply much less beautiful than the reality where we consider life to be sacred.

@Clementulus

So if I happened to find murder more beautiful, would that be ok too.. beauty, being subjective, is it a useful motive?

@freemo all motives are based on subjective criteria. Justification for any action is ultimately a statement about what sort of reality you believe we should live in. Sartre writes about freedom causing anguish for this very reason. Killers always justify their actions in terms of "doing what is right or necessary" and real world conflicts are usually spoken about as good vs evil, light vs dark, true-human vs. Sub-human. Ultimately it is all statements about Beauty; the beautifull reality is one where light triumphs over the dark, where good has overcome evil, where the less-than-humans (read: terrorists) are erradicated and only the pure (read: us and ours) are all that remain. If you were to think that way you would be joining probably the majority of people as they currently view the world (at least consciously). I do think, however, that with a little serious reflection, most people would realize that the reality where life is sacred is far more beautiful, but to sustain that belief in a conflict ridden world is another matter altogether.

@Clementulus

> all motives are based on subjective criteria. Justification for any action is ultimately a statement about what sort of reality you believe we should live in.

I am asking what is morally just, not what motivates you. I am also not asking what reality you want to live in, I am asking what is morally right. A person may want to live in an immoral society, that doesnt make it moral.

> Killers always justify their actions in terms of "doing what is right or necessary" and real world conflicts are usually spoken about as good vs evil, light vs dark, true-human vs. Sub-human. Ultimately it is all statements about Beauty;

I cant agree with that. I can think of plenty of ugly things which are objectively morally right and beatuiful things that are objectively morally wrong. Even though the beauty itself is subjective.

@freemo I am also talking about morals. We always choose what our morals are. For instance, at one time, most people in our society found it morally wrong to have sex outside of wedlock but many nowadays no longer see this as immoral; following that thread though, many people even back then would *say* that they believed that extra-marital sex was immoral so that they would be seen as a moral person by the rest of their society; but they would still practice it in secret. Of those that did it in secret, some would repent their actions, believing they had made a mistake and therefore still believe it immoral even though they did it; but others simply did not think it wrong at all and so to them it was clearly not immoral. Same can be applied to any moral question: different people will see different things as moral / immoral and they will not necessarily be forthright about their beliefs, depending on prevailing social attitudes.
Nothing humans can come up with can be considered "objectively moral" since no one is an objective observer of the universe. The closest we could come would be something like "divinely moral" by believing that the universe has a divine purpose which would necessitate certain behaviors to fulfil that purpose. How to discover that purpose would be a spiritual question.

@Clementulus While we can choose our morals, the morals we choose are not nessecarly ethical (what I mean when I say moral, not our **choice** of morals, but whether a particular more is ethical or not).

My guess is you are of the opinion (which i find incorrect, but it is common) that morals are objective. Your choice of them may be subjective, but what is or is not moral/ethical/right is objective.

The measure is quite simple, and similarly objective. That which is ethical is that which reduces net suffering (or to put it another way increases net happiness). While it may not be easy to determine before hand if a particular adoption of a moral rule will fit that, in the end it is objectively measurable as either ethical or not based on its results.

With the correct technology all it would require would be an mri to objectively measure how happy people are and one could, in theory, objectively measure the net result.

@freemo its true that your choice of morals will depend on your ethical framework and how you interpret it, but that itself is a choice. you reference utilitarianism as what you would choose but even within that ethic there is huge margin for interpretation. How do you measure relative happiness / suffering? There are many things that would make me happy that other people dont care about while many things I can easily tolerate other people find insufferable; not to mention state of mind: should we brave-new-world ourselves into chemical bliss so that we can all be maximally happy? Also are we considering only currently living persons or do we consider future generations as well? If so, how many? Do we include only our own species, all species or only some arbitrary number of them? I dont expect you to answer all those questions, I was just demonstrating that even a single ethical standpoint could yeild wildly different morals, none of which are "objective" as you correctly point out.
Which comes back to why I mention Beauty, because the experience of beauty, while subjective, provides the best overall guiding principle for determinig ethical frameworks and their moral outcomes; I do find that when you seriously discuss with people what is beautiful, humans seem to have rather similar experiences of it which is why when someone exemplifies a beautifully lived life, other people are more likely to change their outlook to match that one rather than another.

