Most Ancient Greeks thought the earth was flat, that slavery was OK, and that women were second-class people. Plato thought democracy sucked, that poetry and drama were bad things, and that freedom of speech is a sort of joke. So, one might ask, where’s the wisdom in all that?
Why Be Moral?
Why Be Moral?
Read more about this show: Why Be Moral?
This week we're asking the question: Why Be Moral? But what kind of question is that? Morality is a good thing. Immorality is a bad thing. A person should always do good things and never do bad things. Doesn't everybody agree?
Well, judging by people's behavior, not necessarily. But we also have to be careful not confuse 'ought' and 'is'. People do behave immorally. But they shouldn't. Everybody knows that - at least in their heart of hearts.
That implies that immoral behavior is irrational or insincere or hypocritical or something. Couldn't there be situations in which a person fully weighs the pros and cons, and sincerely and rationally decides that the best thing for him to do, all things considered, is precisely what morality forbids? In other words, what do we make of situations in which morality tells you to do one thing, and self-interest tells you to do something different?
Many people are psychologically inclined to elevate their own self-interest above all else - including morality. For people like that, when morality and self-interest come into head-to-head conflict, morality loses out. But rationally speaking, that's not how it should be. Rationally speaking, morality should always trump self-interest.
But imagine there's an open, unguarded bank vault, with lots and lots of cash, staring you in the face. You could really use that money. And ther's an iron-clad guarantee that if you take it, no one will ever know. Where's the rationality in not taking the money?
If you take the cash, you're a moral skeptic, someone who believes there are no facts of the matter about right and wrong. Sure, that would make us free to do whatever we want, without having to worry about morality. But denying that there's any objective right and wrong seems pretty desperate.
There's actually a lot to be said in favor of moral skepticism. But for the sake of our argument, I'm willing to stipulate that it would be morally wrong to take the money in the situation we just imagined. I'm even willing to stipulate that that's an objective and inescapable fact. So: does the bare fact that something is objectively morally right or morally wrong, automatically give you a reason to do it or not do it?
That question presupposes that the only thing we ever have reason to do is pursue our own self-interest. But surely there's more to rationality than calculations of naked self-interest. For example: when I go to my doctor and he sees I have an illness that's treatable with certain medicine, he gives me the drug. Why does he do that? Because he cares about my well-being and wants to cure me. He's acting in my interest, not in his own interest - at least not exclusively. And he's acting rationally. So no -- behaving rationally doesn't just mean acting in your own self-interest.
So now we've come up with a distinction between two different kinds of reasons: self-regarding or egoistic reasons, and other-regarding or altruistic reasons. Self-regarding reasons are rooted in considerations of naked self-interest. Other-regarding reasons are rooted in our concern for others. Morality may not always give us self-regarding reasons to do what it commands, but it does give us other-regarding reasons to do so. Problem solved.
Or not: how do we balance self-regarding reasons against other-regarding reasons, when the two conflict? Who says that altruistic reasons always trump the selfish ones? Many people believe moral considerations always override selfish concerns. But why do they? There are also people who just don't care a whit about the well-being of others. They might be selfish in the extreme -- but is that really irrational? If you can be totally self-regarding, and still be rational, won't the other-regarding considerations that morality depends on just fail to move you?
Tune in to hear what our guest, James Sterba from the Univeristy of Notre, and an audience of young philosophers at Pacific University's 16th annual Undergraduate Philosophy Conference, have to say on these issues and more.
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Comments
A better question to ask is" Would you like people to behave morally with you? All the time or half the times?. If you answer with yes- all the time, then don't you think (most) others, if not all, would answer the same?
If the case is that everybody wants to be morally treated all the time then this does not imply that everybody needs to behave morally towards all others all the time? At least, the principle of reciprocity, even when not symmetric, is good to think about and hope for.
Right and wrong is situational because right and wrong varies from situation to situation. We can only know what is right up to a point. Even the law can be wrong in the right situation.
Why be moral? because first of all, it is a sign of life within life to be someone who doesn't rely on their bullshit instinct such as sex. If a guy or girl feels the need to have sex, it is wrong to seduce someone only for the sake of getting pleasure. We should all be making something better out of what we have. Many of us have the ability to postpone pleasure and if you can't do that then that is a type of weakness because post poning pleasure is part of our reasoning ability. Without it, you wont always leave the things you are supposed to.
Being moral helps. Btw, when I say we should be moral, I'm not saying we should follow the bible to a t. Im saying we should do what is right and good.
