I'm curious, why would it matter to the relevancy of an ethical or moral statement whether or not it was absolute? Wouldn't the key question be whether or not such a statement was accepted by society? I'm really not sure why anything but that would matter.
Inherent Immorality
- Thread starter Thoreau
- Start date
I'm curious, why would it matter to the relevancy of an ethical or moral statement whether or not it was absolute? Wouldn't the key question be whether or not such a statement was accepted by society? I'm really not sure why anything but that would matter.
Because, Balerion, the assumption or debate as to whether or not morals are absolute is fundamental to any discussion of what those morals should be.
If you're going to dismiss that, best state why you would do so.
If you're going to dismiss that, best state why you would do so.
1. Who exactly is "society"?
2. It's not possible to feel wronged (or righted) unless one believes there is something essential, real, inherent, absolute about said feeling.
For example, if someone beats you up, and you feel hurt and wronged afterwards, you feel that your feeling hurt and wronged is real, relevant, that it isn't just a "cognitive construct" or a "social construct" or anything otherwise relative or non-substantial.
Why on earth would that have any bearing on what our morals are? "Just because" isn't an answer.
There's nothing really to dismiss. There's no evidence to suggest that morals are innate or absolute, and the claim that they are is debunked by the fact that morality changes depending on the culture.
wynn said:
Oh Christ. Don't be obtuse.
Okay, you're going way off-topic. We're talking about whether or not morality is innate, not whether or not your personal feelings are innate. Morals don't depend on how you feel about something, and your feelings don't necessarily rely on what is or isn't moral. You can feel hurt or wronged for getting beat up, but it may have been the just consequence of you previously beating up someone smaller and weaker than yourself. The fact that your beating was justified probably wouldn't have any bearing on how you felt about it. Likewise, you may feel jilted when your lover leaves you for another woman, and those feelings would be real and legitimate, yet the person who left you didn't do anything immoral. So morality isn't about your feelings, it's about concepts of the good and just.
Morality is a kind of social contract, and totally dependent on context. This is why morality changes from society to society, culture to culture. If morality were innate or absolute, there would be no such differences.
Actually, "Feral children" tend to suggest that they are not absolute at all.
The fact that other civilisations before our own had a completely different set of morals, as you've mentioned.
It is only in modern times that universal morals have become paramount... and that, in itself, lends more weight to the subjective argument than to the absolute one.
Broadly speaking, there is more evidence for morality being subjective than there is for them being absolute.
I am not saying that evidence is conclusive; only that it is there.
The OP suggests absolute morality. Hence the contention.
You realize that I don't believe that morals are absolute, right? I feel like you're trying to argue with me, but to the same end.
You said that the discussion is fundamental in determining what our morals should be. I disagree. I'm waiting to hear your reasoning as to why that would be true.
Oh Giordano. Don't be so imprecise.
You're skirting the issue by taking for granted factors looking into which may be crucial. As if you've determined in advance what is to be considered relevant to a solution of a problem, and what isn't.
Another example: When you lose your job and you are convinced it was a wrongful termination (and your lawyer also tells you that it was evidently a wrongful termination), do you consider this conviction of yours to be a mere "social contract, and totally dependent on context"? Or do you find that your feeling wronged is substantial, relevant in some crucial way?
I mean, just try taking your past employer to court, while you believe there is really nothing substantial to your having been wrongfully terminated.
This suggests a grossly idealist, static conception, dissociated from real life.
Variation in moral expression does not preclude that morality is innate or absolute.
The principles of morality could be the same for everyone everywhere, innate, absolute, while their particular manifestations-applications vary, depending on various resources available (ie. how much time, money, reputation, concentration, patience, goodwill etc. someone has at their disposal).
So you don't know what "society" is, then? I'm supposed to believe that? When people talk about society in your presence, you're absolutely clueless?
C'mon, Wynn. Don't pull a Lightgigantic and derail this just because you're not sure how to proceed. Just bail like you usually do. That's a more considerate tack than asking people to explain to you why the fucking sky is blue.
