Right and wrong

This week in class we examined Kohlberg's stages of development in a human being, which examine human motivations to follow rules and laws at different stages of life. The motivations begin with fear of punishment, progressing to individual gain, then to good relationships with others, later to maintaining social order, then to viewing laws as a social contract enabling individual rights, and finally to the recognition of universal principles. Indeed not all individuals necessarily reach the final stage or stages, but Kohlberg maps out the moral development most people undergo from infancy to old age. The varied motivations to act justly, progressing from individual, to societal to universally moral perspectives raised an issue in my mind: the ability or inability to justify any set of morals.

How do we define right from wrong? Most of us are raised with a cultural viewpoint on the definition of moral behavior, but is it possible to justify our morals beyond mere individual or cultural perspective? For instance, if two people debate the moral status of adultery, how can the correct view point be determined? I myself am undoubtedly against it, but if asked to justify my view, I struggle to think what I could say beyond the obvious statement (to me) that cheating on a marital partner is wrong. If others held opposing viewpoints, by which infidelity was perfectly acceptable, there would be no apparent logical process by which I could prove them wrong. The issue would come down to a clash of viewpoints, both of which were likely determined in our cultural upbringing, in my case a western one which supports the concept of fidelity. Other cultures around the world see no problem with polygamy though.

If morals are all defined by perspective, how can standards for moral behavior be set and imposed on others? An article in the BBC caught my attention not long ago concerning the issue of stoning in Iran, http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-middle-east-10956520. The article described the case of a woman sentenced to death by stoning (though the sentence may have been changed to hanging) for adultery. This provoked understandable outrage amongst human rights groups. The issue that arose in my mind, though, was that if Iranian culture sees the stoning of unfaithful women as morally acceptable, what higher authority if any can such human rights groups appeal to in order to prove the moral error of this Iranian practice (which I certainly consider outrageous, in case I am misunderstood)? Many may turn to God and religion as the source for their morals, but for those who lack such beliefs, a vacuum is left in which an absolute standard for morals is seemingly undefinable and arguably unjustified. One can no more argue for the morality of human equality than for the immorality of a monarchy beyond their own personal conviction that one is right and the other is wrong (which is my moral conviction nonetheless). Whilst one might believe in equal rights for all, the other might believe in the divine right of kings to rule, which was the common belief in mediaeval Europe and still is in some countries.

In the absence of a certain method by which to define human morals, it would appear all we can do is define our own country's morals as the majority sees fit. As soon as we start trying to impose our own definitions of right and wrong elsewhere, we have entered into murky waters in which no issue or debate can be resolved with certainty.