Where Does Morality Come From?

Not just the avoidance of pain, that's self centered and thus amoral. It also includes not doing things that cause pain to others. It's basically the golden rule.

 

That's actually what I meant, I was using "pain" in a universal sense.

Same problem applies. Doesn't seem to be a very good guide to living my life. Sure, I don't want to cause pain to anybody nor experience it myself, but to take that as a moral first principle seems lacking.

Would you describe your moral position as a utilitarian one?

 

And proud of it!

 

I Suppose a better way to describe it would be not causing harm needlessly

No is consider it a rational one. Its okay to habe personal nuances regardless of where you get them. If your nuance causes harm needlessly it is morally questionable.

It is a benchmark, a useful one and though it's based on a subjective concepts of harm it is as objective as you can be with morality.

 

Maybe our disagreement lies in our differing concepts of morality.

To me, morality submerges every aspect of life. It starts with an existential question of why I'm here, and what I'm to do.

What is "morality" to you?

 

Morality to my understanding are principles in which good or bad behavior is determined to be good or bad. The concept of right or wrong if you will.

There is an existential question to be asked am I moral or immoral. But it really has more to do with how you interact with others thus I don't think it's necessarily existential. Though I do agree it does involve many if not all aspects of life.

I'm very interested in this conversation I find you to be respectful opponent if we are even are opponents but I do have to call it a night I do have to get up early in the morning please feel free to respond I welcome that and I will reply in the morning.

 

Swell ... but your original claim wasn't about any of that, it was about morality, of which you understand nothing.

However weak it may be, it's at least a million times better than that of anyone who buys into the diabolical myth of subjective morality.

On the contrary, I have a better idea of what you're open to than you do.

Already have; and the jury is in like Flint, I assure you.

 

Just a question for everybody else, has this poster ever contributed anything beyond assurances that he's right and we're wrong?

Let's try again, yguy. Your implication was that the immorality of non-monogamy could be rationally justified on grounds of the harm it causes children.

Is harm caused to human beings a yardstick by which to judge the morality of any action or institution?

 

Morality is completely imaginary and is simply based on societal norms and our emotions promoting social behavior. We then made up mythological beings who give us bronze-age moral rules including stoning people for picking up sticks on the Sabbath. Make choices that make your life happy, you don't need to sit through boring church services in hopes of going to a "happy farm" after you die.

 

Even if true, how does any of that make it imaginary?

 

Additionally, one would have to justify a foundationalist epistemology in order to ground those first principles of morality, not an easy task; that is to say it hasn't yet been successfully demonstrated in the last two millennia of philosophical discourse. My hunch is that moral justification is grounded in some type of coherentist theory (or moral constellation, but one that is not beholden to Rawlsian reflective equilibrium).

 

You think a believe that a man in the sky who decides that certain things are wrong and that magically makes them wrong isn't imaginary?

 

All societies need an agreed list of rules, or they'd be fighting all the time. As societies grow more complicated they need to spend vast sums on brainwashing the disadvantaged to keep them quiet, a function that was in simpler systems of exploitation fulfilled by religion but is now managed mainly by ideology backed by armed force.

 

I do not think much about morality
To me It mostly seems like a social construct
(except for weirdos)
As i think about it, it feels like

Mostly a term of aprobation
A term that we apply to others
A term either used to judge past behaviors
Or threaten judgement of future behaviors

I cannot imagine someone trying to decide what to do NOW and contemplating "what is the moral thing to do?".....especially if ones decision will not be observed and judged by others

When i decide my actions in private, i consider it a matter of personal integrity
IOW since I believe in the "golden rule".
Does my planned action confiorm to my beliefs, or am i letting self interest corrode adherence to my beliefs

 

The belief isn't imaginary, if that's what your asking.

This was not an answer to my question.

 

This is by far the best responseI can reply to in order to keep this discussion moving forward. I'm not avoiding any of your questions/ statement, hopefully, I will address everything in this response.

Few thoughts.

First, though you don't explicitly state it, but you seem to be inferring that there is something akin to "individual mortality", the idea that you can choose your own idea of what is moral arbitrarily and no one can assert that what you are calling morality is wrong. I assert that the term individual morality is a non-sequitur, like the term, married bachelor. The term makes no sense in an individual context. Morality is a purely social construct. If you were alone in the universe, what would it mean to be moral? Why would it matter? if you understand why it matters, then you are one step closer to understanding what morality is.

Think of it like the rules of a game. A basketball hoop could be any height, yet the regulation height is 10 feet. What about the height of the hoop was that randomly or arbitrarily chosen? No, it was chosen relative to the height of grown men and the gravity that we all experience. Thus the height of basketball hoops isn't objectively 10 feet, it is subjective based on very real facts about our experience. If we ever colonize Mars and play basketball there where the gravity is 1/3 less, do you think the hight of the hoop will stay at 10'? How would the lack of gravity affect the game?

This is why I've said that morality is shaped by people's experience of the world. Since the environment changes morality can change to reflect our experience of it. Now does this make morality relative? OF COURSE, the only question is, relative to what? Any morality that claims it's not relative can easily be shown to be immoral because it isn't founded on the pain and suffereing, happiness and well-being of people. I know this because what makes people happy and the conditions under which they suffer change based on the environment around them and their understanding of the world.

Once you realize that morality is a social construct, you have to ask yourself, why should morality matter, why can't you do whatever you want?

You could try this thought experiment, next time you're at the movies, talk really loud, take out your phone, steal other people's popcorn, pee in the corner and just be loud obnoxious. If going to the movies is something you enjoy, then you will find that acting ethically and moral will help you achieve that end, thus if you want to watch a movie without being asked to leave (or worse) then you ought to treat others with the same respect you want (this is where empathy comes in). That is, being moral and ethical helps you achieve things that you want to achieve. So if you wish to live in a happy healthy flourishing society there are objective ways to move closer to that and farther from it.

