Morality . . . where do you think it comes from?

Also bear in mind the original question posed by the OP:

I think morality comes from our innate sense of empathy, which I view as an evolutionary adaptation to group living.

Does that mean that there is some encodable “universal” morality? No, since different individuals may have different levels of empathy. And in the homicide/death penalty examples mentioned earlier (and in other situations) different individuals may “attach” their empathy to different actors.

Certainly, I agree, there are some self-abnegating individuals, who are rapidly stripped of their livestock by those who perceive a good deal from a sucker, but what about priests, monks and nuns? You imply that their calling is an evolutionary dead-end, but this is rather counterintutive considering the millenia of historical continuance!

Consider, can a class of people be trained as hyperempathic – putting the feeling of others higher than themselves? And isn’t this a social conditioning once again?

Another thought on social conditioning. Why is it we are more accepting of murder for the defense of a family member than murder for the defense of oneself? Isn’t survival the ultimate motive?

—Ehrm, that was a rebuttal, just there.—

No, it was a bunch of jargon with little to do with what I said. Maybe next time try to accuse me of not being “organic” enough?

—Nice job of contradicting yourself.—

Did you fall off the wrong side of the crazy train today? Where did I contradict myself? Just because an idea is new doesn’t mean that it’s BETTER.

—No offence but after the above, you call me ahistorical?—

You’re right: anyone who describes something as having a historical development, instead of a idea appearing out of a vacuum, must be “ahistorical!”

—If I understand you correctly, you claim we can look down from atop our mountain and formulate an abstract universal morality. I’m very interrested in hearing what that is.—

No, we can look from wherever we are and have the idea that a particular value is not just wrong to us, but universally wrong: a “should” divorced from a subject.

I’m not defending the idea, but rather that it IS a particular idea, with a particular intellectual development over time. It wasn’t an idea that popped into being all of a sudden, or was present from the beggining of time. People thought it up in exactly the same way they thought up the idea of representing concepts with symbols. It may be radically changed by a next generation of thinkers. It may be discarded in favor of something else.

—Ehrm, that was a rebuttal, just there.—

No, it was a bunch of jargon with little to do with what I said. Maybe next time try to accuse me of not being “organic” enough?

—Nice job of contradicting yourself.—

Did you fall off the wrong side of the crazy train today? Where did I contradict myself? Just because an idea is new doesn’t mean that it’s BETTER.

—No offence but after the above, you call me ahistorical?—

You’re right: anyone who describes something as having a historical development, instead of a idea appearing out of a vacuum, must be “ahistorical!”

—If I understand you correctly, you claim we can look down from atop our mountain and formulate an abstract universal morality. I’m very interrested in hearing what that is.—

No, we can look from wherever we are and have the idea that a particular value is not just wrong to us, but universally wrong: a “should” divorced from a subject.

I’m not defending the idea, but rather that it IS a particular idea, with a particular intellectual development over time. It wasn’t an idea that popped into being all of a sudden, or was present from the beggining of time. People thought it up in exactly the same way they thought up the idea of representing concepts with symbols. It may be radically changed by a next generation of thinkers. It may be discarded in favor of something else.

You gotta look at it objectively and subjectively.
From natures point of view morality doesn’t exist, it’s pretty obivous.
If a thousand children were killed by a bomber today, it wouldn’t affect nature at all. I use the word ‘nature’ because some of you think there exists some sort of ‘objective’ morality outside of the human mind.
Like another poster who said objective goodness must exist because the mother is abusing her child in the parking lot -, no it doesn’t, just because the crime is a vicious and ‘evil’ one doesn’t mean it’s inheritly ‘evil’ and immoral.

Now, if nothing is objectively wrong and immoral, how can we blame people for doing them since morality is only subjective anyway?
I say because deep down the murderers and molestors know damn well about our moral stance, and they’re probably working against it out of spite(long story cut short).

Now you might say, what if aliens come down and kill children thinking they’re doing us a favor, could we blame them since they’ve had no impact from our society at all?
Yes we can, the way the world works today, each society has to protect their own culture and rituals - even if those rituals involve killing children.

Because, nothing stops you from trying to change that other persons moral stance, let’s say they sacrifice kids in their own sick society, it’s still their own free will and it has no moral impact objectively.

