Almost everything that is right or wrong can be rationalized by putting forth a practical or logical support for it - “Murder is wrong because it creates a society in which people are fearful and paranoid for their own self-preservation,” “Paying taxes is good because it helps society provide for the overall needs of those in a country,” etc.
So I would like to ask if there is anything that is morally right or wrong for no reason other than that it simply is morally right or wrong, period -* and does not have a logical reason for it. * I think one such instance might be cruelty towards animals as being morally wrong - showing cruelty to an animal has little to no effect on humans or human society, but is arguably wrong in and of itself.
Any logical system must have axioms. If your rationale for murder being bad is that it causes people to be fearful, then you’re assuming that making people fearful is wrong. Or maybe you come up with some explanation for why making people fearful is wrong: But that must in turn be based on something else you consider wrong, and so forth.
Not quite sure about the animal cruelty issue not having an effect on humans, there have been studies that point out that people that are cruel to animals have a propensity to move into hurting humans.
Cruelty to animals can harden feelings (of any observers or of the perpetrator) towards cruel acts, and thus make them more likely to act cruelly in the future. So I think there can be a logical reason for such a prohibition.
Cruelty to animals is wrong for the same reason that cruelty to humans is wrong. I don’t get why you would think that what makes an action moral or not is solely its effect on humans.
A nice resource for conceptualizing/framing this question is Peter Singer’s book Practical Ethics. Don’t have my copy handy, but as I recall Singer spends chapter 1 talking about the difference between “morality” and “ethics.”
In his definition, the difference is that morality is at root arbitrary, whereas ethics is justified (in some way, not necessarily well or correctly).
While one CAN come up with ethical or other justifications for moral rules (e.g., that proscribing homosexuality ensures population growth, or banning pork prevents disease, or prohibiting murder ensures that people live free of fear), it is not necessary to do so. Under moral rules, you should be good and avoid evil because … someone says you should. (God, the elders, whomever.)
Although Singer has strong (and controversial) views of his own about ethics, the book is at least in part a survey textbook for ethics. He presents arguments from a number of different ethical positions on a variety of issues. IMHO, it’s a well-written, readable book that is very helpful in clarifying thinking about these kinds of issues.
Followup on Singer related to the talk of axioms above: one of my favorite sections is where he addresses the question: “Why be ethical at all?” It causes him a great deal of trouble, and I believe he ultimately describes the choice to embrace an ethical point of view as something like a leap of faith. For someone who has strong views on ethical issues, this admission of … uncertainty? the failure of reason? is refreshing.
One final note about Singer, then I’ll shut up: he absolutely extends the “ethical sphere” to include animals (and the planet, actually). (I believe he made his name as a philosopher with the book “Animal Liberation.”)
What do you mean by “right” and “wrong”? When I say that something is morally right, what I mean by that is that it will lead to greater overall well-being (however defined) than the alternative. When I say that something is morally wrong, what I mean is that it will not lead to greater overall well-being relative to the alternatives and will lead to a reduction in over-all well-being (in other words, it has to both make things worse and not be the best of a set of bad bad options).
If I don’t have some articulable reason for thinking one of those two things about something, I don’t really know what it would mean to say I think it is right or wrong. I suppose I might be going off a gut feeling about how my actions might affect the world, but that just means I’m making moral judgments without enough evidence, not that the thing is somehow intrinsically right or wrong. I don’t know even know what that would mean.
Different people might disagree in how they define “well-being,” how it is measured, or how they believe a given action will affect it, but still have more or less the same understanding of what “right” and “wrong” mean that I have. If you mean something completely different, then you need to explain what it is.
I had a professor who once argued that the wrongness of unnecessary suffering in general, and of cruelty-to-animals stuff in particular, can follow automatically from the definition of “unnecessary” and “suffering”.
Like, if you’re out to kill me so my organs can save the lives of others – well, look, you and me, we’re going to have us a long talk; and I’m hoping I can argue you out of it; but, for the sake of argument, technically, maybe. But if I then ask “Hey, why aren’t you using Method B? It works as well as Method A, and costs the same, but would hurt me less”, and your reply is, “Yeah, I know”, well, then, you’re a dick.
