Not A Poll: Does Motivation Affect Morality?

[robvalue]

It's so complex I find it a bit hard to explain at times. There's many ways of approaching the subject, and it's easy to be talking at cross purposes. Are we talking about an individual? An individual action? A society? Societal norms?

What I was drivelling on about above highlights the difference between morality and law. We can objectively see that certain things cause (what we consider to be) harm to individuals or to society, and as such we often implement laws to prevent people causing too much harm that way. Job done. We have no need to also say any such harm is "immoral", partly because it's redundant (we've already made our decision) and partly because it doesn't help further understanding.

If we want to try and prevent (what we consider to be) harm happening in the first place, we need to convince people that such harm is real and relevant (I can point out "animals are killed" all day, yet if someone doesn't see this as a problem, what am I achieving?). We need to understand why they did it. We hopefully want to change their attitude, and that of society in general, so that such harm is reduced in the future.

If a person gets locked up for what they consider to be something harmless, they haven't "learnt" anything. Only by trying to reach a middle ground and discussing morality from both points of view can we ever make progress.

If instead we exclude from the discussion anyone who doesn't agree with our preconceptions about what exactly morality is, we're in an echo chamber and holding our subjective morality as golden.