Ethics

sensibleken

Hi all

seeing as that Athiests are often described as being immoral because they do not believe in a god given moral code I would like to start a general discussion on ethics.

As this is the A&A forum there will be a wide variety of ideas on what constitutes a moral code and where you get that from.

so where did you get your own moral compass so to speak. is some of it left over from religious teaching? is it independantly arrived at? based on an idea of fairness? based on logic?

Handsome Bob

At first it would have been based on religious teachings but as I got older my idea of ethics increasingly stemmed from a human rights standpoint. From fairness and equality too.

This might be a bit controversial but I don't think it's in our nature to be ethical and to have morals (it's not part of our natural "evolution"), I think it has everything to do with our environment and how we are brought up.

Zombrex

My moral code is mostly based on empathy and the golden rule.

sensibleken

LZ5by5 wrote: »

This might be a bit controversial but I don't think it's in our nature to be ethical and to have morals (it's not part of our natural "evolution"), I think it has everything to do with our environment and how we are brought up.

thanks for replying. interesting. i would put our nature in with our evolution. not just biologically but also as we started to develop society and its institutions.(kind of a semantic arguement compared to what you said above really)

kind of like rousseau's idea of 'i will give up my right to kill you if you do the same'

i would react to situations ethically. call it a gut feeling of 'thats right' or 'thats wrong'. allot of that would have been based on catholic upbringing and allot of it from a lapsed catholic upbringing. i would however then think about it thoroughly to see if my reaction made sense.

probably my guiding principles are fairness, consideration and compromise

sensibleken

Wicknight wrote: »

My moral code is mostly based on empathy and the golden rule.

what is your golden rule if you dont mind me asking

ColmDawson

I'd say my (and most people's) moral compass and actions are based on a subconscious idea of what we'd like the world to be like. I'd like to live in a society where people are nice to each other, don't steal, don't lie etc., so my moral decisions are basically my contribution to the effort to create that environment.

I think we can (and ought to) arrive at moral standards without recourse to religion.

Good viewing:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hj9oB4zpHww

Daftendirekt

Empathy. Like every other moral being, I tend to like things that make others happy, and dislike things that hurt them.

As a guiding principle, I'd also go with the golden rule: don't do to others what you wouldn't have them do to you.

I've never taken my morals from religion, although I may have believed I did so at one point.

checkyabadself

I would have learned ethics from my parents from an early age, I remember my parents telling me that you shouldnt do anything to anyone you wouldn`t like them to do to you. (i`d hazard a guess that this is the golden rule being referred to)

I would like to point out that I thinks ethics are inherently within us and not software that MUST be installed to ensure we dont otherwise become maniacs.
I dont believe that ethics come from God or the bible or any passed on code for that matter.
If you look at the animal kingdom, you`ll see everyday how animals interact with humans positively when treated well.

On that basis alone, we see how forming a moral compass is a daily litmus test of trial and error leading to an evaluated sense of what passes for decency.

sonicthebadger*

LZ5by5 wrote: »

At first it would have been based on religious teachings but as I got older my idea of ethics increasingly stemmed from a human rights standpoint. From fairness and equality too.

This might be a bit controversial but I don't think it's in our nature to be ethical and to have morals (it's not part of our natural "evolution"), I think it has everything to do with our environment and how we are brought up.

I think that's a Christian teaching but it is entirely untrue, humans who have never had their morals bet into them still manage to be very moral creatures. I think that if you want to claim absolute authority in all matters then you must try to convince people that they naturally have the opposite of what you're teaching. I actually find it quite offensive (nothing to do with the poster) that this particular religion teaches that all humans are inherently bad, I think it leads to terrible treatment of people.

I read a very interesting article written about the moral life of babies posted in a thread on here, I think it was in the "clobbering kids" thread, indicating that humans have a tendency to be attracted by altruism and a desire to reward it. I'll go do a search for it now and post it as an edit if I can find it.

robindch

sonicthebadger* wrote: »

[...] a very interesting article written about the moral life of babies [...]

That article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html

sonicthebadger*

robindch wrote: »

That article is here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html

Exactly what I was on about, thank you

Glenster

sensibleken wrote: »

what is your golden rule if you dont mind me asking

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

sink

Ehtics and morality stem first from biological evolution, our evolved sense of the Theory of Mind, and from that empathy. Upon this foundation cultural evolution builds social norms and socially acceptable behaviours, which we would call moral and ethical.

Religion hijacks morality and ethics initially to propagate itself and once it becomes powerful enough people in positions of power use it to control the populace to their own ends.

kiffer

empathy, compassion, fairness and selfishness...
Wait, what? selfishness?
Lets call it enlightend self interest or something like that.
If I want want what's best for me and mine then I should support a system of fairness... A system of fairness that protects the weak from the strong and should also protect the strong... Should they find themselves in need of protection.

