Morals and Ethics

<OL type=“1”>
<LI>There is never a good occasion to lie. 3
<LI>There is never a good occasion to cheat on a test. 3
<LI>Abortion is a great assault on innocent human life and can never be justified. 5
<LI>It is wrong for a rich country to engage so vigorously in an armsrace when it has so many poor people in its midst. 1
<LI>Outside of marriage, it is wrong to engage in sexual intercourse and the events leading up to it. 5
<LI>People have an obligation to worship God, even if they don’t feel like it.5
<LI>Given the efficiency of today’s justice system, it is virtually impossible to justify capital punishment. 3
<LI>It would be dangerous and imprudent to lower the age for legalized drinking of alcohol. 5
<LI>It is wrong to asses or judge a person by the color of their skin. 1
<LI>Pornography - both soft and hard - debases human sexuality. It should be outlawed. 5
</OL>

yeah i know i don’t have moral standards

oops forgot to take the quotes thingys off

There is never a good occasion to lie.
Disagree. Since sometimes an innocent white lie, is useful when you want to protect people (especially children) from the painful truth.

There is never a good occasion to cheat on a test.
Strongly agree. If you don’t know the stuff, then that is you fault. And you deserve what you get.

Abortion is a great assault on innocent human life and can never be justified.
Disagree. Sometimes an abortion is better than having the child, for example if the pregency itself will cause harm to the mother (and even the child), so why put the mthough it.

It is wrong for a rich country to engage so vigorously in an armsrace when it has so many poor people in its midst.
Agree. Rich countries should spend more money trying to fix the problems in their own countries before lookingh for trouble outside it.

Outside of marriage, it is wrong to engage in sexual intercourse and the events leading up to it.
Strongly disagree. As long as you are aware of the possible consiquences, and take the proper actions if they occur. Then I think it is perfectly fine for people to have sex outside of marriage.

People have an obligation to worship God, even if they don’t feel like it.
Strongly disagree. People should not be forced to do something they don’t want to. Especially if they don’t even believe in any type of higher being.

Given the efficiency of today’s justice system, it is virtually impossible to justify capital punishment.
Neither.

It would be dangerous and imprudent to lower the age for legalized drinking of alcohol.
Agree. Hell many people who are over the age limit, don’t think about what they are doing, and end up getting hurt because of some drunken act of stupidity. And lower the age limit would just make that increase.

It is wrong to asses or judge a person by the color of their skin.
Strongly agree. As the saying goes, “you can’t judge a book by it’s cover”.

Pornography - both soft and hard - debases human sexuality. It should be outlawed.
Diagree.

-There is never a good occasion to lie.
(5) Um… lies are good. Honesty causes undue pain and confusion. What people don’t need to hear doesn’t need to be said to them. (this opens up a whole mess about who gets to decide who can and cannot handle the truth, but I’ll leave it there)

-There is never a good occasion to cheat on a test.
(1) I’m hard pressed to find a situation where cheating is a good plan. If extenuating circumstances create a disadvantage for you on the test, talk to the instructor and see if sometihng can be worked out.

-Abortion is a great assault on innocent human life and can never be justified.
(5) I’m sure this will create anger too, but I believe in Euthanaisa. Why should someone be forced to suffer needlessly because of the mistakes of their parents. For you hateful people who think that the woman should be responsible and better learn her lesson, how would you like it if your life was based on the idea that your mother needed retribution? As inhuman as it is to say that I think some people are better off not having to live a life that is stacked against them, I say that it is inhumane to demand that an innocent child suffer and lose their innocence for nothing but a belief about the sanctity of their innocence.

-It is wrong for a rich country to engage so vigorously in an armsrace when it has so many poor people in its midst.
(2) This assumes a time of peace. I generally disagree with war, but what would have happened if France hadn’t at least attempted to build the maginot line? This question is weighted by the modern perception of threat, and ignores the real necessity for defense that hasn’t been seen since WW2

-Outside of marriage, it is wrong to engage in sexual intercourse and the events leading up to it.
(4) My main argument about this one is going to be different than most peoples, though for the most part I tend to agree with others. My question is what about gay and lesbian couples? They can’t get married in the US, so this “moral” question immediately calls into question a group of people who I personally don’t have any moral issues with. Furthermore, how are people going to know what to do when they get married? I’m not a free love hippy type, but a certain measure of trial and error helps humans grow and mature.

