What is 'good'? Thoughts of a 16 year old PART 2

Moral Realism

In my previous post I have discussed a concept called moral relativism which I recommend you to check out before reading this.

This post will be about moral realism. So what exactly does this expression mean?

It is the belief that there are fact concerning morality that are definitely true. Just like it's true that trees are made of wood.

Our common sense makes us think that there are some things which are inherently wrong or inherently right. An example for this would be:

Murder is bad.

Saving lifes is good.

This runs into some problems though: 

If there are actually moral facts then how does one know what they are? Can we really say for sure that killing people is always bad? Maybe we need to kill a bad person to save the rest of humanity? Is there any way to prove these moral facts? Why do so many people not agree on what is morally good or bad?

Moral absolutists:

These are people who are of the opinion that there are moral facts which apply regardless of any other circumstance.

Other groups think that what is good depends on the culture of people living in them. This means that we might think that stealing is bad but another culture might think of it is good. Therefore morals are always dependent on the culture in which they are present in.

Another group asserts simply that multiple moral standpoints can be true and one should decide for himself and regarding the situation what he actually thinks is correct. 

All of this are some ideas I recently read around and that really stuck with me. What do you think determines the morality of an action? Are there things which are always bad? Does it depend on culture? Or do you have an entirely different opinion?

Let me know!

Picture taken from Pixabay.