What is morality?

[Mystic]

Define it in a thorough manner.

[Athene]

No. I will not.
You can't make me.

[Court Jester]

morality

mo·ral·i·ty

məˈralədē

noun

principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.

synonyms: ethics, rights and wrongs, ethicality

More
a particular system of values and principles of conduct, especially one held by a specified person or society.

plural noun: moralities

"a bourgeois morality"

the extent to which an action is right or wrong.

"behind all the arguments lies the issue of the morality of the possession of nuclear weapons" (Webster, M., 2017)

[Chad32]

Basically morality is a set of rules that social creatures use to get along with each other. They can vary from group to group, and it's usually the morals held by those in the highest authority that are the ones that cement into the culture. They are fluid, often change with the times, and can be based on subjective and objective things. It's always better to ground it in proven facts than personal opinion. For instance almost everyone can agree that killing is generally bad, but most groups will agree that sometimes killing is acceptable. So it's not objectively wrong to kill, because it's not wrong in every instance imaginable.

[bennyboy]

Morality: doing what is right.

[LadyForCamus]

Why should I?

[Brian37]

Define it in a thorough manner.

No length needed.

DON'T harm others physically outside self defense. 

Don't steal from others.

Help others when you can.

Morality in our species history has always been a point of view thing. You think it is moral to sell Allah, Christians thing it is moral to sell Jesus. Hindus their religion, and Jews theirs and so on.

What has not changed in our species long before any written religion or nation for that matter, what has not changed is evolution has produced EMPATHY for others. The problem with humans is that empathy is limited to that which the person is born into, and it is hard for most to view the world globally. Our species has a tendency to protect that which is local. But that does not change that compassion is a species attribute and not a religious patent. 

A Hindu mother and Jewish Mother and Christian mother and Atheist mother are likely to defend their own kid against any threat against that kid. Same with men. What humans have a hard time with is the global reality that we all share the same common ancestors. 

You want to use this post to point to Allah as the origin of our species morality. Problem is so do Jews and Christians and Hindus and Buddhists.

But evolution is where morality is coming from which is why these elephants did what they did. 

[Angrboda]

I think it's natural to look for a unified factor underlying all of morality, I just don't think the abstract of 'harm' is it. Otherwise we would have a stronger natural inclination against killing animals that can suffer. I too look for a unified approach, but from a different angle. Jonathan Haidt has proposed that five major dimensions underly our moralistic reasoning. The question of harm, that of fairness, questions of authority, those of loyalty, and the question of ritual/conventional purity (aka 'sacredness'). With the exception of sacredness, these are all values whose norms orient us towards successful functioning within a group. As a social species, I believe we have evolved subconsciously derived values which, taken together, ensure our thriving as a social species. Our nature as a social species is a part of our niche in the environment. Individual humans would not be as successful as groups of humans, and surviving in groups requires proactive advocacy of things like authority and loyalty. (They also are of benefit in the child/parent relationship.) Rather than rely upon conscious thinking about one's situation to push forward these values, evolution has favored those who succeed in groups by favoring those who instinctively derived these values. Thus these values are essentially subconscious in origin, and no a priori reasoning about the benefits of these values can derive them. They are the result of the practical experiment of humans living in greater and less successful groups. That I believe is the uniform factor underlying morality.

When it comes to the question of why we don't have a natural inclination to conclude that killing animals that can suffer is wrong, then the answer is simple. Morality has, as its goal, the flourishing of humans in groups of humans. It isn't about harm qua harm across whatever animal can experience harm, it is human-centric in its origin and reason for existence. Thus we only get to concluding that harming animals is wrong by analogizing them to ourselves. Indeed, in that context the question of why harm of humans is morally significant at all is paramount. Why is harming humans a significant value to embrace? Arguing a sort of tit for tat reasoning about harm doesn't explain the peculiarities of our moral intuitions, that harming animals is not morally significant and harming humans is. It really doesn't explain the kind of pre-thought, intuitive nature of moral reasoning. Nor does it offer much argument for the evolutionary origin of it, or any other origin story. In that, harm to humans comes across as a disembodied value, arising out of nothingness (and collapsing back into nothingness upon inspection).

So I think a rational basis for morality can be found in our moral intuitions having evolved to further our flourishing as a social species. It isn't just one value, such as harm/empathy, but a cluster of values which benefited the animal that lived in groups because the group was stronger and fitter as a whole than any individual could be.

On the pragmatic side, I doubt this will remain as anything much stronger than a conjecture until more is known about how exactly moral reasoning operates in the brain, and that is quite a ways off. However, I think the contours of this theory are very consistent with the contours of morality as experienced by humans, and offers a plausible path toward explaining the development of such intuitions.

[AFTT47]

Morality in our species history has always been a point of view thing. You think it is moral to sell Allah, Christians thing it is moral to sell Jesus. Hindus their religion, and Jews theirs and so on.

What has not changed in our species long before any written religion or nation for that matter, what has not changed is evolution has produced EMPATHY for others.

You want to use this post to point to Allah as the origin of our species morality. Problem is so do Jews and Christians and Hindus and Buddhists.

But evolution is where morality is coming from which is why these elephants did what they did. 

Bravo, Brian! I think the basketball fans would call that a slam dunk. I'm more of a baseball guy so I would call it a grand slam.

All you have to do is look at the body-English of those animals. Their concern for the welfare of the baby was hard-wired. Automatic. It is a trait selected for by evolution because it is beneficial to the survival of the species. Very simple explanation. Nothing more is needed.

[Little lunch]

Morality is everything that I think is right.
For you, it's everything that you think is right.