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Morality - Part Two: Needs and Moral Principles
Dec. 7th, 2006 | 02:31 pm
Is morality absolute or relativistic?
Morality can be broken down into several components: needs/desires, moral principles, moral codes, moral awareness, and practical morality.
Without a need or desire, there is no impulse to choose, and no need for a morality to govern that choice. What morality is needed for someone to decide to use their hands? The relevance of the moral principle is dependent on the strength of the need or desire it governs. Note that at this point needs or desires are not good or bad, nor do they have any relation to each other, nor are there any choices or situations involved. Some strong needs which have given rise to moral principles are: sex, food, shelter, love, hate, property, power, acquisitiveness, security, freedom.
A moral principle is the basic judgement governing good and bad behavior. In order to be a moral principle, it must be 1) arise from a need or desire, 2) be recognized by all cultures and times, 3) directly affect standards for both personal and social behavior, 4) be in conflict with other moral principles.
For example:
1) "people should live without breathing" is not a moral principle. It is based on no human need or desire. "people should be content with what they have" is based on desire.
2) "women's faces should be covered" is not a moral principle. It is not recognized by all cultures and times. 'Recognized' does not mean followed by all cultures and times, but that it must be recognizable universally as a topic of moral debate. "murder is wrong" is a moral principle.
3) "people should think before they speak" is not a moral principle. Although it may have limited effect on some personal behavior, it does not affect standards for personal and social behavior. "property should be respected" is a moral principle.
4) "people should do the best they can" is not a moral principle. It responds to a need, it is universal, it affects standards for behavior, but it is not in conflict with any other moral principle. "people should love and care for their children" is a moral principle.
Moral principles do not give any instructions on how to achieve a certain end; they define the end to be achieved. All moral principles point to a desired state of affairs. They address a need or desire and indicate in what way behavior based on that need or desire would be good or bad.
This introduces the concepts of relative and absolute. What is meant by good and bad, and is there any absolute guide to what is good and bad?
First, good and bad are not single points; things are not simply good or bad, they are by necessity degrees of good and bad in relation to each other. Without the ability to rank relative strengths of good and bad, moral principles, which are always in conflict, have no meaning. If it is possible to be entirely content, entirely loving, entirely harmless, entirely chaste, entirely alive, and entirely happy, all at the same time, with all of your needs and desires met, then there is no need for morality. Morality is the act of ordering what is good and bad, according to the strength, or importance, of each principle. The strength (not the goodness) of the principle is dependent on the strength of the need it is based on.
For example, one moral principle might be that it is good to provide for your children materially. However, the moral goodness of providing your daughter with a new toy may be less than the moral goodness of spending more time with her.
On more serious levels, it often leads to situational ethics: the moral principle of preserving innocent human life may cause an immoral act, for instance killing. Despite the bad reputation, situational ethics do not imply moral relativism, nor are they immoral; they are the inevitable result of moral tension and must be applied to moral principles if any choice is to be made. In such cases the choice is dependent on the conflict of two (or more) moral principles in a given situation and the resolution remains the same regardless of who is in the situation, or what the consequences are. If an evil action (for example, killing) is taken, it is because refusing that action (allowing innocent people to be killed) is worse. It does not change the moral principles involved; killing does not suddenly become a good thing.
Human beings are, of course, quite capable of rationalizing moral principles, but that belongs to a later section of this essay.
Moral relativism arises when the moral principles themselves are considered arbitrary, when there is no objective good or bad, only random moral principles developed in a cultural setting.
The main problem with this idea of morality is that moral principles are not random. They are responses to human needs and desires, which are demonstrably universal, that is to say absolute. If moral principles were random, there could be no communication of morality across cultures. But there is. The best illustration of this is not philosophical or even moral; it is the universally recognizable language of con men, conquerors, and self-justification. "We are here to take everything you have, rape your women, kill your children, and spit in your faces." Who would answer, "hooray, that is good"? Instead, there is a universal tendency to focus on underlying needs and desires (such as greed) and justify them in terms of moral principles (this is really good, if you look at it right).
This brings up an interesting point. When speaking of moral absolutism, it is not possible to speak of unbreakable moral laws. A moral principle, by definition, addresses a choice; without a choice it is not a moral principle. There is no way to point to a universal practice and say, "See, everyone does this and agrees that it is good. Therefore, it is a moral absolute." People act against their own moral principles as well as those of other people. When speaking of moral absolutes, it is necessary to speak of a moral reality, independent of opinion.
This absolute morality exists if one foundational idea is accepted: that life is a good thing.
