Morality: Where do you get yours?

[NoahsFarce]

Hmm... Morality... What is it exactly? Is it even exact enough for us to define it as such?

Well, I personally think people place too much thought into morality. Is it universal? Is it objective? Here's my question... Does any of this actually matter? Are you going to change if you find out that some of your actions aren't objectively/universally moral?

I think the best any of us can do is live our lives treating one another respectfully. The simple reason being that it's just flat out better for our survival as an individual and a species. Maybe that's too shallow to be objective morality. Who knows? I just know that I feel better and make more friends this way.

When you over think the issue of morality, groups like PETA happen. While I have nothing against vegans, I have everything against them calling me immoral for consuming meat.

Note to Vegans: I stop buying meat products from brands if animal abuse in their farms comes to light. I'm not talking about trivial abuse i.e. "that cow got butchered". I'm talking clear-cut abuse like 500lb chickens that can't walk. Can't remember the last time I had KFC.

[liam]

Well naturally I don't agree with everything that he said as that would be ignorant and smacks of sycophant, however, It seems only logical to me that we do not take life from others, for two primary reasons:
The first of these reasons is simply that life is life and because of the vast complexity of it and the great process undertaken to create and develop it, it seems to me to be a shame to remove that at all, on this grounds I would distinguish humanity from single-cellular organisms, amoeba and other miniature beings in terms of morality (thus it is wrong to kill a person or animal yet not kill bacteria). It would seem to me to be inherently bad to be destroying a precious existence and, to our knowledge, the rarest thing in the universe.
Secondly, I would assume that murder is intrinsicly bad because it violates the person's right to act autonomously, thus we would be removing that entirely if we were to kill them. However, were they to commit suicide this would not neccessarily be an immoral act as this affords autonomy even if it is to kill oneself. Therefore the act of murder would be intrinsicly bad because we do not afford to the individual a great enough level of control over their own actions, we must ask ourselves whether or not they want to die.
There are other reasons but these are my two primary argument and if anyone has some fors/againsts I'm more than happy to entertain them and utilise them in the future

[NoMoreFaith]

Are you going to change if you find out that some of your actions aren't objectively/universally moral?

A better question would be is that would your actions change if your actions aren't relative, but dictated as an objective.

If God were proven for instance, and proven that he hates homosexuality, would your attitude to homosexuals change?

My thoughts on sexual equality border on the objective, although I am aware they are certainly not.

Which begs the question, would you accept being considered evil, potentially be punished in the afterlife through defiance of a God, or would you change how you act.

[Jinkies]

The first of these reasons is simply that life is life and because of the vast complexity of it and the great process undertaken to create and develop it, it seems to me to be a shame to remove that at all, on this grounds I would distinguish humanity from single-cellular organisms, amoeba and other miniature beings in terms of morality (thus it is wrong to kill a person or animal yet not kill bacteria).

I'm not sure exactly what you're saying here, but I assume you believe one or more of the following:

1: The value of a life increases as its complexity increases.
2: Life does not have value until it reaches a certain level of complexity.
3: The value of a life increases as its size increases.
4: Life does not have value until it reaches a certain level of size.

I assume by "miniature" you mean non-complex and you don't agree with both 3 & 4. I'm still not sure exactly what you mean by complexity, though. Is intelligence a prerequisite of complexity for you, or do you place a particularly high value on any non-intelligent plants that have evolved an incredible level of complexity?

If you believe #1, would you adjust your scale assuming a higher intelligence is found? You consider simple organisms to not have value, but what if we found alien life that makes humans look incredibly simple in comparison? Would humans lose their value in your eyes?

If you believe #2, what level of complexity is necessary for a life to have value?

It would seem to me to be inherently bad to be destroying a precious existence and, to our knowledge, the rarest thing in the universe.

I'm not sure about killing being inherently bad. That seems to be an objective view of morality. I consider morality to be a construct of the mind, which makes it subjective. I'd be interested in hearing your arguments for objective morality if I'm correct that that's your viewpoint.

