What is rightness? What is correctness? If we’re all shaped by our own experiences, assumptions, and biases, what meaning, then, does the word “absolute truth” hold? So when we have religious books and religious authorities telling us whether we’re straying far from or moving close to “the truth,” what is it? Where is it? Who knows, maybe God (whoever or whatever that maybe to you ...
If democratic decision making prevails, then the basis of rightness will rest in the might of the whole group. Democratic or autocratic might will define what is right, and as many have discovered, democratic might can be as unfavorable to outliers as autocratic might can be.
It must be maintained that the rightness of an action is completely independent of the motivations from which it is done. Perennial moral dilemmas are a bad thing because they imply there has been little or no moral progress in these areas. They are also a very troubling to those faced with them, especially in a real life situation.
This rightness may be either of a descriptive or a prescriptive nature: the feeling of apprehending some truth, or of apprehending some good. Scientific knowledge of many kinds, for example, can be beautiful in its descriptive rightness, in the apprehension of truth.
The 'rightness' of a theory about bridge-building is attested to by the ability of a bridge built according to that theory, to hold traffic. No one watches it fall down and claims it a success, no one believes that bridges are 'supposed' to fall down, that being the aim all along.
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