Which morals could be considered universal and applicable? - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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For discussion of moral and ethical issues.
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#13809242
I always am curious on how many concepts that are socially constructed are considered universal and how many are really cultural mores and vary according to cultural values---is morality universal in some ways? Or is morality subject to only the society specifically requiring it?

I think morality depends on a variety of concepts. Language, culture, context, religion, circumstances, socioeconomic status, age, sex, ethnic identity. In fact, moral values are quite complex if one examines it.

For example, in one culture, being honest and truthful, is a great virtue. But applied to what situation? If a good friend's taste is terrible and you lie about what you think is something very ugly and not aesthetic but to spare your friend's feelings you lie.....are you being immoral? Or are you being moral for protecting the feelings of your friend even if you tell a fib to make her or him feel good?

Is it moral to get a divorce if you feel the relationship is not working anymore? But your husband or wife did not really do anything to provoke the divorce?

What about moral relativity? What is acceptable in one culture or society is seen as immoral behavior in another?

Which are your personal moral codes and why do you hold them? Please explain.
#13809249
There are a number of moral codes that are universal; usually predicated on human survival mechanism -- all societies reject murder, for example (at least within the confines of a given community's circle of loyalty). Incest at the first level of consanguinity is another no-no (cousin-fucking is accepted throughout most of the world, but it notably carries much less risk of genetic decay).
#13809294
Hey House. :D

Not seen you around these parts in a while.

I'll get to answering Tainari's question in a moment, but with regard to your analysis I too would conclude that it is about survivability, but also expediency.

'Societies' may reject murder, but groups within society - and groups that may however delusionally aspire to replace society - have no problem with it on the grounds of expediency. Thus, hardened Communists are quite happy to contemplate mass murder if it furthers the cause of their revolution. White supremacists would cheerfully contemplate mass murder if it eradicated non-whites, and so on.

As for incest, you're right, but a disproportionately high degree of importance being placed on preservation of bloodlines is a disturbing feature of some groups.

Turning to Tainari's question, it is something that has vexed me for many years, but for a very specific reason. I was born, christened and confirmed a Roman Catholic and was taken to church every Sunday - and mostly educated in Roman Catholic schools - until I was in my early teens. When I rebelled, it was because I had got the first uncomfortable inklings that I had been and continued to be...indoctrinated. Those feelings continue to this day, thirty years on.

So, my morality is firmly grounded in the teachings of Christ, but I'm not a practising Christian and I cannot shake the idea that I only believe in Christian morality because I was helplessly brainwashed as a child. Being motivated by goodwill toward others and 'loving my neighour as myself', feels fundamentally right...but does it only feel right because of my early childhood experiences?
#13809308
Cartertonian wrote:Hey House.

Not seen you around these parts in a while.

Nice seeing you too. :) I'd been hanging around typology forums lately, but recent events have rekindled my interest in politics -- and ultimately boredom pushed me back.

Cartertonian wrote:'Societies' may reject murder, but groups within society - and groups that may however delusionally aspire to replace society - have no problem with it on the grounds of expediency. Thus, hardened Communists are quite happy to contemplate mass murder if it furthers the cause of their revolution. White supremacists would cheerfully contemplate mass murder if it eradicated non-whites, and so on.

The machinery of the state has historically been allowed to hold the monopoly over the use of force, first because society implicitly understands that such centralization is needed for society to function, and second because government by default consists of whomever's powerful enough to yield that monopoly (who has the guns makes the rules and so on). Under the first allowance, the government is given power to maintain control through lethal force. Under the second, the disclaimer I made about in-group loyalty (man is a tribal animal) stands -- the agents of the state may not feel responsible for the people in their charge. Tribal thinking is also behind ethnic cleansing, which is really older than fucking dirt. Skinheads just pop up because they're the most recent example; no one really cares about King Leopold having near-exterminated the Congo, and insane African dictators doing the same over the decades/centuries.

As for incest, you're right, but a disproportionately high degree of importance being placed on preservation of bloodlines is a disturbing feature of some groups.

