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What are Morals?

applecorped

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applecorped
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Mar 8, 2008
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I asked this to another poster because I would like to get different opinions. Unfortunately my question wasn't answered. Are morals inherent? Learned? Do other animals have morals or is it completely a human construct that applies only to the human animal?

Could someone lead a "good" life without morals?

I would say absolutely yes.

What do you think?
 
So there are no universal morals? Different societies would have different morals which would make morals fluid and ever changing based on the society it originated from. So morals are in the eye of the beholder?
 
applecorped (from the other threat) said:
I started another thread because to me morals are an idea and that's it. Morals don't make anyone do or not do anything. I'll continue in the other thread. Feel free to rip me a new one over there.
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Well, I'm not sure how much energy I feel like divulging for this topic split, but I disagree that they are "just" an idea. Ideas are more powerful than some people might think. Entire societies rise and fall based on ideas. Science is nothing without ideas. Just the idea of gravity, inertia, and the size of the world has given us a tremendous amount of things.

applecorped said:
Could someone lead a "good" life without morals?

I would say absolutely yes.
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Could you lead a "good" life without morals? That's a good question. If you led a purely amoral life, that would mean that you don't care about whether an action you are doing is "good" or "bad", and you probably don't really care very much about whether what other people are doing are "good" or "bad" -- to the amoral, "good" and "bad" have no qualification, even a personal qualification.

In a perfectly amoral life, you have no reason, except perhaps fear or the law (or laziness!), to not steal whatever I have, or kill me, or do bad things to me or anything around you. Because "good" and "bad" mean nothing to the amoral subject, therefore the amoral subject does not lead a "good" life, because there is "good" or "bad" to the amoral person.

Essentially, the question is, if you don't have morals, what keeps you from harming others? If "nothing", then that very idea that you lack can very well lead to the idea of you not leading a "good" (aka, moral) life. Leading a "good" life couldn't possibly be your goal. You're amoral, and "good" means nothing to you. If you lead a "good" life, it would be purely a happy accident, and never a result of anything else.

applecorped said:
So there are no universal morals?
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There are universal (or rather, shared across the human race) desires; one important one is the general shared desire to not die, which is usually broken only by a pretty dang small minority.

Different societies would have different morals which would make morals fluid and ever changing based on the society it originated from. So morals are in the eye of the beholder?
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Morals are in the eye of the beholder of society, one could argue. Yet there are logical ways to handle morality, as seen in moral philosophy. The Golden Rule ("Do unto others as you would have done unto you") is a surprisingly popular moral rule, that has had a surprising power to breach different cultures (As Gandhi said, he liked Christianity's Christ, but not so much the Christians).
 
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"Universal" in the sense of existing without people? If so I'd say no. However I think an argument can be made that human behaviour is universal so it would not be surprising if different societies didn't come up with moral codes that are generally quite similar (even if different in the details).
 
I wrote a poem about morality when I was a kid. This will be my only poem, so don't worry.

Morality is the fulcrum of the lever on which we stand
to be elevated by the weight of those we point to
whom have inadequately speculated
about the nature of the unknowable
 
Darat said:
"Universal" in the sense of existing without people? If so I'd say no. However I think an argument can be made that human behaviour is universal so it would not be surprising if different societies didn't come up with moral codes that are generally quite similar (even if different in the details).
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So morals are behaviour based?

By your explanation would you say that other animals then have morals based on their behaviours?
 
There is no such thing as "morals". There are only consequences of actions.
 
I think animals (mammals) do display moral behavior. There's a YouTube video of a bunch of water buffaloes exposing themselves to unnecessary risk to save a young water buffalo, which demonstrates to me a degree of altruism. There was a gorilla who protected a young boy who had fallen into the gorilla pit at the zoo, so it isn't an isolated case.

I don't think I've seen any behavior I'd call "moral" from insects, reptiles, or birds, though that may just mean I've missed something. Maybe ants' and bees' willingness to sacrifice themselves to defend their nurseries is a "moral" behavior too.

I suspect moral behavior is widespread (if not universal) among creatures with brains which are evolved enough to imagine what another creature is feeling. Still, among social creatures, morality can be variable -- if you are raised in a society which values killing, social pressures may override an innate reluctance to kill. Then too, most social groups have different standards for those outside the group, whether that's "It's okay to kill insects" or "It's okay to kill infidels" or "It's okay to kill food."
 
Lonewulf said:
Many of which are consequences placed on you by people around you, many based on moral arguments and reasons.
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What is imposed rather than natural consequences does not change the consequences of an action. Imposed consequences are artificial and may be dire, but without imposition, the actions are morally neutral.
 
jimmygun said:
What is imposed rather than natural consequences does not change the consequences of an action.
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Just because every moral can result in a consequence, doesn't make "natural" consequences and moral-based consequences completely similar to the point of morals being virtually invisible or non-existent.

Imposed consequences are artificial and may be dire, but without imposition, the actions are morally neutral.
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Except that the imposed consequences are also a result of what the self imposes on themselves, and thus are not necessarily always external consequences. For instance, if I had to kill someone or put down an animal, I'd feel pretty bad about it, and guilty if I could have otherwise have prevented it. This is much different than external consequences that do not bring me guilt or any other emotion outside of fear or desiring to avoid those consequences.

Since I assume that most people have a conscience, therefore I can assume that most people also impose consequences on themselves that radically differ from fear or an instinct for self preservation, and thus I can assume that the majority are moral beings. You may be an exception, but that does not mean that morals suddenly cease to exist because you cannot recognize them.
 
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applecorped said:
Figuratively or literally?
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I suppose one could imagine a case where a person is neurologically damaged and cannot have aesthetic reactions and yet is still considered alive. So if I can't go with a caveated literally I'll accept figuratively.

PC
 
Lonewulf said:
Since I assume that most people have a conscience, therefore I can assume that most people also impose consequences on themselves that radically differ from fear or an instinct for self preservation, and thus I can assume that the majority are moral beings. You may be an exception, but that does not mean that morals suddenly cease to exist because you cannot recognize them.
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If you are saying that someone is a moral being because they imposes consequences upon themselves then are you not stating that morals are universal within humans since all humans at some point will impose consequences upon themselves?
 
bokonon said:
I think animals (mammals) do display moral behavior. There's a YouTube video of a bunch of water buffaloes exposing themselves to unnecessary risk to save a young water buffalo, which demonstrates to me a degree of altruism. There was a gorilla who protected a young boy who had fallen into the gorilla pit at the zoo, so it isn't an isolated case.
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I think it's slightly problematic to call such behaviours "moral". Morality, to my mind, requires some capacity for self-reflection; some ability to tell right from wrong in something beyond an instinctual level. People will come to different ideas of what constitutes right and wrong, of course, but that's entirely the point - morals are arrived at by individual or group reflection (something you touch upon in the second half of your post).

That said, I am of course no denying that morals may be anchored in empirical concerns. Just that an empirical concern is not the same thing as a morality.
 
Pretty much what Darat said. No humans, no morals. Its no wonder that certain core values are shared across the world. Human groups need a basic group of rules to work propperly, and these guidelines compose moral or ethical codes. Its almost the same thing regarding the "good" and "evil" notions - good = moral, evil = imoral. I think most if not all societies have moral codes which condemn killings and aggressions without justifications, stealing material goods and a number of restrictions regarding sex (incest and stealing sexual partners). Of course, quite often these "laws" do not apply to the people who belong to another group. They can be robbed, killed, beated, have their women stealed...

Language perhaps would be a relatively good analogy, but I may be wrong.
 
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