Is morality/the conscience self-perceived, or based entirely upon society? Do we contain our own set of moral beliefs, or are they subconsciously engraved into us by the majority of humanity? Can someone ever be amoral? I'd like your thoughts Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
As infants are genetically pre-programmed to behave in a "Me, me, me." mode because it enhances their odds of survival, and because experience alters the physical make-up of the brain's internal 'circuitry', morality and ethics are mostly learned behaviors because they are the community's sense of organization more than they are the new individual's. My thoughts.
Prior to a certain age (I forget what it is, but it's like 4 years old or something), infants are incapable of viewing others as separate individuals. IOW they can't imagine someone else's point of view or how someone else thinks or feels; they are only capable of projecting their own thoughts and feelings onto others. For example, if such an infant is unhappy they assume everyone is unhappy. Or if the infant is not in pain, they assume you're not in pain either even as they try to pull your hair out. Once they mature enough, babies learn to assume the perspective of others and to empathise. This is not a socially conditioned thing; it's just a normal part of how the brain develops. Once you have empathy, morals can begin to emerge (of course, you need to be in the company of other humans for that.) Sometimes this process goes astray and proper empathy is not developed. Then you get sadistic kids that think nothing of chopping up their pet kitten with scissors.
what really pisses me off, is that i just typed a longish response to this and got disconnected during submission. Now i cant recapture what i said. frustrating.
An individual's "morality": The laws he has devised for living in a populated area and/or dealing with others. Morality: The degree to which the above actually intercepts The Good. Edit: Rather, the degree to whch acting in the above manner will intercept with Good actions.
Hi Squid, my condolences. It's happened to me before too, though mostly it's due to my PC hanging Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! Anyway, I have learned a useful heuristic. If, as you type your reply, it begins to scroll off the text input field, it's time to select all and copy->paste into wordpad or notepad or your favorite text editor. Then save to desktop as temp.txt or something. Now you continue to type your reply in the text editor, saving periodically. When you've finished, copy->paste from the editor back into the text input window of the browser, and do the preview/submit thing. This works, believe me.
Oh, I hate when that happens. I use Overdoze's technique too. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! ------- --------- -------- Back to the question: To me, morality is society based, simply because of the "power in numbers" rule we've applied to ourselves. From democracy, we learn that the majority is right, so it would be the right choice to do something, because more people think so. As we grow up, we are engraved with basic morals, such as "killing is wrong", and "raping is abhored". Coming from a technologically advanced country, our ancestors found that these things were punishable, therefore has ingrained into later generations that these acts are wrong and against the majority of moral beliefs. Human beings can be swayed, however. Media has already proven that, through their many advertisements of fashion and pop culture. Our mindsets have also been changed. And due to the latest news about same-sex marriages, who knows what our children's children will think? Morality seems ever-shifting, based on current events. The behaviour of people in 1900 is much more different than the behaviour of people today. It used to be "conservative is good" and "women belong in the kitchen"; now it is "freedom of expression" and "women are people too".
In 1900, most people were convinced that women did belong in the kitchen and more of that limited thinking. However, there were a lot of people in those days who did not agree with that "women belong in the kitchen" thingy (as an example) and they were excluded from society as being not going with the majority, thus freaks of society and morality. Nowadays there are a lot of people who still think, deep in their hearts, that women belong in the kitchen and only act otherwise in public, not in their private little world. And not in countries wich is not called a democracy. So what is a real democracy? And who makes the standards? I guess it is all up to the people themselves, to decide whether they go with the flow or wehther they "play" by their own standards, or morals, if you want. It is wrong to kill or harm another living being in any way. Still, there are always exceptions. Does these exceptions justify things like the death penalty, for instance? What makes morality? Only living in a democracy? I do not think so, though. I think morals are strictly bound to a person. You can live in a democracy and still not be treated right and in the way you should be treated. It can happen you come to live in a family where there is abuse. Child molest, fights, all kind of things and it can go on for ages. Without being noticed. Well, of course people can do something about it, only if the people who are involved in such situations, want it to be known and want something done about it. It is a rather difficult subject and it doesn't work out well all the time, not even in a democracy where those rights are standard, so to say. Then there are the people who are not treated right, not live in a democracy but still turn out good. Because of their inner good nature? I think so, yes. Because of their inner good nature and their thinking and seeing for themselves. I know this is a little simplistic, you get my point I hope. The media play a big part in people's lives, it is not the most important part and this is also up to every individual. How they handle things like fashion, television hypes and all the other bs that is related to the media and highly overestimated in my opinion. Every person who can think and deduct for him/herself, can see how they are played for fools by the media... Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Sometimes (emphasis on sometimes) I think morality is one big excuse for people to project their paranoid fears, that stem from personal insecurity, onto other people.
I believe morality is objective, though social/cultural constructions obviously do have an influence. Whether moral truths are of the divine nature or evolutional is, for me, an more perplexing question.
What if a regular human child were to be raised in a world which teaches that killing is right? The child would grow up knowing nothing but violence, and his moral beliefs would be set in society.
Human children have been taught that killing is right and proper, as standard parts of cultures. Example: the Spartans. Every year, the Spartans would cull their slaves, called Hellots, just kill off heaps of them. This served several purposes: it kept the Hellots oppressed (severely), it gave the Spartans a damn good reason to good excuse to go raiding and capture more slaves, and it got them accustomed to killing people. Kept them in practice. In addition to the yearly culls, they would sometimes just kill a slave or two at random, or maybe one who was too much ofa smart-arse. Spartan children were taught that killing was just another part of daily life. While this may seem terrible to some, it was perfectly normal to them. And from the Spartans we get some of our most treasured tales of heroism and honour.
"What if a regular human child were to be raised in a world which teaches that killing is right? The child would grow up knowing nothing but violence, and his moral beliefs would be set in society." It's called Palestine. For a long time kids have been taught that killing is wrong there - unless it's to kill an Israeli Jew. And while the education system in Israel is designed to help peace there is little doubt that Jewish parents instill a distrust and dislike for Palestinians in their children.
Hey, good example! Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image! It reinforces my point as well (double bonus!), as a picture of influenced morality.
I used to know a young Israeli chap, he was a regular on the IRC channel I operate. He believed the Palestinians were sub-human, that they were all filthy, liars, thieves, et cetera. Apparently so did all his friends. He said army people would gather the local young chaps into "neighbourhood watch" groups, give them guns, and take them out "patrolling". One day he came on the channel and started bragging that his group had seen two Arabs walking about near dusk, so they'd stopped the Arabs, pushed them up against a wall, put guns in their backs, and searched them thorhoughly, even made them take their clothes off to their underwear. To him, this was all very funny, a great day's fun. Unbelievably racist, thinking the Arabs were sub-human like that, the way they treated them. Let's face it, Israel is doing to the Palestinians exactly what Germany did to the Jews in the mid-1930s.
