The Origin of Morality

[Coyote1023]

So the other day, Tyler (Artifex) and I were discussion philosophy. We ended up talking about morals and how they came to be. So I ask you, read this post, then help me discover the true source of morality.

Now, to start off, this is my view: Morality is a man-made tool. It was created for self gain in order to help being equality to every human. Lets jump back to before morals. In this era man ruled by brute strength and power. The strongest would always prevail and could do anything he/she wanted. This is when morality came to be. A group of weaker, intellectual humans came together and started creating a code. If this code was broken, the group as a whole would retaliate as one. The benefit of this pact was that now power had limits. One could not just steal from another or murder without reason. If an act such as this was done, one would be outcast from the society. I will state it again, morality is a tool that gives every man an equal chance to make it in this world. It makes genetics play less of a role and gives more emphasis to actions.

Now, go discuss your theories and reasons for the existence of morality. I will mediate the discussion and will try to comment on all of your ideas.

[Zackj191]

My idea: "Hey, I don't like to kill people. So I won't."

The End

EDIT: The word you are looking for Coyote is "Laws," not morals. Morals are personal "preferences" if you will.

[Artifex]

My idea: "Hey, I don't like to kill people. So I won't."

The End

EDIT: The word you are looking for Coyote is "Laws," not morals. Morals are personal "preferences" if you will.

Laws stem from the majorities' morality.

[HLG Viper]

If you define morals that way, chimps also have morals. They don't kill or steal from eachother, they work as a group. So do dolphins and many other animals too, including ants. They share their food and die as a group, they don't even resort to cannibalism in most cases. I'd say this is something of an instict that's been inplanted in our mind by evolution, because individuals who work as a group are more successful than the lonewolves. As we humans can make concious choices, we chose to think of this as morality, but I'm pretty sure none of you would kill another person unless forced to or unless you're mentally disturbed, in which case the instict can be slid aside.

[Canadians360]

I have to say morals spring more or less from primal instinct. I do agree that in some ways they exist for the survival of the meeker in strength of the human species. However there are also objective morals. That is morals that come from a persons surroundings. Objective morals vary from society to society, for example its seen as a bad thing for a man to have multiple wives in the northeast but is perfectly acceptable in some middle east nations. I believe these morals were more or less put in place by those in power years ago, which tends to be the religious systems who set forth a code to structure their masses as they saw fit. So I say morals spring from basic primal instincts and old governing laws/views.

[HLG Viper]

Well, that's basically thanks to culture. Here, we learn one thing and there they learn another thing. Parents pass on their view of right and wrong to their kids and the morality "evolves" plainlessly in each culture.

[Artifex]

Instinct and morality are much different. Instinct revolves mostly around future survival and procreation, if you are HAVE to eat a member of your species or are forced to fight another member of your species you will do so. This is why when extreme cases arise cannibalism can increase in probability as reason is replaced by primal functions.

Morality is derived from what is judged to be "right" or "wrong" and is constructed (in my opinion) from events occuring after birth, and has nothing do with anything beforehand. The human mind takes in what it sees around it and what is deemed to be acceptable, and generally when something unacceptable is done there are consequences. As a result this is what is 'wrong' and what is acceptable is 'right'. In western society (i.e. Christian based society) morality/ethics/laws have been formed through the culture spawned by the Catholic church over a millennium of control.

From my moral nihilistic perspective, morals do not exist (they can easily be reformed by changing what is acceptable in society), as they are simply man-made codes that are just impressed upon our minds at young ages by what we see/hear/do when we're children. Many perceive morality to be something that is deeper than simple existentialism, possibly supposing that they are constructed by 'god' or the like. Think of it how you will, but when it comes down to it, in a 'barbarous' society, survival and procreation will be the most important concepts and all else following are attempts of forming a foundation that can support larger populations. Much of modern society in this manner is 'fake', or does not truly 'exist', it is simply a man-made code.

[HLG Viper]

Like many other things. The thing I've been pondering is whether murder is also a thing we've LEARNED not to do, and if we'd do it with ease if we didn't learn that it's bad. Probably not, considering that part of morality should belong to the instict section (Tyler, I'd say the basic "morality" such as "Don't murder your own species" is in fact a primal instict since chimps donät kill eachother unless perfectly necessary). But you are in ways correct that the church has a big part in modern morality. Just look at the past, in the past slavery was nothing weird, there were people and there were slaves. Today the american civil war unified african slaves with the western world and today slavery is wrong.

[Artifex]

Like many other things. The thing I've been pondering is whether murder is also a thing we've LEARNED not to do, and if we'd do it with ease if we didn't learn that it's bad. Probably not, considering that part of morality should belong to the instict section (Tyler, I'd say the basic "morality" such as "Don't murder your own species" is in fact a primal instict since chimps donät kill eachother unless perfectly necessary). But you are in ways correct that the church has a big part in modern morality. Just look at the past, in the past slavery was nothing weird, there were people and there were slaves. Today the american civil war unified african slaves with the western world and today slavery is wrong.

Yes, but murdering of members within your species is not a 'logical' thing to do. A specific species share the fundamental make-up, which is what links us all together. By killing a member of your species you are preventing its advancement/procreation, which is detrimental to the species itself and thus we do not kill each other unless it is necessary.

Now, all humans are homo sapiens, which is the same species, but we grow up in such different regions and ethnic background that we essentially form sub-species, even if the genetics are still the same. This is why the 'white man is superior' from the European perspective, and this is also why it was 'okay' to kill/enslave anyone that was not white. In modern society and more knowledge of genetic traits, we realize that we're all the same, and skin color has nothing to do with it. Thus, it is not okay to murder/kill in modern society unless through necessity. In a "barbarous" society, which has yet to be enlightened, murder of others would theoretically be okay as long as they did not look similar to those in the immediate region/society.

---

I'm not really conveying this well, I'm in a bit of hurry. So, tl;dr:

Members of the same species 'should' not kill each other as it prevents future advancement/procreation which leads to a more powerful race.

---

And this was the fundamental principle of Hitler's philosophy of the Aryan race mind you. Aryans (looking different) must have been superior, from Hitler's perspective, and all other 'races' (even though all humans are one race) are automatically inferior, thus it is okay to lock them away in concentration/death camps and wipe them from the face of the planet.

[HLG Viper]

Yes, but murdering of members within your species is not a 'logical' thing to do. A specific species share the fundamental make-up, which is what links us all together. By killing a member of your species you are preventing its advancement/procreation, which is detrimental to the species itself and thus we do not kill each other unless it is necessary.

Now, all humans are homo sapiens, which is the same species, but we grow up in such different regions and ethnic background that we essentially form sub-species, even if the genetics are still the same. This is why the 'white man is superior' from the European perspective, and this is also why it was 'okay' to kill/enslave anyone that was not white. In modern society and more knowledge of genetic traits, we realize that we're all the same, and skin color has nothing to do with it. Thus, it is not okay to murder/kill in modern society unless through necessity. In a "barbarous" society, which has yet to be enlightened, murder of others would theoretically be okay as long as they did not look similar to those in the immediate region/society.

