Recently I’ve been thinking and came to an interesting dilemma. Although we have so many different philosophies on how we should act in order to act “morally” There are very few that explain why we should want to act morally.
I know if you get religion involved, one could explain this by saying it is the will of some deity. However, I believe that ethics should be able to exist without religion. This is because if it didn’t atheists would have no reason to want to act morally. Simply by looking at the number of atheist philosophers there must be another reason…
One could say that it is through goodwill towards others that we want to act morally. However, this would only support consequentialist frameworks and would condemn deontological frameworks.
Because we do not trust ourselves. So feel we must codify goodness and then align ourselves with it. The fear is that if we did not have a code we would be monsters. Notice however that most monsters have codes.
The biggest reasons to act moral are to avoid guilt and to promote happiness.
for example; stealing.
Why should we not steal?
if you live in a society, and then steal something. you will cause harm toward the person who you stole from. this person might be motivated to either steal from someone else to compensate, or your theft might even inspire more thieverys.
If in your society everyone is stealing from everyone else, prosperity will quickly suffer. If nobody stole, more people would be happy.
treating others as you want to be treated is a moral designed to promote a society that treats you the way you want.
I sort of agree, but it should be noted that ideas about what is stealing vary greatly culture to culture. I personally would consider it a form of theft to demand that my employees - who may not have any other options - work in a mine given certain working conditions, at the rates of pay miners have often received.
Moral guidelines are generally the same worldwide. They vary a bit through cultural enclaves and what some would consider third world societies. Some of those may appear foreign in their ideologies due to how traditions were passed down over the eons.
Most civilized cultures (if you will) follow ethical thinking. Subsets of those which are theocracies follow stringent guidelines which address how people dress, (women moreso) how facial hair is adorned, practicing prayer rituals and sexual orientations. Those governing bodies would argue using those guidelines help control the people and behaviors. Death sentences are more readily doled out for what would be tolerated in non-theocratic affectations.
Morals are considered to be the cessation of anachronistic tendencies so communities will act in concordance within a give framework. Ethics provide the structure to check killings, stealing, sexual conduct and the like. Morals help define and judicate in written/unwritten laws in a particular society. Having people behave in predictable ways makes things run more smoothly. For those who want to forgo such ideals, they will suffer the consequences of those actions. In a democratic society, religious and atheistic thinking should follow certain guidelines so all will know what to expect from one region to the other. If an infraction is perpetrated by either party, each will know a punitive course will be followed. Unfortunately, biased bigotry sometimes impedes justice and certain personages are unduly treated thus affecting how laws are viewed not to ment the harm brought on to the injured individual.
I would argue that this is more of why laws are formed. I think ethics is (should be) above any particular society. If the purpose of ethics is simply to help society to work better, than many ethical frameworks can not fit. For example, any non-consequentialist framework is not ethics. This is because in many of these frameworks, and even in utilitarianism, they state that punishment is generally immoral. They then go on to state that because people do not act morally etc. it can be justified. However, if the purpose of morality was to help society, these frameworks would never have arisen.
What if i think the society i’m in is bad, does this mean that i no longer have any reason to act morally?
no.
To me it seems that many people prefer living in harmony with their surroundings, rather than being in conflict with it. If you agree and think that ethical behavior increases this harmony between you and your surroundings, then you just found your answer.
Then it sounds like you are moving into moral relativism. Where ethical boundaries won’t suit a society. Moral relativism only works in a subjective sense. Macro application of ethical behavior sets guidelines for for like minded society. Establishing enclaves within those societies will cause discord, thus anarchy will prevail. People who want their society to function with harmony has to set up basic rules to keep people in check. You can’t throw the fox into the henhouse and expect the chickens to prosper and produce eggs. You have to provide a safe barrier to keep the chickens protected.
Ethics, to me, seems to always have a foundation in biological importance.
Take a silly notion such as cannibalism. Of course our current moral compass leads us to automatically determine it to be wrong. Yet the foundation seems to be that eating people makes you more susceptible to various diseases.
I can go on with various examples about how biological necessity affects our social/legal/ethical worlds. at least from my perspective.
Hegemon- your signature is interesting…but don’t use Kant-use one of the older versions. They come in Latin, which makes you smarter.
Fiat justicia et pereat mundo — Let justice be done though the world perish.
We are all the same in the soul. The soul trumps our body, but there are side effects of the soul in the body, as well as how the body affects the soul. Some people are tuned into certain things of the soul, others are oblivious and or calloused. Somtimes you just have to practice kindness to grow kindness. And kindness that is good for them more then your own taste.
