I think people do better when they have a 'why'. That's when they've made it their own.
Oh, now, I do agree with
that.
But a reason why something is wrong still leads to the conclusion that it is wrong. Whereas a reason why something is inadvisable leads to the conclusion that it is inadvisable.
The way I see it, morality can start with some basic first principles.
"You wouldn't like it if someone else hit you" can be used to derive the modest conclusion that hitting someone else without a good reason is inadvisable, or the more ambitious conclusion that it violates the other person's rights, and is therefore intrinsically wrong. So I'm not talking about
not giving reasons for behavioral injunctions, but rather whether one couches those instructions in practical terms, rights-oriented terms, or moralistic terms.
One problem with practical reasons for good behavior is that they don't apply if you don't get caught. Another problem is that such language lacks... emotional intensity. Refraining from something because it's wrong, it's evil, it transgresses against another's rights - is something one is more firmly committed to than refraining from something because... it's inexpedient.
The basic principles of right and wrong, to my mind, are:
Not to do injury to others, except
- as a response to injury from those others (to oneself or an innocent third party), or
- a minimal injury required in an emergency (holding an infected person under quarantine, or a suspect in advance of trial)
To include damage to, or deprivation of, a person's property in the definition of injury.
Here, we look at how what belongs to no one can become something that belongs to the person who did work on it to make something out of it. (This is
not an exhaustive definition of property, though; we have the right to breathe, even though we haven't improved the air - and, similarly, while you can take land away from trees and animals to make a farm from it, it does not follow that the hunting grounds of indigenous people may be treated in the same way.)
And where other rules are needed, they need to be made in a way that is fair; they can't be written to favor one particular person or group of persons unless there is some prior difference that justifies that.
Principles as basic as this don't really have a 'why'; they're the postulates of morality rather than its theorems.
(I should note, though, that this is a "why" in terms of
deductive reasoning. There's also
inductive reasoning. Thus, if you tell a child stories about people interacting with each other, treating one another with kindness or with cruelty, and these stories elicit an emotional response, the basic postulates of morality can be derived from these slices of life by inductive reasoning - they tell us about what we feel is right and wrong.)