---

I'm not really conveying this well, I'm in a bit of hurry. So, tl;dr:

Members of the same species 'should' not kill each other as it prevents future advancement/procreation which leads to a more powerful race.

---

And this was the fundamental principle of Hitler's philosophy of the Aryan race mind you. Aryans (looking different) must have been superior, from Hitler's perspective, and all other 'races' (even though all humans are one race) are automatically inferior, thus it is okay to lock them away in concentration/death camps and wipe them from the face of the planet.

"'White man is superior from the European perspective'"
Wtf? I hope you do know that Sweden has one of the highest immigration rates in the world, taking in immigrants mostly Iraqis, Turks, Kurds, Iranies and some africans. Many other European countries are right behind Sweden on the list, so saying racism is more common in Europe is of course blasphemous. While the civil war in america stopped slavery, I'm sure racism has just as much of a presence there, if not more.

Let's ponder this then; Chimps don't kill eachother (It's a necessity for the progress of the species), but Chimps don't kill other rivaling species just because they eat the same food or exist in the same area. Lions don't kill Jaguars, Elephants don't kill Giraffes. Animals only kill other animals that are their prey or animals that threaten their youngs. It would benefit their species to do so, but they don't. Morality? Or simply a "side-effect" of natural selection?

[MultiLockOn]

Click spoilers for mind blowing.




Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and
sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we
can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they
say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to
you?"-"That's my seat, I was there first"-"Leave him alone, he isn't doing
you any harm"- "Why should you shove in first?"-"Give me a bit of your
orange, I gave you a bit of mine"-"Come on, you promised." People say things
like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as
well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the
man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does
not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of
behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man
very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to
make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the
standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there
is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the
seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he
was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him
off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had
in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or
morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.
And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals,
but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means
trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no
sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as
to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that
a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the
rules of football.
Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of
Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean
things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the
older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they
really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies
are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so
the creature called man also had his law-with this great difference, that a
body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a
man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected
to several different sets of law but there is only one of these which he is
free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot
disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice
about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various
biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That
is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the
law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with
animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he
chooses.
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every
one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean,
of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did
not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no
ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human
idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were
right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were
nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless
Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and
ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right,
then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have
blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.
I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent
behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and
different ages have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their
moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total
difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching
of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and
Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each
other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in
the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our
present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different
morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for
running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the
people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a
country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what
people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or
your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men
have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have
always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.
But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says
he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man
going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if
you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before
you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but
then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular
treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter,
and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there
is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an
unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that,
whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.
People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get
their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any
more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on
to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of
Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologise to them. They had
much better read some other work, for nothing I am going to say concerns
them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:
I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not
preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else.
I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or
this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise
ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be
all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children
was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the
money-the one you have almost forgotten-came when you were very hard up. And
what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done-well, you
never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were
going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister
(or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at
it-and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I
do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone
tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses
as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good
excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we
like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in
decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having
behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much-we feel the
Rule or Law pressing on us so- that we cannot bear to face the fact that we
are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For
you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these
explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or
worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human
beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave
in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do
not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.
These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and
the universe we live in.



If they are the foundation, I had better stop to make that foundation
firm before I go on. Some of the letters I have had show-that a good many
people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature,
or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is.
For example, some people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the
Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like
all our other instincts?" Now I do not deny that we may have a herd
instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it
feels like to be prompted by instinct-by mother love, or sexual instinct, or
the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act
in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of
desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd
instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that
you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for
help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires-one a desire
to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of
danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside
you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that
you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run
away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which
should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say
that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note
on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely
the keys.
Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our
instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in
a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the
two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral
Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two
impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the
man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same.
And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than
it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd
instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so
as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not
acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it
is. The thing that says to you, "Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,"
cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on
the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.
Here is a third way of seeing it If the Moral Law was one of our
instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which
was always what we call "good," always in agreement with the rule of right
behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law
may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes
tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses-
say mother love or patriotism-are good, and others, like sex or the fighting
instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting
instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent
than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are
situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual
impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also
occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for
his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness
towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are
no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has
not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones.
Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law
is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes
a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the
instincts.
By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most
dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and
set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of
them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute
guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not.
If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and
faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end
a cruel and treacherous man.
Other people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the Moral Law
just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" I
think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are
usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents
and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of
course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A
child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it
does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention,
something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made
different if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent
Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn
everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which
might have been different-we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it
might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right-and others of
them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the
Law of Human Nature belongs.
There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as
mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there
are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of
another, the differences are not really very great-not nearly so great as
most people imagine-and you can recognise the same law running through them
all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road or the kind of
clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this.
When you think about these differences between the morality of one people
and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or
worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If
not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means
not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas
were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring
civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi
morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are
better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to
change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or
Pioneers-people who understood morality better than their neighbours did.
Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better
than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying
that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But
the standard that measures two things is something different from either.
You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting
that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people
think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than
others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of
the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to
be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less
true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from
what either of us thinks. If when each of us said "New York" each meant
merely "The town I am imagining in my own head," how could one of us have
truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood
at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply
"whatever each nation happens to approve," there would be no sense in saying
that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any
other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or
morally worse.
I conclude then, that though the differences between people's ideas of
Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of
Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these
differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I
have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not
distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief
about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago
people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the
Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not
execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we
did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold
themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return
and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or
bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the
death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of
moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may
be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral
advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You
would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so
because he believed there were no mice in the house.

Mere Christianity : C.S. Lewis

[Skittlemeister]

Click spoilers for mind blowing.




