Where does morality come from?

[AngryAmish]

I was reading this article earlier <http://chronicle.com/article/The-Biology-of-Ethics/127789/>. It is a piece about Patricia Churchland who is a neuroscientist and philosopher. Her thrust is morality is determined much the same way our social interactions are determined, and that determines what is acceptable and what is not. Thus philosophy which searches for rules is meaningless because it does not determine what makes our brains feel happy.

Does morality come 1) from God(s) or (2) from our own intuition about what is good or bad?

So what determines your sense or morality? Is it universal? What acts could never be considered moral?

[slackmaster]

1. It seems to be a natural part of human development

http://faculty.plts.edu/gpence/html/kohlberg.htm

[Atman]

2. I order mine online.

It makes it interesting. Never know quite what I'm getting.

.

[KansDem]

3. My take...

Many "believers" will say morality comes from God. I tend to think this is a "quid-pro-quo" arrangement as these folks also believe in an "afterlife." So, in order to get into God's Kingdom, you have to play nice with your fellow humans. It has more to do with your ultimate payoff than with what's good or bad.

As for atheists, I believe morality comes from the belief that we treat each other as we would want to be treated ourselves. And the fact that life is finite. As such we only have one "go round" in life, so we need to get along with each other in this life since it's the only one we'll have.

[Heretofor]

19. Ummm

"the belief that we treat each other as we would want to be treated ourselves"

You DO realize that statement comes from religion, right?

[RaleighNCDUer]

24. No. Religion comes from that idea.

(on edit)

Religion, in fact, is a construct created to find caveats to that idea - Do not kill (unless they don't believe as you do); Do not steal (but taking from the gullible to support the church is not considered stealing); Do not commit adultery (not because it is wrong and harmful to the individuals, but because it messes with the line of paternity and women are property); Do not lie (unless you do it claiming you know what god wants from you and others).

It is the idea that is instinctual - you see it in infants and lower primates. It is the religion that takes advantage of that instinct as a means of social control.

[Heretofor]

25. So...

Then who said it first? Atheists or religious people?

[RaleighNCDUer]

26. See my edited comment, above. nt

[Marr]

4. I'd say what we call morality is just a list of species survival tips for a social primate.

It's completely subjective. Change the environment enough and your society's morality will completely change.

[AngryAmish]

6. My friend we are in agreement

That is why thinking that alien species would be friendly or want to help us is so stupid. We have no idea what their morality is so it is best to avoid them until we can overpower them if need be.

[no_hypocrisy]

5. It comes from at least one person envious of you having more fun that s/he is.

[Solomon]

7. Morality comes from the need to live in a social environment

without killing each other. Human are social animals. Has nothing to do with religion.

[hamsterjill]

8. I'm a Christian, but my morality doesn't come from God.

I was a moral person long before I became a Christian. IMHO, it has a lot to do with upbringing. If a child is taught to treat others as he/she would like to be treated, then the child learns to behave that way.

[valerief]

9. The puppetmasters. To keep us in line and do their bidding. nt

[sakabatou]

10. It comes from society

If morality came from God, and God dictated that raping was moral then it would become moral and be necessary to be good.

[kctim]

11. It comes from

an individual need to control others by dictating they live according to your personal beliefs.

[PeaceNikki]

12. I take a daily pill.

Some days I forget. :blush:

[Uncle Joe]

13. From the universal intelligence that drives life in to increasing levels of complexity via evolution

Peter Railton, a philosophy professor at the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor, agrees. Our intuitions about how to get along with other people may have been shaped by our interactions within small groups (and between small groups). But we don't live in small groups anymore, so we need some procedures through which we leverage our social skills into uncharted areas—and that is what the traditional academic philosophers, whom Churchland mostly rejects, work on. What are our obligations to future generations (concerning climate change, say)? What do we owe poor people on the other side of the globe (whom we might never have heard of, in our evolutionary past)?

Not only are our morals; shaped by our biology, immediate future and environment, but in order for our species to survive they must be increasingly influenced by more abstract considerations of time and location, I believe the Internet will play a growing role in that regard as time and space become more localized.

I believe Churchland has done good work in re: to identifying some of the mechanics of the operation.

Thanks for the thread, AngryAmish.

[AngryAmish]

16. Well I do not think there is an universal intelligence and life is not becoming more complex

Horseshoe crabs are not more complex, they don't need to be. On second thought they probably have a linger genome then they did 100 million years ago due to virus and all that thus making them more complex at a molecular level. But the basic form is the same.

We are here and we have consciousness. I think that is just the breaks. It does not have to be that way. The dinosaurs could still be here but for the big asteroid.

cheers.

[Uncle Joe]

20. Did the dinosaurs become more complex before they were destroyed by the big asteroid?

I believe the answer is yes.

Horseshoe crabs will either become more complex or die out as a species along with planet Earth unless humanity; its' evolutionary descendant or some separate branched more advanced species takes Horseshoe Crabs along for the ride to other planets.

