I think this is the issue of moral relativism versus moral absolutism. Are there any absolute, indisputable standards of morality, or is morality relative to the place and time? According to the Old Testament, if my wife is unfaithful, I should bury her up to her neck in sand, gather all my friends together with the largest rocks they can carry, and collectvely turn her head into strawberry jam. How would society deal with me, if I did that today?

I don't personally subscribe to any of the traditional systems of superstitious belief, and I follow Bertrand Russell: the good life is the life enlightened by knowledge, and guided by love.

A good question and a good opening post. I can't come up with a good response right now. I'll think about it some more.

Can anyone demonstrate that an objective morality exists 'out there' separate from human values and is waiting to be discovered?

My own view is that morality is a kind of shared (or imposed) 'agreement' about how a community or a society manages cooperation and order (and it is extremely unlikely that all citizens agree on every point). Moral values shift and change over time. Are we making progress? Are we less barbaric now than we were in 2000 BCE?

Probably. But all such judgments are dependent on perspectives and on shared values. From my perspective slavery was never right. If one holds values based on human flourishing of all people equally, then slavery can't be right subject to those values. I have no doubt that I partake in beliefs and practices that in the future will be considered abhorrent subject to different values. And it wouldn't be hard to find people now who think anyone with a petrol-driven car is a kind of miscreant.

Are there any absolute, indisputable standards of morality, or is morality relative to the place and time? — alan1000

Suffering.

Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing? — Matias

Yes. One can be mistaken.

Another related question could be: is it possible to be morally wrong retroactively?

Yes. There's no such thing as moral statute of limitation.

... we are doing something that we think is normal and morally acceptable, but without knowing or suspecting that it is (objectively!) morally wrong and we are in fact morally depraved beings?

I think it only means that we are morally fallible.

All decent people today (at least in so-called Western countries) agree that slavery is morally wrong, and that this is not just an opinion, but a moral fact. Most would even argue that slavery has always been wrong, be it 200, 400 or 2000 years ago. — Matias

I think many people knew even 200, 400, and 2,000 years ago that slavery was wrong. America's founders - Jefferson, Washington, Monroe, Madison - knew it was wrong or at least had serious doubts even though they owned slaves themselves. They knew their practice put the lie to their rhetoric in the Declaration of Independence. That doesn't answer your question, but I think it shines some light on it.

After all, Aristotle, one of the most enlightened and smart persons of Antiquity, argued that slavery was natural and normal. We can assume that this was the dominant view on this issue until the 18th century. Not to forget that the Bible mentions slavery many times, but always in a neutral ,matter-of-fact way, never saying that it is wrong. Lets face it: the vast majority of people for the most time in human history thought that there are free and un-free humans, just as there are rich and poor people.
By the way: when the authors of the Declaration of Independance wrote that "all men are created equal" they were talking about white men, not women nor black people (many even thought that the latter were not fully human...)

Would that mean that those people like me, who are still eating meat from animals that were raised and then killed for that purpose are in the same moral position as slave-owners in the year 1700 CE or 100 BCE — Matias

Yes, Yep, and Aye!

We're criminals, all of us, at least to the extent we kill & eat for fun/pleasure (meat is tasty, oui?).

However, predators hunt out of necessity and if meat is essential for health, that does absolve us to some extent.

Where our descendants, if they survive global warming, can point a finger at us is for not trying hard enough to develop meat substitutes.

I am vegan for more than 12 years but I can not agree with the label "criminal" on meat eating. "Criminal" is a legal term while a moral evaluation of an act is not.
Sure our current dietary practices will have an negative impact on future generations but this can only be evaluated by ethics not by our judiciary system. The issue with such wide spread unethical behavior is that our Economical Systems depend on them hence they are promoted as "acceptable".
But I will totally agree with all your "yeps and Ayes"!!! Moral evaluations are difficult BECAUSE the degree of expansion and application of more rules"rules" depend on how good we are in including groups of different individuals through time. Its impossible to evaluate an act as moral/immoral without projecting its implications in a larger temporal scope and how it affects different agents in the world.

I defer to your more nuanced assessment of the situation.

Would you agree with me more if I replaced crime with immoral?

Personally, I would like to be vegan, but lack the will power to be one. Perhaps people like me - want to but haven't yet adopted veganism - are carriers of a proto-morality gene which will be expressed fully in a few generations down the line; some like you, a vegan, are ahead of the pack.

The short answer is universalism is an invention of monotheistic religions.

Is it possible to be morally wrong even if one is convinced to do the right thing? — Matias

Yes you can be wrong by the standards of contemporary moral understanding.

Another related question could be: is it possible to be morally wrong retroactively? — Matias

No, as morality is determined by socio-historical context, this doesn't even make sense.

Note that morality is relative to a certain socio-historical context, not relative 'within' a certain context, which is what people generally seem to be confusing.

Lets do a little thought experiment: Imagine that in the year 2100 all decent people are vegetarians and they are convinced that eating animals is as wrong as owning slaves or torturing suspects, and that meat-eating has always been wrong (after all there are a lot of people today who would say so, although I am not among them; but in the year 2100 this has become the general consensus). — Matias

This is a good question. How would you convince lions, sharks and necrotizing fasciitis bacteria that what they do is morally wrong?

