What does morality mean to you?

[Pyrrho]

I agree with your point about being drunk, and indeed willfully ignorant. If you have knowingly put yourself in a situation where you are impaired but required to make important decisions, then that adds immorality.

What else do you think is missing?

I don't think your approach accurately characterizes what is going on with morality.  Moral behavior has been observed in animals, and so it cannot be based upon advanced reasoning.  (Also, almost every idiot human has a sense of morality, so it is not brilliance that is the source of it.)

See:

http://www.livescience.com/24802-animals...-book.html

http://www.pbslearningmedia.org/resource...-fairness/


My own take on morality I have explained in the past:

http://atheistforums.org/thread-33164-po...#pid934918

http://atheistforums.org/thread-33164-po...#pid935583

There are more posts in that thread.

By "doing the right thing" I mean trying to maximise the wellbeing of other people/animals and reduce unnecessary harm. I should have stated that explicitly.

You are there seeming like you believe that morality is objective.

However, it is still not satisfactory, because what, precisely, is "wellbeing" and what, precisely, is "harm"?  It really just seems like alternate words for saying that doing the right thing means trying to maximize doing what is right and minimizing doing what is wrong.

If there were not already a common sense of morality, I would have no idea what you were writing about.

[robvalue]

OK, thanks I'll check it out.

I think we probably mean slightly different things by morality in the first place, although if we hammered out the definitions for 57 years we'd probably agree in the end. Yes, wellbeing is an incredibly vague term which will mean different things to different people. This is why I argue for subjective morality. It simply covers the general notion of valueing others. So it could include lifespan, happiness, freedom from illness, being comfortable, being safe... and so on. The problem of objective morality is that it assumes we all somehow agree on which of these are important, and to what extent. Quite clearly we don't.

As for my poll, I've come to agree that although I still consider intentions to be at the heart of personal morality, it does involve other factors.

With regard to animals, I agree they can have morality. And this comes down to my idea that the more capable you are of thought and understanding, the more responsibility you have for your actions. I would alter the expectation to meet the abilities.

I consider it a clear distinction between scientifically observing/classing morality, and considering the thought processes of an individual with regard to their personal morality. I think a lot of the confusion comes from people either not talking about the same thing, or else conflating the two.

But I seem to be making no sense to you at all, so I'll leave it at that I appreciate your input.

[bennyboy]

Morality means doing good, and not doing bad. . . duh!

[GrandizerII]

I'll have to think about my personal answer to the topic question, but I'll say one thing.

Until there is a clear set of criteria that most rational and intelligent people would agree on to judge what can be considered good or bad, morality is not yet objective to the same degree as logic, mathematics, science, and such. Plus, the fact that it is often based on what people value, and values differ with each person or culture or circumstance at hand makes it really really difficult for there to ever be a clear consensus on the relevant criteria to determine moral goodness, even if most of us can agree that there are some things that are really really good or bad.