@Clementulus

For starters its important to note moral intent (the intention to create net-happiness) is distinct from moral action (the results of our actions). Below we discuss mostly moral actions, not intent.

> How do you measure relative happiness / suffering?

Well we dont have the technology to do so, but to objectively measure it is possible in theory if we had an MRI with high enough resolution and a computer with sufficient computing power to analyze it and quantify it.

Just because we dont have the ability to measure a quantity objectively yet doesnt make it any less objective.

> There are many things that would make me happy that other people dont care about while many things I can easily tolerate other people find insufferable;

That doesnt make the measure any less objective, it only makes the actions which are moral rely on the context. A particular action may make some people happy and others suffer, but so long as the net result is more happiness than suffering then the act is moral.

> Also are we considering only currently living persons or do we consider future generations as well?

We are considering all of the future. An action may be moral in the short term but turn out to me immoral in the long term. And while it would be impractical to measure it doesnt make it any less objective as it is, measurable in theory.

> If so, how many?

Infinite, the morality of an action will forever be in flux, but objectively measurable at any moment.

> should we brave-new-world ourselves into chemical bliss so that we can all be maximally happy?

I would posit that using drugs to make everyone happy would be unsuccessful and would instead result in a net loss long term by not being able to reach the same levels of happiness we could without drugs, and in fact with most modern drugs would long term result in suffering.

> Do we include only our own species, all species or only some arbitrary number of them?

All species, all of time, and all of space (should we ever interact beyond our planet).

> I dont expect you to answer all those questions, I was just demonstrating that even a single ethical standpoint could yeild wildly different morals, none of which are "objective" as you correctly point out.

They were all quite trivial to answer and were consider in my original statement, so no worries. And as I pointed out all of them were answered objectively.

@freemo But you do see that that framework for an ethic is itself a subjective choice? Because the weight you give to those various factors changes the morals drastically. If Thanos appeared tomorrow and said that the most intelligent supercomputer in the galaxy predicted that humanity would be extinguished in 1000 years but if he instanly vaporizes all but 1000 select individuals that we would regain our population and humanity would then go on to thrive for 100 000 years, he could claim the moral right to do so using a utilitarian ethic by citing all the immense happiness that the unborn trillions would be denied if he allowed the current billions to keep on living. Also, it is actually not entirely logical to posit that happiness could be proven to be objective if a hypothetical machine existed to measure it properly (you can't prove something based on a hypothetical).

@Clementulus

> But you do see that that framework for an ethic is itself a subjective choice?

Choosing to adopt the perspective the earth is flat is subjective. If the earth is flat or not is objective.

Same for moral frameworks, your choice of one is subjective. If it it correctly represents good and evil is objective.

> Because the weight you give to those various factors changes the morals drastically.

What factors, there was only one factor, all the other questions you listed werent factors, they were attempts at narrowing the scope, there is no narrowing it, it is absolute.

> If Thanos appeared tomorrow and said that the most intelligent supercomputer in the galaxy predicted that humanity would be extinguished in 1000 years but if he instanly vaporizes all but 1000 select individuals that we would regain our population and humanity would then go on to thrive for 100 000 years, he could claim the moral right to do so using a utilitarian ethic by citing all the immense happiness that the unborn trillions would be denied if he allowed the current billions to keep on living.

As long as that computer is guaranteed to be correct, then yes thanos would be doing the moral thing. However if there is any possibility such a system could be wrong then thanos would be exercising moral intent, not moral action.

> Also, it is actually not entirely logical to posit that happiness could be proven to be objective if a hypothetical machine existed to measure it properly (you can't prove something based on a hypothetical).

Yes it is a hypothesis till proven, and must be true for my stance to work. I think for most who understand the brain know these things are quantifiable by the chemical state of the system. But until it is demonstrated it is certainly free to be debated.