Where Does Morality Come From?

Before I'd expend any effort in that direction, I'd need to see some evidence of human consciousness on your end.

 

We were talking about morality. Consciousness is the ability to be aware of yourself and the world around and experience everything. Conscience is the drive that people have for selfless, empathetic, and voluntary rule following behavior.

 

No, I am talking about morality. You are avoiding the subject like the plague, by poisoning the well at every opportunity.

 

You referred to "objective" morality. Where does your objective morality come from? The God who killed (almost) all of his Creation? The God who told His subjects that it was permissible to kill the young male offspring of defeated soldiers? That God?

 

You were asking about the origin of conscienceness which has nothing to do with morality. If you can't give me a decent question that has anything to do with morality, then answer my question about why you believe that objective morality is true. Stop dancing around the question like a baboon. You failed to refute my arguments for objectivism and now can't even attempt to support your claims. Maybe you need a few years to grow up before doing debates.

 

Most definitely. Most work in ethical/moral theory has been in secular theories. Kant, Mills, Bentham, Aristotle, Plato, the Stoics, etc. all developed their ethical ideas without any reliance on the existence of any deity. Actually, the only moral theory I can think of that absolutely requires a belief in God is the divine command theory, which bases morality on God's arbitrary whim. In divine command theory, if God had preferred rape and murder, then those would be moral obligations. It all boils down to God's personal tastes, making it perhaps the most militantly subjective of moral theories. These morals are necessarily arbitrary, because if they were actually BASED on any objective consideration, then God would no longer be necessary for morality. He could be wise, perhaps even the most moral being in existence, but he wouldn't be necessary for morality. It all boils down to Plato/Socrates's Euthyphro Dilemma: is something good because God says it is good, or does God say it is good because he recognizes something good about it? If the former, morality is completely arbitrary. If the later, God's existence doesn't matter for ethics and morality.

Nietzsche based a lot of his initial thoughts on another atheist philosopher, Schopenhauer, who argued that morality should be based on limiting harm as much as possible. Karl Popper and many Utilitarians have agreed with that logic.

I don't buy into the whole "society defines morality" explanation for a number of reasons, but the chief one that comes to mind is that this logic would dictate that all deviation from social norms would be immoral. If society defines morality based on deviation from social norms, then why aren't all social deviations held as being immoral, and how are societies capable of self reflection? If societal norms dictate morality, then forgetting to take off one's shoes should have the same moral gravity as murder.

 

I wasn't doing any such thing, obviously.

 

You can't get your story straight:

Quote from you:
"I'd need to see some evidence of human consciousness on your end."

 

No, you won't get my story straight.

Yeah, that's what I said. It's nothing like what you said I said.

 

It seems objectivism doesn’t real have anything to do with morals, individualistic self-interest isn’t an offence of another, people come into agreement do to self-interest, and in those agreements, are the morals agreed on hence morals relative to those who come into agreement. it takes more then one, for one to be moral or immoral.
A person alone with no one but himself can’t offend hence no chance for immoral consequence nor can he offend.
Agreements, contracts, covenants so on and so forth are cornerstones to morals of which only those in such agreements are bound to “morally” you are just not bound to yourself morally. Surviving is justified by the survival.

 

As I said before consciousness has nothing to do with morality so I don't see why you are asking me about it.

 

Morality is how human society makes rules so that we can live and work together as a team. No other animal on the planet has achieved such a modus operandi except maybe the lower orders like ants and termites. And it's how we've remained at the top of the food chain for so long.

Toss it aside? That would be suicide for our race.

 

Societies assign value to morality commensurate with the potential harm that they perceive that transgression could cause and they also modify morality when it is clearly at odds with how harmful something actually is. Technically, transgression from a socially defined morality would be immorality but, such strict adherence to a static morality is a fundamentalist position and not in line with how a tolerant liberal society operates.

 

I believe that it is altruism that is hard wired into us and not morality which is why we can adapt and be incredibly successful.

I agree with you, a static morality would be the end for us.

 

But if that's the case, why not cut societal judgement out of the equation and just say that morality is based on avoiding harm?

 

Tell ya what: reread what you re-quoted in #108, and note the punctuation, Sherlock.

You understand that by this reasoning there is nothing intrinsically immoral about despotism, right?

 

Because we still have to agree what causes the minimal harm, that's called democracy these days.

 

And we all have to make individual choices about minimal harm. That's called personal responsibility. Why is it only "morality" when it is done collectively and not when it is done individually? If a man is stranded alone on an island and decides not to needlessly cause harm to the local wildlife, how is that not also morality?

 

I didn't say it was only a collective phenomenon but, we form societies and they generally prevail, if someone chooses to transgress the collective morality then they can plead their moral case for doing so.

A man stranded on his own like that effectively becomes a society of one, he still has a morality regardless of how anyone else might judge the appropriateness of it.

 

If it isn't only a collectively phenomenon, then society isn't a necessary component of morality. No need to include it in the definition. We can just rely on harm as a standard instead. If an individual disagrees with his or her society about what is moral because of the harm that his or her society is causing, then the individual is in the moral right and society is in the moral wrong. If society were a defining aspect of morality, this wouldn't be the case.

 

Yup. it's pretty much subjective isn't it. I have no argument with that.

 

The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire - Robert A. Heinlein

"Sin lies only in hurting other people unnecessarily. All other 'sins' are invented nonsense. (Hurting yourself is not sinful - just stupid)." - Robert A. Heinlein

If you become a despot because The People want you to do so, that's not immoral. If you become a tyrant by overturning democratic government and by killing people, that's immoral and a sin.

 

Morality is a product of evolution.

1. There is benefit to a social existence, which is why humans and many other animals live in communities. There is safety among many, and food is easier to obtain.

2. Group cohesion, therefore, is of prime importance to the individual member of the group. The group thrives, the individual thrives.

3. And cohesion is impossible unless the indviduals care for one another. Humans and other social animals have evolved emotions and a sense of morality towards other members of the collective because it ultimately benefits the individual to care. (Yes, animals have evolved a morality, too. Go to YouTube and see videos of dogs protecting human children from abusive parents and from other animals. Watch videos of bats swooping from cave ceilings to save dropped bat babies that aren't even theirs. Watch elephants even mourn for their deceased.)

4. Non-social animals, like many reptiles, only really know fear. This is because they're solitary and have no need for emotions or a moral code.

5. We tend to show greater moral responsibility towards those closest to us. We love our family members most, then our friends, our communities, our nations, etc. This heirarchy shows that morality is tribal, which goes to show that it's nothing special in a religious sense.


Simple, really.

 

Kind of agree with you here except that I believe that altruism is the evolutionary trait and that morality is a means to express that.

 

wow 7 pages and no one even hits the broad side of the barn.

Here I will help by laying it out for you all.

We can say life good, murder bad, therefore I protect and champion life and refuse to murder. Caveat extreme circumstances of course where one would apply another moral of self preservation.

I presume we all know and agree that is a moral life good murder bad is a moral determination. yes?

That said a 'moral' is a 'qualitative' judgment that requires an 'associated action', usually in ones 'best interest', usually a 'matter of conscience', usually that 'does not injure or damage another' in the process of 'exercizing' your moral prerogative. A group of morals forms the elements of ones 'religion'.

Ethics has no associated action, morals have an associated action, ethics is the 'study of morals'.

That is if you want to ratchet this up a few notches and approach it from a philisophical perspective. My use of the usually and generally aand so forth is because there are always mitigating circumstances where one must break the rule, however like most things the exception proves the rule.