What is right and what is wrong?

Now, we probably want to agree with Mackay that murder is wrong and that kindness is right, but that is not the point. In a morally relativistic world we can imagine whatever we like to be right and wrong. So, in such a world, murder is not wrong and kindness is not right because nothing is actually right or wrong. All we can have are preferences, as Mackay himself indicates, “it is perfectly reasonable to state your own preferences in a particular matter” p.93.

Consider the implications of what he writes on p.90, “moralising, when it takes the form of an attempt to reconstruct someone else’s moral framework, represents an invasion of their right to be whatever they want to be.” Here, quite incredibly, Mackay says we all have a right to be whatever morally we want to be.

Really? Can he be serious? Does he actually mean that Hitler, torturers, and child abusers have the right to do whatever they want and no one should interfere? But if these people decided or imagined that what they did was “right”, how can they be criticised, at least according to Mackay’s philosophy?

On p.129 we read that “a person’s sexual preferences, whether derived from a genetic predisposition or from cultural conditioning, are as authentic for that individual as anyone else’s are for them”. So there we have it, pedophilia and incest are okay after all, apparently.

Finally, one last example of Mackay, who said he wouldn’t tell us what to do, telling us what to do, “Over and over again, we must ask ourselves: Is this right?” p.236. But if we make up our own moral standards, what possible value can there be in asking this question? Whatever we decide to do we can choose to call “right”! And if we want to, tomorrow we can call it “wrong”, then the next day “right” again. Inconsistent? No problems, because we can claim that being inconsistent is “right”.

The book is fatally flawed. Think about it, moral relativism, Mackay’s position, excludes the possibility of (rationally): accusing others of wrong-doing; of complaining about unfairness or injustice; of believing in moral progress; or of even holding meaningful moral discussion.

However, if humanity has simply happened to evolve out of the slime, then Mackay is correct that there are no moral absolutes. We are absolutely free because the notions of “right” and “wrong” are mere fabrications. Next time though when someone is murdered, raped, or tortured, what do we do with our strong gut feelings that something terribly wrong has happened?