What makes something "wrong"?

It has come to my attention that we are now trying to disprove the points i make and it has already been forgotten what points you were making, since you never tried to prove them.

why don't you instead logically prove to me that society does in fact have the right to defend itself ? after all, that was the original claim.

Who are you talking to in this comment?

I wanna see you argue WHY society has that right.

Self-preservation.

What about Al Qaeda or Taliban - according to you they must also have the right to function because they are also interested in self preservation.

They have a right to function yes, and when that function includes killing other people, we are justified in defending ourselves from them.

so what you're saying is that our society is a terrorist organization.

which is true. it's just surprising that you figured it out.

That's not at all what I said.


Either you lack comprehension skills or you are being intentionally obtuse.

We have the capacity to generate a priori knowledge in the form of abstract meaning and a posteriori knowledge from empirical experiences.

These two forms of knowledge are categorized in our memory as to likes and dislikes which identify what we naturally value. What we value from a priori knowledge is our sense of morals and from our a posteriori knowledge we derive our social ethics.

In time we culminate these experiences of moral and ethical instances into holistic moral and ethical principals. These principals are used to guide us toward our pursuit of happiness. Without meaning we have no values, without values we have no purpose, without purpose we cannot achieve any form of happiness.

What is moral is "right or wrong" and ethics define what is "good and bad."

While awareness "that" right and wrong exists is natural, we individually decide "what" is right and wrong for ourselves.

While awareness "that' good and bad exists is natural, we individually and collectively as a society, decide "what" is good and bad ourselves and us.

For some, the sanctity of life is absolute the abortion is wrong.

For others, the sanctity of life is conditional and abortion may be right.

If it is decided that abortion may be right, it could be decided that aborting a 5 month fetus is unethical and may qualify as murder.

So, your question, "What gives society the so-called legitimate right/business to claim murder is wrong and that it has the right to judge and punish murderers," is a moral question itself assessing the ethics of punishing people.

The answer is, we are naturally aware that "right" and "wrong" exists but "what" is right and wrong is a matter of social agreement and nothing more.

If we chose not to punish a murderer then logically, we could not punish a rapist, thief or any other criminal for that matter. This would contradict our natural inclinations to preserve life and species. There would be no deterrent. There would be no social predictability and we could not function as a group.

So, given "that" morality exists as form, we must choose "what" is moral and immoral. It doesn't really matter what this content is, but the form of morality cannot exist in a vacuum.