My apologies, you are right. I ought to have backed that up in some way.
Briefly: reason is the means of our survival as a species. We are not equipped with enormous teeth or fangs like most predators (and as omnivirious beings we are predators of a sort). To deny reason, our primary means of survival as a species, would seem to me to ne a denial of morality. Human extinction movements notwithstanding. Then again, I do not think that humanity is fundamentally bad, as some do (and seesm implicit in many religions - original sin, fallen from grace etc).
While I agree with your reasoning here (the greater our capacity to reason, the greater our capacity to act morally) this doesn’t explain why you see any or all religion as necessarily involving the denial of reason.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by The Great Unwashed *
On the subject of: “What is moral to one person is immoral to another”
I don’t know if I accept that at all:
[ul][li]*Those who act in a way that they believe to be right are behaving morally. * [/li][li]*Those who act in a way that they believe to be wrong are acting immorally. *[/ul][/li][/quote]
I suppose we have to decide what we mean by morality – whether we are talking about the most general sense of distinguishing between the goodness or badness of an act or character, or the more specific sense of conforming to accepted standards of behavior. If I am correctly interpreting what you are saying, I don’t think your examples would not apply to the second definition, which applies to societal standards. For example, blowing up an abortion clinic might be something someone believes is right, but society has determined that such actions are illegal, and therefore immoral.
Therefore, I would presume that your two statements would apply to the more general, individualized sense of morality. If this is the case, then one could choose within his or her own moral code to agree or disagree with your position, because your statements are in themselves morally based. It follows, then, that what is moral to one person is not necessarily moral to another.
As to wilful ignorance, I personally think of morality as relating to actions, not beliefs, but our beliefs invariably dictate our actions. It seems to me that if a person honestly believes they are right to the point of certainty, i.e. knowledge, then they would be acting morally by your above-stated standards.
Immoral = illegal? I don’t think so, at least in our (American) society. There are many acts which are considered illegal but not immoral, and quite a few others which are immoral but not illegal.
And, while I can’t give you a cite, I can tell you as a former psych major that beliefs by no means dictate actions - I often wish they did! I believe with all my heart that I would be better off NOT eating that pint of Ben and Jerry’s - does that mean that I don’t eat it? If only! A given individual action is usually dictated far more by circumstance than by belief, BUT beliefs do dictate the over-all TREND of actions. Example: you may believe wholeheartedly in 40 hours work for 40 hours pay. But you’re feeling lousy and the cat threw up on the rug, and your wife is yelling at you to get home early tonight because otherwise you won’t get a sitter and so on, and you cut out early. Circumstance, not belief. Or at least, not belief in the sense of tenet.
Diogenes the Cynic, if you were to believe that X is The Right Thing To Do would you say you were morally obliged to do X?
'Cause I don’t really get your point so far. If our morality is not connected to our beliefs then what is it connected to? Is it independent of everything?
I’m an atheist, but I do think that morality is derived from religion.
My reason for believing this is that, prior to a few hundred years ago, religion was pretty much the sole vehicle for describing or prescribing the morality of any given society.
If early societies hadn’t been religious, I doubt that such a strong framework of morals would have existed.
Of course, I believe that morals are relative, and I don’t think religion itself is derived from God - it is a product of society - so I feel that this thought is consistent with my lack of faith.
I tend to define morals as “a system for distinguishing between good and evil”. Many people’s sense of what is good and what is evil is informed by their religious beliefs; many people also have some portion of their moral compass deriving from other sources.
As I think about it, I would interpret the principles of my religion such that a belief that atheism is immoral is, itself, an immoral belief. One of the primary foci of moral thought in my faith is the (essentially unachievable, but think of an ideal here) goal of establishing a community without significant internal strife. Declaring someone immoral is one means of attempting to cast someone out of the community, and is only justified if they have been doing harm to the community. Very few communities in the society in which I live are definable by religious belief.
I’d argue that hating religion - ‘hating god’ is a logical impossibility if you’re an atheist; perhaps hating the concept of god is different - is not the same as hating religious people. Doing the latter might be immoral, but I don’t see hating religion as being any more or less moral than hating racism or any other idea.
jjim, doesn’t this require one to think that religion - or the laws that the religions of which you speak passed down - were moral in the first place? Between slavery, war, and the oppression of women, gays, etc., I don’t think I’d be able to respond to the argument with a straight face.
