Morality

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[edit] Overview

Morality refers to either (1) any particular system of ethics, or (2) the question of whether given acts are considered innately right or wrong within a given moral system (the morality of a particular act). In order to minimize confusion, we will use the phrase "moral system" when meaning #1 is intended.

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[edit] Purpose

Issuepedia is particularly concerned with values which define particular moral systems. These values are not generally subject to rational debate; what is more useful is to attempt to determine:

  • meta-rules by which people with different moral systems can get along.
  • where the basic differences lie between moral systems (e.g. if two people disagree about some immediate issue, such as "the death penalty", what are the basic irreducible principles upon which each person is basing their point of view?) towards the end of devising meta-rules (see above) which might work across those differences

[edit] Related Concepts

  • Moral syncretism [W] attempts to reconcile disparate or contradictory moral beliefs, often while melding the ethical practices and of various schools of thought. The cornerstone of moral syncretism is that religion cannot be morality's only arbiter.

[edit] Value Dichotomies

Most moral systems weigh in somewhere between the two extremes for each of these, but the differences in opinion between one system and another are significant. The following principles may or may not be truly basic, but they at least are closer to being principles than they are opinions about specific issues.

  • Human nature is essentially: good or evil (not quite the same as Hobbes vs. Rousseau; see below)
  • Human nature comes from: genetics and other factors fixed at birth ("nature") vs. training and learning after birth ("nurture")
  • Property rights: personal property is sacrosanct (propertarianism) vs. all property should be held in common
  • Power: absolutism (Hobbes: "abuses of power by [legitimate] authority are to be accepted as the price of peace") vs. separation of powers and social contracts (Rousseau). This may be a restatement of Brin's question "To what degree should the state or party have to power to coerce cooperation?", or it may be subtly different.

[edit] Other Possibilities

I'm throwing these in for further discussion because it's not clear to me whether they are basic or merely corrolaries/combinations of other dichotomies:

  • Moral externalism (important truths are discovered by observing reality) vs. moral internalism (important truths are discovered by meditation, reflection, prayer) vs. moral dogmatism (important truths come only from the wisdom of the past)
  • moral absolutism vs. the alternatives

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[edit] Reference

[edit] Projects

[edit] Filed Links

  • 2008-05-18 /S/D/ Exploring The Mechanics Of Judgment, Beliefs: Technique Images Brain Activity When We Think Of Others “Using fMRI, [MIT neuroscientist Rebecca Saxe] has identified an area of the brain (the temporoparietal junction) that lights up when people think about other people's thoughts, something we do often as we try to figure out why others behave as they do. .. That finding is "one of the most astonishing discoveries in the field of human cognitive neuroscience," says Nancy Kanwisher, the Ellen Swallow Richards Professor of Brain and Cognitive Sciences at MIT and Saxe's PhD thesis adviser.” Looking at the fMRI image shown, this is quite a small part of the brain. In how many people is this area defective, damaged, or missing? How do people behave (e.g. with regard to areas like "compassion") when this happens?
  • 2008-04-25 /S/D/ Blaming The Unlucky by Robin Hanson: “A recent working paper finds that we call the same decision immoral when it leads to a bad outcome, but moral when it leads to a good outcome. .. This makes morality look more like a social convention for who we can blame for what, rather than a direct guide to decision making.”

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