Every one has heard people quarrelling. Sometimes it sounds funny and
sometimes it sounds merely unpleasant; but however it sounds, I believe we
can learn something very important from listening to the kind of things they
say. They say things like this: "How'd you like it if anyone did the same to
you?"-"That's my seat, I was there first"-"Leave him alone, he isn't doing
you any harm"- "Why should you shove in first?"-"Give me a bit of your
orange, I gave you a bit of mine"-"Come on, you promised." People say things
like that every day, educated people as well as uneducated, and children as
well as grown-ups. Now what interests me about all these remarks is that the
man who makes them is not merely saying that the other man's behaviour does
not happen to please him. He is appealing to some kind of standard of
behaviour which he expects the other man to know about. And the other man
very seldom replies: "To hell with your standard." Nearly always he tries to
make out that what he has been doing does not really go against the
standard, or that if it does there is some special excuse. He pretends there
is some special reason in this particular case why the person who took the
seat first should not keep it, or that things were quite different when he
was given the bit of orange, or that something has turned up which lets him
off keeping his promise. It looks, in fact, very much as if both parties had
in mind some kind of Law or Rule of fair play or decent behaviour or
morality or whatever you like to call it, about which they really agreed.
And they have. If they had not, they might, of course, fight like animals,
but they could not quarrel in the human sense of the word. Quarrelling means
trying to show that the other man is in the wrong. And there would be no
sense in trying to do that unless you and he had some sort of agreement as
to what Right and Wrong are; just as there would be no sense in saying that
a footballer had committed a foul unless there was some agreement about the
rules of football.
Now this Law or Rule about Right and Wrong used to be called the Law of
Nature. Nowadays, when we talk of the "laws of nature" we usually mean
things like gravitation, or heredity, or the laws of chemistry. But when the
older thinkers called the Law of Right and Wrong "the Law of Nature," they
really meant the Law of Human Nature. The idea was that, just as all bodies
are governed by the law of gravitation and organisms by biological laws, so
the creature called man also had his law-with this great difference, that a
body could not choose whether it obeyed the law of gravitation or not, but a
man could choose either to obey the Law of Human Nature or to disobey it.
We may put this in another way. Each man is at every moment subjected
to several different sets of law but there is only one of these which he is
free to disobey. As a body, he is subjected to gravitation and cannot
disobey it; if you leave him unsupported in mid-air, he has no more choice
about falling than a stone has. As an organism, he is subjected to various
biological laws which he cannot disobey any more than an animal can. That
is, he cannot disobey those laws which he shares with other things; but the
law which is peculiar to his human nature, the law he does not share with
animals or vegetables or inorganic things, is the one he can disobey if he
chooses.
This law was called the Law of Nature because people thought that every
one knew it by nature and did not need to be taught it. They did not mean,
of course, that you might not find an odd individual here and there who did
not know it, just as you find a few people who are colour-blind or have no
ear for a tune. But taking the race as a whole, they thought that the human
idea of decent behaviour was obvious to every one. And I believe they were
right. If they were not, then all the things we said about the war were
nonsense. What was the sense in saying the enemy were in the wrong unless
Right is a real thing which the Nazis at bottom knew as well as we did and
ought to have practised? If they had had no notion of what we mean by right,
then, though we might still have had to fight them, we could no more have
blamed them for that than for the colour of their hair.
I know that some people say the idea of a Law of Nature or decent
behaviour known to all men is unsound, because different civilisations and
different ages have had quite different moralities.
But this is not true. There have been differences between their
moralities, but these have never amounted to anything like a total
difference. If anyone will take the trouble to compare the moral teaching
of, say, the ancient Egyptians, Babylonians, Hindus, Chinese, Greeks and
Romans, what will really strike him will be how very like they are to each
other and to our own. Some of the evidence for this I have put together in
the appendix of another book called The Abolition of Man; but for our
present purpose I need only ask the reader to think what a totally different
morality would mean. Think of a country where people were admired for
running away in battle, or where a man felt proud of double-crossing all the
people who had been kindest to him. You might just as well try to imagine a
country where two and two made five. Men have differed as regards what
people you ought to be unselfish to-whether it was only your own family, or
your fellow countrymen, or everyone. But they have always agreed that you
ought not to put yourself first. Selfishness has never been admired. Men
have differed as to whether you should have one wife or four. But they have
always agreed that you must not simply have any woman you liked.
But the most remarkable thing is this. Whenever you find a man who says
he does not believe in a real Right and Wrong, you will find the same man
going back on this a moment later. He may break his promise to you, but if
you try breaking one to him he will be complaining "It's not fair" before
you can say Jack Robinson. A nation may say treaties do not matter, but
then, next minute, they spoil their case by saying that the particular
treaty they want to break was an unfair one. But if treaties do not matter,
and if there is no such thing as Right and Wrong- in other words, if there
is no Law of Nature-what is the difference between a fair treaty and an
unfair one? Have they not let the cat out of the bag and shown that,
whatever they say, they really know the Law of Nature just like anyone else?
It seems, then, we are forced to believe in a real Right and Wrong.
People may be sometimes mistaken about them, just as people sometimes get
their sums wrong; but they are not a matter of mere taste and opinion any
more than the multiplication table. Now if we are agreed about that, I go on
to my next point, which is this. None of us are really keeping the Law of
Nature. If there are any exceptions among you, I apologise to them. They had
much better read some other work, for nothing I am going to say concerns
them. And now, turning to the ordinary human beings who are left:
I hope you will not misunderstand what I am going to say. I am not
preaching, and Heaven knows I do not pretend to be better than anyone else.
I am only trying to call attention to a fact; the fact that this year, or
this month, or, more likely, this very day, we have failed to practise
ourselves the kind of behaviour we expect from other people. There may be
all sorts of excuses for us. That time you were so unfair to the children
was when you were very tired. That slightly shady business about the
money-the one you have almost forgotten-came when you were very hard up. And
what you promised to do for old So-and-so and have never done-well, you
never would have promised if you had known how frightfully busy you were
going to be. And as for your behaviour to your wife (or husband) or sister
(or brother) if I knew how irritating they could be, I would not wonder at
it-and who the dickens am I, anyway? I am just the same. That is to say, I
do not succeed in keeping the Law of Nature very well, and the moment anyone
tells me I am not keeping it, there starts up in my mind a string of excuses
as long as your arm. The question at the moment is not whether they are good
excuses. The point is that they are one more proof of how deeply, whether we
like it or not, we believe in the Law of Nature. If we do not believe in
decent behaviour, why should we be so anxious to make excuses for not having
behaved decently? The truth is, we believe in decency so much-we feel the
Rule or Law pressing on us so- that we cannot bear to face the fact that we
are breaking it, and consequently we try to shift the responsibility. For
you notice that it is only for our bad behaviour that we find all these
explanations. It is only our bad temper that we put down to being tired or
worried or hungry; we put our good temper down to ourselves.
These, then, are the two points I wanted to make. First, that human
beings, all over the earth, have this curious idea that they ought to behave
in a certain way, and cannot really get rid of it. Secondly, that they do
not in fact behave in that way. They know the Law of Nature; they break it.
These two facts are the foundation of all clear thinking about ourselves and
the universe we live in.



