3 ms·

The thing with morals is that they are not worth a lot as they just express what a given slice of society at a given place/time deems morally right. If you real

by atoav 3y ago

The thing with morals is that they are not worth a lot as they just express what a given slice of society at a given place/time deems morally right. If you really wanna dive into what is right and wrong you have to discuss ethics. It is for example about universally answering the question whether it is good/bad to give someone a bad time for having been born with some characteristics they couldn't influence. E.g. left handedness — is it okay to prevent left handers from using their left hand to do things? Probably not (yet, a while ago this was seen as morally right). The only argument people had against left handers was "it is weird" and the more it became clear that forcing left handers to be right handed can have severe consequences and that a certain percentage of the population is always left handed the clearer it became that it was wrong to try to change them. In that case the moral person is the one that "just follows the tradition" but ends up being spectacularly wrong. Always thing about the questions universally, e.g. are people born into this (do they have a choice), is there harm from them supressing what they are born into? Is there harm to others in them being themselves? Ethics will guide you towards a good answer, morals will not.

vacuity 3y ago
Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality While it is at times useful to recognize that people have different moralities, sometimes very different, you seem to suggest that people answer questions of right/wrong and moral decline in a way that can't really be "correct". That is, that moralities are subjective and ethics is objective. Every individual has their morality (perhaps not very developed yet) and that is that. We can't really verify universal truths around anything, unless mathematical in nature. What you call "ethics" isn't the objective truth of right/wrong, but just your perception of overlapping moralities. "Seen as morally right" by who? The majority? When did the sandhill shift to not oppressing left-handed people? If you want a semblance of objectivity, get every individual to agree to your answer (through words only). Maybe there are objective values and maybe some people have discovered some of them, but we'd never know unless we become gods, in a certain sense. I'm certainly not one, so I'll stick to agreeing and disagreeing with other people. Society is just a word used to describe how people interact with each other. There's no development of a morality from subjective to objective or vice versa in the engine of society. Why someone holds the morality they do can be a productive question, but at the end of the day, one person's morality is just that.
- atoav 3y ago
  > Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. Might be because: A) I am not a English native, and not plugged into any US discourse about the topic B) I studied philosophy and I studied it in Europe, where these definitions might have been used differently. Ethics have never been my focus, so I am not an expert here. On the topic of universality: You rightly say that this is a somewhat illusive goal (as in: reaching a set of rules that everybody has to objectively agree if only they were reasonable). However that was never my claim. I simply said that instead of just inheriting your moral rules from tradition, culture and your ancestors it is superior to try to embed those rules into your own subjective rational framework in order to test those rules under a somewhat consistent "framework". And there are some guiding examples how sich a framework could look (e.g. Kant with his categorical imperative). Imagining universality is a good trick here to give your framework a check: "what if my standards were everybodies standards"? If you hate what comes out as an answer you should probably rethink your own opinions. IMO there are just too many people that hold totally inconsistent views. The key questions is: How can one expect others to bow to ones moral claims, if your views contradict each other or if your moral claims are always strong if they affect the outgroup and waved away if they affect your ingroup or yourself? It is next to impossible to find common ground with such a person, because they are not interested in finding good rules, their interest is to rule. Society is about finding some form of consensus on what is "commonly" acceptable and what isn't, which is why people that don't even try to think in an universal ethical framework are somewhat problematic. Of course not everything needs to be subject to rules, but some rules will reduce conflicts between the different groups and individuals. Now morals are not the same as these rules, because they don't have to be enshrined in law, but the border is fluid here.
  - vacuity 3y ago
    I appreciate your expounding. I've never really thought about how I evaluate my moral values, so you bring up interesting points. I should also look into philosophical works; as it is, I'm not familiar with those based in the US or foreign. I share your dislike of inconsistent views.

by atoav 3y ago

vacuity 3y ago

Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality While it is at times useful to recognize that people have different moralities, sometimes very different, you seem to suggest that people answer questions of right/wrong and moral decline in a way that can't really be "correct". That is, that moralities are subjective and ethics is objective. Every individual has their morality (perhaps not very developed yet) and that is that. We can't really verify universal truths around anything, unless mathematical in nature. What you call "ethics" isn't the objective truth of right/wrong, but just your perception of overlapping moralities. "Seen as morally right" by who? The majority? When did the sandhill shift to not oppressing left-handed people? If you want a semblance of objectivity, get every individual to agree to your answer (through words only). Maybe there are objective values and maybe some people have discovered some of them, but we'd never know unless we become gods, in a certain sense. I'm certainly not one, so I'll stick to agreeing and disagreeing with other people. Society is just a word used to describe how people interact with each other. There's no development of a morality from subjective to objective or vice versa in the engine of society. Why someone holds the morality they do can be a productive question, but at the end of the day, one person's morality is just that.

atoav 3y ago
> Your terminology is somewhat contrived, not least of all because people view the terms quite differently. Might be because: A) I am not a English native, and not plugged into any US discourse about the topic B) I studied philosophy and I studied it in Europe, where these definitions might have been used differently. Ethics have never been my focus, so I am not an expert here. On the topic of universality: You rightly say that this is a somewhat illusive goal (as in: reaching a set of rules that everybody has to objectively agree if only they were reasonable). However that was never my claim. I simply said that instead of just inheriting your moral rules from tradition, culture and your ancestors it is superior to try to embed those rules into your own subjective rational framework in order to test those rules under a somewhat consistent "framework". And there are some guiding examples how sich a framework could look (e.g. Kant with his categorical imperative). Imagining universality is a good trick here to give your framework a check: "what if my standards were everybodies standards"? If you hate what comes out as an answer you should probably rethink your own opinions. IMO there are just too many people that hold totally inconsistent views. The key questions is: How can one expect others to bow to ones moral claims, if your views contradict each other or if your moral claims are always strong if they affect the outgroup and waved away if they affect your ingroup or yourself? It is next to impossible to find common ground with such a person, because they are not interested in finding good rules, their interest is to rule. Society is about finding some form of consensus on what is "commonly" acceptable and what isn't, which is why people that don't even try to think in an universal ethical framework are somewhat problematic. Of course not everything needs to be subject to rules, but some rules will reduce conflicts between the different groups and individuals. Now morals are not the same as these rules, because they don't have to be enshrined in law, but the border is fluid here.
- vacuity 3y ago
  I appreciate your expounding. I've never really thought about how I evaluate my moral values, so you bring up interesting points. I should also look into philosophical works; as it is, I'm not familiar with those based in the US or foreign. I share your dislike of inconsistent views.