If life is not good, then there is no point to morality, because there is only one choice to make: to die. If life is bad, it doesn't matter where on the scale of bad things it falls. Any decision that life is better than death (i.e., good in comparison with death) will work as well as the decision that life is good, because anyone who is alive must continue to make choices. Anyone who has made the choice to die can be safely ignored; they have nothing further to say about morality.
Given the choice to live, moral principles can be ranked: good is what continues to make life better than death. One of the interesting paradoxes here is that it doesn't have to be the life of an individual, nor does it have to be for all time; life is good as a moral principle retains tension and conflict with other moral principles. An individual may decide that the lives of other individuals are better than the deaths of other individuals, even at the cost of his own; a group of people may put their lives at risk for one individual's life; and if good is what makes life better than death, it is possible to make choices that lead to a life which is better than death for a short time rather than to a life worse than death for a long time.
All other moral principles are dependent on the person deciding to be alive to make choices. As a moral principle, life is good is not dependent on opinion, because everyone capable of exercising an opinion has agreed with this moral principle, consciously or not. This makes it a standard against which all other moral principles can be measured. Does any one moral principle make life better? For whom, and how long, and at what cost? The ethical dilemmas which result from this aren't simple and many answers have been proposed and argued.
It is important to keep in mind that this does not mean that the best answer to any dilemma has yet been discovered, or that it ever will be. It doesn't mean that every possible dilemma has been faced. It doesn't even mean that people have come to an agreement about which moral principles are useful and which are not, or that morality has progressed or will progress toward an ultimate perfection. It is also important not to oversimplify human actions. People are interdependent, and people are empathic, capable of abstract thought, and the needs and desires on which moral principles are built are not limited to material needs or simplistic desires.
Some religions argue that there cannot be absolute morality without a god who gives absolute morality. Even if absolute morality has been given by a god, deciding which god and moral system is correct is still only a human opinion, granting no more authority over other cultures and opinions than moral relativism. Also, if absolute morality is given by god, then there can be no ultimate argument or proof that one god's morality is better than another's, because it is either a matter of faith, or the god is irrelevant.
For example, take the moral stance that homosexuality is wrong. Given that this is a religious tenet, how can people who are not of the same religion be convinced to accept this moral principle? Either they must be converted to that religion and so accept its moral tenets (basing their morality on faith) or they must be convinced that homosexuality is bad (making it irrelevant whether or not it is part of their religion). An example of a moral principle which is both part of most faiths and accepted by most societies would be murder is wrong. People who do not believe in god believe that murder is good cannot be accepted as a moral principle.
Or to put it another way, if absolute morality exists it must be comprehensible to man; there is no morality without humans to be moral or immoral. If it is logical, comprehensible - if 'bad' and 'good' have meanings which people can recognize - then following that morality is independent of faith; people will follow it (if at all) because it is good, regardless of whether or not they believe in god. If it is incomprehensible, then it is useless as morality. It is possible for absolute morality to come from god, but if so, then it does not take faith to recognize it if it has value, because it is explicable outside the religious context.
Morality can be broken down into several components: needs/desires, moral principles, moral codes, moral awareness, and practical morality.
Without a need or desire, there is no impulse to choose, and no need for a morality to govern that choice. What morality is needed for someone to decide to use their hands? The relevance of the moral principle is dependent on the strength of the need or desire it governs. Note that at this point needs or desires are not good or bad, nor do they have any relation to each other, nor are there any choices or situations involved. Some strong needs which have given rise to moral principles are: sex, food, shelter, love, hate, property, power, acquisitiveness, security, freedom.
A moral principle is the basic judgement governing good and bad behavior. In order to be a moral principle, it must be 1) arise from a need or desire, 2) be recognized by all cultures and times, 3) directly affect standards for both personal and social behavior, 4) be in conflict with other moral principles.
For example:
1) "people should live without breathing" is not a moral principle. It is based on no human need or desire. "people should be content with what they have" is based on desire.
2) "women's faces should be covered" is not a moral principle. It is not recognized by all cultures and times. 'Recognized' does not mean followed by all cultures and times, but that it must be recognizable universally as a topic of moral debate. "murder is wrong" is a moral principle.
3) "people should think before they speak" is not a moral principle. Although it may have limited effect on some personal behavior, it does not affect standards for personal and social behavior. "property should be respected" is a moral principle.
4) "people should do the best they can" is not a moral principle. It responds to a need, it is universal, it affects standards for behavior, but it is not in conflict with any other moral principle. "people should love and care for their children" is a moral principle.
