I need to know how you feel about morality

[andrewducker]

Poll #25203

Open to: Registered Users, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 63

View Respondents

There is one true morality

View Answers

Yes, and I know what it is, and it accords with my own views
3 (4.8%)

Yes, and I know what it is, but it does not match my own views
0 (0.0%)

Yes, but I do not know what it is
6 (9.5%)

No
43 (68.3%)

Something Else I Will Explain In Comments
11 (17.5%)

To explain slightly, if you believe that there is a God, and that you know what the moral rules they set are, and you agree with those rules, that would be option one.

(Or you can replace "God" with "the natural order of things" if you believe that this includes an inbuilt morality.)

Comments

[andrewducker]

Absolutely.

But it does tell me that I'm far from alone.

[mountainkiss]

That can be nice in itself.

[andrewducker]

Yup! And as I'm fairly sure most of these people are human, tells me that the opposite isn't human nature.

[mountainkiss]

Not automatic. They might have worked hard to overcome their natures.

[andrewducker]

People work hard to learn to walk as well. Doesn't make an inability to do so human nature.

Edit: that's probably too strong - one view isn't better than another here. But things we learn to do are not inhuman.

[mountainkiss]

Probably too complex for a low bandwidth medium. But we don’t have to agree on this.

[danieldwilliam]

How accurately do you need to know the moral rules to answer yes?

General principles or specific speed limits in k/h?

[andrewducker]

If you believe your general principles are intrinsic to the universe then they totally count.

[gingicat]

This Jew is okay with the popular summary, also used in Jewish settings my entire life. But if you prefer:

שׁוּב מַעֲשֶׂה בְּגוֹי אֶחָד שֶׁבָּא לִפְנֵי שַׁמַּאי. אָמַר לוֹ: גַּיְּירֵנִי עַל מְנָת שֶׁתְּלַמְּדֵנִי כׇּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ כְּשֶׁאֲנִי עוֹמֵד עַל רֶגֶל אַחַת! דְּחָפוֹ בְּאַמַּת הַבִּנְיָן שֶׁבְּיָדוֹ. בָּא לִפְנֵי הִלֵּל, גַּיְירֵיהּ. אָמַר לוֹ: דַּעֲלָךְ סְנֵי לְחַבְרָךְ לָא תַּעֲבֵיד — זוֹ הִיא כׇּל הַתּוֹרָה כּוּלָּהּ, וְאִידַּךְ פֵּירוּשַׁהּ הוּא, זִיל גְּמוֹר.
There was another incident involving one gentile who came before Shammai and said to Shammai: Convert me on condition that you teach me the entire Torah while I am standing on one foot. Shammai pushed him away with the builder’s cubit in his hand. This was a common measuring stick and Shammai was a builder by trade. The same gentile came before Hillel. He converted him and said to him: That which is hateful to you do not do to another; that is the entire Torah, and the rest is its interpretation. Go study.

[andrewducker]

Thank you!

[naath]

I think it exists, and that I don't understand it. But also that it is not some easy to state pithy aphorism, but a complex set of balances between "too much X" and "too little X", that there are often multiple competing interests that need to be considered.

[lilysea]

I think some moral or ethical rules are absolute

for example,

"Do not kill other human beings [actual born human beings, not foetuses] without their prior consent except in self defence or when a war has been declared"

while other ethical rules are more context-specific

eg

"Do not eat endangered species, but if the species becomes so numerous that it is definitely no longer endangered, it is okay to eat it again"

Edited to add: the rules that I think are absolute, I do not think they are absolute because any God(s) or Goddess(es) or The Universe have decreed them [I'm an atheist], but rather because they are necessary in order to have a safe and functional society

[andrewducker]

I have to say that a rule with three exceptions in it seems less than entirely absolute.

[lilysea]

I mean, I 100% believe that the rule as written

"Do not kill other human beings [actual born human beings, not foetuses] without their prior consent except in self defence or when a war has been declared"

applies to 100% of situations...