If you're asking me why anyone should want to live in a happy, healthy flourishing society, then we've now hit philosophical bedrock with the shovel of a stupid question and I'd submit that if this is your position (and I'm not saying it is) then I don't even know what you are talking about and I'd suggest that you don't either (again IF you hold this position). You and most other people act morally not as conscious thought process, but because we observe the real and tangible benefits we derive from it and we act with respect to that experience.

Happiness isn't arbitrarily chosen. Iit is subjectively experienced, but it's not arbitrary. You don't need someone to tell you they are happy (happiness is an objective state of human consciousness that is subjectively experienced), to recognize what happiness looks like. You could meet a tribe of people that have never been exposed to the outside world and simply observe and you could identify when people from the tribe are happy and when they are suffering (and they could of you). Just like you can identify when someone is sick and when they are healthy. We don't have objective definitions of the states of health and sickness but you are, I presume, ok describing people in terms of sickness and health without an objective definition. I suspect that you are ok calling cancer bad and being free from disease good.

The problem is, you appear to be searching for an objective morality, but the idea that there can be a morality independent of people's wants and desires is a non-starter. A morality independent of states of being isn't morality. This is why the concept of Christan morality (divine command) is such an abject failure (not that you are a Christian). Because Christians believe that god defines morality as X, so when you ask the question, does god define morality as X because he wants to increase happiness or prevent suffering? The answer has to be no.

Q: Why is X good?

A: Because god says so.

Q: And why does god say so?

A: Because X is good.

See the circular reasoning?

Now you don't have to be Christian to get caught up in circular reasoning. Anyone that would define morality outside the experience of human beings is defining morality into existence.

Am I a utilitarian? No, because utilitarians don't recognize the social and empathetic nature of morality. I do.

 

Why can't the minimization of pain, sickness and suffering and chaos be that metric?

 

Beliefs aren't imaginary, absolute objective morality based on a religion is.

 

One last thought about experience.

Think about how we value the lives of non-humans.

In general, we, as a species tend to value the lives on non-humans relative to our perception of how non-humans experience the world. Now, we tend to be a bit biased in this endeavor in that we believe that ours is the gold standard by which all other experience is measured (something that's probably true). If we perceive an animal is capable of sadness, or grief, or happiness or comradery, we tend to value the lives of those creatures more than those that we perceive as being unaware or mindless. There are of course a million things that can get in the way of this. We are uniquely aware and can choose to justify, rationalize or convince ourselves that we don't care, but for most people, these feelings are objectively real.

 

But surely the minimization of pain and suffering is not always "good." You seem well versed in the Western Philosophical tradition, doesn't Socrates' argument in the Apology demonstrate the problem of false happiness? Eudaimonia (translated here as flourishing/well-being) often entails pain and suffering. Living well is a communal issue that comprises a constellation of relations; that is, one needs a conception of the good life (which includes a conception of the good community) in order to address what it means to live excellently (separate from what it means to live free from pain and suffering). It seems that modern ethics is borne out of a certain subjectivist account of Enlightenment that leaves this aspect behind. I take it that Hegel's account of Sittlichkeit (Ethical Life) is an attempt to challenge such myopic forms of ethical thought (Hegel's argument suggests that consciousness is a product of social and cultural relations), and one seemingly at odds with approaches like Popper's. Again I have in mind here the Positivist Dispute between the Frankfurt School and Popper in the 60s.

 

No, that was an inference drawn by you, presumably to divert attention from the idiocy of the statement I was responding to.

Obviously not, seeing there is at least one institution, traditional marriage, which is God ordained, and as to which only a fool would even think of rendering a judgment. You're welcome.

 

To avoid fighting, you have to have an agreed system of rules. This is established by the shifting class balance, and consists of the interests of the rich and powerful modified to the degree that the majority of the exploited will accept them.

 

Where Does Morality Come From?

It comes from the spirit world where our soul comes from and returns to after physical death. We all arrive in the fetus from that spiritual world carrying a memory of ethics and morality rules from that world, but pressures from negative sources here on Earth begin to distort our soul's convictions early on and continuously through our physical lifetimes, causing confusion and doubt and fostering a willingness to forfeit our spiritual standards in daily physical life. Contrary to what many believe, religion is NOT the source of ethics or morality, though both do exist at the core of every major religion. Morality is a part of the soul.

 

So many dubious assertions there that I can't see it convincing anyone.

 

My goal here is not to "convince" anyone, but to open minds to explore the subject on their own. There's considerable evidence out there for anyone interested in the topic. As one proceeds, a gradual transition will occur that completely alters one's view of what constitutes one's own personal "life." As long as we regard the physical body we currently inhabit as the totality of who we are, then we'll never begin to comprehend the truth that "we" are actually a spirit--or soul--and our personal "life" is actually all the experiences our soul accumulates over many millennia across dozens, even hundreds of incarnations through a wide variety of physical bodies. As a soul, "we" are much more than we think we are when we limit ourselves to thinking in terms of the frail, physical specimen we are currently "living." From the soul's perspective, every human lifetime is like a "class" we take to learn specific important lessons, which accumulate for the soul as each physical life ends and preparations for the next incarnation begins. These incarnations are not haphazard or random or inflicted on us. We are in control of them ourselves, but we have a great deal of help from teachers, friends, and spiritual family members who reincarnate with us, but in different roles in each life depending on the lessons to be learned. "Life" from the soul's perspective is far more complex, enduring and interesting than any simple, limited physical life could ever be. But the fact that we experience both the spiritual world and the physical world intermittently, and that they work together to form who and what we are as individuals and as a conscious life form, is incredible.