DoubtingThomas wrote:Sure, if we define morality as something that is healthy.
Any statement of oughtness - anything that says or implies that you are obligated to do something - is a moral statement. For instance, any thought you have that the law should be this way instead of that or any politician you favor over another because of those preferences, is a moral issue. You can say that ethics is the study of statements and thoughts that carry this sense of obligation.
Morality isn't defined as healthy. Morality doesn't tell you to be healthy. The idea that you ought to be healthy itself is a moral thought.
How do you do it well? There is no consensus on anything in philosophy. Is there a well-established philosophical idea? and how do we know that it is true? Is it possible to know anything in philosophy? Perhaps our world is just a computer simulation experiment or someone's dream.
I really don't know how to answer this in a message board post because it's such a broad question presuming zero entry-level knowledge.
DoubtingThomas wrote: Please tell me when can a human have rights? Why? Is it before 24 weeks? in third trimester? After birth? After two years old? Please don't ignore my questions.
What this thread is about, in theory, is asking subgenius your question to see what he thinks. What I recommend in your case, rather than me telling you what I think, is reading up on how different people defend stances on this.
Some people argue that anything that has the conscious ability to experience pain is a person. Many animals have this, and if you think this, you ought to be a vegan and probably also ought to view our society as incredibly morally abhorrent and in need of drastic reform. Have you ever heard someone argue this? I bet you have. And surely you recognize here that merely asserting this does no good. This isn't self-evidently so. It might appeal to some people's emotions when they think about other people and animals, but more than this is needed.
One route to arguing this is to say that when you think about some moral thoughts, and specifically thoughts about things that are morally wrong, what you really are saying is that they cause things to experience pain. At least some statements of moral wrongness, when you closely analyze them, are really talking about inducement of pain to anyone that can experience it. Therefore, anything that can experience pain can be morally wronged. From there, it follows that rights associated with preventing moral wrongs should apply to anything that can experience pain. Fetuses that can experience pain are people. But so are cows, pigs, cats, etc.
Another route to arguing this is that morality consists of subjective intuitions about what produces a sense of moral disgust and satisfaction in us, and the thought of causing others pain is inherently a morally disgusting to us in general, ergo it's proper to say that it is bad. And you can probably see how the rest follows from there.
I'm not saying these arguments are right. I don't think they are, mainly because I don't think moral statements reduce into statements about pain or base intuitions like that. But it's instructive to think about how people reason their way to these positions.
The idea that morality applies to a shared human community of genetically similar beings is a sucktastic position whose justifications leave a lot to be desired. That's easier to see when you've sampled from different schools of thought and how they go about defending themselves.