kctan

Are morals just a set of behaviours which are followed by the majority or is it something else altogether ?

Is there any act which you will uphold no matter under what circumstances eg. killing another person ?

How can you attribute such an act to morality then if its just a behaviour which you will adopt no matter under what circumstances ?

Once that morals are shown as nothing more then just behaviours, how can a theist justify that atheist are without 'morals' ?

Tom Sawyer

IMHO, morality is just a system of behaviours that puts things into categories of 'right' and 'wrong' that is put together by whatever society you are in.

In one society, letting a girl go out and have to live on her own and make her own way in life would be considered an immoral act and a man would be considered a bad person if he had his daughter do that, so he marries her off to a friend of his when she's twelve, so he can ensure that she'll have a good life with lots of babies in a stable household. The man would be considered moral for doing that. In other societies, the friend would be arrested as a child molester and the father would go to jail too and lose custody of all his other children for committing such an immoral act.

Morals are really nothing more than a set of rules that have been developed to allow us to interact with each other in a society, much in the same way that laws are, except that laws are what you have to do and morals are what you should do. They usually coincide quite well, though.

A lot of theists make the claim that morals are based on the commands of god(s) and if you don't follow a god, then you don't follow that god's commands, and therefore cannot be moral. It's a false analogy based on a misinterpretation of what morals are. It's a straw man argument to try and demonize atheists so that they won't have to deal with a reduction in their tithes.

galiel

I agree with the second half of your post. And I don't disagree factually with what you state in the first half. I would merely observe that we can choose to focus on the differences in moral standards between societies, or we can focus on the commonalities. I contend that there are sufficient nearly-universally accepted standards of behavior and ethics to serve as a foundation for consensus. Certainly, if one limits ones review to free peoples, or people free to express their convictions, one can find true universal standards. The UN's Universal Declaration of Human Rights, first proclaimed way back in 1948, and as of 1993 had been reaffirmed and signed by 171 nations. It is not perfect, but it is a start.

<a href="http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/index.htm" target="_blank">http://www.unhchr.ch/udhr/index.htm</a>

[ October 21, 2002: Message edited by: galiel ]</p>

Longbow

They are something else altogether. What you are describing are social norms which are distinct from morals.

Who upholds killing another person? Well, if this is asking what I think it means, then I woudl say that almost all ad hoc rules like "Thou shalt not kill," are contingent on the circumstances one finds themselves in. Morality is supposed to be independent of the agents it applies to, but it can be arbitrarily contingent on circumstances. It is often said that "absolute" morals are not "circumstantial" in this way. This view is pretty much false as far as I can tell unless you define "absolute" specifically to mean that (in which case it applies to practically no moral world view that people actually adopt).

It's kind of ironic that you ask this question. It is probably usually because atheists go around claiming things like this that theists say that atheists are amoral. Morals are not behaviors -- that is is just categorically absurd. Morals are evaluations of behaviors. This whole idea, I think, really just comes out of the fact that people don't really know what morality is about and this is the best they can come up with off the top of their head.

There is a lot more to moral philosophy than that. A lot more is possible in terms of an explanation of the phenomenon of moral dilemmas.

Primal

I see morals as a certain quality of emotions made in response to data, demonstrated to be real by "raw feel".

Kind of like how one feels hate,lust,love one feels "moralistic" in certain situations.

kctan

Originally posted by Longbow:

Social norms are distinct from morals ? Social norms are the 'morals' of a society. A person acting out of social norms are usually considered amoral or eccentric or mentally challenged but how 'moral' is it to think of them in this way just because they act out of social norm ?.

Its not ironic at all. Have you ever count the number of times theists show up here trying to prove or just say that atheist have no morals at all ? I know that morals are just how we judge the behaviours of others but isn't this judging in itself just another behaviour ? This is not something that just came off of the head. Its a bare view of what morality really is & to let people especially some theists wake up to the fact that what they presumed are bestowed by their fairy god is nothing but a behaviour that all of us have.

You can philosophise as much as you want but when exposed, morals are nothing more than behaviours. What are moral dilemmas ? Inability to makeup one's mind regarding a course of action. Eg. Your wife & mother-in-law are drowning & you can only save one, whom do you choose ? (Bad example ? Think about it seriously pls. )

Longbow

It doesn't make sense to speak of society as literally having morals. What such a statement would mean is that the individuals of that society generally held those moral beliefs.

Just as what I personally believe to be true is distinct from what is, in fact, true, so too what is, in fact, moral is distinct from what people believe is moral. So social norms are clearly distinct from morality.

When you say this, are you referring to people acting outside of a social norm? (Or because a certain social norma exists?) Taking it to mean the fomer, then of course those that do not act within social norms are typically ostracized because the social norm (where it is relevant to morality) reflects what most people in that society believes is morally required. So, if you think that someone is acting immorally, it would be rather strnage and inconsistent for you to act any other way than to ostracize them.

But it is certainly possible for a whole society of people to be mistaken, and so create mistaken social norms if that is what you are getting at.

You can philosophize all you want. (And, that is what you are doing, by the way, to make the very contention that morals are behaviors and not ideas.) Certainly moral dilemmas are not just personal dilemmas and they certainly are not just about "how I should proceed right now." Moral dilemmas are just as much about legislators drafting laws and judges resolving disputes between parties they couldn't personally care less about. In fact, it is more about such things as that than it is about some particular person trying to choose a particular course of action for themselves.

But, even if we do look at something like that, this line of reasoning fo yours is exactly what I am talking about when I say the general idea is not very well thought out. You can morally disapprove of an action and still take it, for instance. This is at least, in principle, true and is often what people do claim to do. And, they feel guilty about it afterwards! Choosing your course of action and evaluating a course of action are two different things that can happen quite independently of one another. So, that sort of "common sense" positivistic view of morality really doesn't withstand very much scrutiny at all.

[ October 23, 2002: Message edited by: Longbow ]</p>

Nataraja

Predominantly, they (morals) are constructs, not necessarily requiring theocentric foundations of any kind to occur within any given culture. Whether complex moral constructs are beneficial to a society can be argued from either end. One might argue that frivolous regulatory models provides little more than one more provision for conflict or that a legalistic society is hindered and unready for unexpected incident, etc. One might also argue that lack of structure within a society gives no foundation for growth and development. My opinion is that only minimalistic regulatory models are necessary and that tradition shall fill in any gaps (tradition has been observed to occur in some higher primates).

Longbow

You aren't talking about morality but rather laws, customs or, at best, personal beliefs about morality. The idea of morality is possible. That is, "morality" is conceivable whether people exist or not. I am not in favor of turning justice over to informal private interactions. I am also not in favor of legislating every flakey idea someone has about what they think might be "good".

In order to start creating a justice system that is limited to just justice and that doesn't tyrannically invade everyone's life, allowing everyone an equal right to antagonize everyone else, we have to start taking moral philosophy seriously.

Nataraja

Morality is elemental to the constitution of any effective system of law.

This is precicely what I meant by "minimalistic regualatory models" in my last post.