WHAT IS GOOD OR BAD, RIGHT OR WRONG...

What is Good or Bad , Right or Wrong

Distinguishing what is good from bad or telling apart a right deed from a wrong one has been said to be a matter of personal judgment and therefore choice . But one may ask : What causes a person to make a particular choice or reach a certain judgment ' The answer to this according to pundits , is the person 's philosophical outlook . In other words , his or her ethical basis for distinguishing right and wrong which could be dictated by religious belief , cultural or ethnic background

and other personal circumstances . Because of these differences in people 's moral values and principles , what is right for some people is often considered wrong by others . There are several philosophical positions which impact on people 's perceptions of right and wrong

One of these is moral absolutism ' According to this position , there are certain actions which are always morally right and morally wrong regardless of the circumstances involved . In other words , actions are inherently either right or wrong , no matter what conditions surround the actions . A classic case in point is Immanuel Kant 's position regarding lying . He wrote in his On a Supposed Right to Lie ' that one should always be truthful even in answering the question of a murderer who wants to know if his or her intended victim is in the house . In spite of the fact that the intended victim might meet his or her death if his or her presence in the house is revealed to the murderer , Kant insisted that one has no right to lie because lying is inherently wrong . Another instance of moral absolutism could be found in the United Nations Convention against Torture and Other Cruel , Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment ' published in 1987 . This document maintained that the use of torture could never be justified under any situation Critics of the convention interpreted this provision to mean that even if a terrorist bomb is about to explode and the terrorist responsible for planting the bomb is already under the custody of police authorities , this captured terrorist should not be subjected to torture to force him or her to reveal where the bomb is being concealed . This declaration is an outright absolutism because it does not take into consideration the lives that could be lost when the bomb finally explodes (Lau Chan-a

Moral absolutism is likewise articulated in deontological concepts These concepts categorize actions as inherently good or bad . The Natural Moral Law ' is one deontological theory which states that an action is either good or bad depending upon the laws of God and nature In other words , once an action has been categorized as morally evil under the laws of God embodied in the teachings of the Roman Catholic Church , such action could no longer be considered good under any circumstances . One specific example of this situation is the Roman Catholic belief that abortion is wicked and immoral because it is an act of murder , thus...