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Matter of Opinion?
Morality is not just a matter of opinion.
Imagine two people in an argument, Adam and Bob. Adam has offended Bob, who objects to Adam's behavior. In his defense, Adam says that his behavior is fine, because morality is just a matter of opinion. Further, he asserts that Bob's opinion is no better than Adam's opinion.
Adam and Bob - Image from Freepik.com
Bob is not satisfied with that claim. He thinks there should be some objective way to settle the matter. Fortunately for Bob, there is a flaw in Adam's argument.
To explain this, let's consider a more specific scenario. Suppose Adam is driving a vehicle down a highway in a nation where it is standard practice to keep to the right side of the road. However, Adam points out that the selection of the right or left side for the standard is totally arbitrary. Further, he asserts that his opinion is as good as anyone else's, so he drives on the right or left at random, according to a whim. The result is a high risk of damage to his vehicle or other vehicles, as well as potential injury to himself or others.
Adam has failed to consider how his behavior interacts with the choices of others. If he considered that, his own opinion would change, because he prefers not to have damage, injury, nor the risk of those things. He would adopt the standard.
As demonstrated in the rules of the road simulation, standards arise naturally in populations. Sometimes there is more than one way to achieve the same result. In the case of selecting a side of the road to drive on, either side could be chosen as a standard. Once the standard is established, there is generally an advantage for newcomers to adopt the standard.
Some situations are more complex than a binary choice of left and right. Sometimes there is a value judgement to be made among an infinite number of choices, and the best choice is uncertain. In such cases, often people will agree on an approximation. This is explained in detail in the "Setting of a speed limit" example. That method produces a result that most people will prefer, as compared to a choice made by randomly selecting one person's preference.
So we might assert that if morality is a matter of opinion, it is not just a matter of individual opinion. One might say it is a group opinion. However, that's not quite an adequate explanation either.
Opinions may disregard facts, but facts matter. Consider the popularity of smoking in the 1960s. The majority of adults in many nations smoked, to the point where smoking was considered a right. But as people realized that it caused damage that shortened their lives, the majority in favor of smoking began to regret their decision. If they had known the facts, they would have decided differently.
Caring also matters. When people care about each other, care about their children and future generations, care about their pets and dependent farm animals, and care about the ecology, this produces different results than when that caring is lacking. A society without caring will farm their crops to depletion, pollute, engage in wars of conquest when they think they can win, etc. They bring eventual destruction upon themselves across generations. This puts them at an evolutionary disadvantage compared to societies filled with caring people.
In general, standards are preferred that produce mutual happiness, and that continue to do that across unlimited space and time. Across generations, moral standards tend to be discarded when they produce misery for those who adopt them, or when they create conflicts between groups that bring destruction upon each other. Better standards are invented and there is progress in the wellbeing of societies.
So, let's get back to Adam and Bob's original argument. The particular dispute was not stated, but most likely there is a standard of behavior that would decide the matter, that they can rely on. Or there is some non-violent process available for deciding it. It doesn't have to be a deadlock of one opinion vs another.
So, the first step of resolve the dispute is to rely on established moral standards. Often that is sufficient to settle it.
This is not a guaranty that they will agree. Perhaps Adam is both selfish and irrational. There are no words that can convince him. But even in that case, if Bob is behaving according to the moral standards of his society, Bob will be more likely than Adam to get the support of his society.
An alternative possibility is that Adam disagrees because he determines that the moral standard of his society is flawed. As in the example of smoking, drawing upon evidence can convince people of the benefit of change. In this case, a second step for resolving the dispute is to draw on evidence. Either of them could recommend to the other to make the decision based on a proposed new standard, presenting available evidence about the likely outcomes of the proposed standard and why people will prefer those outcomes.
Morality goes beyond simple boundaries of what behavior is acceptable. There is not just good, but also very good. Typically a society will set a minimally acceptable standard of behavior as the legal standard, leaving people free to adopt other standards beyond that voluntarily. This enables them to put themselves into a "very good" category, or to conduct some experiments aimed at making things better.
If that turns out well for them, these ideas may also be adopted by friends and relatives who observe those results. It can become a seed that spreads, like the gradual transition mentioned above from "smoking as a social obligation" to "indoor smoking in public is prohibited."
Changes in traditions in a society often seep into other societies too. As people in each group have contact with each other, they have the opportunity to observe what works well and what doesn't. For this to happen, the people need to understand that the other people are pretty much like them, so what works for one society will work for another. People learn from this, to borrow standards or to develop equivalent standards. This makes it easier for them to interact with each other, and when there is frequent communication and interaction among them they tend to develop empathy for each other. They begin to think of each other just as people rather than as labeled nationalities.
So it becomes a situation where morality is not just one person's opinion vs another, nor even one group's opinion vs another, but one in which people strive to find solutions that work for everyone. It is an incremental, gradual process toward universal ethics.
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