As I said, first level of consanguinity. Beyond the third, the risk of genetic malformation is roughly equivalent to breeding with any random stranger.
#13809314
Dr House wrote:all societies reject murder,

What do you mean by the term murder? I presume that you mean immoral killing. Are you therefore saying that all societies consider immoral killing to be immoral? ;)
#13809339
I believe the answers to this type of question can be easily resolved by refining the semantics of moral language. First let us establish a definition of morality – moral principles are those guiding ethical interpersonal-conflict regulation. Moral principles are a man-made construct, they are not divinely inspired or enforced by mysterious cosmological forces. Even if you believe in God, you must also believe that God’s law is different from man’s law, and we have very little access to His moral beliefs. Furthermore, no-one can ever truly be held morally responsible for their actions because human beings do not transcend the laws of causal determinism, even if they have a form of individual autonomy over moral conduct that is not compelled, merely caused I do not see how they could be held morally responsible. These concepts of morality exist to help aid human's in determining proper(moral) conduct - and possessing this knowledge itself may be a 'cause' which determines our future moral conduct.

First, simple subjectivism is...simple.

Because ethical subjectivists, who believe that the truth conditions for moral ‘statements’ are determined by personal belief, cannot account for disagreement where two conflicting arguments are both 'true' and yet simultaneously both false. And what about infallibility, where someone changes their mind?

These problems, which are to do with the context of logical operators since these ‘statements’ cannot fit into contexts involving disjunction, conjunction and so forth, are solved by emotivists who argue that moral judgments are irrational expressions of personal belief and emotional intuition. This is still plainly false because it is easily established that all values (including moral values) must be established by some form of reason that is relevant non-moral fact informing the personal belief: and because emotivists give such a poor account of reason, it is clearly irrational. Using non-moral facts in this way is not deriving an 'ought' from an 'is' because these are merely reasons for rather than entailing identical semantic definitions.

Similarly false is nihilism, which supposes that moral facts do not exist, because as we have established, moral judgments must exist, they must be either true or false therefore and must be fully informed by non-moral facts. So this raises the question of how we can determine a true moral code.

These meta-ethical beliefs are certainly up for dispute, but I believe that there must be a true, rationally informed moral code even if we cannot – with the limited scope of the human brain – ever determine these principles and determining this is found in ethical consistency. A principle, such as murder, that cannot be willed by a moral agent universally is not ethically consistent. It has not been informed by all non-moral facts – such as the outcome (the pain or suffering induced by the victim and the victim’s family), whether the moral agent would place himself in his victims shoes, and so forth. It is not a universalisable principle. This is Immanuel Kant’s categorical imperative.

Wolfman wrote:Thank you for asking the most fundamental question to all meta-ethical debate. There is no answer. There will never be an wholly accepted answer.


Then how is it you and I could disagree about moral principles?

Dr House wrote:There are a number of moral codes that are universal...all societies reject murder, for example


Plainly false. Consensus cannot establish the truth conditions of a statement.

For example, does the majority believing 2+2=5 make the equation true?
Last edited by Sceptic on 08 Oct 2011 12:00, edited 3 times in total.
#13809364
Sceptic wrote:Plainly false. Consensus cannot establish the truth conditions of a statement.

A moral code is neither true nor false, as morality cannot be anything else but subjective, either to individuals or to groups. Consensus morality refers to the moral conditions accepted by the majority of people within a community, and protected and defended by it. I consider these more important than individual morality, because they have arisen over time to optimize the chances of success of society, by establishing social controls against irresponsible and potentially destructive behavior (to self or others).

Of course, since you've in the same post rejected moral subjectivism, let's examine your argument.

Sceptic wrote:Because ethical subjectivists, who believe that the truth conditions for moral ‘statements’ are determined by personal belief, cannot account for disagreement where two conflicting arguments are both 'true' and yet simultaneously both false.

It's a simple matter of perspective. Morality is neither true nor false, precisely because it is subjective. It isn't subject to logical analysis, and cannot be determined to be correct by logical litmus tests, except by stating "if X then Y and Y is wrong," which forever begs the question of why Y is wrong. So quite simply, morality is true... to those who hold it to be true.

Sceptic wrote:These problems, which are to do with the context of logical operators since these ‘statements’ cannot fit into contexts involving disjunction, conjunction and so forth, are solved by emotivists who argue that moral judgments are irrational expressions of personal belief and emotional intuition. This is still plainly false because it is easily established that all values (including moral values) must be established by some form of reason that is relevant non-moral fact informing the personal belief: and because emotivists give such a poor account of reason, it is clearly irrational.