Secondly, I would assume that murder is intrinsicly bad because it violates the person's right to act autonomously, thus we would be removing that entirely if we were to kill them.

Omit "intrinsically," switch "murder" with "killing" and "person" with "being," and I share a very similar view.

As for my views of morality, I consider intelligence to be what gives a being value. I don't have a sliding scale where higher intelligence gives higher value, though. It'd be nice, but that view fell apart pretty quickly when they made me stop eating creationists. Once I've determined whether a being has value (i.e. is intelligent), it's the golden rule in conjunction with its brother, "don't do to others what they don't want you to do to them." I end up having to choose the lesser of two evils quite often due to the harsh nature of reality, but I consider that a much more reasonable situation than simply shrugging my shoulders and ignoring the evils entirely.

[liam]

I would only agree with number two, however, my definition of complexity would be a very abstract one and I'll try define it a little more clearly. I do believe there to be a level of biological development that is prerequisite for the acceptance of something as living, for example, an amoeba or a bacteria does not possess the biological prerequisite that would suggest to me that it requires consideration as it is so incredibly simple that we cannot assume it possesses a sense of rationale or other self-consciousness, it is a purely survivalist entity. However, I base this upon the rationalising ability of the entity as well as it's biological development so I will explore that a bit more as otherwise I may risk being unclear. The intellectual or rational side of an animal shows great importance in determining this as well, if an animal displays intelligence we must not eat it, not to say that if it doesn't we must. Furthermore, I would say that anything endangered, yet again, must not be eaten as this is another perversion of reasonable conservation. Another thing that I think we should take into account is the ability of an animal to act contrary to it's own survival for some reason would be off limits. With this said, I would conclude that my overall view is that if it is smart enough to act morally or within a more collective manner it should definitely not be eaten, moreso if it is endangered.

Your alien question is interesting and I'd just like to delineate to it for a moment, I would argue that the value we place on life IS relative, as we can only really value things by our own value, that we say that a cow is valueless in terms of morality we would say this because the cow is considerably less valuable than a human, not because there is anything intrinsically wrong with a cow. It pertains to a lower biological and intellectual state than we knowers and thus we may consider it to be less morally valuable than us, while not being valueless. So no, I would not consider these aliens better unless they showed a superior code of morality and a communal conscientiousness

I do view morality as a very objective existence, I think to say that it is subjective could be seen as nothing more than an attempt to justify certain self-serving behaviours and these are generally detrimental to everyone. Morality exists as a human construct but it exists objectively, regardless of whether people choose to align themselves with it. For example, to travel back in time and kill hitler, most would say, would be a good thing, because it prevents horrific consequences. However, I regard this as missing the point, the act of killing him would still be bad but you would be subverting your morality, not completely denying that murder is wrong.

[Angrboda]

Hmm... Morality... What is it exactly? Is it even exact enough for us to define it as such?

Well, I personally think people place too much thought into morality. Is it universal? Is it objective? Here's my question... Does any of this actually matter? Are you going to change if you find out that some of your actions aren't objectively/universally moral?

Briefly, ethics involves more than just serving as a personal guide to how to behave as an individual.

Some important uses are:

1) Deciding whether or not to allow certain research and medical practices or not, from stem cell research, to pain management ethics, to testing new medications or procedures, to curtailing psychological research that may be inappropriate.

2) Ethics is important for determining how groups should and should not behave. I like to say that political philosophy rests on the back of ethics. If we don't have a sound justification for condemning some government or its practices, such as allowing honor killings and Sharia law, what are you going to use to persuade people to support your politic viewpoint? Pretty please with sugar on it? How do you determine whether a law is just or unjust without ethics?

3) If atheists do not have a solid foundation for their ethics, they have no rational basis for advocating for atheism, skepticism or whatever over and above a religious framework. Again, what will your argument be? I think you should stop persecuting homosexuals because it bothers me? One of the organizers in our state humanist organization readily admits to not knowing how to justify her ethical positions, but feels it necessary to assert an ethical platform — I find that not only silly (and a bit hypocritical), but dangerous; she's a humanist embarrassment waiting to happen.