Would cultural values count? The Jewish and Muslim prohibition on pork, or the typical American rejection of dog or horse meat? There isn’t any “real” reason for these (I don’t quite buy the trichinosis explanation for rejecting pork.) They’re just culturally received values.
Something can be wrong and I can intuitively know that it is wrong without knowing the reason that it is morally wrong, which is a different thing from something being wrong for no reason.
I have my doubts that anything can be wrong “for no reason”.
Aha! Yes. I recall years ago a horse-lover friend being angry on Facebook about Obama (or some figure) condoning the consumption of horse meat, and when I asked her just why pigs and chickens and fish were OK to eat but not horses, her reply was essentially *“Eating horse meat just **is **bad/wrong, period - it just **is **that way.” *
Oh, well, if THAT’S the kind of thing you were looking for, I’ll suggest the example of incestuous sexual relationships between adult, mentally competent people that can’t reproduce. (E.g., same-sex couples, people past reproductive age, and other hypotheticals.)
It’s totally gross to 99%+ of us, but why? No six-toed kids to worry about.
(I think the question in the OP is poorly worded/thought out, or maybe I just don’t get it, but I’ll give one more stab at addressing it in general terms: various rules-based ethical systems take the position that even when edge cases [gay adult twins violating the incest taboo, for example] challenge our usual moral or ethical guidelines, the rules we usually follow should take precedence, because the potential downside to making exceptions in edge cases is worse than the injustice perpetrated when we account for them. This issue is, once again, addressed in some detail in Singer’s Practical Ethics. Kant’s question about whether we should tell the murderer at the door that their intended victim is hiding inside is a classic example of this problem.)
Millions of horses all over the world are eaten every year; I’ve eaten horsemeat myself, in France, a country renowned for its cuisine. I’d say that the taboo on horsemeat fits the OP’s definition of an entirely illogical prohibition, and is far from an ‘edge case’.
The axiom that I base everything else off of is that, “We’re here, so we may as well enjoy it.” I don’t think there’s too many holes to be poked in that, given that it still leads (more or less) to the golden rule, etc.
The other day, I was about to put money into one of those new-fangled parking meters that spit out the receipt that you then put on your dashboard. On the ground below the meter was a receipt that someone had either dropped or had plain forgot about.
The little imp in me smiled and I thought, “Instead of paying like a fool, I can use this receipt!”
It would have been so damn easy. And I’d get to save six bucks!
But I didn’t do it. And I had a reason. “Someone could be watching me right now. Maybe they own the parking lot and they’ll tow my car. Maybe they’re with the TV station, trying to catch crooks to show on live TV. Maybe they’re a cop looking to entrap someone. Maybe it’s some do-gooder type who is looking for the one last honest person in the world to write into their will. Maybe it’s an annoying kid who will be all ‘oooh, I’ma tell!’, and then I’d have to kill them. I don’t know who it is, but somebody is seeing me right now. And I don’t want to have to explain myself to them.”
Is this a logical reason? Or a paranoid guilt-ridden reason?
Someone can argue that animal cruelty is wrong because it is something that has a high probability of coming back to haunt the person who does it. Is this logical? It certainly has a kernal of truth since remorse often has a delayed onset and evil frequently does come to light. But I don’t think one can logically prove something like this. Then again, you can’t logically prove a lot of morals. Doesn’t mean that they don’t make sense.
I don’t have the book in front of me, but I think Singer thinks that being ethical is a choice one has to make without logical justification (e.g., you can’t choose to be ethical because “good things will happen if I make ethical choices,” because that’s justifying ethics with ethics - but you could justify ethics with “I hate to see people unhappy,” because that’s using something outside ethical reasoning [hatred of pain in others] to justify being ethical).
What keeps this from being “morality precedes ethics” is that no one is telling you to make this choice. You’re also free to make other choices THAT MAKE SENSE in terms of internal logical consistency: sociopathy is one example (assuming that sociopathy is chosen, but that’s another topic, and we could argue all day about pathologizing people who subscribe to anti-social patterns of behavior or belief).