There's absolutely no reason why morality should be backed up by logical reasoning, and at the very root of it, it can't be backed by logical reasoning -- you have to state a preference somewhere in the reasoning chain. If you, for example, state that capitalism is wrong because it oppresses the poor (debatable to say the least but let's run with it), you have stated an explicit preference for the poor to not be oppressed. And if you want to follow that logically, you have to state why you don't want the poor oppressed. Otherwise it's, well, subjective.

So as you can see, moral subjectivism isn't quite that simple. ;)
#13809372
Dr House wrote:A moral code is neither true nor false, as morality cannot be anything else but subjective, either to individuals or to groups. Consensus morality refers to the moral conditions accepted by the majority of people within a community, and protected and defended by it. I consider these more important than individual morality, because they have arisen over time to optimize the chances of success of society, by establishing social controls against irresponsible and potentially destructive behavior (to self or others).


Ok, but assuming ethical subjectivism is true, your original argument was that these moral principles (such as murder) could be true because there was consensus. I believe there is a term for this: argumentum ad populum.

It's a simple matter of perspective. Morality is neither true nor false, precisely because it is subjective. It isn't subject to logical analysis, and cannot be determined to be correct by logical litmus tests, except by stating "if X then Y and Y is wrong," which forever begs the question of why Y is wrong. So quite simply, morality is true... to those who hold it to be true.


All statements as far as I am aware must be true, false or probable (it is never suggested that moral judgements could be probable and this is the domain of fuzzy logic in any case). Expressions, on the other hand are not statements and therefore subject to personal taste. To state 'abortion is immoral', for example, would be the equivalent of stating 'eugh! abortion'. Only in this case could the sentence be neither true nor false. I have expressed my objections to this stance, which regards moral judgements as expressions of emotional intuition known as emotivism: the stance cannot account for reason informing moral judgement.

I will not make any pretences that I could possibly know what non-moral facts could possibly inform a moral judgement but there must, psychologically, always be a reason for believing x to be true, surely? The psycho-analyst, Freud gave compelling subconscious instincts which could motivate conscious desires, for example. This could be incorporated into reasons for.

Alternatively truth conditions for morality, could be as you suggested yourself earlier the promotion of species survival. In either case, I have epistemological scepticism with regards to the attainment of moral knowledge, but I believe it can exist independently of the human mind by laws of rationality.

you have to state a preference somewhere in the reasoning chain


Yes but there is no reason why values (lets call preferences values) cannot be informed by non-moral fact. In fact to have a value in the first place, you must have a reason for believing such and this was James Rachel's criticism against emotivism.
#13809431
Morality has a natural basis. Moral Relativity is what people invented when they could no longer see that obvious fact. People don't invent morals - people were invented with morals. Children understand this stuff, religions understand this stuff. Contemporary political minded atheists can't see anything even when you wave your hand in front of them.

Would you feel bad about murdering someone? If feeling bad due to that murder polluted your whole life and destroyed your potential and drove you to suicide would you still call it a neutral thing without any real source?

Try The Basis of Morality by Schopenhauer. It's a very easy concept. The reason we even talk about subjectivity in morality isn't because people have differing opinions - people have differing opinions about hair styles, not morals - but because we're talking about how our actions feel and what consequences are natural and how bad (or good) a situation feels compared to other feelings. It may be difficult to pin down the numerical degree one action is worse than another (situations are not entirely and immediately transparent) but that a thing is wrong is obvious in a way that is not controversial at all, it feels wrong because it is, even if you can't figure out why.
#13809448
Science can help here: a lot of research has been done on intelligence ans it turns out that on average men are no more intelligent than women (men have more outlyers though: more geniuses and more dumbasses). So this is a universal truth one can use to formulate a law stating that women should not be barred from education or any mental work. The same could be said for gays and people of different ethnicities (with the additional observation that their average strength is not less either)

One doesn't even need science, just common sense to figure out that the wealth of ones parents doesn't correspond to ones abilities, so this takes care of aristocracy.

The golden rule (reciprocity of behaviour, whih we can use because of the observations made above) eliminates murder, rape, stealing, etc...
#13809453
You're talking politics and rights...