[lilysea]

If I were trying to write ethical laws I would write

Avoid causing harm, unless causing that harm is genuinely necessary in order to avoid greater harm occurring;

People should be able to decide what to do with their own bodies, unless their choices are endangering other people's physical health [eg typhoid Mary];

Wherever it is possible without harming yourself or over-exhausting yourself, strive to make the world a better place;

Slavery is always wrong. No human being should ever be bought and sold;

We have an ethical obligation to do our very best to leave a habitable planet behind for the people and animals who come after us;

Every society should provide access to healthcare, housing, and education to its citizens to the maximum extent that it can afford to do so, regardless of the wealth/race/religion/gender/sexuality of those citizens

[aldabra]

I think there are things which happen which are quite clearly Bad. I don't care whether Hitler thought he was being virtuous; he was wrong. Therefore I think there is an objective morality.

I don't think it's amenable to being summarised as a list of Commandments. I think it's very dependent on situations and the beliefs of those within the situations, and to the extent that an ideal moral calculus exists we're nowhere near to formalising it. You can construct perverse counter-examples to most Rules, but that doesn't mean that the Rules aren't useful rules-of-thumb in everyday life.

The key intuition is that people are of equal moral standing. Those kids being taken from their families and kept in cages are of equal moral standing to my kid. (K says: "Can't they see they're people?") It turns out to be quite easy to see what's Bad if it's done to you; the bit people have difficulty with, because it's inconvenient, is "don't do that, then."

[armiphlage]

A problem with treating other people as I would wish to be treated is that there is so much variation between people.

I might want to be left alone in times of stress, others might want close human contact.
I might want to be forcibly stopped if I'm doing something hazardous, others might want to be left to do as they wish.
I might want to not be resuscitated if I suffer a severe injury with no chance of recovery; others might want all possible medical treatments to be applied.

If you phrase it as "treat other people as they wish to be treated", you get edge cases where the other person is operating without information that you have (they want to drink from the attractive bottle of liquid, you know it has bleach in it), or the other person is in a mental state (temporary or otherwise) where they want to do something that would harm themselves.

It would be very difficult to come up with a moral code that works well in every situation, because humans are so good at creating so many different situations.

[gingicat]

I’ve just noticed that the source I grabbed this from used masculine forms for when the convert was speaking about himself, but changed the vowels in the part where Hillel is talking to the convert to make the verbs feminine. Probably a typo, but interesting.

[mme_n_b]

You... just repeated what I said in a longer way. I'm going to take it as a signal that my own reply should have been shorter, containing only the words "do NOT do unto another".

[gingicat]

I thought you were scolding me.

[mme_n_b]

Jove forfend! Merely pointing out the difference between "do" and "do not", which I consider to be one of the key differences between Judaism and Christianity.

[myka]

for once I find myself in the majority! (of respondents)

[agoodwinsmith]

There are things I abhor, and I will judge anyone who does them, but humans have justified doing everything doable. In fact, I think sometimes that if there is a commandment/law about it, it's because people want to do it, and will if they can get away uncaught.

[symbioid]

I don't like using the word Morality for the "religious" context it implies.

My heart says "surely there's *something* that guides us as a universal law with regard to 'morals'"

My brain says "nah, the universe is chaos and as no inherent meaning, in theory you can murder away with no moral dilemma" (ethical dilemma, on the other hand ;))

I personally choose not to murder, for many reasons (even if there are times that certain politicians make me wish I didn't have such a "moral core" :P)

I think the closest thing I can come to is that morality is a process of least resistance to causing conflict. I can't quite explain it. Maybe the Tao.

But whatever I say about "morals" will ultimately be about Ethics, because I don't believe in some universal arbitrary rule.

I certainly don't believe something is good just because "God says it is so" (Euthyphro dilemma). That was one of the sticking points that led me out of Christianity, when my youth pastor basically said "God IS Just and therefore whatever God says is Just, and if God says we should all be tortured for all eternity - that is Justice"

I kinda get what he's getting at, but yeah, no. In that sense I guess there IS a universal morality, but it exists outside of $Deity. But I don't believe in that framework so it's irrelevant to me except as a "what if".

[symbioid]

I think this is about the closest to my thinking...