Recently I wondered what it means to be right or wrong, and unfortunately I mean this in a logical sense and not in a sense related to justice, though fortunately I'm sure that my professor will not object to me going on a rant about logic.
Often we say how things are either right or wrong and we mean that in one of two ways, either A) logically or B) ethically. If something is logically right then it means that the proposition a person makes accurately reflects the real world. For example, if I say "If I jump into that pool with no clothes on, I will get wet." This statement, with any unexpected anomalies of nature notwithstanding, is logically true. If something is ethically right then it means that an action or proposition is moral by some standard and generally promotes ideals that can be agreed upon by the affecting and effected parties. For example, someone might say to me, "You shouldn't jump into that pool naked because it would be wrong." This is not to say that I cannot jump into the pool nude, but rather the exposure of my body to people who do not wish to see it would be rather unpleasant for them to see, doubly so if children were around. Ergo, my statement was logically correct, but my actions would be morally reprehensible.
Now, here's the question: how do things shift from one day being logically or ethically right to being wrong?
The most obvious answer is that of cultural changes. Religion, tradition, and populations effect how people view the everything. In Modern America, slavery is seen as immoral since it denies a person their right to life, liberty, knowledge, and autonomy, whereas Colonial America viewed slaves as less than human and not worthy of equal rights, citizenship, or even person-hood. In a similar manner, conceptions of science, such as the discovery of more senses than Aristotle had originally postulated, have changed and evolved over time.
It is obvious to say that our mechanisms of determining morality and validity have changed throughout the years, but I'm curious to know if they will ever stop changing. We only have so many thousands of years of recorded history, and much of the earlier history is blurry and ambiguous. Furthermore, we haven't the foggiest idea if we are going to become extinct tomorrow due to war, plague, or any of the other wonderful horsemen of the apocalypse. Ergo, what we believe to be right today, ethically or morally, could be viewed as unquestionably wrong in the later years of our life.
However, what of the controversies of today? Right now, we have writers and speakers who say how certain ways of living are right and wrong, yet no agreement on which is which. Is gay marriage moral? Is owning a firearm really a justifiable way of protecting one's life, liberty, and property? Was the world created by some divine entity or was it the product of billions of years of celestial activity and evolution?
If we only have one ultimate mode of thinking, shouldn't there be absolute agreement? But if this were the case, we'd have already reached the pinnacle of thinking and become a perfected species. As such, it makes me curious to know why certain things are right or wrong. Hume sought to show how induction was an inferior means of reasoning to inductive logic, Nietzsche aimed to show how Christian morality and other forms of reasoning were self-refuting by their own means, and countless scientists proving and disproving theories every day. But if Hume disproved inductive logic, why do we still use it? If Christianity is self-refuting, why is it still practiced and celebrated? If Newton's theories were inaccurate, why are they still taught in schools?
The best answer that I have for a lot of these is lack of knowledge. After all, not everyone gets a chance to read Nietzsche, and the few who do rarely understand him. It could also be convenience. There's little risk in trusting inductive reasoning for insignificant things, so to chastise a person for believing that their car is going to still be where they parked it since it hasn't magically vanished on them yet would not be very fruitful. Finally, as a play off of the first, it could be that ignorance is bliss. Some say that if any entity were omniscient that they would be driven to insanity, unable to handle the horror that all of reality holds or the trauma of every terrible event happening vividly before them. As such, it might be useful that we don't know everything and continuously prove ourselves and each other wrong. Hopefully, this type of thinking will lead us to a better tomorrow, whatever the hell that means for us today, tomorrow, or several thousand years from now.
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