If I supported an unfair system were I was unfairly favoured, promoted, made rich and successful and was above the law... but if I or my decendents later fell (did he fall or was he pushed?) from this possition we would find ourselves in an awfull position... On the wrong side of the unfair system...

No better to promote a fair system now and attempt to thrive within it... Rather than activly suppress empathy and compassion to create an unfair system which may later turn on us.

Stercus Accidit

If I took my morals from religion I'd be a homophobic bigot, thankfully atheism doesn't have a 'moral' code.

gigabit

I don't believe humans in general have any moral or ethical boundaries, if we did we wouldn't tolerate living on a planet where 2 billion are starving because of our historical and current exploitation of others.

Beruthiel

My parents would have instilled the basics.
I have very strong opinions on what I consider to be fair and unfair. I won't do what I wouldn't like done to me.
Never heard of that Golden Rule, but that fits with me.

strobe

As a kid I my ethics were instilled initially by my parents. I'd imagine that is true of most people. Religious teaching never came into it, as I was a skeptical agnostic from about the same age I stopped believing in Santy Clause and had been thought very little about religion apart from the nativity story before that.

If I robbed a kids tricycle, when my parents found out they would tell me I shouldn't have done it and asked me how I would have felt if someone robbed my tricycle. Basically got me to put myself in their shoes. I realised I would have felt sad if someone robbed my tricycle, I knew it felt bad to feel sad and I didn't want other people to feel bad any more than I wanted to feel bad. Then they'd get me to walk down and give him his tricycle back and I'd see that that made the other kid happy. So I avoided robbing any other kids tricycles.

I was thought to listen to my feelings of empathy and then act on them. Abraham Lincoln summed it up well "When I do good I feel good. When I do bad I feel bad. That is my religion." Then as I grew up my ethics were refined in certain areas through my experiences in the world and in dealing with other people. But it all basically stems back to the golden rule. In general I do whatever I can to make other people around me happy and try to avoid doing anything to make people around me unhappy, then hope they reciprocate in the same way.

There will always be exceptions of course, nothing is black and white. But the above is a pretty good summary of my ethics and where they come from.

sonicthebadger*

gigabit wrote: »

I don't believe humans in general have any moral or ethical boundaries, if we did we wouldn't tolerate living on a planet where 2 billion are starving because of our historical and current exploitation of others.

So either you're not human or that doesn't upset you?

The very fact that that sort of thing gets attention and makes people angry is an indication that people think it is immoral. Changing it is desirable but seems to me to be immensely complex, it is not the sort of thing we can change overnight. After all it has taken about 1,000 years of bad governance to put in place. It may well take hundreds of years to fix. Though honestly I think it can be fixed quicker if we throw out the ideology and make poor people's lives better not seek to make their after-lives better.

Zillah

gigabit wrote: »

I don't believe humans in general have any moral or ethical boundaries, if we did we wouldn't tolerate living on a planet where 2 billion are starving because of our historical and current exploitation of others.

Those two billion people are far away. Geez, don't you know anything about morality?


My morality is rather simple. I do what I feel like, I support what I feel like supporting. Luckily for most people in the world around me, I tend to feel like being generous and helpful, and I feel like supporting issues such as equality and free speech.

Which begs the question, if I really felt like eating babies, far more so than any other feelings I had (like empathy, guilt or fear of reprisal) would I? Yes. Yes I would eat the baby. As would anyone else. People who desire to kill, rape or abuse more than they desire anything else are called sociopaths and that's exactly what they do.

Zombrex

sensibleken wrote: »

what is your golden rule if you dont mind me asking

The golden rule is the ethic of reciprocity, most commonly known by the (not particularly accurate) Christianity version of Do unto others as you would have them do to you

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Golden_Rule

strobe

Zillah wrote: »

People who desire to kill, rape or abuse more than they desire anything else are called sociopaths and that's exactly what they do.

Nope a sociopath/psychopath is someone that doesn't feel emotions or experience empathy and most are no more violent than anyone else. (Pet peev of mine).

Zombrex

strobe wrote: »

Nope a sociopath/psychopath is someone that doesn't feel emotions or experience empathy and most are no more violent than anyone else. (Pet peev of mine).

True, though I still think that is what Zillah meant (that raping and murdering are not part of normal human emotional systems)

I heard that possibly 10% of the population are psychopathic, though to various degrees.

Zillah

strobe wrote: »

Nope a sociopath/psychopath is someone that doesn't feel emotions or experience empathy and most are no more violent than anyone else. (Pet peev of mine).

I'm aware of that, I'm not saying all sociopaths are violent, but the ones with violent urges have no empathy to reign in their behaviour.

