Morality is derived from collective tastes

Do we want to live without rules? What if there were no laws, certainly attacking people and behaving badly would have harmful outcomes and would be risky, even without laws. So what is the point, or is the adage that we need rules to provide structure to Society correct?

Monica Geller: "rules help control the fun!"

If rules aren't so much a set of laws which result in prescribed punishments, but instead a code of ethics which has been elucidated by experience over time and with the advantage of thought and scholarship, then this is not harmful, unless knowledge is harmful. So then can morality (and ethics) been regraded as nothing more than a body of knowledge and categorisation of behaviour? If it viewed this way, is can be nothing other than beneficial.

If morality and ethics is nothing more than a body of knowledge (of past events) then this is not harmful and is not a proposition, but instead a branch of science. So then morality moves from being a claim (perhaps even a religious one) to a matter of deductions made from observation and consideration of life. We then cannot be a moral nihilist, since we cannot be a Biological (scientific) nihilist (can we?!) or a sceptic of jurisprudence.

But then, in jurisprudence, what separates good behaviour from a crime? Something that you wouldn't want done to yourself? Something that the victim does not want and has not deserved, so that the attack (use of force) is not defensive. We assume a complainant. Something that is not desired by the complainant and cannot be justified (or forgiven) is then a crime. A crime is something the group doesn't like. Morality is defined by nothing more than what the group likes, or dislikes, so morality is then specific to the Social group concerned and will alter as people become more (or less, temporarily) enlightened. It (morality) is whatever behaviour is acceptable, or unacceptable to the group, at the time.

In earlier times certain behaviours would have been seen as taboo, such a failure to sacrifice animals to God, or being physically different to the norm, in these cases we can see that reduced dogma and bigotry result in a change in morality. This is the 'descriptive' sense of the term morality.

So if we (do) say that something is immoral, we only describe what is judged to be acceptable to the Societal culture at the time. If we (a critic) think that something that is presently (morally) acceptable at the time is in fact criminal (such as taxes?) then we might say it should be immoral, or ask how can it be moral...

In history, to murder might have been (already) immoral at one time, and yet to sacrifice animals would not have been immoral, simultaneously. We learn to have empathy for the animal.