Tl;dr: Morality is a relative thing and cannot be externally deduced from pure logic. Your personal values will necessarily inform your moral beliefs.
Others have addressed that there are very real social/self-preservation reasons to not harm others but I will address the morality side which is what I think you were asking about.
I’ve heard this sort of question framed more generally as part of the “is/ought” logical dilemma. Morality can sort of be summarized as “ought” statements regarding our behavior. For example: We should (ought to) protect children from harm. That’s a moral statement but where is the justification for it?
The basic idea of the is/ought dilemma is that you cannot logically derive “ought” statements from “is” statements. Said differently: you cannot derive a moral statement of “one ought to do X” from premises that simply define “this thing is A.”
So I can say that children are wonderful, creative, and beautiful (This is an “is” statement which you might agree with).
Children are innocent (“is”).
Neither of these statements then logically implies that we should never do harm to children (An “ought” statement). I would need to add another premise “We ought to protect the innocent” for it to be a logical conclusion.
But then where did “We ought to protect the innocent” come from? If you try to justify it you will find that you will have to predicate it on another “we ought” sort of statement, you never get back to just stating something “is” as the sole basis of the moral conclusion.
That’s a bit long winded but the general idea is that the basis of morality is not something I think you can logically deduce from statements of fact. Religions often try to bypass this by saying “well god is the source of morality so if he says something is wrong that makes it objectively wrong.” This is a gigantic stipulation to agree to however and without it, I don’t think logic alone can be used to derive morality.
For example I believe that life evolved over millions of years and is incredibly fragile (is statement). I also think that life is special and beautiful. Someone once said: “We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.” That statement resonates with my world view. Because I personally value life and think it is special, it makes sense to me that we ought to do things to protect life - don’t harm others, try to assist those in need, etc. But even that is more of a guiding priciniple and not a moral absolute. If someone was committing violence against my child I would would harm them if necessary to stop them.
Furthermore, I recognize that not everyone even accepts my “is” statements about life being special and beautiful, and even that statement is insufficient to come up with an absolute moral position, as I just gave an example of. That’s part of the reason societies will make laws to enforce punishment for behavior that harms others - not everyone agrees on morality or its basis.
So why shouldn’t we hurt others? Look closely at your core beliefs and you’ll find the answer (or maybe you won’t).
But the problem with relativism is that it’s not universalisable. If my personal values inform my moral beliefs, I can’t impose them on others. For example, I think excision is wrong, but if that idea is only rooted in my personal values, I’m not legitimate to oppose it in an other continent, with an other culture, and then other personal values.
I completely agree it is problematic if not impossible if your goal is to use some sort of universal logic to persuade others that you are right and they are wrong. I don’t have a solution for that and as far as I can tell only religions claim to have an answer which is basically “our god is right and says X is right and Y is wrong.”
I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that means you are not “legitimate” for opposing harm to others. The question that springs to mind is, who gets to decide what is objectively legitimate? The question sort of presupposes there is some higher authority which can be appealed to (a god, etc). If you aren’t basing your reasoning in religion/gods then I don’t see how you can logically derive morality without relying on your personal beliefs. I’d love to see someone show me how they think morality can be objective without a religious premise.
This is longer than I intended, sorry.
Tl;dr: Morality is a relative thing and cannot be externally deduced from pure logic. Your personal values will necessarily inform your moral beliefs.
Others have addressed that there are very real social/self-preservation reasons to not harm others but I will address the morality side which is what I think you were asking about.
I’ve heard this sort of question framed more generally as part of the “is/ought” logical dilemma. Morality can sort of be summarized as “ought” statements regarding our behavior. For example: We should (ought to) protect children from harm. That’s a moral statement but where is the justification for it?
The basic idea of the is/ought dilemma is that you cannot logically derive “ought” statements from “is” statements. Said differently: you cannot derive a moral statement of “one ought to do X” from premises that simply define “this thing is A.”
But then where did “We ought to protect the innocent” come from? If you try to justify it you will find that you will have to predicate it on another “we ought” sort of statement, you never get back to just stating something “is” as the sole basis of the moral conclusion.
That’s a bit long winded but the general idea is that the basis of morality is not something I think you can logically deduce from statements of fact. Religions often try to bypass this by saying “well god is the source of morality so if he says something is wrong that makes it objectively wrong.” This is a gigantic stipulation to agree to however and without it, I don’t think logic alone can be used to derive morality.
For example I believe that life evolved over millions of years and is incredibly fragile (is statement). I also think that life is special and beautiful. Someone once said: “We are star stuff. We are the universe made manifest, trying to figure itself out.” That statement resonates with my world view. Because I personally value life and think it is special, it makes sense to me that we ought to do things to protect life - don’t harm others, try to assist those in need, etc. But even that is more of a guiding priciniple and not a moral absolute. If someone was committing violence against my child I would would harm them if necessary to stop them.
Furthermore, I recognize that not everyone even accepts my “is” statements about life being special and beautiful, and even that statement is insufficient to come up with an absolute moral position, as I just gave an example of. That’s part of the reason societies will make laws to enforce punishment for behavior that harms others - not everyone agrees on morality or its basis.
So why shouldn’t we hurt others? Look closely at your core beliefs and you’ll find the answer (or maybe you won’t).
Thanks for this interesting answer.
But the problem with relativism is that it’s not universalisable. If my personal values inform my moral beliefs, I can’t impose them on others. For example, I think excision is wrong, but if that idea is only rooted in my personal values, I’m not legitimate to oppose it in an other continent, with an other culture, and then other personal values.
I completely agree it is problematic if not impossible if your goal is to use some sort of universal logic to persuade others that you are right and they are wrong. I don’t have a solution for that and as far as I can tell only religions claim to have an answer which is basically “our god is right and says X is right and Y is wrong.”
I’m not sure I would go so far as to say that means you are not “legitimate” for opposing harm to others. The question that springs to mind is, who gets to decide what is objectively legitimate? The question sort of presupposes there is some higher authority which can be appealed to (a god, etc). If you aren’t basing your reasoning in religion/gods then I don’t see how you can logically derive morality without relying on your personal beliefs. I’d love to see someone show me how they think morality can be objective without a religious premise.