individual behaviour + social considerations = morality
(or, is morality the necessary relation of individual behaviour and social decisions about self-regulation? Is morality then a purely social phenomenon? Does an individual morality even exist in this sense?)
6 comments:
Can a fish have morality?
I think morality only exists in a social context. Morality would not exist in a hypothetical case of individual behavior without any other living beings involved.
Do chimps have morality? Most of their social interactions are based on survival and propagation of the species.
When a dog is punished for pissing on the floor, you can tell he/she feels guilt. But this is a conditioned response, a result of training from the alpha person.
Maybe human morals are a slightly more advanced version of this phenomenon.
I'm not sure it's just a social context. My intuition, or my claim, is that morality is a property of the social, in which and through we engage as an N of N + 1, does that make sense?
And fish do have a certain morality, as do dogs and chimps, it's just not as engaged and apparent relative to the complexity of their social forms.
Also, the alpha argument is a bit problematic, as it begs the question of who taught the original alpha? It would seem more plausible that morality already exists 'out there', and it is us who engage it, again through social interaction.
This is interesting to think about in relation to how we as individuals and societies relate to each other - or so often don't.
I think morality is something innate - intangible and mysterious but there in everyone. But there is certainly social context to it - how it's defined, viewed, bounded.
The tricky part is that there are so many "socials". Same goes for the chimps - they exercise morals in how they care and protect each other but we see it differently because we don't exist in the chimp social structure.
And if morality is something we all have but is engaged through social interaction, what goes on with the equation that ends with us all doing "un-moral" things?
I think morality is something innate too, but more so 'out there' than in us. Although innate in both is a reasonable and highly likely idea, definitely.
As to whether it is intangible, I think it is highly tangible as well, it is both (which is actually a transcendental realist argument for moral realism).
As to immoral things (if this is what you mean), I'm not sure this is a problem. Smells and colours can have many shades, as can morality.
The trick is to understand there is a teleology to all of this.
Oh no! He didn't! Telos, egad!
Here I use unmoral as distinct from immoral or amoral, but agree that much of this is an 'out there' phenomenon.
It's not the shades of morality that is problematic (for me); it's that if taken to an extreme, social consideration potentially provides an excuse for any harmful behaviour. I'm thinking of historical examples of behaviour that are now considered heinous crimes against humanity but were considered moral by at least some of those who committed them.
Around and around the telos pole they go.
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