-People have an obligation to worship God, even if they don’t feel like it.
(3) This is not ambivalence, this is a refusal to reply to this one, because it assumes that everyone ‘believes’ in a god. Given that every person did believe in a god, I would give this one a 2, but since a large number of people do not believe at all, I see it as a 5. But for heaven’s sake, were there conclusive proof of a divine entity who watches over us all and does good things for our benefit, we had better start being more thankful as a species.

-Given the efficiency of today’s injustice system, it is virtually impossible to justify capital punishment.
(2) Though I don’t feel that death is ever a good punishment (especially with an inefficient system of administration) there are times when the judiciary needs to focus more on protecting the people than on rehabilitating the criminals. I can’t think of any such criminals in recent times, but I would feel sick to my stomach should one such appear and be let to live by a system with no conviction to do what is needed.

-It would be dangerous and imprudent to lower the age for legalized drinking of alcohol.
(5) Alcohol needs to either return to the natural part of our culture that it once was (via no age limit), or be completely removed from our culture because, “alcohol IS the devil.” Our problem is the way that alcohol responsibility isnt taught through living, and then, right when we are at our least responsible age, we are given alcohol suddenly. Yeah, good plan.

-It is wrong to asses or judge a person by the color of their skin.
(3) Why is it so wrong? There are some things about a person that are beyond their control that have a serious effect on their pyschologies. People born near holidays tend to have more compromising mindsets than others, people born into rich households tend to view money very differently than people born into poverty, and these mindsets permeate into everything aobut the person. Why can’t we look at someone, and take a guess that because they are asian, that they have spent years being held up to expectations in school, by their teachers and peers that they did nothing to warrent other than look like smart asian kids? It is wrong to judge/condemn/damn someone based on racial stereotypes, but it can be very good for communication to be aware of some general trends within an ethnicity, not only to prevent ourselves from accidentally offending, but also so that we can simply see more eye to eye. We just have to be sure to remember not to hold people to the preconceptions, and allow for all sorts of individuality that is more than capable of going exactly against the trend.

-pornography - both soft and hard - debases human sexuality. It should be outlawed.
(4) Outlaw porn?!?!?! Madness! Yeah, I think that some porn debases sexuality, but that doesn’t mean that it is inherently evil. Besides, sometimes a guy really needs to see some lesbians getting it on.

Morals and ethnics are, always will be and should be different from person to person; else we would all be blind.

Alright, anyway. A few responses. Yes, I know some of these were poorly worded and pretty broad, including two or more judgements in one pass. And for those of you nitpicking (what is “wrong” and “good”), these are your opinions. It’s how YOU define “wrong” and “good.”

As for me…

    1. I’ve lied a lot in my life (cough), usually to help bolster someone’s image of themselves or to protect someone else. I’ve been bitten in the ass by a few, though.
    1. I’ve never cheated myself, and I don’t see the need to cheat.
    1. I’ve argued points which others have brought up here (harmful to mother/child, seriously deformed children (and I mean REALLY deformed, not something small), etc.). I think what the debate really hinges on is what you define as “human life.” I don’t believe that starts until the child is able to fend for itself (not in every situation, but a few).
    1. Yes, the country should help its poor, but at the same time it must keep up in defensive technology and other items of war so it won’t be seen as weak and potentially be invaded if a war comes around.
    1. People are going to feel the desire to have sex before they can easily get married, so why try to restrict them? Granted, people (teenagers a lot) having sex whenever they want isn’t always a good thing, but people need a release and sex could do it for them. What about if a husband has an erectile dysfunction but his wife still needs to be sexually satisfied?

And as for the gay/lesbian couples not being able to be married: They can in some states. But until it’s widely accepted that they can, then it’ll just be another mark against them I guess.

    1. Oh fuck no. I’d never worship if I didn’t feel the need to. Forcing someone to do something they don’t want to is little higher than slavery, IMO.
    1. Our prison system isn’t exactly the most efficient. From what I’ve heard and seen, we’re overcrowded. Not only would capital punishment help lighten that load, but it’ll save the state money so they can improve on the prisons.

A few points brought up: You deal with the person then and there (well, eventually, but still the point stands). There’s no further chance for them to murder or whatever, and they won’t be able to escape prison and wreak havoc. And since the point of prison is to rehabilitate, consider if the possible death-row inmate weren’t sentenced for death but for life instead. He’d have a negative effect on the inmates because I’d doubt he’d be real bright and cheery, and if there’s no capital punishment, what’s to stop him from killing other inmates? He’s already there for life; what’re they gonna do, extend his sentence?