If they are the foundation, I had better stop to make that foundation
firm before I go on. Some of the letters I have had show-that a good many
people find it difficult to understand just what this Law of Human Nature,
or Moral Law, or Rule of Decent Behaviour is.
For example, some people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the
Moral Law simply our herd instinct and hasn't it been developed just like
all our other instincts?" Now I do not deny that we may have a herd
instinct: but that is not what I mean by the Moral Law. We all know what it
feels like to be prompted by instinct-by mother love, or sexual instinct, or
the instinct for food. It means that you feel a strong want or desire to act
in a certain way. And, of course, we sometimes do feel just that sort of
desire to help another person: and no doubt that desire is due to the herd
instinct. But feeling a desire to help is quite different from feeling that
you ought to help whether you want to or not. Supposing you hear a cry for
help from a man in danger. You will probably feel two desires-one a desire
to give help (due to your herd instinct), the other a desire to keep out of
danger (due to the instinct for self-preservation). But you will find inside
you, in addition to these two impulses, a third thing which tells you that
you ought to follow the impulse to help, and suppress the impulse to run
away. Now this thing that judges between two instincts, that decides which
should be encouraged, cannot itself be either of them. You might as well say
that the sheet of music which tells you, at a given moment, to play one note
on the piano and not another, is itself one of the notes on the keyboard.
The Moral Law tells us the tune we have to play: our instincts are merely
the keys.
Another way of seeing that the Moral Law is not simply one of our
instincts is this. If two instincts are in conflict, and there is nothing in
a creature's mind except those two instincts, obviously the stronger of the
two must win. But at those moments when we are most conscious of the Moral
Law, it usually seems to be telling us to side with the weaker of the two
impulses. You probably want to be safe much more than you want to help the
man who is drowning: but the Moral Law tells you to help him all the same.
And surely it often tells us to try to make the right impulse stronger than
it naturally is? I mean, we often feel it our duty to stimulate the herd
instinct, by waking up our imaginations and arousing our pity and so on, so
as to get up enough steam for doing the right thing. But clearly we are not
acting from instinct when we set about making an instinct stronger than it
is. The thing that says to you, "Your herd instinct is asleep. Wake it up,"
cannot itself be the herd instinct. The thing that tells you which note on
the piano needs to be played louder cannot itself be that note.
Here is a third way of seeing it If the Moral Law was one of our
instincts, we ought to be able to point to some one impulse inside us which
was always what we call "good," always in agreement with the rule of right
behaviour. But you cannot. There is none of our impulses which the Moral Law
may not sometimes tell us to suppress, and none which it may not sometimes
tell us to encourage. It is a mistake to think that some of our impulses-
say mother love or patriotism-are good, and others, like sex or the fighting
instinct, are bad. All we mean is that the occasions on which the fighting
instinct or the sexual desire need to be restrained are rather more frequent
than those for restraining mother love or patriotism. But there are
situations in which it is the duty of a married man to encourage his sexual
impulse and of a soldier to encourage the fighting instinct. There are also
occasions on which a mother's love for her own children or a man's love for
his own country have to be suppressed or they will lead to unfairness
towards other people's children or countries. Strictly speaking, there are
no such things as good and bad impulses. Think once again of a piano. It has
not got two kinds of notes on it, the "right" notes and the "wrong" ones.
Every single note is right at one time and wrong at another. The Moral Law
is not any one instinct or any set of instincts: it is something which makes
a kind of tune (the tune we call goodness or right conduct) by directing the
instincts.
By the way, this point is of great practical consequence. The most
dangerous thing you can do is to take any one impulse of your own nature and
set it up as the thing you ought to follow at all costs. There is not one of
them which will not make us into devils if we set it up as an absolute
guide. You might think love of humanity in general was safe, but it is not.
If you leave out justice you will find yourself breaking agreements and
faking evidence in trials "for the sake of humanity," and become in the end
a cruel and treacherous man.
Other people wrote to me saying, "Isn't what you call the Moral Law
just a social convention, something that is put into us by education?" I
think there is a misunderstanding here. The people who ask that question are
usually taking it for granted that if we have learned a thing from parents
and teachers, then that thing must be merely a human invention. But, of
course, that is not so. We all learned the multiplication table at school. A
child who grew up alone on a desert island would not know it. But surely it
does not follow that the multiplication table is simply a human convention,
something human beings have made up for themselves and might have made
different if they had liked? I fully agree that we learn the Rule of Decent
Behaviour from parents and teachers, and friends and books, as we learn
everything else. But some of the things we learn are mere conventions which
might have been different-we learn to keep to the left of the road, but it
might just as well have been the rule to keep to the right-and others of
them, like mathematics, are real truths. The question is to which class the
Law of Human Nature belongs.
There are two reasons for saying it belongs to the same class as
mathematics. The first is, as I said in the first chapter, that though there
are differences between the moral ideas of one time or country and those of
another, the differences are not really very great-not nearly so great as
most people imagine-and you can recognise the same law running through them
all: whereas mere conventions, like the rule of the road or the kind of
clothes people wear, may differ to any extent. The other reason is this.
When you think about these differences between the morality of one people
and another, do you think that the morality of one people is ever better or
worse than that of another? Have any of the changes been improvements? If
not, then of course there could never be any moral progress. Progress means
not just changing, but changing for the better. If no set of moral ideas
were truer or better than any other, there would be no sense in preferring
civilised morality to savage morality, or Christian morality to Nazi
morality. In fact, of course, we all do believe that some moralities are
better than others. We do believe that some of the people who tried to
change the moral ideas of their own age were what we would call Reformers or
Pioneers-people who understood morality better than their neighbours did.
Very well then. The moment you say that one set of moral ideas can be better
than another, you are, in fact, measuring them both by a standard, saying
that one of them conforms to that standard more nearly than the other. But
the standard that measures two things is something different from either.
You are, in fact, comparing them both with some Real Morality, admitting
that there is such a thing as a real Right, independent of what people
think, and that some people's ideas get nearer to that real Right than
others. Or put it this way. If your moral ideas can be truer, and those of
the Nazis less true, there must be something-some Real Morality-for them to
be true about. The reason why your idea of New York can be truer or less
true than mine is that New York is a real place, existing quite apart from
what either of us thinks. If when each of us said "New York" each meant
merely "The town I am imagining in my own head," how could one of us have
truer ideas than the other? There would be no question of truth or falsehood
at all. In the same way, if the Rule of Decent Behaviour meant simply
"whatever each nation happens to approve," there would be no sense in saying
that any one nation had ever been more correct in its approval than any
other; no sense in saying that the world could ever grow morally better or
morally worse.
I conclude then, that though the differences between people's ideas of
Decent Behaviour often make you suspect that there is no real natural Law of
Behaviour at all, yet the things we are bound to think about these
differences really prove just the opposite. But one word before I end. I
have met people who exaggerate the differences, because they have not
distinguished between differences of morality and differences of belief
about facts. For example, one man said to me, "Three hundred years ago
people in England were putting witches to death. Was that what you call the
Rule of Human Nature or Right Conduct?" But surely the reason we do not
execute witches is that we do not believe there are such things. If we
did-if we really thought that there were people going about who had sold
themselves to the devil and received supernatural powers from him in return
and were using these powers to kill their neighbours or drive them mad or
bring bad weather, surely we would all agree that if anyone deserved the
death penalty, then these filthy quislings did. There is no difference of
moral principle here: the difference is simply about matter of fact. It may
be a great advance in knowledge not to believe in witches: there is no moral
advance in not executing them when you do not think they are there. You
would not call a man humane for ceasing to set mousetraps if he did so
because he believed there were no mice in the house.

Mere Christianity : C.S. Lewis
I saw "Nazis" in there somewhere.