...Rather must this be something that requires but little reflection, and still less abstraction and complicated synthesis ; something that, independent of the training of the understanding, speaks to every one, even to the rudest, a something resting simply on intuitive perception, and forcing its way home as a direct emanation from the reality of things... virtue is nature's work and cannot be inculcated.


The central fact:

"we perceive the remoter consequences which our conduct has for others"

The Golden rule isn't an imposed law, it's a warning about being ignorant about your own well-being which you would harm in the act of harming.
#13809482
Strikes me that morals are at least subjectively universal. If you think something is good, it doesn't suddenly become neutral/bad just because others hold that view. But your question is really whether moral thinking requires us to view a thing as good. There are quite a few things that are impossible to view as evil (e.g. respect or kindness), but there are no 'applications' i.e. actions that fit the bill. I think action doesn't give us enough information - we instinctively want to fill in the characters involved - why was the action performed, what did the recipient think about it, and was the recipient moral. Cultural/geographic sensitivity creeps in with all these variables because varying interpretations necessarily exist of ech action, and perhaps also because we must appoint authorities to deal with the question of when virtue and motive come into the equation with their attendant vagueries, and when actions will be proscribed regardless of virtue/motive.

Sceptic wrote:because it is easily established that all values (including moral values) must be established by some form of reason that is relevant non-moral fact informing the personal belief: and because emotivists give such a poor account of reason, it is clearly irrational.
I think you may that the wrong way round. Moral impulses clearly come first (when I've done evil things I've never slowly calculated its evilness :) I simply apprehend certain things and then feel guilty), and then reason (necessarily) steps in to turn them into rules.
#13809487
Does morality and justice go hand in hand? Or is morality not related to justice. For example laws change and are abolished or established but why they come about has to do with popular moral beliefs in the citizens? Yes or no?
#13809559
No moral truths can be separated from their historical context. All of them are subjective and irrational.

The only paradigm that makes any sense to me at least is one that seeks to maximize the quality of human civilization. Still, this is ultimately arbitrary. One could devise a system that seeks to maximize negative liberty, for example; this would be as arbitrary as my own.
#13809570
Andropov wrote:No moral truths can be separated from their historical context. All of them are subjective and irrational.


I disagree: for example, it can be shown objectively (through scientific research) that the average woman will do just as good a job at being an office clerk as the average man. So allowing women to do the same office jobs as men is not irrational or a subjective choice.

It's really a shame when philosophers with no background in the exact sciences start making unwarranted generalizations (like "all -insert term here- is subjective") that any scientist could easily prove to be wrong. One can pander all one likes in a cave but if one doesn't go out into the real world and test one's ideas one will learn nothing (in a cave one can devise all sorts of theories but in the end only one of them can be true and one will never know which until one does an experiment in the real world).
#13809617
I don't see you trying to understand what I'm saying.

Morals aren't human inventions. It'd be more accurate to say that humans are moral inventions. The best we can hope for from our minds is that they don't trick us into doing something stupid, or let us attempt to excuse something wrong.

The basis of morality is not arbitrary at all; it is that we have to live with ourselves and we feel what others feel. It is plain self-interest that makes a moral person and the proof of a society's virtue is their fellowship with each other and with the rest of the world. Without some virtues even trade would be impossible.

...some weird kind of lego model of humans; it says we have no incentive to be good other than that someone told us to or threatens us... Well, sure, that someone is our own nature and the fact that some things hurt and hurt is a lot harder to live with than say peace of mind.
#13809621
Sceptic wrote:Ok, but assuming ethical subjectivism is true, your original argument was that these moral principles (such as murder) could be true because there was consensus.

They're true to society, which means most people hold to them, they're codified into society's rules and enforced, and get transmitted throughout society -- which makes them as close to universal as one can get -- especially as universal mores are almost always borne of instinct.

Yes but there is no reason why values (lets call preferences values) cannot be informed by non-moral fact. In fact to have a value in the first place, you must have a reason for believing such and this was James Rachel's criticism against emotivism.

Naturally, but what I'm getting at is that no matter how layered in reasoning your beliefs are, the basic root of them invariably appeals to emotional motivation. There's no escaping that, because logic is incapable of making judgment calls. All that logical analysis can do is lay out exactly how the world works and what the consequences thereof are -- whether these are positive or negative always depend on the observer.
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