    1. All the current age of alcohol is doing right now is making it a bit harder to get your hands on the stuff. I’m 16 and I can reliably get it if I need to, just not directly. Underage people will still drink and they’ll still drive, so either the laws need to be a lot stricter or a lot looser.
    1. I can’t give a 1 because I’ll profile someone by their race sometimes, but I try to avoid it and I’m not going to automatically assume they’re a horrible person.
    1. Like said previously, pornography is an outlet for some people and an education tool for others. It can be entertaining or demeaning, but that’d require another discussion on just what qualifies for that. And you have to consider if you outlaw it, would you just outlaw the “wrong” porn and not the “right” porn? If you did, how would you figure out where it falls?

Solitary confinement.

You’re not getting what I mean, I think.

When I hear the word “happy”, I have a feeling that corresponds to it. When I hear the word “big”, I can identify what “big” is by sight. When I hear the word “good”, I have nothing by which to identify it. It doesn’t correspond to any reality. It’s a false adjective - neither describing a thing physical nor mental.

When you say, “There’s never a good occasion to lie” - technically, I agree completely, because there’s no such thing as “good”. It’s like asking a devout Christian, “Does doing service give you positive karma?” To be precise, no - the Christian doesn’t believe in karma, so there’s no point talking about whether some karma is positive or negative. I’m in the same situation: I don’t believe in good or evil, or any sort of exterior morality.

So: you can state that something is good, and then state that the same thing is bad; my response will always be, I disagree. Hence, all my fives.

I think you’re taking the statements a bit to figurativly.

What? So do you think that it is fine to judge people based on skin color?

ALso, Xwing has an excellent point about good. Good is subjective. What I think is good, maybe completely different from what you think is good. Things like happy or sad have an actual thign attached to them. There is a pretty good idea what happy and sad are. However, good is vague. I like think that XBOX is good, you think it is bad. Neither of us wrong. We just have different tastes.

You’re being too abstract, Xwing. Someone can have a moral system that isn’t based on the belief that wrongful actions will be punished, but rather that good actions are beneficial to the greatest amount of people. People do not kill others not so much on account of the punishment that is threatened (although that is a factor), but because it is not beneficial, and indeed considerably detrimental to the lives of many people.
If you had two people who never met each other before and they were in a room, and one for no reason at all killed the other, you would at least consider that wrong, would you not?
Right and wrong may be abstract concepts with no value but what we apply to them, but there is some sort of consensus on their meanings, and although it varies from individual to individual, it is ridiculous to conclude that you have no sense of what is good and what is bad.

“Beneficial to the greatest amount of people”? Utilitarianism is silly pop philosophy. How does one measure the “benefit” of an action? It’s as meaningless a term as “good”. What each person considers “beneficial” merely reflects what that person wants the world to be like. Society’s definition of beneficial is determined democratically. There’s no exterior significance to it.

Hence, it’s misleading to talk about benefiting people. Rather, talk about individuals trying to enforce their individual wills for how the world should be run.

If you had two people who never met each other before and they were in a room, and one for no reason at all killed the other, you would at least consider that wrong, would you not?
No. I would be appalled because murder is generally something I dislike. On the other hand, calling it “wrong” assumes there’s a universal standard by which to judge behavior; I see no reason to make this assumption. Moreover, if there were universal “rights” and “wrongs”, how could I or anyone pretend to know them? Finally, if there actually were “rights” and “wrongs”, why would they matter?

For example: it’s “wrong” to have pre-marital sex. So what? Why not have sex anyway? “Because you’ll be punished by God someday.” Okay.

But you say you have a moral system that’s not based on punishment. If “morality” isn’t enforced by punishment, then what exactly does it mean to be “moral”? What does it do? If being “moral” doesn’t make you happy, or reward you or others somehow, then what worth does it have? Perhaps you’d respond that being moral does make you happy. In that case, isn’t “being moral” just an alternate and confused way of saying “doing what makes yourself and others happy”?

This is the point: “morality” is a worthless concept, in that it does not tangibly affect anything; unless a tangible reward is attached to being “moral”; and I’ve encountered nothing to suggest that certain behavioral modes are rewarded by an exterior power. Therefore, attempting to do what’s “good”, when I have no way of knowing what “good” is, when doing “good” will accomplish absolutely nothing, seems silly to me.