Subjectively however, each society must protect their own interests, if another society or culture(or person from another culture) interfers with their ‘moral rituals’, they have the right to punish that person within their own set rules and standards.

BUT, and I stress this, I get that feeling inside when writing this too, “but killing children is such a horrible crime, it HAS to have some sort of objective moral value”, but sorry, it’s just your own empathy and the way your brain works that makes you rationalize that conclusion.
Nature is a cold and heartless place where no one has real value.

So basically(and yes, this post is way too long :P) I don’t know if morals have arosen because of empathy, genes, evolution or whatnot, but the point is it’s subjective and if we study humans and evolution and the human brain we might come to a logical scientific explanation to it(yes I don’t think this can be philosophized because we have way too little information to make a conclusion).

coax, why is man separate from nature? Is man not a natural animal?

Well, we are in some ways natural animals.
But all those concepts of worth, value, morals etc are concepts that are made by living organisms.
Animals respect some animals and kill others.
Humans however have been able to think more deeply about it because of the way our brain works, we have a much bigger neural network and hence we can consciously make our own moral judgements, and even change those moral stands.

However, I don’t think animals have much choice in that matter.
I think the ‘respect’(i’ll call it that and not morals, because I don’t think animals have developed that big of an emotional life) has been developed in nature because otherwise there would be chaos.
Maybe not literally chaos, but if noone had a natural respect for one another, how could any lifeform live in peace or indeed survive?
It’s just one of those things that nature figures into it’s logistics.

BUT, I think humans have developed a different type of ‘respect’, one that is more thought out and one that not only reflects our emotions but also reflects our thoughts.
This on its own makes it a subjective moral stance.
Because there are so many different personalities walking around we’re developing different moral values.

I’m not saying all lions have the same moral values, but I do think they are not thinking about their values, they’re just basing it on instinct and what they ‘learn’.

That’s why our morals are different to that of animals and nature.

True, human morality is different than that of a lion’s. We might even go so far as to say a lion has no morality.

However, that isn’t to say morality is “unnatural”. As you note, “we have a much bigger neural network and hence we can consciously make our own moral judgements, and even change those moral stands.” Well, there are some words in there that I find unnecessary, but your main thrust revolves around an appeal to our natural structure.

We learn about morality in any number of ways, and we have all sorts of more or less complicated justifications for valuing them “good” or “bad”. Sometimes the dog wags its tail and we declare something immoral because of an appeal to how it makes us feel (the golden rule), and sometimes the tail wags the dog because we develop a theory of interaction and deduce certain moral tenets from that.

Sometimes we just declare something immoral and then search for a justification, thus begging the question.

My question is: what makes you think humans have a choice in morality? If something is “good”, do you actually choose to see it that way? For example, I see a fork. I don’t see this lump of metal as a fork. Murder (barring certain indeterminate qualifications) is immoral; I don’t see it as immoral.

Of course I see some things as [good or bad]; these things I am flexible on, I adopt a stance of moral relativity. For example, the structure of human interaction in the form of a government: I can go many ways on this topic and say things are more or less good here. Perhaps here I choose my morality.

IMO morals run thus: some tenets are absolute in the sense that the feeling I get about them (when, say, they are violated) indicate that I value them negatively, and so there is no room for me to bend here (as in the case of unqualified murder). On the other hand, some morals are relative to the context they are in; I can see justifications for taxation, for example, even though I still consider it fundamentally immoral. Other things I don’t even consider in the framework of morality at all (what food to eat).

Of course someone can always say that my morals are relative to me; but what more information does that yield? —haven’t I already said they are my morals? Someone can also say that I am actively denying a fundamental moral code by adopting any form of relativism. Whatever.

The difference between the fork and the murder is that the lump of metal does not have a relative value, the moral value of the murder does.
You state that murder is immoral, but the whole point is that it might not be.
We might have ideas that any living thing that is born on this earth has an objective right to live, but even though that living thing is murdered, there isn’t added a moral value that marks the murderer as a ‘bad’ or ‘immoral’ living. That moral value is only added subjectively by the ones who watch the murder, or somehow hears about it.

Only you see a fork, an alien would see the lump of metal as a fork once told it was a fork.
Now, you see it as a fork because you’re taught to see it that way. So I believe morality is taught on by parents and society, and maybe inherited through genes and evolution(not sure about that though). But because our minds are pretty strong I think we can change even our most strongest of moral tenets.
That includes murder and other hideous acts.
So to me there are no ‘absolute tenets’, only subjectively.