Okay, so how was my last answer not enough? I provided you a few examples that covered this very thing you're trying to pass off as a legitimate question. In any case, this is another false dichotomy. The wrongful termination can be simply a matter of social construct and your feelings of being wronged can be legitimate and real. It's not an either-or proposition. The wrongful termination clause can be something lawyers dreamed up out of thin air while also being something that greatly affects you. There doesn't need to be an absolute morality for your feelings to be hurt. As I said before, you could be in the wrong and still feel like the victim.
Are you looking in a mirror? How could that possibly be directed at me? The fact is that morality changes from place to place, and within each place over time.
Of course it does. If it did not, we would not have mutually exclusive moral ideals. And yet, we do.
This is nonsense. We already know that it isn't the same for everyone, everywhere. We know it for a fact. Look at what people in Iran think constitutes moral justice for thieves, and ask yourself if you share that opinion. Then ask if you see those same morals in other cultures.
You're quite right. you can discuss morality freely once it has been pointed out that some consider morality to be subjective. One can acknowledge an evolutionary viewpoint without needing to bow to it.
The only problem I have with that is that when discarding the absolute morality argument, you enter into the realm of the subjective.
Which, basically, is one mob trying to tell the other mob what to do, without any particular basis other than that they prefer it that way.
I'm not arguing, specifically, just saying... fuck that.
I suppose I could have just typed that instead. Or nothing at all.
Just because morality ultimately depends on crowd-dictated cultural and social mores, it doesn't mean there's no basis for it. There are agreed-upon principles in play. They boil down to subjective valuations, true, but that's not quite so cavalier or fickle as mere preference.
And I still fail to see how an objective moral system can be argued for, especially given the time we live in. The US has been racially integrated for decades, but its mass media has only been that way for probably less than ten years. The original Star Trek featured an interracial romance as a taboo, a thought that would make most people under 25 today laugh in the same way people of my generation (and the generation before, to be fair) laughed at the controversy sparked by Mary Tyler Moore wearing pants on the Dick Van Dyke show. How many gay people kissed on network TV before Will & Grace made it a weekly--and wholly benign--occurrence?
Point is, our morals are constantly changing. How is this possible if morality is innate?
Here's a great video on the subject of objective morality.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sN-yLH4bXAI&list=PL0EFCB22DFCD4F2E7&index=3
kx000
Valued Senior Member
Morality is an entity, natural, and universal. Encoded in us all.
Truth, faith, wish, respect, want, salvation, and co. They are all key to him. Morality will never work around the wish to be. It will never be moral to leave one in danger. Morality identifies evil a completley seperate nature, so nature of the mind be proven. Nectaries a nature of general faith, thus all which he details. An afterlife, eternity, and moral himself.
If there is a nature moral, then nature faith as well. Faith can NOT be born of 21st century earth. He must have been born into a heaven, so moral as well. Given, morality transcends earth. It is morality, and it is what it is.
Truth, faith, wish, respect, want, salvation, and co. They are all key to him. Morality will never work around the wish to be. It will never be moral to leave one in danger. Morality identifies evil a completley seperate nature, so nature of the mind be proven. Nectaries a nature of general faith, thus all which he details. An afterlife, eternity, and moral himself.
If there is a nature moral, then nature faith as well. Faith can NOT be born of 21st century earth. He must have been born into a heaven, so moral as well. Given, morality transcends earth. It is morality, and it is what it is.
Fraggle Rocker
Staff member
Even if it does affect or harm someone else, does that make it immoral? Life is a series of compromises. In the USA it is legal for governments to seize our homes, destroy them, and use the land to build schools, hospitals, football stadiums or even shopping malls; all they are required to do in return is pay us what they calculate to be fair market value. Is this moral?
I fail to see the commonality in your series of questions so I'll answer each individually. Perhaps my point is that the concept of "morality" is an oversimplification. Every decision in life must be analyzed and judged on its own merits.