[Codeine]

14. when a mommy morality and a daddy morality love each other very much. . . nt

[Iggo]

15. 2.

[lapislzi]

17. Great question.

Virtually every society has some moral absolutes, such as the incest taboo. I guess it could be argued that some morality is hard-wired. At least for most of us.

As an atheist, I don't need a supernatural being in order to apprehend the difference between right and wrong, although the "sacred" texts offer some good advice on the matter, along with some outright nonsense that may have made sense in historical context, but no longer.

Although I consider myself a moral person (doesn't everyone?), I hold only a few moral absolutes. Treat others as you like to be treated. That pretty much sums it up. Everything flows from there. If it (an action) doesn't meet that moral litmus test, I consider it immoral.

[AngryAmish]

There is a difference between hard wired and a deeply held conviction

Incest is mostly universally taboo but that has been breached (Ptolemaic dynasty) and flexible (many middle easterners marry first cousins). There is good reasons for an incest taboo. But the evidence of hard wiring is scant.

I myself have more than a few moral absolutes, hang-ups and the ilk. But there is some sense in what determines morality is much the same as what determines fashions and fads - people agree upon them amongst the group.

[RaleighNCDUer]

31. Any hard wired trait can be overridded by intellect.

The simple urge for self-preservation is hard-wired into every higher life form, followed closely by the sex drive - and that's taking 'higher life form' down to reptiles and fish.

Yet a soldier will throw himself on a grenade to save his buddies, and people choose celibacy as a life style all the time. If those most basic drives can be overridden, how does a scant few people violating the incest 'taboo' indicate that it is not hardwired?

[bemildred]

18. What is morality for? nt

[seabeyond]

23. lyin, cheatin, stealin, .... it is not only about sex. nt

[Heretofor]

21. My take...

Has always been that either there is a defined right or wrong from a higher Being, or that nothing matters. How could it? What's the point if there is no God? It's about not getting caught.

[surrealAmerican]

30. There is a point, regardless of whether you believe in ...

... any "higher being", and it is this:
your life will be better if you treat the people you live with well.

It really is that simple. We are social creatures. If you treat others badly, they will treat you badly: it's true for humans, monkeys, wolves, meerkats, dolphins, all the other animals that live in groups.

[seabeyond]

22. universal and not about religion. is said morals once and jumped all over by a number

of posters.... all decrying religion. nothing to do with religion.

it is an understanding that some behaviors cause hurt of others or self... at that point for me is the morality issue.

[Tierra_y_Libertad]

27. Considering how flexible it is probably Dunlop Rubber Company.

In Alan Sherman's view morality should be limited to: "Though shalt not stuff 47 tennis balls down thy toilet."

[liberal N proud]

28. I would think it comes from a multitude of things

Experiences, learning, intuition peer pressure and many other forces.

[BOG PERSON]

29. [H]ow did that other “gloomy business,” the consciousness of guilt,

the whole “bad conscience” come into the world?—And with this we turn back to our genealogists of morality. I’ll say it once more—or have I not said anything about it yet?—they are useless. With their own merely “modern” experience extending through only a brief period , with no knowledge of and no desire to know the past, even less a historical instinct, a “second sight”— something necessary at this very point—they nonetheless pursue the history of morality. That must justifiably produce results which have a less than tenuous relationship to the truth. Have these genealogists of morality up to now allowed themselves to dream, even remotely, that, for instance, that major moral principle “guilt” derived its origin from the very materialistic idea “debt” ? Or that punishment developed as a repayment, completely without reference to any assumption about freedom or lack of freedom of the will?—and did so, by contrast, to the point where it always first required a high degree of human development so that the animal “man” began to make those much more primitive distinctions between “intentional,” “negligent,” “accidental,” “responsible,” and their opposites and bring them to bear when meting out punishment? That idea, nowadays so trite, apparently so natural, so unavoidable, which has even had to serve as the explanation how the feeling of justice in general came into existence on earth, “The criminal deserves punishment because he could have acted otherwise,” this idea is, in fact, an extremely late achievement, indeed, a sophisticated form of human judgment and decision making. Anyone who moves this idea back to the beginnings is sticking his coarse fingers inappropriately into the psychology of older humanity. For the most extensive period of human history, punishment was certainly not meted out because people held the instigator of evil responsible for his actions, and thus it was not assumed that only the guilty party should be punished:—it was much more as it still is now when parents punish their children out of anger over some harm they have suffered, anger vented on the perpetrator—but anger restrained and modified through the idea that every injury has some equivalent and that compensation for it could, in fact, be paid out, even if that is through the pain of the perpetrator. Where did this primitive, deeply rooted, and perhaps by now ineradicable idea derive its power, the idea of an equivalence between punishment and pain? I have already given away the answer: in the contractual relationship between creditor and debtor, which is, in general, as ancient as the idea of “legal subject” and which, for its part, refers back to the basic forms of buying, selling, bartering, trading, and exchanging goods.