And they might not even be absolute, who knows what external influences can make a person change and lose all sense of morals.

To conclude, there is no fundemental moral code, that’s my point.
If there was you couldn’t adopt much relativity to it.
It would mean there was objective morality, which is what I’m discussing against.

Morality is not absolute nor completely subjective–it is objective. It arises in human language because humans have a need to classify actions and objects. F’rinstance, the term “righteous” is analogous to the term “delicious:” an action is rightous if it is morally good, and food is delicious if it tastes good. Humans didn’t invent morals any more than they invented flavors–they just incorporated methods of classifying morals and flavors into their language, since it behooved them to separate beneficial (rightous, delicious) actions/objects from dangerous/unpleasant (wicked, distasteful) actions/objects.

It is possible to objectively state that certain actions are righteous or wicked. “Murder” is wicked, by definition–murder means “unlawful/unjustified killing, especially with premeditated malice.” “Killing” may be righteous, wicked, or neither, but “Murder” is defined as wicked. Those who state that murder can sometimes be righteous (because it is efficient, for example) is objectively wrong, just as anybody who states that razor blades are delicious because they make one’s mouth bleed is objectively wrong. Terms such as “Efficient” or “Practical” do not mean the same thing as the term “Righteous.”

Those who state that morals are competely subjective, and that “righteous” means “that which I like” while “wicked” means “that which I do not like,” are also objectively incorrect. There are many ways for somebody’s actions to be unpleasant or objectionable without their necessarily being wicked. For example, if somebody accidentally spills their milk at the dinner table, their actions are “clumsy” or “stupid” but they are not “wicked.” A wicked action is one that is intended to maliciously cause harm, and accidentally spilling one’s milk is unintentionally harmful (and so is not “wicked”). Morals are also not completely subjective–for example, it is inconsistent (and therefore irrational) to apply double standards, so saying “It is righteous for me to randomly kill people but wicked for others to randomly kill people” is clearly an unjustified moral statement.

loinburger, but you forget the basic premise that some people might not think of murder as wicked.
Even though the ones who think that might be morally wrong in your opinion, doesn’t mean you’re objectively right.
We can only see the world from our subjective view, so we have no idea what other entities might value good or wicked.
Which somewhat proves that morality is either a human concept or something that is completely relative and subjective to the living organism in question.

Let’s say killing something was wicked in all corners of the universe, would that mean all races who do so are defined wicked?
I mean animals on this planet kill every day to stay alive, they aren’t wicked because they’re doing it for survival.
But imagine an alien race that’s doing it for the sport, killing everything, are they wicked?
Yes, but only in some people’s views.
I’d say humans are about the only creatures to have any morals, isn’t that proof enough that it’s a human concept and that it’s purely subjective?

You might say that, ‘yes, but because humans are intelligent emotional beings we have understood the real meaning of life, animals haven’t done that and has no choice in the matter’.
You’re right, but that doesn’t make morality objective.
It’s all about the brain that perceives.
About your flavor example.
I agree with everything you say except the fact that it is objective.
My point is(and I hope I have the language to explain it properly :P) You have a person, this person has not experienced anything yet he is 30 years old. He starts to kill other people, he finds it fun.
His morals in our views would be slim to none. How could he do this?
Simple, because no one has told him it’s wrong, and he hasn’t had any ‘feedback’ on it either.

If morals were objective, shouldn’t he had picked up some sort of signal to tell him that it’s wrong to do?
I should think so.

coax, the point isn’t denying that morality is taught, the point is whether it can really be taught to be something other than it is. In a very strinct sense, I think, subjective “things” cannot be taught. How would they be? What words correspond to something no one can share? How would I teach someone how to use the words “right” or “wrong” if morality can be whatever anyone says it is? The use of moral words seem in some ways to correspond to feelings, others in opinion, still others in supposition.

loinburger, an objective statement needn’t be a statement about objectivity. I can objectively state, “That is green”, for example; unless you are inclined to trust my color-judgement you wouldn’t then say that the object was actually green. And even if you were, you still have no idea how green appears to me, only that I use the adjective “green” in situations that you use the word “green”. Also, I would hesitate to say anything was immoral by definition, as it would lead us to merely ask why the terms in the definition indicate immorality. Explanations come to and end somewhere, don’t they?

