MaaS (Morality as a strategy)

Is the good “good and just” because God wills it or does God will it because it is good and just?

This is the key question behind the Euthyphro dilemma (adapted by Leibniz), which pertains to the idea of being “moral” or “ethical”. The question implies that either God’s will determines what is moral — meaning that if God wanted to make evil things like murder or torture moral, He could; or that morals determines what God wills — meaning that God is not omnipotent, since he lacks control over this concept of “morality”. Neither seem like comfortable answers.

And the phenomenon is not made much easier if you assume God does not exist — it does not answer what makes something moral or where morals come from.

Puzzles like the Euthyphro dilemma or the trolley problem are strange and unfamiliar, and therefore forces people to confront what principles actually guides their ethical thinking. People generally know whether something is moral or not, but not what the definition of “moral” is. For the most part, they don’t need to reach that deeper level of understanding.

We can say “moral” means “good for society”, but that of course begs the question what “good for society” means.

What’s the deal with morals and morality anyway?

Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution states that over time, genes (and therefore organisms) mutate slightly. The beings (and therefore genes) that are better at surviving reproduce more than the mutations that are…