I have a Catholic friend who is always puzzled by my strong sense of morals in the absence of any religious beliefs. Those lower on the Kohlberg scale can’t possibly comprehend those that are higher.
Kohlberg’s Scale and his ability to accurately gauge someone’s place on it are two different things. Morality and moral reasoning are also quite different. You can have two people act the same way for completely different reasons. I don’t think you can just give people a list of questions and determine their level of moral reasoning without knowing how they personally define the terms. If this thread is any indication, there is a wide disparity in the interpretations of terms typically employed in a discussion on morality. I never said that Kohlberg’s scale was the defining standard, but I do believe it’s a decent place to frame an argument and begin getting a concept of how other people are defining their terms. Having said that, can you think of an example where a moral choice based on one of his levels of reasoning could be a higher order of thought than the one above it? It does get tricky when you get to a UEP because most people think that that’s where they’re reasoning. I’m sure there are new and improved postmodern moral reasoning scales but I just threw that one out because I knew it. Morality will always be hard to pin down and no “scale” will ever be definitive but I think it’s safe to say that someone who can’t understand how someone else could be “as moral as they are” without someone telling them how to be that way has a slightly less sophisticated of moral reasoning.
Kohlberg is certainly one place to start, and I realize he is dealing with moral reasoning, not action, and by his definition the lower cannot understand the higher. But accepting the idea of a scale leads to framing questions with hierarchical assumptions. Such as “Can you think of an example where a moral choice based on one of his levels of reasoning could be a higher order of thought than the one above it?” Kohlberg assumes that impersonal “principles” that apply rules of justice impartially to conflicting rights are the “highest level” with which to judge moral actions. Others (like Carol Gilligan) see morality developing along other lines, with value placed on affiliation and the nuanced interpersonal relationships that moral choices usually involve.
So I do think “scale” is a loaded concept. Perhaps your friends who are astonished at what they perceive to be your “level” of morality are actually more astonished that your morality agrees with theirs rather than that you could come up with it without being told. Those tricky Universal Ethical Principles are their evidence of an outside Authority. They cannot imagine you could perceive them and not Him.
You seem to be using “moral” as an absolute. I’m not. I’m saying any given society’s own morals (regardless of how repugnant you or I may find them) were both reflected in, and prescribed by, religion.
Carol Gilligan does not deserve to be referenced as an authority. She uses praimarily anecdotal and non-systematic methods, and refuses to publish her methodology or any details about her findings other than what suits whatever issue she’s decided to push this week.
This raises a question that probably doesn’t belong on this thread, but which I’m going to bring up anyway…While I like to think that I have a relatively good grasp on the rationale of faith, I’ve never been able to understand how people could think it was okay that, despite somebody’s being a pretty good person–better, maybe, than a lot of the “saved”–it would be okay for this power-tripping deity to cast said person into hell just because he or she didn’t believe. I’ve always felt like it would really be a case of God violating his own standards. I mean, I have friends who acknowledge that in a lot of ways I’m more upstanding than them, who will say (or at least think) in the same breath that it’s too bad I’m bound straight for hell. Since obviously I don’t believe in hell it doesn’t bother me in a fear-for-the-future sense, but it is grating.
I am an atheist too (well, a Weak one anyway) and I disagree, take a look at Communist Russia’s bloody history, the savage treatment of Buddhists in Tibet in the past and present and the reports of Christian persecution in China. (I am sure other religions are also persecuted, but 90% of everyone I know personally is a Christian so my data are skewed in that direction)
Those cases you cite seem to me more of a political question than a religious one. In communist Russia, Christian cutl was not completely banned, because the Orthodox Church had (and still has) great influence over common people, being a beleiver was not something to be proud of, but not completely forbidden, the communist regime did tolerate it to certain point.
In China the situation was different, but the inner matter is more or less the same. They attacked buddisths because they were a treat to communists´ power. You see, I´m no expert in buddism, but the great Lama is (was) the head of civil and religious power in Tibet. China wanted to take over Tibet, so erradicating buddhism and it´s followers was just required to accomplish that goal, not to fight Buddhism itself, just in the name of communist atheism.