Who is saying otherwise? The point is that there are many ways different people value different actions. Homosexuality being one that, historically and contextually, has been considered moral, immoral, and amoral.

Neat. Who gets to determine the justification that makes this statement so clear?

—You gotta look at it objectively and subjectively.—

Maybe, but it’s never been clear what “objectively” means in this context. The paradox is that ideas about “should” seem inherently subjective: how can their be a should if there isn’t a subject willing it? Yet the modern idea of morality has characteristics which seem to defy subjective classification, because it explicitly denies its roots in any particular subject and appeals to a general principles that are supposed to apply to all subjects, irregardless of their views. But then this too can’t quite be, because if there were no subjects with distinct preferences (no people around to feel that certain things “should” or “should not” happen to, at the very least, themselves) how could there meaningfuly be any morality? How could you wrong someone if they had no particular feelings about one thing being more wrong than another? How could anything be wronged if there was a lifeless universe where nothing had any preferences?

—From natures point of view morality doesn’t exist—

That depends on whether or not “nature” has a point of view at all, or if a “point of view” is relevant to what is and is not moral. The real problem here is that you’re assuming that anyone should care about “nature’s point of view” or look through that perspective: why? That’s not any more of a privaleged view than anything else.

I agree that some people might not think that killing is wicked in certain circumstances (self defense immediately comes to mind), but murder is definitively wicked. It’s possible for one person to argue that a killing was justified (and is therefore not murder) but it is impossible to argue that murder is justified–it literally means “unjustified killing,” so the only way to claim that murder is not wicked (i.e. is justified) is to misunderstand the term. It would be like saying “This rotten apple tastes awful, therefore it is delicious.”

Something can be subjective without being completely subjective. F’rinstance, let’s say that two people are arguing over who is the greatest basketball player (which we can all agree is a fairly subjective assessment). Person A says “Michael Jordan is the greatest basketball player because he is a fanstastic team player,” person B says “Wilt Chamberlain is the greatest basketball player because he is the best at scoring baskets.” Neither person is wrong here, because they’re both using the term “greatest” as it applies to the game of basketball in a reasonable fashion. However, person C says “My empty beer can is the greatest basketball player because it is made out of aluminum and was once filled with beer.” Person C is objectively wrong, because he is simply misusing the term “greatest” as it applies to basketball.

The same is true with moral judgments. Two people can make differing yet valid moral assessments, but that doesn’t mean that all moral assessments are equally valid. Morals are objective, but this doesn’t necessarily mean that we always have to agree on what is moral/immoral, nor does it necessarily mean that disagreement automatically makes one party wicked and another righteous. I’ve disagreed with people over moral subjects (abortion comes to mind), but their arguments for their position are justified well enough that, while they haven’t swayed me to their side, they have convinced me that they aren’t at all wicked despite the fact that we disagree.

Do you mean that this person has lived in isolation of society until he was 30 years old? If so, then it would have been impossible for him to have any kind of moral development. Morals aren’t necessarily taught by society, but they do require a society in order to form. Righteous or wicked actions require at least two participants (a donor and a recipient, or a transgressor and a victim), so somebody living in isolation would not be able to understand morals–they have no idea of an “other” until they’re able to recognize that there is nothing principally different between them and other humans (or other members of the society). This concept of an “other” can’t form without the ability to communicate, and Tarzan hasn’t communicated with any other humans ever.

Tarzan wouldn’t be “immoral,” he’d be truly “amoral.” It isn’t until he’s grasped communication that he’s able to be classified as either “moral” or “immoral.” It’s an either-or proposition–either you are the member of a society (or pre-societal communicative group) and are capable of moral/immoral action, or you are incapable of communication and are incapable of moral/immoral action. This doesn’t negate the objectivity of morals at all, since nobody can actively choose to withdraw from communicative action.

