echidna

A : “Because I’m telling you” – unless you’re holding a baseball bat, I think this only works up to a certain age.
B : “Because it’s Right” - Personally my favourite, but needless to say a little irrational.
C : “Because God says so” – Somehow I suspect this won’t be a common answer here, but effectively it’s the theistic version of B.
D : “Because you won’t go to Heaven” – Might work for as long as the bluff holds, but again not a popular response I suspect, and to me downgrades morality to some kind of scoresheet.
E : “Because it’s in your contractarian interest to do so” - I know we haven’t had one for a while but past threads leave me quite cold towards Contractarianism as a moral system since it seems to assume an ability to reciprocate. It seems to be the atheist version of a reward-based morality quite akin in some ways to D.

This still leaves 21 letters of the alphabet …

(OK, thinks twice, spellchecks for QoS, makes sign of cross for Pascal, checks for divine guidance but still finds none, sacrifices goat, and posts new topic anyway. )

ju'iblex

A slightly modified version of B, which would involve telling him or her about why they're doing the right thing and if necessary, how that will benefit the parties involved <including themselves>.

<but then again, this question is somewhat wasted on me. i'm not exactly the child-bearing type >

[ April 17, 2002: Message edited by: juiblex ]</p>

ShabbyChick

Empathy. Golden Rule (not biblical). When situations arise with ethical implications, we strive to teach him what we feel is ethically correct and how it will effect him and others. I guess a lot if it is basically "how would you feel if you were on the other end".

I do have another question regarding the raising of freethinking kids, but I'm going to post it to secular lifestyle instead of in here.

ShabbyChick

echidna

Yes, empathy of course. What if they’re clever (or annoying) enough to ask why ?

After all, I’m not that other person and nor will I ever be.

(I did briefly contemplate SLS, but regarding moral foundations, I concluded that the question was equally relevant to this forum.)

DRFseven

Some of it you conscienciously teach; some of it you teach "unawares." Six-year-old children perform more of what is considered morally correct behavior when, from the time the children are infants, the parents 1. Clearly state moral rules. 2. Illustrate, emotionally, using real-life examples 3. Model these behaviors, themselves (hint: this one is the big problem).

There is a problem with the word, "empathy"; people use it in different ways. What people really mean is usually "sympathy." Empathy just means understanding what the other person feels; sympathy means not only understanding but feeling compassion due to that understanding. People can have empathy and use to gain advantage over others, as in exploitation. They can learn how to direct intutitive feelings toward cheating people. Everyone does this to some degree (as in putting the "best face forward" in an interview or on a date, etc.), but those who feel compassion don't cheat, or at least have the scruples to feel bad about it, LOL.

Anyway, this compassionate trait, whether it is referred to as empathy or sympathy is an essential element in developing what we, in this society (and in most societies) think of as morally correct behavior; that is, children who behave fairly, are helpful, are tolerant, who share, who are not aggressive, etc. And parenting style has a lot to do with children's ability to learn empathetic/sympathetic behavior; parents who are referred to as authoritative use tact and explanations rather than either authoritarian-style or permissive-style parents are much more likely to rear empathetic/sympathetic children.

Edited to add that my answer would be that you use B when the child is pre-verbal and graduate to E.

"No, no!", we say, with plenty of emotion and a dismayed face. "Put that Tonka truck down; we don't hit little sister! Look, now she's crying; poor little sister, she feels sad and hurt now. We don't want little sister to get hurt, do we? No, that's right; we don't, now come tell her you're sorry. " You convey your true dismay at little sister being hit and do your best to make the guilty child feel bad about it. The child takes your emotional message to heart and learns that it doesn't pay (feels bad) to do "bad things." By avoiding bad things, the child avoids feeling bad.

[ April 18, 2002: Message edited by: DRFseven ]</p>

MadMordigan

My children are the least immoral, least unkind, and least disruptive members of our society.

babelfish

I think the tendency to behave morally is at least partially hard-wired. I think we have evolved to get along in a society. Just like the mechanism used to learn a language, I think young children have a mechanism to learn morality.

You don't sit down and teach your kids to speak. They pick it up. They absorb speech from you. In a similar way, they pick up their morality from you.

It is not necessary to threaten anyone with hell-fire. Usually being liked by others and accepted by others is motivation enough. Nothing supernatural necessary.

[ April 20, 2002: Message edited by: babelfish ]</p>

Straight Hate

Mine will probably revolve around the idea "because it's your social responsibility." I fancy myself as a humanist, so I try to base my values around progression - tolerance, acceptance, understanding, etc. This isn't me living in la-la-land, but rather facing the mindset we're going to need if we're to get ahead as the human race.

Samhain

Is that something to be proud of? I always thought a little social dissension was a good thing...

God Fearing Atheist

We contractarians are indeed the opressed minority here

In any event, I had been pondering something recently that is right in line with all of this: namely, there may be a contractarian rationale for socializing children (or at least, some children) in some non-contractarian ethical theory.

Consider, for example, what would happen if contractarianism were universally socialized. In this case, some minority (however small) would take notice that there can be no moral duties where the structure of interaction is zero-sum: if the only way you can be better off is to make me worse off. But morals do not apply to these situations. Restrictions on behavior will only be rational if there can be some mututal benifit which is, by definition, impossible in a zero-sum game. This is, unfortunately, part of what goes into the "moral standing" of an individual according to the Neo-Hobbesian tradition. Classical utilitarianism requires an actor have the capacity for pleasure/pain, Kantian deontology demand reason, and Gauthierian contractarianism requires Prisoner's Dilemmas and the ability to harm/better....never zero-sum games.

So this small minority, lets say, are sociopaths, whos sole pleasure in life comes from the pain they inflict in others. Does it really make any sense, given the above considerations, and from our point of view (that is, the view of those who they will, or might, harm), to socialize them this way? It would seem we are giving them free reign to worsen our situations.

But now suppose we were to socialize them in ways B, C, D...or any combination thereof. If our sociopaths expected their utility to be infinitely lower because pie-in-the-sky deity is going to toss them into the firey pit of eternal damnation, you can expect them to hold off on acting out their anti-social desires....even if they would *actually* be better off had they done so.

Just to be clear, i dont mean to say universal socialization of contractarian is the *cause* of those sorts of preferences, simply that, should you have them, contractarianism cant give a rationale for you to not act on them: good for you, bad for us.