Damn, you are really going to make me fight for this one aren’t you Xwing?

Alright here goes. Crime and punishment are not only the basis of morality, but also based off of morality. Let’s look at things from a natural order point of view.

I ask that we can make two assumptions about human beings, and I’d like to focus on the argument that these lead to first. If these assumptions go completely against some base philosophy, then we can try to work that out, but otherwise, please work with me on this:

1-human beings are a social animal
2- because human beings are social, they exist more happily in the presence of other human beings

[I know that there are some major flaws to this, and it can easily be nitpicked, but it makes for a damn good starting point, so lets move from here rather than argue at that point.]

Living in the presence of another creature that is dangerous is a bad idea, thats why most people tend not to enjoy living in the panda den at the zoo, because their lives are threatened constantly be the panda. If a person poses the same threat to another person that the panda poses, the threatened person would sanely wish to be removed from the presence of the threat.

There is an obvious problem with this scenario when people pose threats to each other, but simultaneously find themselves drawn into community. At a primal, subconcious level, we all recognize this subtle threat that others pose, and usually we can recognize that we too pose a similar threat. And so a social hierarchy is born, in which each person accepts the level of threat they are willing to allow imposed upon themselves and limits the threat that they impose upon others. If someone oversteps the bounds of danger that another as defined as their limit, then the person who has become to much of a threat will lose their role within the community, not by punishment, but by the nature of the beast.

And so, the very basic levels of morality are defined by how much of a threat each person is willing to accept from each other person. Then those limits, which we place upon each other are turned upon ourselves (if we are moral people) and we do not impose upon others to any extent further than we allow them to impose us.

So yes, there is a benefit for being good, but it is so instinctual that it is almost invisible to us. If you are good, people like you, if you are bad, people dislike you, is the basic concept behind it. Now you might argue that some morally horrible people are well liked, and in response I will point out that it is a rare occurance when someone severly threatens another’s place in life and is liked by the person threatened. More often than not, such ‘bad’ people are liked by people who either fail to see the persons threats, or do not feel threatened themselves, and are therefor immoral themselves.

All morals and ethics stem from this basic (and formerly unspoken agreement) not to threaten another person. Now it could have spiraled out of control since the term threaten [in the sense that I have been using it] can mean almost anything that puts another’s health, property, social worth, or emotions at risk of being diminished. Instead of getting this bad however, a measure of conviction and desire to survive kicked in and decided that sometimes people get hurt, and nothing can be done to stop it. So we step back our morality to the point where we decide that a “moral person” is one who does not go out of their way to threaten others in a hostile way, but instead attempts to inspire friendly competition when they threaten another’s place in life. This person will not allow themselves to become threatened by their own inaction, but will not intentionally take action that is harmful to others according to their own definition of what is harmful.

Ultimately, wrong can be summed up in the phrase “wrong is what other people do when we feel that our value or place in life is threatened by the actions of others.” And evil can be summed up with the phrase “evil is when we do things that we think are wrong.” Meanwhile good is best left to the void, but can sort of be specified as “acting in a way such that it strengthens the communal bonds within a given social order.” So yeah, good can be evil. That is my specialty.

That’s a valid definition of “wrong”, but it’s arbitrary. It doesn’t tell me why not to do “wrong”. With your definition, “wrong” is just one more adjective, like “eccentric” or “interesting”. It’s cool to be eccentric; it’s cool to be interesting; so why not cool to be wrong? The impossibility isn’t in providing a definition for “wrong”, but in proving that it matters.

Before that, you were describing the origins of the concept of “wrong”: in short, some people thought their lives would go better having established rules of conduct. That’s fair. Remember, though, that the rules only exist because people want them. People at some point became confused, and began to put the rules of “right” and “wrong” before what they wanted. Hence, there are billions of people now who want to have sex, and don’t; want to eat certain kinds of food, and don’t; want to wear certain kinds of clothes, and don’t; even just want to not love a few people, yet feel they have to anyway. It’s a sad state of affairs.

You guys are both dumb. The definition of morals is “the actions taken that give Hades what he wants.” It’s the only definition that works.

I was going to write big long essays explaining my points of view, but that’d take forever, so I just put a sentence or so explaining point.

