User blog comment:Alchemical/Morality and its Relativity/@comment-4962138-20120610035804

Though I feel convinced good and bad cannot be used synonymously with moral and immoral, I may just be ignoring the multiple meanings of good and bad.

I'll explain by example. Let's say two people see someone run a red light, noticing that a person in the passenger seat appeared injured. There were no cars around and it is clear to see that no accident would occur. Both of the onlookers adhere to a moral code based on respecting authority.

The first onlooker thinks that the action was "good" because the driver is trying to get their injured friend to help sooner (assumably). He made a decision to ignore the authority of the stop light to shave a few seconds off the drive, and that could make a difference.

The second onlooker thinks the action was "bad" because the stop light means you are supposed to stop. It doesn't matter if breaking the rule won't hurt anyone, because it's still disrespecting authority. It doesn't make it okay to break rules because circumstances are different.

Both of these people think in terms of "good" and "bad" that can be viewed more or less synonymously with "moral" and "immoral." However, the second onlooker is correct in a sense, according to the moral of respecting authority.

In short, good and bad are terms that account for the relativity and circumstance of actions, whereas moral and immoral are black and white. You can't say an action was mostly moral, but a little immoral there. Immorality is a very easy thing to do, and can still provide a "good" outcome.

One could hypothetically perform an immoral act in order to achieve the greater good. The action would still be "immoral," but not "bad" per se if it is agreed that the outcome was worth the immorality of the action. I may still be being unclear, but I guess we'll see.

Morality is not a universal code in my opinion either. The "Golden Rule" appears in various ideologies, so it is probably the closest thing to a universal moral code. However, many of those that preach this rule equally ignore it in other parts of their belief, so that's hard to take seriously. Should the concept of the golden rule be universally applied, I suppose it would be a universal code - but that answers the question by providing the answer as a given.

Because morality is defined by people, I don't see any way it can be universal. It is in fact not universal currently for obvious reasons - people don't agree with one another about how to treat one another. Should it be universal? That would be nice.

Consider: Being rude is immoral. In one culture an action is rude, in another it is a sign of gratitude. Is the action therefore moral, or immoral? It clearly depends on what culture you're in.

The only way that morality can be universally defined is if one assumes there is a universal definer for it. Because people can't agree on a universal definer, it isn't.