Moral principles do not give any instructions on how to achieve a certain end; they define the end to be achieved. All moral principles point to a desired state of affairs. They address a need or desire and indicate in what way behavior based on that need or desire would be good or bad.
This introduces the concepts of relative and absolute. What is meant by good and bad, and is there any absolute guide to what is good and bad?
First, good and bad are not single points; things are not simply good or bad, they are by necessity degrees of good and bad in relation to each other. Without the ability to rank relative strengths of good and bad, moral principles, which are always in conflict, have no meaning. If it is possible to be entirely content, entirely loving, entirely harmless, entirely chaste, entirely alive, and entirely happy, all at the same time, with all of your needs and desires met, then there is no need for morality. Morality is the act of ordering what is good and bad, according to the strength, or importance, of each principle. The strength (not the goodness) of the principle is dependent on the strength of the need it is based on.
For example, one moral principle might be that it is good to provide for your children materially. However, the moral goodness of providing your daughter with a new toy may be less than the moral goodness of spending more time with her.
On more serious levels, it often leads to situational ethics: the moral principle of preserving innocent human life may cause an immoral act, for instance killing. Despite the bad reputation, situational ethics do not imply moral relativism, nor are they immoral; they are the inevitable result of moral tension and must be applied to moral principles if any choice is to be made. In such cases the choice is dependent on the conflict of two (or more) moral principles in a given situation and the resolution remains the same regardless of who is in the situation, or what the consequences are. If an evil action (for example, killing) is taken, it is because refusing that action (allowing innocent people to be killed) is worse. It does not change the moral principles involved; killing does not suddenly become a good thing.
Human beings are, of course, quite capable of rationalizing moral principles, but that belongs to a later section of this essay.
Moral relativism arises when the moral principles themselves are considered arbitrary, when there is no objective good or bad, only random moral principles developed in a cultural setting.
The main problem with this idea of morality is that moral principles are not random. They are responses to human needs and desires, which are demonstrably universal, that is to say absolute. If moral principles were random, there could be no communication of morality across cultures. But there is. The best illustration of this is not philosophical or even moral; it is the universally recognizable language of con men, conquerors, and self-justification. "We are here to take everything you have, rape your women, kill your children, and spit in your faces." Who would answer, "hooray, that is good"? Instead, there is a universal tendency to focus on underlying needs and desires (such as greed) and justify them in terms of moral principles (this is really good, if you look at it right).
This brings up an interesting point. When speaking of moral absolutism, it is not possible to speak of unbreakable moral laws. A moral principle, by definition, addresses a choice; without a choice it is not a moral principle. There is no way to point to a universal practice and say, "See, everyone does this and agrees that it is good. Therefore, it is a moral absolute." People act against their own moral principles as well as those of other people. When speaking of moral absolutes, it is necessary to speak of a moral reality, independent of opinion.
This absolute morality exists if one foundational idea is accepted: that life is a good thing.
If life is not good, then there is no point to morality, because there is only one choice to make: to die. If life is bad, it doesn't matter where on the scale of bad things it falls. Any decision that life is better than death (i.e., good in comparison with death) will work as well as the decision that life is good, because anyone who is alive must continue to make choices. Anyone who has made the choice to die can be safely ignored; they have nothing further to say about morality.
Given the choice to live, moral principles can be ranked: good is what continues to make life better than death. One of the interesting paradoxes here is that it doesn't have to be the life of an individual, nor does it have to be for all time; life is good as a moral principle retains tension and conflict with other moral principles. An individual may decide that the lives of other individuals are better than the deaths of other individuals, even at the cost of his own; a group of people may put their lives at risk for one individual's life; and if good is what makes life better than death, it is possible to make choices that lead to a life which is better than death for a short time rather than to a life worse than death for a long time.
All other moral principles are dependent on the person deciding to be alive to make choices. As a moral principle, life is good is not dependent on opinion, because everyone capable of exercising an opinion has agreed with this moral principle, consciously or not. This makes it a standard against which all other moral principles can be measured. Does any one moral principle make life better? For whom, and how long, and at what cost? The ethical dilemmas which result from this aren't simple and many answers have been proposed and argued.
It is important to keep in mind that this does not mean that the best answer to any dilemma has yet been discovered, or that it ever will be. It doesn't mean that every possible dilemma has been faced. It doesn't even mean that people have come to an agreement about which moral principles are useful and which are not, or that morality has progressed or will progress toward an ultimate perfection. It is also important not to oversimplify human actions. People are interdependent, and people are empathic, capable of abstract thought, and the needs and desires on which moral principles are built are not limited to material needs or simplistic desires.
