Morals

[andrewducker]

Following on from Allorin's post here, I'm intrigued as to whether peopel think that morals are principles that can be applied to situations or are situational (but you can generalise into principles) or something else...

[Poll #164321]

Comments

[yonmei.livejournal.com]

I wish this one was a check box. If it was, I'd go for flow from general principles. One should discuss the principles and then work out the answers to specific examples from them and are mostly situational. Principles can sometimes act as guidelines, but it's the instances that count. I think they're both true.

[nickys.livejournal.com]

It's all very complicated, because there are conflicting rights in almost all cases. One person's right to do something conflicts with another person's right to be left in peace.

Freedom of speech is often in conflict with the right for people to avoid things that upset them (as we discussed earlier with the example of gruesome anti-vivisection posters being placed where my seven year old can see them as we walk along the street).

[heron61.livejournal.com]

While it is obviously limited in a few obvious ways, I'm reminded of the Meyers-Briggs personality test here. I'm fairly certain that what you have done is map out the P/J (Perceptive/Judgmental) division in the people taking the poll. I'm guessing only Perceptive people answered "mostly situational", that only Judgmental people answered the "flow from general principles" answer w/o counterexamples and that mostly people in the middle answered "flow from general principles" with counterexamples.

Rigid vs. situational morals seem to be one of the significant divides in people. I have noted that I rarely agree with anyone Judgmental in any in-depth discussion of morals or ethics.

Re: Morals

[wolfieboy.livejournal.com]

Morals are societally based rules.
Ethics are individual based rules/choices.