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Moral/Immoral behavior

1. By "our," I meant me, arcticpenguin, BillyJoe, Lost Sailor, denise, bignickel, and Soapy Sam. First person, plural.

2. I said "cheating" in my list of universal immorals.
 
CurtC said:
1. By "our," I meant me, arcticpenguin, BillyJoe, Lost Sailor, denise, bignickel, and Soapy Sam. First person, plural.

2. I said "cheating" in my list of universal immorals.
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But lots of people cheat (at least on their taxes), so clearly it's not a universal immoral. Lots of people also steal, lie, assault, etc. Are they immoral? You or I might say so. With what authority do we speak?

Also, consider some controversial issues such as abortion, homosexuality, capital punishment and prostitution (just to name a few.) How do you decide if any of these activities are moral or not? Guess? Make it up as you go along? As long as it's legal it's moral? Isn't it possible that two athiests would disagree on the morality of, say, prostitution? Eric Carpenter says he "chooses" to be moral. Ok, what did he choose in regard to prostitution and how does he know it was a moral choice? I don't understand why Randi would be insulted by that line of questioning.

Here's another question: does morality only apply to human Earthlings? In other words, Are these behaviors truly UNIVERSALLY immoral? I think we can all agree that we humans are the only Earthlings that engage in "moral" behavior. Why? Just how smart do you have to be before behaviors are determined to be moral? In other words, given the size of the universe, isn't it possible (or a given) that there is an alien species regularly engaging in what we've described as "universally immoral" behavior? So do we treat them the same way we treat non-human Earthlings that behave immorally and consider them "unworthy of morals?" Does it make a difference if they happen to be smart enough to build what we consider to be cool tools? What authority would we use to classify their behavior?

Tim
 
Rockon said:
I think we can all agree that we humans are the only Earthlings that engage in "moral" behavior. Why? Just how smart do you have to be before behaviors are determined to be moral?
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I think that you think wrong. I mentioned above that man is a social animal. I would guess that any social animal would have codes of behaviour, which could easily be called morals.

As for differences over whether prostitution, abortion, etc are moral, many Christians differ on whether these are moral, so I don't know why you would single atheists out. We are seeing in the news just recently that Christians even differ on whether gambling is immoral.
 
Moral is a label we give a certain type of behaviour.

I think that seperating humans out of the 'rest of the living things' and treating them as special is always a mistake. All living things have behaviours, some are instinctive and some are taught. All living things are interesting in nothing more than survival of their genetic population. Behaviours that are conducive to this will become very succesful. That's why morality is more common than murder.

There is your higher authority. All living things answer to it. Its called evolution.
 
Re: Re: Moral/Immoral behavior

BillyJoe said:
One person's goodness: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.
....Another person's evil: Do unto others and split.
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GW Bush: Do unto others before they do unto you.
 
Denise said:
IMHO, long before there was Christianity, or Islam there were human communities. Human tribes who had to live by rules so as to be successful as a tribe. Gorillas and other primates also live by rules, by social constraints. I think they probably don't believe in a diety. We are social beings and we tend to conform to the rules of our group, it has nothing to do with a god.
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I agree. It's not just primates, either. Look at wolves. Even my goofy little dog follows rules, especially if he is aware that I'm watching.

Human morality is more complex and flexible than the rule-following behavior of other animals (as far as I know), and I expect that this is because of the greater complexity of the human brain and that human capacity for adapting to a wide range of situations.

There are many things that we're not born with. An absolute knowledge of which specific actions are right or wrong for humans is one of those things. My guess is that if it were otherwise, our ancestors would have been less likely to successfully adapt to new situations and survive long enough to reproduce.

Religion may have come about because it makes it easier to get people to behave. That is, I think religion is a tool of morality rather than morality being the creation of religion.
 
NoDeity said:

I agree. It's not just primates, either. Look at wolves. Even my goofy little dog follows rules, especially if he is aware that I'm watching.
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It's not a question of following rules. It's a question of whether or not the rules are moral. Nazis followed rules, right?

[q]Religion may have come about because it makes it easier to get people to behave. That is, I think religion is a tool of morality rather than morality being the creation of religion. [/QUOTE]
Exactly! From a religious perspective, it's God (supposedly) that provides the authority on what is moral or not. In the case of Judaism, it was Moses speaking with the authority of the creator of the universe that "layed down the law," so to speak.

So if you are not religious, where does the authority to establish morality come from? One could say "I choose to be moral," but that statement is meaningless because there is no consistent or authoritative law that defines the word "moral."

BigNickel: By definition, it would be moral to rape if that's how you define morality. (In your example, the authoritative source defines rape as moral.)

JimlinTott: I don't see how evolution provides an authoritative framework for morality. Evolution, as far as I know, only describes the process by which life changes over time. Evolution does not put a value judgement on any behavior.

ArcticPenguin: I'm not trying to "single athiests out." This is not a discussion intened to pit religious people against athiests. It's a discussion about how you define morality. My position is that morality is meaningless without some kind of authority. Either you agree with that or not. If you disagree with that, please describe how you build a moral framework in the absence of authority. Perhaps you can use your own experiences as an example. How do *you* decide what is moral?

