forum for week of 12 September

It's hard to judge beliefs concerning what is or is not ethical because different cultures often have different opinions on the matter. Still, I feel that good beliefs should be backed up by good reasons. Example: if a certain action causes direct harm to somebody else, then that backs up the belief that that action is wrong. If a belief is not backed up by any reasons showing why that action's right or wrong, then that belief is simply arbitrary. If a belief is backed up by poor reasoning, then it is much more likely for that belief to be wrong.

At the same time, it might be hard to judge whether the reasons backing up one belief are better than the reasons backing up another belief. With some difficult ethical questions, it might never be possible to decide whether some actions are right or wrong. But by evaluating the reasoning behind certain beliefs, we can at least begin to separate the good and the bad beliefs. Veronika Bondarenko