[Denominator]

Let's ponder this then; Chimps don't kill eachother (It's a necessity for the progress of the species), but Chimps don't kill other rivaling species just because they eat the same food or exist in the same area. Lions don't kill Jaguars, Elephants don't kill Giraffes. Animals only kill other animals that are their prey or animals that threaten their youngs. It would benefit their species to do so, but they don't. Morality? Or simply a "side-effect" of natural selection?

You nailed it. For more on that, read Dawkins' The God Delusion. He outlines why morality exists outside of religion quite well.

[Artifex]

"'White man is superior from the European perspective'"
Wtf? I hope you do know that Sweden has one of the highest immigration rates in the world, taking in immigrants mostly Iraqis, Turks, Kurds, Iranies and some africans. Many other European countries are right behind Sweden on the list, so saying racism is more common in Europe is of course blasphemous. While the civil war in america stopped slavery, I'm sure racism has just as much of a presence there, if not more.

First off, none of this argument relates to immigration, but if you want to turn it into an argument about immigration, fine. Here ya go:

The US has been the king of immigration in the world for the past two hundred years even up to the quotas that began to occur in the 1890s-1950/60s. The entire country is founded upon immigration, and the only people living within its borders that are natives are the native Americans. That is besides the point, immigration does not directly correlate to the amount of racism within a country nor does it eliminate cultural perspectives.

The entire two-thousand years, and many before that, on the European continent, hell any continent with whites on it, has spurred the belief that whites are better than all other races. If you are blind to the mere observation of this you can go back to Hitler's Aryans, Spanish conquests, the Catholic church, expansionist policies, imperialism, the Crusades, enslavement throughout history of people from Asian/African ethnicity. Etc. Etc. Etc. Before the church and whites took the main course of history (hence: "History is written by the white man") the Egyptians came before. They enslaved thousands to underneath them that they thought were inferior or needed to be enslaved. If you do not recognize this mere fact, you are ignorant to the course of history.

Now, racism occurs in all countries, in all cultural groups, and all regions. You know why? Because people resent immigrants in economic hardships and even in economic highs. They take jobs, money from welfare, living space, they're "dirty/different/'stupid'" to each populace that experiences their presence.

so saying racism is more common in Europe is of course blasphemous.

No, just because you have a high immigration rating does not mean racism is 'low'. The US, as I've said before, has been the king of immigration for the past three centuries. Racism has always been present, first the British colonists once the US had been founded resented the movement of Irish from the potato famine and the Germans from the 1848 revolutions. Both of the immigrant groups contributed greatly to society, but that didn't matter.

Twenty years later, those same immigrants who came and faced the racism of the British that had been there now felt resentment and racism grew towards their own people. Irish "Americans" hating other Irish, German "Americans" hating other Germans. This cycle goes on.

Point being, this is the US's history, but the European nations are no different, in fact they were much worse, specifically regarding cultural differences and religion. You cannot say that racism does not exist in Europe, while it may not be as prevalent in the US due to highly diverse and the fast growth of the US, it still occurs, and the countries with the highest immigration ratings are more than likely to also have their fair share of racism and resentment towards immigrants who make life harder in down economic times and are too "different".

Now that that is out of the way:

Let's ponder this then; Chimps don't kill eachother (It's a necessity for the progress of the species), but Chimps don't kill other rivaling species just because they eat the same food or exist in the same area. Lions don't kill Jaguars, Elephants don't kill Giraffes. Animals only kill other animals that are their prey or animals that threaten their youngs. It would benefit their species to do so, but they don't. Morality? Or simply a "side-effect" of natural selection?

Yes, but animals, to our knowledge, do not experience the more gruesome traits of 'higher intelligence'. They kill out of necessity. And you will also note, what I have discussed related in no manner to animals because of what I have just said in the above two sentences and this clause from my other post:

"Members of the same species 'should' not kill each other as it prevents future advancement/procreation which leads to a more powerful race."

It is a very general statement, hence the reason why I classified it as the general "tl;dr" version of my post. If you re-read my post you will take note that I was discussing the traits of humans throughout it in specifics. Due to the construction of our brains and the different 'reality', so to speak, that we exist in apart from animals we have created a society that murders and enslaves itself.

However, you could argue that this is called co-existence. Once again, if going by the European perspective*, the white man is the superior race, thus others must live under it and we will allow them to live while they provide for us to live. This is similar to the animal way of life (co-existence) minus the oppression and greed that appear to only be characteristics of humans. Your example of chimps co-existing in the same regions without fighting is true, because those animals do not interfere with each other and in many ways help each other survive. However, if a group feels threatened, they will retaliate. This is much like human wars, although many are also fought for reasons spurred by greed, if a nation or people feel threatened or oppressed by another nation they will retaliate and revolt/attack.

It is quite obvious then, that animals have no need for morality, as it is a construction of humans to attempt to govern the 'evil' nature of our beings (greed, lust... essentially the Catholic's "seven deadly sins").

At this moment, I will raise the fact that some animals do fight for reasons other than protection of young and food. You will no doubt of heard of the animal called a meerkat. Meerkats often fight for territory of opposing 'gangs' and attack the young and warriors of their 'gangs'. This is very 'human-like' so to speak, and an instance of animals fighting each other, clearly this contradicts what you said above. On that note, there are other mammal species that fight, and members of the chimp and monkey families that will have social structures and 'wars'. You could call them 'barbarous' animals, and perhaps they are.

Regardless, my point is made, think of it as you will.

* note, as I believe you took what I said in the context of modern day when I was referring to history, the European perspective is that of history, not the 21st century

[HLG Viper]

First off, none of this argument relates to immigration, but if you want to turn it into an argument about immigration, fine. Here ya go:

The US has been the king of immigration in the world for the past two hundred years even up to the quotas that began to occur in the 1890s-1950/60s. The entire country is founded upon immigration, and the only people living within its borders that are natives are the native Americans. That is besides the point, immigration does not directly correlate to the amount of racism within a country nor does it eliminate cultural perspectives.

The entire two-thousand years, and many before that, on the European continent, hell any continent with whites on it, has spurred the belief that whites are better than all other races. If you are blind to the mere observation of this you can go back to Hitler's Aryans, Spanish conquests, the Catholic church, expansionist policies, imperialism, the Crusades, enslavement throughout history of people from Asian/African ethnicity. Etc. Etc. Etc. Before the church and whites took the main course of history (hence: "History is written by the white man") the Egyptians came before. They enslaved thousands to underneath them that they thought were inferior or needed to be enslaved. If you do not recognize this mere fact, you are ignorant to the course of history.

Now, racism occurs in all countries, in all cultural groups, and all regions. You know why? Because people resent immigrants in economic hardships and even in economic highs. They take jobs, money from welfare, living space, they're "dirty/different/'stupid'" to each populace that experiences their presence.