(2) There is never a good occasion to lie. (Lying shouldn’t be done EXCEPT when telling the truth would lead to more immoral actions than the lie itself would)

(2) There is never a good occasion to cheat on a test. (Cheating is a form of lying, for all intents and purposes.)

(2) Abortion is a great assault on innocent human life and can never be justified. (It gets a 2 instead of a 1 only because the uneccesarilly strong connotations of the words used in the phrasing.)

(3) It is wrong for a rich country to engage so vigorously in an armsrace when it
has so many poor people in its midst. (No comment, really)

(3) Outside of marriage, it is wrong to engage in sexual intercourse and the
events leading up to it. (It gets a 3 instead of a 2 because I don’t know what is meant by “events leading up to it”)

(3) People have an obligation to worship God, even if they don’t feel like it. (Nobody should be FORCED to worship God, because religion (Or at least Christianity) is completely based on free will. That doesn’t mean that people shouldn’t worship God, however)

(?) Given the efficiency of today’s justice system, it is virtually impossible to justify
capital punishment. (Poorly worded, I don’t know what you mean. I don’t think there’s anything intrinsically wrong with capital punishment, but I don’t think it should be practiced today due to the INEFFICIENCY of today’s justice system (many more minorities are sent to death than whites, etc.))

(3) It would be dangerous and imprudent to lower the age for legalized drinking of alcohol. (Kids drink either way, I don’t think there’d be a significant change in anything lowering the age to 18 or so. It’d be better if we did a better job educating kids on the dangers of alcohol)

(1.5) It is wrong to asses or judge a person by the color of their skin. (1.5 instead of a 1 because there are certain differences in the way people act that you can sometimes tell by appearance, but this is due to CULTURE, not RACE.)

(3) Pornography - both soft and hard - debases human sexuality. It should be
outlawed. (I’m not saying pornography is morally right, but it’s not immoral for the reasons given)

Also, moral relativism, as far as I’m concerned, is a myth. But most people in their teens and 20s are too stubborn to listen to anybody saying this (much less be consider their point of view), so I won’t take the time to try and explain why. Feel free to read some articles on the subject if you’d like, though:

http://myweb.tiscali.co.uk/cslphilos/Relativism.htm
http://radicalacademy.com/ethicsmyth.htm
http://theologyweb.com/forum/showthread.php?t=28178

Who here is a moral relativist? I think the concept of morals is silly and unnecessary: intended to help people get what they want, and gone catastrophically out of control till becoming counteractive.

my my…

bows to anti-relativism

So true.

Perhaps we should keep in mind though, that the basic ideal of relativism can carry through, so long as it is viewed as a transition towards a greater understanding.

Relativism fails on an individual level too, when we see that people who do bad (as almost universally defined) things usually do so because they aren’t happy, and bad things don’t seem to make them happier, even when they get away with them. So your spiffy relativism that allows Joe to go slaughter a family and wear their bones as jewelry because “its right to him” doesn’t even work for Joe the sicko.

There is never an absolute right or wrong, but there is always a distinct gradient between the two that every option lands on. The relative part is realizing which moral sin is worse, killing Joe the Sicko, or allowing him to live free and risking the lives of another family by your inaction. That is where relative morals belong, not in saying that nothing has any moral value.

Yes everyone has their own personal morals that are all relative to everyone elses, but why would they be developed in the first place, so similarly to each other if not for some greater truth in morality? And on that note, yes our cultural morality has in many cases stepped beyond a functional morality, but often, that cultural morality is bred from a real need at the time.

Two good examples:
1-Kosher foods were a good idea for health reasons, not because its actually wrong to eat beasts who don’t chew cud.
2-The Morman Word of Wisdom places restrictions on consumption of non-food stuffs, not to impose some greater moral truth, but to keep Mormish folks healthy.

Culteral morality is just as much about maintaining a strong population as it is about being good people. I think that was the main problem with this assignment. It failed to distinguish between culteral morality and personal morality.

Huge difference between these values, and of course, the questions given did not tell us whether we should be thinking in terms of societal values or our own. I know that I feel very differently about an individual lying to me than G.W. lying to me. And for some reason, I feel that the government has more right to impose upon my right to live free than Joe the Sicko does.

1:4
2:1
3:1
4:2
5:1
6:4
7:1
8:1
9:1

Just cause I really have to ask this:

What the fuck did I say that gave you any idea that I’d think somthing stupid like that?

This thread sure degenerated.