(October 18, 2013 at 2:21 am)genkaus Wrote:(October 17, 2013 at 2:51 am)max-greece Wrote: Why are people ethical/moral?
In the main - simply because it feels good to be so. That's good as in heart warming, not as in all superior and proud as the religious might want to portray it.
I din't really have to address the big issues - rape, murder etc.- I would hope those are obvious to all. Those are just innately wrong - against programming - evolutionarily disadvantageous - call it what you will.
You are right about the effect, but not the cause. Acting in accordance with your personal moral values gives you a sense of satisfaction and self-esteem - whatever those moral values may be. Once a person has chosen his moral code, he can expect his conscience, through the feeling of guilt or pride, to indicate if he is being true to it. Therefore, how the moral code is chosen is often more important than whether you follow it.
Your moral code is not innate or biologically programmed. Either you choose it through careful consideration or it is chosen for you - by the society you live in, by the environment you were raised in or by the company you keep.
For example, whether or not you empathize with something depends on how well you identify with it. Some people, who regard all living things as having a soul or being sentient would consider cutting down a tree as morally wrong. While others dehumanize their enemies to make killing them much easier.
I'm not sure I was attempting to allocate cause - but I didn't list out all the possible causes in my opening statement.
"Once a person has chosen his moral code, he can expect his conscience, through the feeling of guilt or pride, to indicate if he is being true to it. Therefore, how the moral code is chosen is often more important than whether you follow it. "
Did I make such a choice? I don't ever recall doing that. It was kinda there from whence unknown.
"Your moral code is not innate or biologically programmed. Either you choose it through careful consideration or it is chosen for you - by the society you live in, by the environment you were raised in or by the company you keep. "
This is more interesting. How much choice might I have had? How much of supposed choice is open to me if there is an element of biological programming? How might biological programming have affected the moral choices my society made?
Whilst for all the minor issues you might be right I do think there are biological imperatives at play here that have evolved through natural selection to maximize the chances of the species surviving.
We are naturally inclined to cooperate together. We are naturally inclined not to want to murder each other and so on.
At the same time - as a result of our development we have higher centres of the brain that can over-ride that which is innate. This is not, in my opinion, contradictory. Flexibility should also be considered as potentially biologically beneficial.
At its most basal level its going to be very hard to differentiate ethics and morality from instinct. If we accept that instinct is pre-programming then fundamentals of ethics morality may well be too.
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Is There a Point To Living a Moral Life?
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