What do the words "right" and "wrong" really mean?

[QuestionMark]

As in holding a chair in philosophy at a university?  Do you really want me to check?

There are lists on the internet. There aren't a lot of plain atheist philosophers.

[nateswift]

As in holding a chair in philosophy at a university?  Do you really want me to check?

There are lists on the internet. There aren't a lot of plain atheist philosophers.

How about fancy?  I like my atheist philosophers fancy.

[End Bringer]

In a previous thread, I proposed an alternative method for addressing morality. Instead of looking at a behavior as "right" or "wrong", I suggested that we look at it as either kind or unkind.  In so doing, I was attempting to divorce human behavior from acts based on obligation.

Then it would be an equivocation at best, and naturally entales why being "kind" is "right", and "unkind" is "bad"? Can't it be vice-versa?

One major difficulty I have had in my transition to atheism is how to deal with morality. I formally argued that if there were no god then we are simply matter interacting with other matter.  My line of thinking was that if this is the case then nothing is truly "right" or truly "wrong".  No one is obligated to do anything.  If this is the case, then what Hitler did really wasn't "wrong".  That is a disburbing thought to me.  However, in an attempt to engage in meaningful dialogue, I am attempting to be open in regards to my thinking.

Should have stuck to your initial instincts. 

Which brings me back to my original question:  What do "right" and "wrong" really mean?  Are these terms based on the commands of a deity?  Do they have significant meaning?  Or, are they terms that have to do with obligation, not with the effects of performing a certain action?

No, they are terms based on the existence of an ultimate Transcendant Authority and Moral Lawmaker as the source. They quite naturally entail obligation to act, behave, and think in a certain fashion as opposed to another fashion. Naturally take away the source over Mankind, then Mankind becomes the 'source' in it's place. However as Mankind is finite and immanent (and essentially just another animal) "right" and "wrong" do not strictly exist in any meaningful way. They become pure ether that only exists in the imagination just like any work of fiction. Essentially boiling down to mere opinion. And with 6 billion 'sources' with none being greater than any other it invites a lot of conflicting opinions much of which being mutually exclusive.

Is it in appropriate for atheists to describe anything as "right" or "wrong"?  Or should we describe things as either "kind" or "unkind"?  Or is there other alternatives that we should consider?

Nope. To describe something as "right" and "wrong" is to appeal to a frame of refrence that applies to everyone and one you hope everyone will recognize. Obviously under atheism the only frame of refrence you can appeal to is human opinion in which case we come back to the problem of there being 6 billion of them. The only thing you can do is hold a view that personally relates to you. But you have no buisness extending it to other people. All you can do is say - "I personally like/dislike it." as it relates to you. If Hitler personally like killing Jews and undesirables that was essentially okay. It wasn't "wrong" so much as you just don't like it.

[JustMyron]

I don't think "kind" and "unkind" are good proxies for "right" and "wrong".

"right" and "wrong" aren't theoretical/logical concepts, they're based on emotion. Specifically, the emotion of moral outrage when presented with something "wrong", and moral righteousness when presented with something "right". Deciding whether something is right or wrong is almost a reflexive process, like being drawn towards warm bread or repelled from feces. But, which particular things are "right" and "wrong" are learned, as cross cultural studies have often shown. And they can be changed, as well.

I think it's important to recognize that concepts of "right" and "wrong" are seperate from kind/unkind, useful/useless, beneficial/harmful. The rightness or wrongness of something might be explained in these terms (kindness, benefit, usefulness, etc.) but the feeling of attraction or repulsion from morally significant acts precedes consideration of whether the act might be beneficial, kind, etc.

So, in answer to the OP: "Right" is the feeling you get when you encounter someone doing an action or consider doing it yourself and you have been socialized to believe that this action is both morally significant and on the side of "good". "Wrong" is the converse feeling you get when you encounter someone doing an action or consider doing it yourself, and you have been socialized to believe it is bad.

Now, what do we do with this knowledge?

The problem at the moment is that our transportation and communications technologies allow for the mixing of cultures which were formerly mostly isolated from each other. And, many of us have accepted that our feelings of "rightness" or "wrongness" are universal, and anyone who doesn't subscribe to what your conscience tells you is to be excluded, punished, vilified. I can understand how this behaviour would be favoured evolutionarily: it is very helpful in getting people to work together - everyone in a group has a shared set of common assumptions about how other people will act, which means less thought has to be expended figuring out which actions will get you what you want within the context of the group. Think of this like chess vs. checkers. Checkers is a simpler game because the pieces can only move forward, and only diagonally. Shared morality simplifies the game of operating within a group, because there are many things which everyone understands are just not done. Throw a queen into checkers (that is, someone who is amoral, or ignores their conscience, or even just plays by different rules), and you screw up the game for everyone. So we have a strong aversion to allowing people playing by different rules to coexist with us.

What you're doing by proposing "kind" vs. "unkind" instead of "right" vs. "wrong", is attempting to find a universal set of rules by which everyone can play. So what you are going to want is for "kind" to cause the feeling of moral righteousness currently associated with "right" in various cultures. That's one solution. A problem I see with that is that for many people in various instances "right" is associated with justice, which is punitive rather than kind. Another few ways of dealing with the "right" impulse are:
2. Continue doing what we have been doing historically, which is to exclude and isolate those who don't subscribe to our moral code, enforcing boundaries between moral groups. I think this is a recipe for disaster and holy/ideological warfare between groups, as it has been in the past.
3. We help people to understand that their feelings of "rightness" and "wrongness" aren't universal. Although this is unsettling, the advantage is that we can begin to appreciate and evaluate the benefits of different moral codes in a more dispassionate and rational way, and eventually perhaps engineer a more and more widely accepted moral code. Recognizing "right" as a feeling, and treating it as such, lets us deal with it in the same way we deal with other deep emotional drives we have, like anger and jealousy and love. Yes, these things make us irrational, but they are part of who we are as human beings. Attempting to stifle the impulse to do the right thing by forcing it into a rational model which judges it by how "kind" or "unkind" the impulse is, is probably as unrealistic as attempting to say someone should only feel jealous when <insert logical argument here>. Yet, we have tools and techniques for dealing with jealousy and other emotion, primarily by recognizing that it can serve a constructive purpose and allowing it to be expressed and "vented" even when it can't be channeled constructively, so that it doesn't build up and cause extreme behaviour. And we can develop similar tools to allow people to express their desire to do the right thing and avoid doing wrong, without this impulse being hurtful to others.

[nateswift]

First reaction +1    Need to do a little thinking before responding, and right now I'm doing as little of that as possible.