It comes down to justification. Unless somebody is willing to accept “Because I say so” as a justification from somebody else, then it is unreasonable (due to being inconsistent) for them to say that something is immoral “because I say so” and expect this justification to be sufficient. So, if somebody says “This action is immoral because I say so,” then their justification is invalid (or at the very least dubious). Many of the moral values that have varied the most from time to time and from place to place are the ones with dubious or invalid justifications, or the ones whose justifications were at one time valid but are now called into question or completely invalidated through new advances. (F’rinstance, the taboos on eating shellfish made sense when they were liable to make you sick, but they’re now unjustified in light of modern food preservation/preparation methods.)

Do you honestly consider irrational justifications to be just as valid as (or perhaps more valid than) rational justifications? If not, then what’s the problem?

The obvious comeback is “Neat. Who gets to determine what is rational and irrational?” Look it up in the dictionary. If a statement is illogical (by, for example, being inconsistent), then it is irrational. If humans didn’t consider the distinction between rationality and irrationality to be at all important, then they wouldn’t have made up words for them.

I use the term to mean that there isn’t necessarily a universal standard that all morals can be judged against, but that it is possible to judge morals based on their own merits. Morals that are inconsistent (and therefore irrational) are objectively inferior to morals that are consistent (and rational), f’rinstance, since rational justifications are objectively superior to irrational justifications. We all might have different ideas/beliefs/whatever about what is righteous and wicked, but not everybody’s ideas/beliefs/whatever are equally applicable/justified/feasible/valid.

It’s also a completely irrelevant view. We’re not living in a state of nature, so it doesn’t really matter whether or not we’d have morals (or what those morals would be) if we were living in a state of nature. Our morals would probably be different if we were all ghosts or something, but so what?

loinburger, I agree with some of what you say and disagree with alot of it.
You seem to have the idea that there is a universal ‘truth’ hanging in the air wherever you are that murder is immoral(for example).
But the point is that ALL moral assessements are subjective.
I’m using the word ‘nature’ and ‘objective’ because it’s the only way to seperate the subjectives.
Like your basketball example, sure, it’s true. Person C was objectively wrong, but even so you can’t apply it to moral assessements. Why? Take this example, Person A says, “I’m completely for rape, it makes the girls realize the reality of things, and it helps them prepare for the real world”, then Person B says, “God, I’m completely against rape, they get scarred for life”.
Now in Person A’s world, P B is wrong, and vice versa.

But neither of them are wrong, because morality doesn’t have anything to do with the act, it has to do with the subjective view of that person.
Morality by definition is only ideas of right and wrong, not the objective truth of right and wrong, which is basically none.
Your idea of objective, loinburger, still comes from your subjective view that murder, for example, is wicked.

If Person C had a kinky idea that rape was good, would it be morally wrong of Person A to rape P C?
I mean it’s all subjective.

And to Apos, read above, and I’d also like to add, objective imo is that which has no value, if you look at it from an alien’s POV one might say.
And I do not think it’s an irrelevant view, because it exists.
How can there be subjective if there isn’t objective?
And also, maybe my most important point.
Morality may arise from what a person wants and doesn’t want, and what it feels.
But the point is that not all people would make the same moral assessements in the same situation.
Some people would think murder is immoral, others would think it was moral.

This is why morality CANNOT be objective in any way, it HAS to be determined by the person itself.
Or else we wouldn’t have the large array of possibilites for differences in moral tenets.

—Morals that are inconsistent (and therefore irrational) are objectively inferior to morals that are consistent (and rational), f’rinstance, since rational justifications are objectively superior to irrational justifications.—

Sorry, but that’s cheating. You can’t rank something as inferior or superior without engaging in precisely the sort of moral judgement that we were supposed to be trying to find justification for. You can’t claim that rational morals are better than irrational ones without a pre-existing preference for one over the other.

—It’s also a completely irrelevant view. —

I think you missed his (admittedly silly) point: that “nature” doesn’t “care” what happens to us, so what happens to us doesn’t matter. He’s not talking about a state of nature, but rather simply whatever nature happens to be about at any given time being “okay” with whatever happens.

Oh, and I’d like to correct myself.
Objective means, as I see it in this context, something that is universally true.
For example, you say murder is objectively morally wrong.
That means everyone who thinks murder is morally right is basically wrong, even though they are entitled to their own opinion, nature somehow “thinks” murder is morally wrong.
This statement to me seems totally illogical.
Nature = objective = no values.

Fine, loinburger, why is it immoral for me to find a random baby and beat it repeatedly with a hammer about the arms and legs? Remember, no “because I say so”!