the_cave

Just as the current Pope, for example, has begun to do.

Primal

Well youa re entitled to your opinion, but science demonstrates that at least 50 percent of our personality, who we are, is biological/genetic.


Yes but why does society teach this? And how come its absorbed in some people and never in other(sociopaths)? All societies also tend to have some similiar norms generally. It seems to me society is working on an underlying biological component which makes such a task possible. We feel lots of other emotions by semi-social/semi-biolohical conditioing: anger,joy,love,happiness,fear. Are you saying they are all only social constructs? That I only feel fear because I was taught to? Likewise does their being taught, partially, in any way discount them? Do you for example question all your emotions?
It seems to me partially taught or not, our emotional mechanisms are here to stay, and for certain people our moral mechanisms are very strong.

What you are saying is society evolved without any biological component to morality, sorry but that simply seems too unlikely. Both because groups needed morality to function and because individuals needed it to survive in groups. Now it seems that if it was that essential an underlying biological mechanism would have developed, to make moral behavior(in general) more likely.

Dogs,pack cats, chimps etc. Themselves do demonstrate certain norms and customs within groups and towards group members.(The whole alpha male/female groups structure for wolves for example). What is to make you think that more complex societies(humans) would not evolve more complex moral dispositions-both at the cultural and biological level?

Shadowy Man

Reference please.

Lobstrosity

No, I said that humans are social creatures. That's not a definition, that's a comment about humans. If I say "the number six is even," I'm not defining the number six. All I'm doing is setting up an argument, perhaps, for why six might be evenly divisible by two. If you don't think humans are social animals, I feel sorry for you.

Yes, I'm sure it would seem that way to you--you appear to be incredibly narrow-minded.

Here, let me try to make it blatantly obvious to you:

Let's take the hypothetical situation for a minute that everyone in the world has no morals. They all do whatever they want to whomever they want whenever they want. You feel like killing someone, sure, go for it. You want some money, steal your neighbor's goods. Ok, so what's the flip side? Every time someone gets mad at you there's a good chance you'll be killed. You're going to get robbed all the time--the more you have the less likely you're going to be able to keep it because someone else will want it and just take it. Social interaction is impossible. You can't live in a world where you can't trust your neighbors.

The whole point of society is that you're living amongst a group of people you trust not to steal from you and not to harm you. These people rather help you. They provide your food and your resources such that you can do other things. In turn you provide your services to the community and as a group you are able to achieve more than N people all acting independently. Society is beneficial to you as an individual. It is in your best interests that society functions. Since society cannot exist without morals, it is in each individual's best interest to adhere to the moral code of society such that it will function. Do you see this yet? Is this making any sense?

When you don't have implicit trust in your neighbors, society is impossible. You live like animals. Lions don't trust each other. Instead they defend their domains to keep out all other male lions. If humans didn't have morals, we would have to do the same thing. Each individual would have to forcefully fight off every other individual who came close, for that individual would pose a threat. Morals are our way of having trust in others. If we all agree to live by a certain code, we know what behaviors to expect from others. The whole point isn't whether YOU and only you are moral or not, it's whether everyone agrees to be moral. Yes, your impact is negligible. The impact I'm concerned with is the net impact of all of the individuals of society. You need to think outside of yourself, Guillaume. In order to aggregate in a society, everyone in that society must agree on a code of conduct. Some people will break that code of conduct, and when that happens they are either shunned, expelled, or imprisoned by that society. Society cannot function without morals--it's really very simple. You may not comprehend these words because the ideas are somewhat complex, but I assure you what I'm saying makes sense if you think about it.

Perhaps you're a little bit turned off by my use of the word "morals," but I'm not talking about something intangible or belief based. I'm not stressing that morality is "good" and everything else is "evil." I don't place any value in the terms "good" and "evil." When I speak of morality, I'm talking about those very base, quantifiable things which make living with other humans beneficial to you--almost the golden rule. Since you don't want to be killed, you agree that no one in society will kill anyone. Since you don't want your possessions stolen, you agree not to steal. Since if you fall on hard times it would be nice if society got you back on your feet, you might consider it moral to do the same for others. Morals are simply agreeing to put into society what you all hope to get out of it. If the vast majority of members of society do this, it will function optimally for those members. It's a win-win situation. If they don't, people are going to get jacked and things will fall apart. No one wins.

Vorkosigan

:notworthy:

Alonzo Fyfe

This commits the fallacy of division. Even admitting that society as a whole is better off when people adhere to a moral code, it does not follow that each individual in a society is better off adhering to that moral code.