And Crhistian prosecutions (you mean the War of the Boxers, right?) it was a reaction of fanatic nationalism, Christian cult was seen as a foreign ill influence, among others. Oh, but that was way back in nationalist China…
Now, Mao´s cultural revolution (in the 60´s) led to destruction much of the chinese cultural weatlh. Recently (since about a couple of decades) the chinese realized that the long history of their country and their former rich culture was very valued in the west, and they could make some profit from it, so they started to protect and rebuild some of their old culture. They even have an office to protect Tibet´s culture now.
And for christians prosecutions in communist China, this is my explanation:
Mao wanted an uniformed country, people dressed with the same clothes (no sex distinctions), erradicate family´s unit and the Communist Party involving in every single moment in the individual´s life (kinda “1984”… very odd).
They didn´t prosecuted crishtians for beleiving in God, they did it because being a christian doesn´t consist of beleiving in God only. Christians are bound to a set of values (family, as an example) that were uncompatible with the regime´s politics and subsequently, a harm to it. Again, a political issue.
Altrough most of “religion wars” can be seen under a perspective of a “political conflict”, most of slaughters involving God/religion happen between different religions (whom I see as different ways of understanding God, funny or sad, whichever pleases you most) rather than religion/no religion at all.
The thing is, they weren´t killing for atheism itself (“in the name of No-God”, remmember?), but for political reasons.
Boy! you really made me think hard on this one, I´m most pleased
If she doesn’t publish her methodology how do you know it’s non-systematic? Unaware as I was of this serious accusation, I Googled up a bit, including this exchange where the fur flies freely. He said, she said, they said; take your pick. Thanks for the heads-up; 'tis inneresting.
Though her work has been criticized (as has Kohlberg’s and Piaget’s, limited as it was to males), I’m not convinced that makes it valueless. There’s way too much harping on sexual politics and I don’t think that the line is always drawn straight between the sexes (I’m not sure Gilligan does, either). I do think there is some validity to recognizing the tension between justice and mercy and where individuals place their emphasis of value as they grow in moral reasoning.
My personal moral reasoning feels obliged to apologize for this hijack, as I perceive it to be. Sorry.
Because that appears to be WHY it’s not published. There’s plenty in her books (written for a public, rather than an academic audience) that hints at what she’s doing.
Her conclusions have been criticised (perhaps because of the way her conclusions belittle women and stigmatize men?), but whether they are right or wrong themselves, her cred as a serious researcher is very very low. She gets tacked on after Kohlberg in psychology texts for calling his scale on some important points: but it’s not her criticisms that we’re talking about here, it’s her own work that attempted to create something of an alternative view.
This was a valid point to make about Kohlberg: that his judgements of heirarchy got somewhat subject at the top, and rigidly assumed that certain higher orders could ONLY be reached by a very specific line of reasoning. But that doesn’t at all justify all Gilligan’s unsupported crap about women’s different ways of knowing and delicate, more communal and more serviant ways.
Her subjects aren’t representative of any meaningful population, and don’t appear to have been properly selected (certainly not randomly).
Her actual measuring methods are unknown: all we see is what she decides to tell us she’s defined as her subject’s problems and how she rates them on various categories she’s made up (without defending them very much for any of the various levels of evaluative validity).
Her own accounts of her interviews with her subjects imply that she’s leading them to the conclusions she wants.
Her interpretations of responses seem to be highly selective: we only hear quotes that she picks: and it is these interpretive interviews that seem to make up the bulk of her “evidence.”
Kohlberg can rightly be criticized for his conclusions and his methodology on several points, but at least he was doing real studies with a rigorous methodology that ALLOWED us to critique and improve. Gilligan’s “findings” seem based on an ideology that seemed pre-decided long before she set out to “prove” it.
As many critics have pointed out, her conclusion that girls’ top career ambitions (lawyers, doctors, nurses, businesspeople) compared boys’ bigger and wilder ambitions (rock star, president, movie star, championship surfboarder) are proof that girls are having their dreams have quashed just doesn’t follow directly. They might just as easily be a sign that girls are much more reasonable than boys. And from all accounts, whatever girls are doing, it’s working better than what boys are doing. Not many boys actually become rock stars or president. And when you look at more concrete and less interpretive proxy measures, it’s boys that seem to have the huge problems: boys are dropping and failing out of school like crazy, way faster than girls.
! Now, let me reply.