Starboy

So are these the choices: "mentally handicapped" or Christianity? Or is this a taste of Christian morality?

Starboy

Glory

I am a little confused here.

Black and white as opposed to shades of grey?

Right and wrong as opposed to what? What are our morals if not our ideas about right and wrong?

Children are, of course building their moral code but they are capable of knowing right from wrong. I certainly knew that what I had done was wrong when I did it. I built a little more of my code that day.

I also believe that too err is human and that we deserve a chance to learn and grow as a result of making mistakes such as doing bad things. Guilt should not be the only outcome of a mistake but it is one of the most powerful teachers.

I suppose if one repeatedly violated their moral code, it calls into question what their morals actually are. In this way one might say our actions are our morality but I find this harsh and limiting. I suspect you would as well.

It is, of course, impossible tp adhere to a moral code completely, allthe time. Life has a way of throwing us curve balls that we are not prepared for. It seems that no matter how hard we try to allow for every eventuality, we will be faced with dilemmas. When this happens, we must ignore our moral code and base our decision on something else, pick a side and go for it while adhering to as much of our moral code as is possible, or, and this is what I think most often happens, change our moral code. Alter it enough to allow for this situation that we hadn't anticipated. Thus, our morals are evolving.

Thoughts?

Glory

echidna

I share Keith’s same analogy. For me, right and wrong as opposed to better and worse.

Many of the moral questions which we are faced with are difficult, often there is no clear answer. Almost always we are faced with some degree of compromise.

So in my shades-of-grey analogy, there is no black and white, but there are very bright greys that are almost white, and there are very dark greys which are almost black. For me it’s only an analogy, but it helps me get my mind around some of life’s problems.

LoopHooligan

Thank you all for your answers so far. It has been very interesting to hear your opinions.
I must admit that I am still not convinced that morality is a given. As Immanuel Kant said
“Nowhere does Kant prove that the meaning of moral claims must be derived from reason alone.”

This is what I was really getting at….Kant argues that in moral matters the will is ideally influenced only by rational considerations, and not by subjective considerations such as one’s emotions. This is because morality involves what is necessary for us to do (e.g., you must be benevolent), and only rational considerations can produce necessity.

Where did he get the idea that only rational considerations can produce necessity? Is emotion not a large part of morality?

I am also not convinced that social necessity is an answer, after all a lot of individual people, and groups of people are extremely unsociable, amoral, cruel etc. and still manage to survive.

Anyway thanks for your thoughts.

Amen-Moses

I'd just like to second that.

Amen-Moses

K

LoopHooligan:

In regards to your rejection of the social necessity of morality, I would point out that it is rare to find a human who is completely antisocial. There may be unsocial groups as you pointed out, but those groups still maintain an internal social order. If the ideas of morality I've been advancing are correct, the small social group is what would have provided the survival benefit for our ancestors. It is only relatively recently that we've grown out of those small groups into villages, cities, states, and nations. Also, the fact that individuals with less than optimal moral drives (for preservation and reproduction) can survive is not surprising. Evolution is a population level phenomenon that is only observable in trends. It doesn't apply to individuals.

I'd like to add that our environment is currently (on an evolutionary scale) in a massive upheaval. We now live in a world where we are becoming increasingly dependent on the global community of people and other organisms. I believe it will be a long time before our moral drives have evolved to efficiently allow us to deal with this new global interdependency.

Starboy

LoopHooligan,

That we are social animals is obvious. Even babies have inherent social skills such as smiling, mimicking and the ability to learn language. Given that we are social animals morals must follow. It is true that there are individuals who are extremely unsocial, but even most mass murderers are charming. Extreme cases are examples of busted people.
Just as people can be busted physically and emotionally, they can be busted socially.

Starboy

Primal

The question depends on your view of human nature, your moral theory and society.

For those of the Objectivist school: No.

For those of the relativist: No.

For utilitarians: Ify.

For virtue theorists: No.

For humanists: Depends.

For those of the deontological school : Yes.

Existentialists and other libertarians: No.

For those who see morality as an aspect of human nature: Yes.

I fall within the last category so I'd say yes. In many ways the question can be akin to asking if reason or logic is a necessity, the issue is so basic that the answer will generally depend on the person's epistemic theory.

Amos

Not obvious to me because the animal man is not a social animal but is a solitary being. It is only because of our human nature that we have become social animals and since out human nature is second to our animal nature we are only social for as long as we are divided between our animal nature and our human condition. The same is true with other animals that display social organization in their survival instinct (instinct is memory of soul).

Amos

But non-social is the opposite to asocial and social combined and all non-social people can be very social/social. To be social we employ our faculty reason and to be non-social we employ our intuition and just be who we are.