In spite of your ad hominem attacks, the objection raised against you is valid. I have been born into a society that is already behaving according to specific rules and standards. If I should take the money out of my co-worker's desk drawer, this is not going to bring about the total degradation of society. It is true that if everybody did it, society will suffer. But my taking the money out of my co-workers is not going to result in that type of social consequences. In deciding whether or not to take the money, the consequence of "society breaking down into anarchy" simply is not a real-world possibility that I have to worry about.

I agree with you that "what is good or bad for society as a whole" is the best place to look for determining the difference between right and wrong. But I take the objection that logic does not allow one to shift from talking to the good of society as a whole to the good of each indivdidual in that society.

Lobstrosity

I was trying to phrase it simply, but I guess the most accurate statement would be that it is in each individual's best interest when every other individual adheres to the moral standards of society. What this leads to is the majority of the individuals all agreeing to sacrifice their ability to break these rules in order to obtain reasonable assurance that almost no one will break them. In general the individual is better off adhering to the moral code because going against it places him at risk of being ostracized from the community, but yes, an individual such as a thief or a con man or a murderer can achieve personal gain by successfully breaking society's rules without being caught. The following is just an opinion and should carry no substantitive weight, but I think most people have no desire to risk this and actually have some subconsious drive (possibly evolved, who knows) to act in a way that supports society--I think most humans actually like being social, and it is being social that I would argue is primarily facilitated by some base, underlying sense of agreed-upon morality (you naturally assume that people are telling you the general truth, that the won't randomly stab you while you're talking to them, that they're not plotting to steal your wallet, etc).

I'm defining "morals" as the code of ethics that are best for the society's wellbeing. There's nothing that says YOU have to actually be moral, according to this definition. Any individual can do anything he wishes, but of course if everyone did this then you would have anarchy. As a result, rather than risk that your neighbor will take this path that could be detrimental to you, everyone agrees to follow a set of rules and to in general physically enforce the most important of those rules. This is the ultimate benefit of morality...you can safely assume that other members of society will by and large follow these guidelines. If you choose not to and are caught by society, you will be punished or ostracized. That's a risk some individuals will take. Those individuals will not be characterized by others as moral. I'm just giving what can be viewed as an objective definition of morality (which to me is synonomous with ethics), not a personalized one.

The fallacy is taking the path that "it's ok if only I do it because I'm just one person." I'm not sure if it's a defined logical fallacy, but in my mind it should be because the argument applies equally to everyone and thus there's the very real potential that vastly more than one person will perform the action.

And yeah, sometimes I include ad-hominem attacks, but that's not to meant make my arguments any stronger. It's not a logical fallacy because I'm not trying to convey logic with that portion of my post. I'm not saying "you're wrong because you're an idiot," I'm saying "you're wrong and you're an idiot." Part of the reason to post on an online forum is to socially interact, and part of social interaction is expressing emotion. I will do this from time to time, usually depending on the tone of the post to which I am replying--I find that venting can be cathartic.

I never meant to argue that morality should make one more concerned about society than his own wellbeing. I have the utmost respect for the fact that we are all individuals before we are members of some larger conglomoration of humans. Though society aids us, we do the most to aid ourselves. Survival is the name of the game no matter how you slice it...we only live in societies because it aids our survival. Any code of morality I would require to allow first and foremost that a person can do anything--short of aggressively threatening the existence of another individual--to preserve his own existence (that is to say, self defense is fine but if you need a heart transplant, you are not justified in killing someone for it). One should above all else be concerned with his own existence. But this is a given. You don't need "morality" to tell you this. I view morality as something more complex; I view it as the detailed rules one most follow when one wishes to exist in a society. Every organisms is concerned with its own existence, but only social animals place their existence so firmly in the hands of others, so only social animals have this unique need to establish a code to govern their interactions with others.

My take-home message at its simplest is that society cannot function without a code of ethics (a.k.a. morality). Guillaume's claim is that morals/ethics serve no purpose at all. I find this notion ridiculous and that is what I was attempting to respond to.

Primal

References: http://www.sfu.ca/~dant/projects/psy...re_nurture.pdf

http://human-nature.com/articles/shermer.html

Frank Sulloway:


http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/sull...harris_p2.html

Shadowy Man

Thanks Primal. I 'll check it out.

pariah

What the hell are you talking about? If by 'what jesus taught' you mean not killing, stealing, or lying people think those are 'wrong' because society disagrees with them. Society was against these things long before jesus came. People here do not (should not) have morals, but have ethics.