Tim
 
So if you are not religious, where does the authority to establish morality come from? One could say "I choose to be moral," but that statement is meaningless because there is no consistent or authoritative law that defines the word "moral."
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If I understand correctly, the objectivists see rational self-interest as an objective basis for morality. Even if there can be no truly objective basis for human morality (can there be? I've not studied it enough and I don't know) and if we then need to adopt or invent a basis for morality, rational self-interest seems like a pretty good one.
 
Rockon said:
It's not a question of following rules. It's a question of whether or not the rules are moral. Nazis followed rules, right?

[q]Religion may have come about because it makes it easier to get people to behave. That is, I think religion is a tool of morality rather than morality being the creation of religion.
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Exactly! From a religious perspective, it's God (supposedly) that provides the authority on what is moral or not. In the case of Judaism, it was Moses speaking with the authority of the creator of the universe that "layed down the law," so to speak.

So if you are not religious, where does the authority to establish morality come from? One could say "I choose to be moral," but that statement is meaningless because there is no consistent or authoritative law that defines the word "moral."

BigNickel: By definition, it would be moral to rape if that's how you define morality. (In your example, the authoritative source defines rape as moral.)

JimlinTott: I don't see how evolution provides an authoritative framework for morality. Evolution, as far as I know, only describes the process by which life changes over time. Evolution does not put a value judgement on any behavior.

ArcticPenguin: I'm not trying to "single athiests out." This is not a discussion intened to pit religious people against athiests. It's a discussion about how you define morality. My position is that morality is meaningless without some kind of authority. Either you agree with that or not. If you disagree with that, please describe how you build a moral framework in the absence of authority. Perhaps you can use your own experiences as an example. How do *you* decide what is moral?
][/QUOTE]
As to what you are trying to do, and what your stance is, it seems to be shifting from time to time. Compare your paragraphs 1 and 4 above. In paragraph 1, you seem to be saying that the "rules" of the Nazis did not constitute a morality. In paragraph 4 you seem to agree with a claim that morality is relative. Take your ground and defend it, I will not waste my time chasing you incircles.
 
arcticpenguin said:

As to what you are trying to do, and what your stance is, it seems to be shifting from time to time. Compare your paragraphs 1 and 4 above. In paragraph 1, you seem to be saying that the "rules" of the Nazis did not constitute a morality. In paragraph 4 you seem to agree with a claim that morality is relative. Take your ground and defend it, I will not waste my time chasing you incircles.
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Don't quibble. It's not like this is a PhD dissertation defense.

The question remains:

How do *you* decide what is moral?

NoDiety: rational self-interest sounds interesting. At least someone put a name on it. Should be worth a look.

Tim
 
I think that moral(morality?) on a basic level is self taught, after you develop a self. Not dependant on religion or higher athourity. That its based on emphaty(Hmm, is that the word I'm after? :)) for others, ie I don't want to do that to him/her/it because I wouldn't want that to happen to me.

As you grow up you pick up more and finer "Don't do that's." with help from others and by yourself and eventually, hopefully you turn out to be a person with good moral ( Both in your eyes and others.).

Also, it's important to think, to be critical about stuff in order to develop a sense of moral. Don't just take things for the truth just because someone says so, or you read it in a book, especially the internet. :P

That said, ( sounds like you wouldn't need anyone, but thats not so. :)) adults, parents and friends and other people are good to have around, to point you in the right direction, to ask stuff and learn, to love, to play with and to live among and with, to disagree with. ;)

Regarding Nazis in the post above I think most of those people was unaware of what was happening. Some was misslead ( lack of critical thinking? Indoctrination (sp?)?). Only a few ( I think and hope.) were really evil ( Iwould say sick and lacked empathy for others.) and ordered murders and had a strange view of things. The latter I don't think had any rules to speak of either, they just made their own rules to break or obey when it suited them.

Different societies have variations of their moral code, but are similar to others because of empathy and social interaction I think.

Does this make any sense at all? Well, I can't explain my view of moral any better in English. It's my second language, so I am sorry for sentence errors and typos.

Flame away :)
 
Rockon said:
It can probably be summed up as "Ayn Rand Rules!"
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Well, I don't think Ayn Rand has the rational self-interest market cornered. I don't see that one has to be an Objectivist in order to practice rational self-interest and not even all Objectivists are fanatical "worshippers" of Ayn Rand (although I think most Objectivists would argue that consistent application of rationally self-interested thought would inevitably lead you to Objectivism).

I don't identify myself as an Objectivist. That's partly just because I'm not much of a joiner. I think Ayn Rand wrote some rather good stuff but I also think she was a bit of a nut.
 
Of course illegality and immorality aren't the same. For example, it's illegal to shoot Sylvia Browne and John Edward, but it's certainly not immoral. :D
 
As far as I can tell, (and I haven't done a ton of reading on it, so I hope to get educated here) there is no way of establishing a moral code without some kind of higher authority.
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A good place to start your research into the topic will be the writing of Immanuel Kant. An internet search on Categorical Imperative will point you in the right direction. Very briefly put, the C.I. instructs us to act in such a way that our actions would become universal law. So if you are planning a murder, you ask yourself, what would happen if everyone were required to murder someone. At that point it is not a matter of asking would that be a good thing or a bad thing, but asking is it logically sound. For instance, lying is immoral because if everyone were required to do it, the words like truth and falsehood would become meaningless. Littering is not immoral because if everyone were required to litter, the world would be very messy, but no words or concept lose their meaning.

There are several corollaries and Kant includes a number of examples in his writings.

You may get more responses if you move the thread to Philosophy.
 
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