Some religions argue that there cannot be absolute morality without a god who gives absolute morality. Even if absolute morality has been given by a god, deciding which god and moral system is correct is still only a human opinion, granting no more authority over other cultures and opinions than moral relativism. Also, if absolute morality is given by god, then there can be no ultimate argument or proof that one god's morality is better than another's, because it is either a matter of faith, or the god is irrelevant.
For example, take the moral stance that homosexuality is wrong. Given that this is a religious tenet, how can people who are not of the same religion be convinced to accept this moral principle? Either they must be converted to that religion and so accept its moral tenets (basing their morality on faith) or they must be convinced that homosexuality is bad (making it irrelevant whether or not it is part of their religion). An example of a moral principle which is both part of most faiths and accepted by most societies would be murder is wrong. People who do not believe in god believe that murder is good cannot be accepted as a moral principle.
Or to put it another way, if absolute morality exists it must be comprehensible to man; there is no morality without humans to be moral or immoral. If it is logical, comprehensible - if 'bad' and 'good' have meanings which people can recognize - then following that morality is independent of faith; people will follow it (if at all) because it is good, regardless of whether or not they believe in god. If it is incomprehensible, then it is useless as morality. It is possible for absolute morality to come from god, but if so, then it does not take faith to recognize it if it has value, because it is explicable outside the religious context.
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Morality - Part I: Definition and Purpose
Dec. 7th, 2006 | 11:01 am
Morality
noun [C or U]
a personal or social set of standards for good or bad behaviour and character, or the quality of being right, honest or acceptable.
Ethics
What is morality?
It is what is used to decide what is good and bad, it is the standards applied to human behavior. It is restricted to human behavior because only humans (that we know of) have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and to communicate and codify the distinction in abstract terms. Without abstract thought (the ability to consider consequences), there is no meaningful choice. Without choice, there is no right or wrong. An avalanche has no morality.
What is the purpose of morality?
There are two ways in which morality is used: personal, and interactive. That is, there is the individual, private exercise of an ethical system, and there are the morals of interaction between two or more people. Personal morals are applicable to a person living alone on a desert island and to persons living in crowds; Social morals govern the behavior of individuals within a group and the behavior of individuals as a group.
The purpose of personal morals is identity. A person's personality is based on his choices and all choices are based on moral principles. More particularly, all choices are based on a hierarchy of personal moral principles. A person who decides whether or not to eat is facing a host of principles: why does she eat? What price is she paying in order to eat, and does that price outweigh her reason for eating? Most of the time the answer is easy and unconscious. In response to a need (hunger), a person eats in order to sustain life (a moral principle: remaining alive is good behavior). Because the answer is easy and obvious, and any price is unnoticed or paltry, the moral choice goes by without awareness, but it is there. This can be seen when the price rises or the hierarchy of personal moral principles is shifted. A person can choose not to eat in protest (hunger strike). Some other moral principle has become more important than the idea that remaining alive is good behavior. They can choose not to eat a particular kind of food (vegetarianism) because of a more complex shifting of moral priorities (remaining alive remains good behavior, but remaining alive at the expense of animal life is rejected - sometimes to the extent that the person would rather die, sometimes only to the extent that other food is available). A person can give their food to another (keeping my son alive is better behavior than keeping myself alive at his expense). The choices themselves can be much more complex: how, what, when, to what degree. But the only guide to making any choice is morality, a standard for good and bad behavior. There is no such thing as a neutral choice.
The purpose of social morals is to make interdependent choices possible. If personal morals are complex, social morals are even more so because they govern the interactions between the choices of all the individuals in the group at all times. No one does or can live in isolation. Even the theoretical person on the desert island must have come from somewhere else, must have been cared for until reaching an age of independence, and his survival rate is directly related to how much knowledge he possesses. It drops sharply if he has received no education from the experiences of others. Humans are interdependent. No personal moral code which does not take this into account is possible.
Basic, personal moral standards are in conflict. Social and personal moral standards are in conflict. All morality exists in a state of tension, constantly resolved and constantly renewed. This is true whether morality is viewed as absolute or relativistic: if absolute, they must still be ordered by some absolute standard (is it more important to preserve an innocent life, or to tell the truth?); if relativistic, they come into conflict when one moral system interacts with another as well as when the various principles of a single moral system come into internal conflict (is freedom or security more important, and what if the next person believes in neither?).