In this, we can find a unique way of expressing ourselves. But to snub your nose at the norm is to have no compassion for those you snub your nose at. To snub you nose at an alien is to ignore what makes them human.
Ethics of treating others with the same respect you deserve is important. If you go against other peoples rights,( or sence and sencabilityies) then you deserve to lose your own. In fact, if you are angery, you incite angery responces. So if your compassionate you appeal to their better side because they do have that in their soul also.
Kant himself has a motive for acting morally: one should act morally ought of respect for the moral law itself. It’s debatable whether this is a sufficient motive, but I think it makes sense. After all, the moral law comes from us anyway (human reason); so it makes sense that we should respect our own rationality.
This coincides with what another post said about harmonizing with society, but Kant internalizes it: to harmonize with society is to harmonize with oneself.
Also, God-based moralities are usually deontological in the sense that morality is a set of categorical imperatives created by God; it is a set of laws that we ought to abide because they find their source in a perfect entity. So that is the justification of these laws, but what is the motive?
Here religious motives come in various forms: fear of punishment, desire to please, the hope of heaven, the belief that God is watching, etc.
I’m not saying that God-based moralities are the correct ones, I’m just saying that Deontological moralities can have motives, e.g. Kant’s and God-based ones.
Why assume that volition plays any role in making ethical choices to begin with? When we perform an action with ethical significance, does there need to be a concomitant desire to do it? I wonder if even speaking of a “desire” to make ethical choices is akin to speaking of a “desire” to breathe. I suppose you can desire not to breathe, but left to your own devices you will do it without thinking. I wonder if making ethical choices is the same way. Whether you act ethically or unethically, it seems more an expression of the individual’s particular nature than it is a completely conscious, motivated act. That’s not to say that ethical foundations are necessarily the decision of the individual or that what is ethical is the personal decision of any one person. But the response to actions with ethical significance would seem to depend on how you’re “wired”. This “wiring” could be as a result of indoctrination, of conscious moral reflection, or both.
Read the first few ‘books’ of Plato’s Republic. They specifically address this subject. Personally though, I agree more with ~Dan than Socrates:
This is the Utopian dilemma: because we can imagine a perfect world, we suppose that perfection is possible. But then we go on to attempt to define perfection and find that all our groping comes up empty-handed. There’s no such thing as perfect. Our culture is predicated upon attempting to ‘achieve’ it, and that’s the very thing that is killing us now… (chris-hampton.blogspot.com/2009/ … e-and.html)
Also, I hate steel too. It’s a stupid alloy, and the world would be better off without it
God is invoked by leader monkeys who need to justify telling follower monkeys what to do. “It’s not me that says you need to follow the rules, it’s God!!” In which they allay any frustration the follower monkeys might have upon god, and have the fear of divine reprisal keeping them in line. No one would have followed Hammurabi’s Code (1796 BC – 1750 BC) if it had not begun:
Or even earlier (2112-2095 BC):
Laws of Eshnunna (ca. 1930 BC), the codex of Lipit-Ishtar of Isin (ca. 1870 BC), the Hittite laws, the Assyrian laws, and Mosaic Law. Every one of them invokes God in the preamble as the source of their edicts.
No one would listen to just some monkey. Leadership is divinely ordained. It is for this reason we are unlikely to ever elect an Atheist leader. How can God be on America’s side if the Pres don’t got Jesus?
More accurately, it is the hope that the goodwill will be returned. It’s a barter for future good treatment. The social contract. The golden rule. It’s a transaction, like any other.
Mr. Shambles, i think you might be on to something…
we want to act morally out of self interest.
1.) Because hypocrisy is detrimental to the person committing it (damages trust, which is the core of all societies) we do not want to be hypocritical out of self interest.
2.) as stated before, we can all imagine a world where everyone followed the same ethical code (Imho something deontological, but it doesn’t matter) and all realize that such a world would be, well, utopia.
3.) Therefore, because hypocrisy is not in our self interest, and because everyone following said ethic would be beneficial, we want to act morally because we believe everyone else should.
We act in the way which our beliefs tell us will bring the greatest utility. Some people just have a better ability to predict the future than others, or we’d all act the same. Or something…
Ethics are simply rules of behavior within a society. Without such rules, people can’t get along. If people don’t get along, the society they live in is weaker than if they do get along. Internally trusting societies, with rules, conquered societies that didn’t have rules, and that’s why all modern societies have ethics.