No, just because you have a high immigration rating does not mean racism is 'low'. The US, as I've said before, has been the king of immigration for the past three centuries. Racism has always been present, first the British colonists once the US had been founded resented the movement of Irish from the potato famine and the Germans from the 1848 revolutions. Both of the immigrant groups contributed greatly to society, but that didn't matter.

Twenty years later, those same immigrants who came and faced the racism of the British that had been there now felt resentment and racism grew towards their own people. Irish "Americans" hating other Irish, German "Americans" hating other Germans. This cycle goes on.

Point being, this is the US's history, but the European nations are no different, in fact they were much worse, specifically regarding cultural differences and religion. You cannot say that racism does not exist in Europe, while it may not be as prevalent in the US due to highly diverse and the fast growth of the US, it still occurs, and the countries with the highest immigration ratings are more than likely to also have their fair share of racism and resentment towards immigrants who make life harder in down economic times and are too "different".

Now that that is out of the way:



Yes, but animals, to our knowledge, do not experience the more gruesome traits of 'higher intelligence'. They kill out of necessity. And you will also note, what I have discussed related in no manner to animals because of what I have just said in the above two sentences and this clause from my other post:

"Members of the same species 'should' not kill each other as it prevents future advancement/procreation which leads to a more powerful race."

It is a very general statement, hence the reason why I classified it as the general "tl;dr" version of my post. If you re-read my post you will take note that I was discussing the traits of humans throughout it in specifics. Due to the construction of our brains and the different 'reality', so to speak, that we exist in apart from animals we have created a society that murders and enslaves itself.

However, you could argue that this is called co-existence. Once again, if going by the European perspective*, the white man is the superior race, thus others must live under it and we will allow them to live while they provide for us to live. This is similar to the animal way of life (co-existence) minus the oppression and greed that appear to only be characteristics of humans. Your example of chimps co-existing in the same regions without fighting is true, because those animals do not interfere with each other and in many ways help each other survive. However, if a group feels threatened, they will retaliate. This is much like human wars, although many are also fought for reasons spurred by greed, if a nation or people feel threatened or oppressed by another nation they will retaliate and revolt/attack.

It is quite obvious then, that animals have no need for morality, as it is a construction of humans to attempt to govern the 'evil' nature of our beings (greed, lust... essentially the Catholic's "seven deadly sins").

At this moment, I will raise the fact that some animals do fight for reasons other than protection of young and food. You will no doubt of heard of the animal called a meerkat. Meerkats often fight for territory of opposing 'gangs' and attack the young and warriors of their 'gangs'. This is very 'human-like' so to speak, and an instance of animals fighting each other, clearly this contradicts what you said above. On that note, there are other mammal species that fight, and members of the chimp and monkey families that will have social structures and 'wars'. You could call them 'barbarous' animals, and perhaps they are.

Regardless, my point is made, think of it as you will.

* note, as I believe you took what I said in the context of modern day when I was referring to history, the European perspective is that of history, not the 21st century

From a historical perspective, you're of course right, but in the present, Europe is one of the most anti-racist places on earth. If you ask a German about the jews, he'll flush and wouldn't want to talk about it; They're embarassed for what their former leaders have done. Of course there's racism here too, like one of the swedish governmental parties that tries to stop immigration entirely (see, it does involve immigration, it's one of the main arguments of political racists), but there's also lots of anti-racism movements and the more people are exposed to immigrants, the more uset to it and accepting they get. This is evident in many parts of sweden at least, where schools have up to 50% immigrants at some points. I can't speak for the rest of Europe on this matter I'm afraid so you definitely have a point. But let's get back on topic


Thing is, the goal that animals have in mind is to reproduce and survive, that's all there is (tl;dr version). They can't plan for the future advancement of their race because animals lack the ability to plan ahead, that's one of the traits that make us human. Squirrels make up storages of nuts, but that's because it's one if it's instincts to stack nuts for the winter --> survival. When referring to meerkat gangs, all of this is a part of natural selection. The strongest meerkat gangs get access to the best feeding grounds and the best females, and the leader of that gang is the best fit leader, and thus, the species as a whole gets stronger thanks to this inner natural selection. But MY point was that different animals don't fight. Merkaats are meerkats and they fight meerkats. Foxes defend their territory from other foxes but they don't care about owls or wolves.

This has no correlation to human morality as there's only one human species. Once again we return to the meerkats, natural selection within a species. It's of course possible for us to fight internally, especially since we have no natural enemies but ourselves. Besides, the intelligence we possess gives us limitless possibilities to disobey whatever instincts we have and create our own, and as the whole process of natural selection within humans have long been eradicated (by the art of medicine), it allows anyone to survive, skinny or fat, smart or dumb. We have more of a free will than any other animal, and thus an outer source of morality should be required. I don't see the problem though, it is evident that there are certain norms that we should follow, just like the animal kingdom, and if you don't follow them people don't like you. This feels like a left-over of our ape ancestors IMO.


You nailed it. For more on that, read Dawkins' The God Delusion. He outlines why morality exists outside of religion quite well.

I'm embarassed to say I haven't come around to read it yet, even though I've wanted to. They didn't have it in the city library, so I'll have to borrow a swedish version from my friend possibly, but it doesn't feel genuine in swedish. I'l definitely give it a go though; I love Dawkins

[Artifex]

From a historical perspective, you're of course right, but in the present, Europe is one of the most anti-racist places on earth. If you ask a German about the jews, he'll flush and wouldn't want to talk about it; They're embarassed for what their former leaders have done. Of course there's racism here too, like one of the swedish governmental parties that tries to stop immigration entirely (see, it does involve immigration, it's one of the main arguments of political racists), but there's also lots of anti-racism movements and the more people are exposed to immigrants, the more uset to it and accepting they get. This is evident in many parts of sweden at least, where schools have up to 50% immigrants at some points. I can't speak for the rest of Europe on this matter I'm afraid so you definitely have a point. But let's get back on topic


Thing is, the goal that animals have in mind is to reproduce and survive, that's all there is (tl;dr version). They can't plan for the future advancement of their race because animals lack the ability to plan ahead, that's one of the traits that make us human. Squirrels make up storages of nuts, but that's because it's one if it's instincts to stack nuts for the winter --> survival. When referring to meerkat gangs, all of this is a part of natural selection. The strongest meerkat gangs get access to the best feeding grounds and the best females, and the leader of that gang is the best fit leader, and thus, the species as a whole gets stronger thanks to this inner natural selection. But MY point was that different animals don't fight. Merkaats are meerkats and they fight meerkats. Foxes defend their territory from other foxes but they don't care about owls or wolves.

This has no correlation to human morality as there's only one human species. Once again we return to the meerkats, natural selection within a species. It's of course possible for us to fight internally, especially since we have no natural enemies but ourselves. Besides, the intelligence we possess gives us limitless possibilities to disobey whatever instincts we have and create our own, and as the whole process of natural selection within humans have long been eradicated (by the art of medicine), it allows anyone to survive, skinny or fat, smart or dumb. We have more of a free will than any other animal, and thus an outer source of morality should be required. I don't see the problem though, it is evident that there are certain norms that we should follow, just like the animal kingdom, and if you don't follow them people don't like you. This feels like a left-over of our ape ancestors IMO.