In addition to the tension inherent in any moral system, there is tension between social and personal morals. Even if the standards of the group and the standards of the individual are in agreement (say, that it is good behavior to protect life) they conflict in application (whose life is more important, and who makes that choice?). Decisions must be made (is a single child's life more important than the lives of several firefighters? is the security and comfort of a large number of people more important than the freedom of one?) and each and every decision depends on the weight given to differing social and personal moral principles. In practice, it also depends on differing levels of social and personal power; a choice made does not necessarily imply the ability to bring that choice into effect, and the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of various choices impact the moral hierarchy. (A person can choose to live forever, but this choice means very little and can in fact act against itself if the person in question acts irrationally; moral principles must adjust to physical and social realities. The degree to which the moral principle is adapted is in itself a moral choice.)
The purpose of morality is to make choices possible.
noun [C or U]
a personal or social set of standards for good or bad behaviour and character, or the quality of being right, honest or acceptable.
Ethics
What is morality?
It is what is used to decide what is good and bad, it is the standards applied to human behavior. It is restricted to human behavior because only humans (that we know of) have the ability to distinguish between right and wrong, and to communicate and codify the distinction in abstract terms. Without abstract thought (the ability to consider consequences), there is no meaningful choice. Without choice, there is no right or wrong. An avalanche has no morality.
What is the purpose of morality?
There are two ways in which morality is used: personal, and interactive. That is, there is the individual, private exercise of an ethical system, and there are the morals of interaction between two or more people. Personal morals are applicable to a person living alone on a desert island and to persons living in crowds; Social morals govern the behavior of individuals within a group and the behavior of individuals as a group.
The purpose of personal morals is identity. A person's personality is based on his choices and all choices are based on moral principles. More particularly, all choices are based on a hierarchy of personal moral principles. A person who decides whether or not to eat is facing a host of principles: why does she eat? What price is she paying in order to eat, and does that price outweigh her reason for eating? Most of the time the answer is easy and unconscious. In response to a need (hunger), a person eats in order to sustain life (a moral principle: remaining alive is good behavior). Because the answer is easy and obvious, and any price is unnoticed or paltry, the moral choice goes by without awareness, but it is there. This can be seen when the price rises or the hierarchy of personal moral principles is shifted. A person can choose not to eat in protest (hunger strike). Some other moral principle has become more important than the idea that remaining alive is good behavior. They can choose not to eat a particular kind of food (vegetarianism) because of a more complex shifting of moral priorities (remaining alive remains good behavior, but remaining alive at the expense of animal life is rejected - sometimes to the extent that the person would rather die, sometimes only to the extent that other food is available). A person can give their food to another (keeping my son alive is better behavior than keeping myself alive at his expense). The choices themselves can be much more complex: how, what, when, to what degree. But the only guide to making any choice is morality, a standard for good and bad behavior. There is no such thing as a neutral choice.
The purpose of social morals is to make interdependent choices possible. If personal morals are complex, social morals are even more so because they govern the interactions between the choices of all the individuals in the group at all times. No one does or can live in isolation. Even the theoretical person on the desert island must have come from somewhere else, must have been cared for until reaching an age of independence, and his survival rate is directly related to how much knowledge he possesses. It drops sharply if he has received no education from the experiences of others. Humans are interdependent. No personal moral code which does not take this into account is possible.
Basic, personal moral standards are in conflict. Social and personal moral standards are in conflict. All morality exists in a state of tension, constantly resolved and constantly renewed. This is true whether morality is viewed as absolute or relativistic: if absolute, they must still be ordered by some absolute standard (is it more important to preserve an innocent life, or to tell the truth?); if relativistic, they come into conflict when one moral system interacts with another as well as when the various principles of a single moral system come into internal conflict (is freedom or security more important, and what if the next person believes in neither?).
In addition to the tension inherent in any moral system, there is tension between social and personal morals. Even if the standards of the group and the standards of the individual are in agreement (say, that it is good behavior to protect life) they conflict in application (whose life is more important, and who makes that choice?). Decisions must be made (is a single child's life more important than the lives of several firefighters? is the security and comfort of a large number of people more important than the freedom of one?) and each and every decision depends on the weight given to differing social and personal moral principles. In practice, it also depends on differing levels of social and personal power; a choice made does not necessarily imply the ability to bring that choice into effect, and the effectiveness or lack of effectiveness of various choices impact the moral hierarchy. (A person can choose to live forever, but this choice means very little and can in fact act against itself if the person in question acts irrationally; moral principles must adjust to physical and social realities. The degree to which the moral principle is adapted is in itself a moral choice.)
The purpose of morality is to make choices possible.