4) I gtg, but in another thread, the question of whether so-called "Generation Ships" for interstellar space exploration are acceptable ethically. How are you going to decide without ethics?

5) Moral judgements are a major feature of our minds. We will never fully understand how the brain gives rise to mind without understanding how ethical judgements arise. I doubt you can get there from here without going through the land marked, "understanding ethics".

Anyway, gtg.

[liam]

In addition to the previous point, the role of morality in the development of society and social structures is critical, if we develop a very consequential society (such as the one we currently inhabit), we find that the development of sub-cultures towards fringe activity increases as a result of personal perceptions of the consequences. Furthermore, in terms of commercial ethics, if morality was stricter and more developed in countries and economies then there would be less blood diamonds/slave gold/child labour/debt crises/institutionalised discrimination and other such problems. Never underestimate the value of ethics, especially not in such troubling times as these.

[Polaris]

Well two places in particular....my base morality (aka myself) and my parents (though my base morality has surpassed them).

A little bit from the Bible, but that is from the preaching made by Jesus that most Christians don't seem to follow...because it makes them look at themselves instead. Though I must admit that has more to do with following some moral guideline than anything to do with my own morality.

[NoahsFarce]

Hmm... Morality... What is it exactly? Is it even exact enough for us to define it as such?

Well, I personally think people place too much thought into morality. Is it universal? Is it objective? Here's my question... Does any of this actually matter? Are you going to change if you find out that some of your actions aren't objectively/universally moral?

Briefly, ethics involves more than just serving as a personal guide to how to behave as an individual.

Some important uses are:

1) Deciding whether or not to allow certain research and medical practices or not, from stem cell research, to pain management ethics, to testing new medications or procedures, to curtailing psychological research that may be inappropriate.

2) Ethics is important for determining how groups should and should not behave. I like to say that political philosophy rests on the back of ethics. If we don't have a sound justification for condemning some government or its practices, such as allowing honor killings and Sharia law, what are you going to use to persuade people to support your politic viewpoint? Pretty please with sugar on it? How do you determine whether a law is just or unjust without ethics?

3) If atheists do not have a solid foundation for their ethics, they have no rational basis for advocating for atheism, skepticism or whatever over and above a religious framework. Again, what will your argument be? I think you should stop persecuting homosexuals because it bothers me? One of the organizers in our state humanist organization readily admits to not knowing how to justify her ethical positions, but feels it necessary to assert an ethical platform — I find that not only silly (and a bit hypocritical), but dangerous; she's a humanist embarrassment waiting to happen.

4) I gtg, but in another thread, the question of whether so-called "Generation Ships" for interstellar space exploration are acceptable ethically. How are you going to decide without ethics?

5) Moral judgements are a major feature of our minds. We will never fully understand how the brain gives rise to mind without understanding how ethical judgements arise. I doubt you can get there from here without going through the land marked, "understanding ethics".

Anyway, gtg.

Perhaps people misunderstood me...

I am not trying to take away any of the importance from searching for ethical reasoning.

What I'm asking is if OBJECTIVE morality is of any relevance. If objective morality exists, what is the purpose of trying to find this morality? What if this objective morality is at complete odds with what the rest of the civilized world thinks?

I simply do not believe an objective morality exists. I believe morality is SUBJECTIVE and we as a society, create OBJECTIVE moral laws. I hope that makes sense.

I don't believe there are any objective moral laws separate from the human mind. That doesn't mean we can't create objective laws. We already do. We subjectively created an objective moral law deeming pedophilia a heinous act.

So yes, ethics is very, very important. It is NOT a personal guide... it is a COLLECTIVE guide. But even then, it sometimes goes awry (Nazi Germany).

So whenever someone asks me where I draw my morals from, I reply with:

I draw my morals collectively from society and my own life experiences.

[elunico13]

[quote='Creed of Heresy' pid='283865' dateline='1336649844']
Morality. Everyone has their own moral code

If everyone has their own moral code than there is neither right nor wrong, but just different. Raping a small child is not wrong according to you, but it may be different because your personal moral code is just different. Doesn't make sense does it.