You do realize that I support the theory of natural selection in this cause, however I refute the idea that the 'morality' or 'nature' of a species is predetermined through it. How one acts and responds to things simply can not be predetermined at birth, it takes life experiences first.

[HLG Viper]

You do realize that I support the theory of natural selection in this cause, however I refute the idea that the 'morality' or 'nature' of a species is predetermined through it. How one acts and responds to things simply can not be predetermined at birth, it takes life experiences first.

Of course it does, I'm not saying it doesn't. What I'm saying is that SOME morals are pre-determined (such as the general one - don't kill other humans) while morals such as slavery - no slavery have been subject to change over the ages, and thus can't be a pre-determined moral.

[Cerberus Beast]

For the sake of continuity and flow in this debate, please allow me propose a simple classification of 'morals' such that those debating do not get caught up in whether a specific example may be considered a valid piece of evidence for an individual's theory. I propose the following classification of instincts, base morals, and human morals, with human morals being the topic of discussion as is apparent to me via my own evaluation of the conversation up to this point.



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Instincts: The general biological and 'social' tendencies that are apparent in most species for a nonspecific, homologous set of situations encountered by individuals and populations. Examples include not killing members of the same species, competition is valid in situations where living space, food, water, mates, etc. are not adequate; cannibalism, altruistic behavior, and self-defense are classified here due to their relative applications to species or individual survival
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Base Morals: The extended set of behaviors as are evidenced in group and pack organizations. Essentially, animal behaviors that arise as a result of social living within a concentrated population. This classification primarily involves the beginnings of social behavior and precedents within individual populations for order and structure, as well as 'acceptable' behavior. Examples include male lions' competition for a large number of mates, the formation of dominance hierarchies, ritual or actual combat or behaviors associated with said formation. In terms of 'acceptable' behavior, I am specifically denoting examples such as: Once an alpha individual has established his/her place, and all individuals were involved in the competition for that place, a challenge of power will not immediately take place.
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Human Morals: Tendencies in choices of action in situations that would only be likely to occur in the human social environment. Things such as crime, peer pressure, chosen response to a situation in which an individual is not directly involved, and other complex social interactions and choices are all within this group
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Now, my personal theory as to the origin of human morals is quite simple. Human morals in all populations began to develop as humans developed complex social organizations. Once the hunter-gatherer phase of human development was over, the settler-cultivator phase began. Humans began to create localized and permanent settlements in which they grew crops and raised livestock. In the wake, advanced social hierarchies formed, creating class and feudal systems that were either ratified, opposed, or altered by religion. Religion and social interaction were the intermediate foundations for human morals, with the final step being the population-specific reaction to the status quo ante, or the "way in which before", in it's literal Latin translation. I believe that any given cross-section of human morals during any point in history* that can be validly evidenced is a reaction to whatever the prior social and moral environment was.

*following the development of advanced social organization and religion

[HLG Viper]

Good call, this debate was turning into a war of definitions rather than a debate on morality.

I agree with you that human morality most likely evolved during the forming of civilization. I'm fairly sure it wasn't spoken out by someone just like that, rather it formed independantly. As people worked together to grow crops and hunt, if people committed theft, it would be a disadvantage to the whole group, and thus it was considered a "crime". Basically anything that gave the entire group a disadvantage in place of a single persons selfish needs was considered a crime back then

[Coyote1023]

I'll wait for any opposition to this theory of our "basic human morality," then we can move on to things that are different in every area and why they came to be, such as chivalry (not the knight kind, but kindness towards women. Common misconception that they are the same).

[xthorgoldx]

So the other day, Tyler (Artifex) and I were discussion philosophy. We ended up talking about morals and how they came to be. So I ask you, read this post, then help me discover the true source of morality.

Now, to start off, this is my view: Morality is a man-made tool. It was created for self gain in order to help being equality to every human. Lets jump back to before morals. In this era man ruled by brute strength and power. The strongest would always prevail and could do anything he/she wanted. This is when morality came to be. A group of weaker, intellectual humans came together and started creating a code. If this code was broken, the group as a whole would retaliate as one. The benefit of this pact was that now power had limits. One could not just steal from another or murder without reason. If an act such as this was done, one would be outcast from the society. I will state it again, morality is a tool that gives every man an equal chance to make it in this world. It makes genetics play less of a role and gives more emphasis to actions.

Now, go discuss your theories and reasons for the existence of morality. I will mediate the discussion and will try to comment on all of your ideas.
On the Existence of Morality:
Morals exist. We know they do. They are often expressed as inner "knowledge" of right and wrong - a conscience. While the degrees of which each person's conscience goes differs, there is basic morality that transcends all known human cultures. In all human cultures, unwarranted murder is punished. In all human culture, malicious theft is punished. In all human cultures, rape is punished. While the definitions of each aforementioned crime DOES differ, the point is that right and wrong are recognized across time, geography, and society.

By inductive reasoning, we can see that since all observed human cultures have a basic level of morality that is constant through all cultures, there must be objective morality.

On the Origin of Morality:
There are four possible sources of the human sense of morality, or conscience:

1. Natural - Morality is a natural defense mechanism designed to keep our species from destroying itself
2. Individual - Morality is subjective and determined by the individual
3. Social - Morality is the product of majority sentiment
4. Design - Morality is the product of an intelligent designer

However, three of these sources are faulty, and cannot be used:
1. Natural - If morality is simply a product of nature, we should be able to ignore it, as we are masters over nature. We're past the point where we have to worry about genetic extinction, therefore, we should be able to ignore the boundaries set by natural selection. However, we can't.
2. Individual - If morality is subjective, and determined by, the individual, how come we can't change our minds?
3. Social - If morality is the product of social sentiment, why are we subject to the majority, especially when we may not even belong to said majority?

The only logical source of morality is an intelligent designer - the other sources for morality contradict the timeless and irrefutable nature of conscience.

Therefore, conscience and morality is defined as this:
"Morality is a set of rules that define right and wrong, as set down by a Universal Author. While these rules can be partially ignored and differently interpreted, their basic essence is present in all humans in the form of conscience, which humans must obey. The purpose of morality is the will of the Author - whether for a metanarrative or the preservation of Creation."

[Bartoge]

I an agree with people on Morality residing in the province of whether actions committed can be seen as right or wrong. However, being right or wrong presupposes the idea of what is it right for? Or what is it wrong for? Obviously there has to be some sort of goal that morality leads to and when your actions are right, then you are on th right way to accomplishing that goal. When your actions are wrong, you are going the wrong direction to accomplishing your goal. Now, what is this goal? That depends upon the type of religion, philosophy, ideology, etc your are practicing.