On that note there is a fantastic book of collected anecdotes/case-studies from a psychologist dealing with non-violent sociopaths called The Mask of Sanity. Think they were recorded in the forties when the terms were still being defined. I've only read parts of it but it's a really fascinating look into how broken people can be without being especially dangerous or unhappy per se.

mewso

The Golden Rule has some stumbling blocks for me. I wouldn't like a beautiful woman to see me naked but....

Zillah

mewso wrote: »

The Golden Rule has some stumbling blocks for me. I wouldn't like a beautiful woman to see me naked but....

It's about behaviour, not feelings. So both you and afformentioned beautiful woman agree that it would be wrong to force the other to be seen naked.

Galvasean

LZ5by5 wrote: »

This might be a bit controversial but I don't think it's in our nature to be ethical and to have morals (it's not part of our natural "evolution"), I think it has everything to do with our environment and how we are brought up.

You might want to look into this:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Evolution_of_morality

Very interesting stuff that might change your mind.

pH

How useful is the Golden rule really? It's a starting point, but it's not clear how far you can take it.

Say you're on death row for a crime you didn't commit, could you be morally justified in killing one (or more) of your guards to escape? It would seem that the GR says no (If I were a guard I guess I'd prefer that an innocent prisoner died than he shanked me to make good an escape), but morally I'm unsure.

A lot of what troubles us in society seems to be OK by the golden rule - drugs and prostitution for example, even gangland killings are OK if both parties have adopted a "live and die by the gun" way of life.

I'm not sure which way the GR comes down on abortion (I guess the stronger case could be made that GR is anti-abortion), what does the GR have to say about animal rights (are animals "others" with equal rights?), what about Climate Change, do "others" include all of humanity yet to come? What does the GR say about freedom of speech for example?

Enough of the ramble, I'm just not sure how useful it is except for the very childish "you wouldn't like it if Billy did that to you, would you?" we all heard as kids.

Dades

pH wrote: »

Say you're on death row for a crime you didn't commit, could you be morally justified in killing one (or more) of your guards to escape?

I'm not sure you would be morally justified killing the guard unless he was somehow implicit in your false incarceration, rather than innocently doing his job.

The golden rule isn't best applied to reactive situations. That is, acts by you in response to somebody else's actions. I'd rather somebody didn't punch me, but in order to rescue an old lady from a mugger I'd be justified in punching her attacker.

The GR is more relevant to standalone moral situations.

pH

Dades wrote: »

I'm not sure you would be morally justified killing the guard unless he was somehow implicit in your false incarceration, rather than innocently doing his job.

I agree that's what the GR says, but personally I'm not so sure.

By the above reasoning, imagine you're some poor conscripted foot-soldier in the WWI trenches - given that *you'd* prefer that some opposing grunt didn't shoot you, the GR seems to say it's immoral to shoot him?

The golden rule isn't best applied to reactive situations. That is, acts by you in response to somebody else's actions. I'd rather somebody didn't punch me, but in order to rescue an old lady from a mugger I'd be justified in punching her attacker.

Yes but if *you* were mugging an old lady *you'd* prefer that a random passer-by didn't intervene (surely?) - or is there some meta rule in play? (Once *you've* broken the GR it no longer applies to you?)

The GR is more relevant to standalone moral situations.

Maybe that's my problem with it, are there really any standalone moral situations?

Zombrex

pH wrote: »

How useful is the Golden rule really? It's a starting point, but it's not clear how far you can take it.

Say you're on death row for a crime you didn't commit, could you be morally justified in killing one (or more) of your guards to escape? It would seem that the GR says no (If I were a guard I guess I'd prefer that an innocent prisoner died than he shanked me to make good an escape), but morally I'm unsure.

A lot of what troubles us in society seems to be OK by the golden rule - drugs and prostitution for example, even gangland killings are OK if both parties have adopted a "live and die by the gun" way of life.

I'm not sure which way the GR comes down on abortion (I guess the stronger case could be made that GR is anti-abortion), what does the GR have to say about animal rights (are animals "others" with equal rights?), what about Climate Change, do "others" include all of humanity yet to come? What does the GR say about freedom of speech for example?

Enough of the ramble, I'm just not sure how useful it is except for the very childish "you wouldn't like it if Billy did that to you, would you?" we all heard as kids.

I don't think anyone is arguing that the golden rule is their system of morals, just as you say a basis or starting point.

Tim Robbins

sensibleken wrote: »

Hi all

seeing as that Athiests are often described as being immoral because they do not believe in a god given moral code I would like to start a general discussion on ethics.

As this is the A&A forum there will be a wide variety of ideas on what constitutes a moral code and where you get that from.

so where did you get your own moral compass so to speak. is some of it left over from religious teaching? is it independantly arrived at? based on an idea of fairness? based on logic?

I think people have empathy levels based on their genes. They also have the faculty of reason based on genes. Thankfully my genes are pretty ****ing excellent.