Learn about morals to make smart choices, whether you're thinking about your own values or a subject. There is no doubt that moral standards are different from one country to the next. Being decent means doing good things, and breaking the law means doing bad things. But acts of kindness can make people more decent.
The idea of natural law is that morality comes from a greater power. This point of view says that smart people know what is morally wrong and what is morally right. A moral rule that stops harming people for no reason is also important to them.
Religions sometimes use stories to explain actions that are socially questionable. Like grabbing food to keep from going hungry, which could be seen as wrong. Also, some religious views may support actions that go against moral rules, such as the rule that killing is wrong.
There are small, uniform societies where everyone knows how to behave. People may like different codes in countries that are bigger and more varied. That's why people in different places have different ideas of what is right and wrong. People who follow a set of rules might think that people who don't follow those rules have different morals.
For some, morality is a rule for how to act that sensible people might agree with in some cases. Mill said that normative morality is a set of rules that keep bad things from happening. Sprigge thinks of morals as a set of rules for judging who is right and wrong.
Thomas Aquinas had an impact on the Natural Law school, which says that moral rules come from God. It's different from Divine Command morality ideas that are based on natural law. According to the Natural Law tradition, God's practical sense is what makes us decent.
Bentham, Mill, and Skorupski all say that morals may be a true and objective rule for how people should act. Darwall, Wong, and Gert all say that morality is a set of rules that people follow because they have a good understanding of how their actions affect other people.
Philosophers don't all agree on what is moral, but they all agree on what is right and wrong. Avoiding harm is important to some thinkers, while loyalty and purity are important to others. Folks like Churchland think that what is and what is perfect are not the same thing. Atheists also think that morals might not be spelt out in a single way.
To give you an example, Scanlon sees morals as a set of rules that you should explain to other people. This story is like Sprigge's, but it focuses on morals in society. For example, Darwall talks a lot about second-personal reasons in morality.