Eating the dead is different from cannibalism and justifiable if there is nothing else to eat. So in the situation of the aircraft crash you outlined, I'd say eating the dead is right.

Don't most cannibal tribes kill the human first prior to eating its flesh? Wouldn't they all eat the dead?

Killing is wrong.

Eating human flesh (without killing) (if there is nothing else to eat) is right.

But we've already established killing is a grey area.

But if a person is so pathetic that they really cannot be taught the difference between right and wrong then maybe a compassionate death is in that individual's interests (and the group's).

Good and Evil are not just the results of how one values one thing over another. It is not a list of items ordered in rank of descending value. You can go out and meet both right now. You can look for either and find it. A cautionary note is in order, however. You could die during the course of the investigation.

Let me know how it all turned out.

Killing is wrong but putting something out of its misery is right.

So compassionate killing is right.
And incompassionate killing is wrong.

Good and Evil are not just the results of how one values one thing over another. — Valentinus

I think you will find that all intelligent creatures value the same things.

If a group of people have no food (draught , natural disaster , climate change) they should wait for one of their members to die of starvation before any of them can eat? Does this also apply to small children and the elderly whom may be unable to wait for their kinsmen to die? So we eat the children and infirmed first because they will be the first to go?

If a group of people have no food (draught , natural disaster , climate change) they should wait for one of their members to die of starvation before any of them can eat? Does this also apply to small children and the elderly whom may be unable to wait for their kinsmen to die? So we eat the children and infirmed first because they will be the first to go — Nathaniel

I think you would refrain from killing anyone because they might come up with some ideas / be of some use / on general principles - once the morality of the group is compromised; the group itself is compromised.

The weaker will die first; IE those with the lower quality of living. The remaining people can share the remains.

This is a somewhat gruesome discussion.

So you have mothers/fathers watching their children suffer unspeakable horror of starvation, and we just watch them die and then descend like jackals? Those parents have to watch their loved ones die of starvation while we think up a possible solution?

Starvation is bad whatever way. Adding murder into the mix makes it worse.

It's made all the worse when the parents have to eat the child they just watched starve to death because it's wrong to murder for food. Had they murdered someone and ate them the next generation can grow up and continue on but when we have to wait for the weakest of us to die for it's made all the more dramatic because we have to now eat the next generation in the hopes we live long enough to create another one.

Would you like to be murdered for food?

It's wrong to murder for food.

Im a vegetarian.

Hell for meat eaters is being eaten by the animals they consumed in their lifetime.

The reason people started talking about good and evil is not about sharing a list of what most people desire.
It started because evil people do really awful things that demonstrate, what shall I call, a different source of motivation, from other people who recognize they need to find a different reason to do things than those truly crazed people.

I am proposing a negative to a negative, not a table of shared positives. Creatures adapting to a specific environment, if that floats your boat.

I would be dead, my feelings about it would cease to matter. This is of right and wrong not my personal opinion of eating humans but rather in a logical world is the eating of said humans or rather the entire behavior of said humans can simply be categorized as right or wrong.

It started because evil people do really awful things that demonstrate, what shall I call, a different source of motivation — Valentinus

Evil people are evil because of their upbringing. They are evil, therefore they are wrong, therefore they are suboptimal and therefore they need their neural networks retraining to do right. Then they would be motivated to act for their own good and thus the good of the group.

But we'd miss your opinions if you were dead. It would be a loss to society.

At this point I must take some sleep...

Whoa, who knew you had a whole theory of why people were evil. I am glad I asked.
But your answer regarding a solution assumes that we are in a place to just fix the problem because everything needed to determine that has been determined.
How did you get from a list of what is favorable to retraining people for thinking badly?

The good of one is not necessarily the good of the group or vice versa. Going back to cannibalism the group wants to eat me, not good for me, you claimed to be vegetarian so eating plant protein would be good for you but it takes twice the amount of plant protein to equal meat protein so we would go through twice the vegetation then we currently do speed up our eventually extinction thus being bad for the group.

so we would go through twice the vegetation then we currently do speed up our eventually extinctio — Nathaniel

Meat is murder. Animal fat is solid at body temperature so it clogs up your arteries whereas vegetable fat is liquid at body temperature.

It takes 5 times as much land to produce meat calories as it does vegetable calories,

Meat is wrong.

First:

Good = Right
Evil = Wrong

Then:

Right as what is right in the long term
Wrong as what is right in the short term

Long term > short term, so long term is the most important; we should strive to make the ‘right’ / ‘good’ decisions.

Examples of good/right (right in the long term): Exercise, helping people
Examples of evil/wrong (right in the short term): Sweets, harming other people

Any alternative definitions? — Devans99

Right and wrong is a sense - like the aesthetic sense, or sense of humour. Seeking to define what is right and wrong is difficult for that reason. It's like trying to define art, or define funny - it's a matter of judgement, and of perspective. The world is complex - and the "moral sense" for want of a better term - applies to any and everything - and across time, insofar as one factors that into the equation. There's no inherent reason one must think long term. That's also a value judgement. Sometimes, it's not helpful to think long term - like in a fight.

Where it gets interesting, is Moses coming down the mountain with his stone tablets - or, to be more realistic, when hunter gatherers forged an agreement about right and wrong, pinned it on God for the sake of objective authority, and joined together to form society - in which everyone lived by the rules.

Clearly, there's a difference between a reflexive sense of right and wrong, and a set of rules carved in stone. The moral sense will always update itself in relation to circumstances, whereas - a set of rules carved in stone is liable to become ever more anachronistic over time. We see this in the values set out in religious texts - which were perfectly appropriate in the primitive context in which they were written - but that now, inspire terrorists to seek to impose their dogmatic beliefs and values through violence, upon a world to which those values are no longer relevant or useful!

Right and wrong is a sense — karl stone

No it's a mathematical relationship:

Right is pleasure > pain
Wrong is pain > pleasure
Long term > short term so its what right/wrong in the long term that matters.

Can you summarize this thread? I want to join, but it already has 2 page, and it will be hard to read them all

Please read the first post.

^ I agree

Good is what's demonstrably good for the individual (and therefore the group):

- Helping others
- Sharing ideas
- Exercise
- Consensual sex — Devans99

With respect to my definition, just to help you understand it, what would be demonstrably good about helping others, sharing ideas, etc. (and assuming that in your view we are indeed talking about ethics there, my definition was re ethics), if we're talking about a person or persons who do not approve of or feel that helping others, sharing ideas, etc. are recommendable?

if we're talking about a person or persons who do not approve of or feel that helping others, sharing ideas, etc. are recommendable? — Terrapin Station

Such a person is wrong, so should be corrected. Trying to help them understand the difference between right and wrong would be the correct approach. Once they understand that, they can join normal, well-adjusted society and they will respond positively to good/right actions.

Such a person is wrong, so should be corrected. — Devans99

They're wrong per what?

Rejecting help for example is sub-optimal therefore wrong. If you accept help, you get more pleasure than pain so it is the right thing to do.

Offering unhelpful 'help' is wrong.

Rejecting help for example is sub-optimal — Devans99

Rejecting help is "suboptimal" per what?