You're talking to a 69-year-old man who hopes that not just suicide but euthanasia will be legal before long, so I don't have to endure the suffering, indignity and estate-dissipation that my poor mother did. Some people become so hopeless that they want that option at half my age. Who are we to tell them that their choice is immoral, that they should suffer through another ten or twenty years of emotional agony while hoping that a psychotherapist will be able to both figure out what's wrong and fix it?
I met a pedophile many years ago before the issue had acquired the attention it has today. I'm not convinced that it's something a person chooses. Of course you can choose whether to engage in sexual activity with children, but I don't think you can choose whether to be sexually attracted to them. So your question becomes, "Is a person immoral because of something he is rather than a decision he made?" That's a minefield. Was Hitler immoral or merely wired wrong so he had no choice?
You're still talking to the same 69-year-old who lived through the Sixties. I have nothing but the most vile contempt for people who call recreational drug use "immoral."
I know dozens of people who have used recreational drugs for decades. They show no sign of damage. Where do you come up with this bullshit??? Sure there is a small percentage of people who manage to damage their bodies with drugs (usually with drugs that wouldn't even be on the market if the ones they really want were easier to get), but there are also people who damage their bodies with food, sports, sex, overwork, and too much TV. Are they also "immoral" in your little Victorian paradigm?
Would you mind learning English before you post here again? That makes absolutely no sense at all.
How Adorable. Who owns the world. Look up Who rules the world ---for now. We are a strange species and will most certainly be extinct in a short space of time acccordinly to the universe. Please forgive my lack of knowledge, but I was facinated by the progress of Homo Erectus. (wrong spelling I know) He took off out of Africa and moved about 34 yards per annum. Then about a squillion years later took a a cracking pace of 120 yards per year. What a pack of trend setters. Live them Joanne
Thoreau:
I don't think so. Morality is all about one's actions and interactions with other people.
As has already been pointed out, though, actions that might at first glance appear to affect nobody apart from the actor can sometimes have forseeable yet unforeseen consequences for others.
wellwisher has it partly right in that morality is at least partly about maintaining group cohesion. But that's not the whole story. People who are very moral tend to internalise morals. They self-police their actions according to a set of standards that they adhere to for reasons other than just concern for other people.
I don't think so. Morality is all about one's actions and interactions with other people.
As has already been pointed out, though, actions that might at first glance appear to affect nobody apart from the actor can sometimes have forseeable yet unforeseen consequences for others.
wellwisher has it partly right in that morality is at least partly about maintaining group cohesion. But that's not the whole story. People who are very moral tend to internalise morals. They self-police their actions according to a set of standards that they adhere to for reasons other than just concern for other people.
Thoreau
Valued Senior Member
Have you seen the permanent effects of drugs like ecstacy, meth, and acid? That's where I am coming up with this "bullshit", as you put it.
And my "little Victorian paradigm" is for myself, not others. Like I said, I wouldn't use drugs because I don't want to damage my body.
I firmly believe in the right for everyone to do whatever the hell they want to with their own bodies, regardless as to whether or not it is something I would do to mine. I don't eat McDonalds. But I'm not going to tell everyone else that they can't. If their morals say eating high-fat foods is OK, then good for them. I don't really care. If someone wants to go bungee jumping with a rope straps to their genitals, more power to them. But I sure as hell won't. That's my morals for myself.
Fraggle is one of those old hippies who refuses to believe that weed or any other recreational drug is harmful. Yet when pressed, the best he can come up with is that cigarettes and alcohoal are more harmful than those drugs--which isn't even true, according to some more recent studies. But you notice the retreat from "Not harmful at all" to "Less harmful than something else." And as you've no doubt also noticed, even suggesting that drugs aren't perfectly healthy for you brings out his inner Hulk.
There's nothing to be gained in discussing this with him.
You might want to have a read about the Denisovans too, while you're there.