Would you agree with me more if I replaced crime with immoral? — Agent Smith

Yes I would. An immoral act doesn't have legal implications (at least not most of the time).

Personally, I would like to be vegan, but lack the will power to be one. Perhaps people like me - want to but haven't yet adopted veganism - are carriers of a proto-morality gene which will be expressed fully in a few generations down the line; some like you, a vegan, are ahead of the pack. — Agent Smith

- Ι get your poetic reference to genes but in real life there are no genes in control of our ethics.There are genes (i.e. of the warrior or hunter) that affect our behavior but they are not stronger from the environmental influences around us. What I want to say is that most people well in the middle of a "Bell curve" of our human biochemical diversity, are not to be blamed for their lack of "will power" (even if christianity disagrees lol).
Sure there are some biochemical setups that do not leave room for the host to change many things but in most cases its the environment and how we are programmed by it that governs our behavior. In those cases we need to change the Situation (like we do during diets).

We are empirical animals and we are good in making judgments based on how well and direct a cause is linked to an effect. In the case of meat eating most of us are isolated from the pain caused or the negative implications of the industry on the planet or future generations so we don't really have empirical facts in our reach to inform our actions.
Think of small kids who are directed not to touch the hot stove but they do it anyway.

Causing harm unintentionally is bad. But is it immoral?

If I push a button that says, "Push button to save an innocent life" and I push it, and it turns out that pushing the button actually kills an innocent life. How could it be argued that I behaved immorally?

Sometimes unintentional harm is due in part to negligence of using one's critical thinking or not paying attention to one's conscience.

Did slave owners honestly believe using slaves was not bad, or were they just rationalizing out of convenience?

I think it's also a matter of scale.
Doing wrong based on being too lazy to determine it's wrong might not be as immoral as doing wrong with full conviction that it is wrong.

One other thought. Wise vs foolish seems easier to determine or more objective than morality. Can right and wrong be replaced with wise and foolish?

Ethics seems biochemically mediated for your average Joe and Jane - an illegal subroutine of sorts, oui mon ami?

when the authors of the Declaration of Independance wrote that "all men are created equal" they were talking about white men, not women nor black people — Matias

What you've written makes sense. I do think many of our country's founders were aware of the ambiguity and hypocrisy.

when the authors of the Declaration of Independance wrote that "all men are created equal" they were talking about white men, not women nor black people — Matias

What you've written makes sense. I do think many of our country's founders were aware of the ambiguity and hypocrisy. — T Clark

Interesting :up: :sparkle:

If there is to be any point in time of mass awareness concerning raising animals merely to consume their dead bodies the awareness has to truly resonate from within each individual and it has to start with empathy rather than rationality for it to stick and take root.

A decent argument for vegetarianism which I am inclined to agree with however as a steakloving carnivore my choice of diet does not presuppose that the calf, sheep or lamb is less endowed in its capacity of emotion and or of pain.

If the animal is put down humanely then by it’s inability for it to question its existence or purpose does not alliviate guilt on my part then I should be greatful for the food put on my table.

humane (= showing kindness, care, and sympathy) — Cambridge Dictionary

has to truly resonate from within each individual and it has to start with empathy rather than rationality — Seeker

Understandable. But the example you provided is based on pure mechanism of human’s survival. The consume of meat is not meaningless. We literally need it because it has proteins and other compositions which help us to keep a healthy lifestyle.
Empathy is very complex to put in action. I don’t even have in mind any possible example. It is difficult because it is impossible to put us in somebody else's place.

We literally need it because it has proteins and other compositions which help us to keep a healthy lifestyle. — javi2541997

That is still up for debate however many a studies so far seem to indicate otherwise.

https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-019-46590-1

It is difficult because it is impossible to put us in somebody else's place. — javi2541997

There isnt anything difficult about it, it is actually quite simple, either it is there or it is not.

There isnt anything difficult about it, it is actually quite simple, either it is there or it is not. — Seeker

Our task could be understanding but not empathy. I don’t see it as simplistic. One of the main complex issues in the relations between people is the fact that we don’t understand us pretty well.

Our task could be understanding but not empathy. I don’t see it as simplistic. — javi2541997

Understanding suffering yet inflicting discomfort and suffering still for whatever reason towards our comfort zone. To understand it on an emotional level is something very different.

Our task could be understanding but not empathy. — javi2541997

For sociopaths, no doubt.

Our task could be understanding but not empathy. — javi2541997

I find empathy easier than understanding. :wink:

For sociopaths, no doubt. — 180 Proof

Who said otherwise? :cool:

I find empathy easier than understanding. — Tom Storm

Interesting! But how can we do it? I promise I am not kidding. I don’t see being empathetic as a fruitful or possible scenario. I only try to understand how the people act in society. For example: a drug addict. I could understand him/her of what is the cause for shooting heroin. But I wouldn’t be able to have empathy because I never experienced the fact of taking drugs.

Maybe we are talking about different things. I don't always understand people, but I have empathy when people are struggling/suffering. It's automatic.

I see your point now. Yes, that’s true and I am agree. It’s automatic to have empathy with someone who is struggling.
My problem was a misunderstanding. I thought that you cannot have empathy with people if you understand them previously. But that’s a fallacy

:up:

everything subjective is mediated by our biochemistry either by our default setup or our "epigenetics" (environmental influences during our life).