There are two ultimate goals that morality leads to: life and death. The goal that morality leads you to can be the preservation of your life or the destruction of it (in long or short periods of time). Morality deals with values (things you wish to gain/keep). Do you value life? If so, then what actions allow you to gain/keep life (particularly yours). Do you value death? What actions allow you to achieve death? Depending upon those values, your actions will be seen to you as moral or not moral. If you do not value life, then murdering 100's of people can be seen as moral in your eyes. If you value life, then obviously murder is not moral for it is not allowing you to gain or keep life (in this case not your own but others. remember since you value life, everyone's life is of value including yours, your dogs, your friends, your school rival, etc).

There is not an automatic code that humans are granted that gives them the ability to value life automatically. Humans are a rare organism which has the ability to make choices and plan goals. Other animals live in the range of the moment. They do what they need to survive as nature has determined for them. They can not plan in terms of years or decades in survival (some can plan in the range of a year, like squirrel in collecting nuts for hibernation). Unlike animals, humans can plan and set goals that may takes years or decades to complete, and which require choices and humans may make wrong choices when trying to accomplish their goal. It is this concept of choice that allows humans to value death. It is this that creates murders and robbers and such (although sometimes they have a defect in their brain that may cause that ex: psychopaths). It is that ability to choose, that makes everything in morality possible, because if there was no choice, then there would be no morality, because there would be no wrongs, for everything you do would be the same as everyone else and therefore everything everyone does would be right.

[PsychoBucket]

So I ask you, read this post, then help me discover the true source of morality.

Now, to start off, this is my view: Morality is a man-made tool. It was created for self gain in order to help being equality to every human. Lets jump back to before morals. In this era man ruled by brute strength and power. The strongest would always prevail and could do anything he/she wanted. This is when morality came to be. A group of weaker, intellectual humans came together and started creating a code. If this code was broken, the group as a whole would retaliate as one. The benefit of this pact was that now power had limits. One could not just steal from another or murder without reason. If an act such as this was done, one would be outcast from the society. I will state it again, morality is a tool that gives every man an equal chance to make it in this world. It makes genetics play less of a role and gives more emphasis to actions.

Now, go discuss your theories and reasons for the existence of morality. I will mediate the discussion and will try to comment on all of your ideas.

There is a big difference of the start of morality and the creation of laws to support morality. In order for them to create those laws, morality must have already existed.

The source of morality is simple. The first time something happened to someone (from someone, something, or even something they did themselves) where they thought "I will not do this to people because I do not want people to do it to me" That is how morality was created. When was that? No one can know, but I think it was much longer ago than the time you are referring to.

[xthorgoldx]

There is a big difference of the start of morality and the creation of laws to support morality. In order for them to create those laws, morality must have already existed.

The source of morality is simple. The first time something happened to someone (from someone, something, or even something they did themselves) where they thought "I will not do this to people because I do not want people to do it to me" That is how morality was created. When was that? No one can know, but I think it was much longer ago than the time you are referring to.
If your interpretation is true, then why is it that, in the absence of some form of higher order to govern, humans tend to ignore morality and act immorally? Immoral behavior is much more beneficial than moral behavior - if you want something he has, take it, if that guy ticks you off, get rid of him. It's only when some form of order is established through government or religion that the values of the minority, which bring good effects long term, can be forced on the majority, whose values bring pleasure short term.

As well, your theory fails to explain more morally ambiguous areas - extramarital sex, drug abuse, self-mutilation, et cetera. You may say "But sex outside of marriage isn't wrong!" depending on your viewpoint. However, this is your argument's weakness. If we see differently on a subject, that means morality is subjective and useless - so your point is moot, and morality is irrelevant and can be ignored. On the other hand, it means that morality is not subjective and has an objective source. See my last post on the source of objective morality (i.e. God / Designer).

[PsychoBucket]

If your interpretation is true, then why is it that, in the absence of some form of higher order to govern, humans tend to ignore morality and act immorally? Immoral behavior is much more beneficial than moral behavior - if you want something he has, take it, if that guy ticks you off, get rid of him. It's only when some form of order is established through government or religion that the values of the minority, which bring good effects long term, can be forced on the majority, whose values bring pleasure short term.

You basically just proved my Point "There is a big difference of the start of morality and the creation of laws to support morality. In order for them to create those laws, morality must have already existed." It is silly to think that just because people act immoral, morality does not exist. I never said that laws were not effective in enforcing morality. I just said morality existed before those laws.


As well, your theory fails to explain more morally ambiguous areas - extramarital sex, drug abuse, self-mutilation, et cetera. You may say "But sex outside of marriage isn't wrong!" depending on your viewpoint. However, this is your argument's weakness. If we see differently on a subject, that means morality is subjective and useless - so your point is moot
How does this make my point moot?


On the Existence of Morality:
Morals exist. We know they do. They are often expressed as inner "knowledge" of right and wrong - a conscience. While the degrees of which each person's conscience goes differs, there is basic morality that transcends all known human cultures. In all human cultures, unwarranted murder is punished. In all human culture, malicious theft is punished. In all human cultures, rape is punished. While the definitions of each aforementioned crime DOES differ, the point is that right and wrong are recognized across time, geography, and society.

By inductive reasoning, we can see that since all observed human cultures have a basic level of morality that is constant through all cultures, there must be objective morality.
Actually, to me your statement proves the morality is subjective. This just goes back to my first post. Murder, malicious theft, and rape are things that have happened in all cultures, and obviously people are going to think those are horrible things. So all cultures are going to create similar laws about it.

Then you have the "ambiguous areas - extramarital sex, drug abuse, self-mutilation, et cetera." If morality is objective, how can there be ambiguous areas? How can it be ok for a guy to have multiple wives in some areas of the world, and it is considered wrong in other areas?

Morality is subjective otherwise this could not happen. Morality is all about experience. Different experiences in different cultures lead to different views on morality.


On the Origin of Morality:
There are four possible sources of the human sense of morality, or conscience:

1. Natural - Morality is a natural defense mechanism designed to keep our species from destroying itself
2. Individual - Morality is subjective and determined by the individual
3. Social - Morality is the product of majority sentiment
4. Design - Morality is the product of an intelligent designer

However, three of these sources are faulty, and cannot be used:
1. Natural - If morality is simply a product of nature, we should be able to ignore it, as we are masters over nature. We're past the point where we have to worry about genetic extinction, therefore, we should be able to ignore the boundaries set by natural selection. However, we can't.
2. Individual - If morality is subjective, and determined by, the individual, how come we can't change our minds?
3. Social - If morality is the product of social sentiment, why are we subject to the majority, especially when we may not even belong to said majority?


1: If we can not ignore it, explain murder, rape, and theft? If all governments disappeared overnight, how many people do you think would be able to ignore it? A lot of them
2: Morality is based on experience. Experience of what our parents and society and the experiences of things we have went through. If we go through a new experience that outweighs previsions experiences our views can change.
3: I am not exactly sure I understand the point of your argument for this one but laws are a good reason to follow the majority. You will get punished if you dont.