However, finding out what is right and good requires reading/predicting a situation. You are only responsible for what you can do.
Everything has value and our minds have limits, so even when we know we should be moral, I understand we cant always be that way, especially since influences in this world arent organized enough to prevent weaknesses from developing many minds .
The ability to overcome all is a sign of life within life. ( just as part of the difference between happiness and satisfaction is the It is a sign that we are more than just animals and slaves to a system of controll and influences we live under.
There is something to be proud of in taking the extra miles to do something that will make others happy. Being immoral can also mean being a slave to your own feelings. There is a type of strength, a type of reasoning involved of moving past your feelings and making something better out of it.
In the end, we are all atoms and If we can find a way to create a world where all the good we have done has allowed us to create a permanent hope that will ensure that any atom that becomes part of a human being will live a good life, then that is the ultimate reason to become good. To ensure that in our possible future, after we die, we will e happy, even if we dont remember.
btw good and bad are not always subjective, they can be objective too.
Immorality has value to, but There is a way to make it contain it.
In my opinion, this discussion is victim of an evident amalgam: Morality and Ethics have nothing to do with rationality, at least for "sane" people, since they potentially can behave morally or immorally, as opposed to a clinically retarded person (suffering from insanity), who does not distinguish right or wrong because of incapacity, not because of rationality: he/she is amoral, the notion of morality is not "encrypted" in his/her consciousness. For a sane person, (and by sane I mean not rational but subject to Morality/Immorality), Morality is a duty, at least as it stipulates: Morality is "applicable" in absolute terms: one cannot be half moral or 75% of the times moral, he/she is either moral or immoral. Moving on to the notion of self-interest, it is, in my opinion, another amalgam here since self-interest is not motivated by morality, but by personal satisfaction, always: the anecdote mentioning the dentist is rather candid, since the dentist is being paid and even if he/she didn't charge anything (which almost never happens), he/she would be satisfied that you went to see him/her, having de facto an ulterior motive, which is fulfilling his/her personal satisfaction: I would say that self-interest is deeply "encrypted" is a person's rationale: the best thing humans can do is to allow growing cognition of morality whenever they can in their decisions and more importantly in their actions, but this is too difficult since the majority of humans tend to favor "easy" or "pragmatic" actions, which are essentially immoral, rather than altruistic ones. It is true that my views are rather cynical and maybe too harsh on humanity, but I think that though cynical perspectives, one can accomplish harder things, like sticking to being moral at all times, which is idealistic in cynical terms, but challenging in a Humanitarian/Philanthropist perspective: Humanitarian for hope, Cynical for Actions, and Morality is "applied" throughout actions, and not through Ideas.
You have missed one category. Or, maybe you did not miss it and I did, when reading your post. OR, maybe you were waiting to see if some philosophic nerd would step forward and challenge your dualism? More on that later. I'll write about something more mundane (yet, arguably, related) just now. It is Saturday, September 15, 2012. My home is unusually quiet at this hour, 6:00 p.m. That could change any moment now. This is, of course, football season in my hometown. "The" Ohio State Buckeyes played California today. I do not know who "won" because I had other matters to attend to , and, frankly, I do not give much of a flip about it anyway.
My wife participates in (orchestrates?) a tailgate party at a small local bar in our area. She makes sure people get fed, by organizing what would otherwise be total mayhem---thus her coveted title: Kitchen Nazi. She was critically ill about a year ago: end stage liver disease. But, she fought back and has now re-assumed her kitchen nazi role. Today began at 10:30 a.m. for her, and ended at about 5:00 p.m.---not so long for most able-bodied humans. But, those hours are long for her now-and that is why my home is currently quiet. She is sleeping. At twelve o'clock tonight, she will be wide awake.
Morality and immorality are eminently subjective terms. Consider the madness currently going on in Muslim countries. And reflect upon WHY that madness IS going on. If you cannot get my drift, please do some homework, and realize the inherent emnity between Christianity and Islam.
I promised(?)---well, no, not really---that I would dispel the morality/immorality dualism. The in-between condition, that is more egregious that either of its neighbors, is amorality. When individuals, cultures and nations choose to be amoral: neither good nor bad outcomes are worthy of notice---we have serious problems. I believe this is what is going on right now. Why would otherwise rational humans blow themselves up to murder others?
Hatred is cumulative. And warlike faiths, such as Christianity and Islam, seem to have more than their share of emnity. Don't point fingers unless you are ready to have them pointing back at you.
The German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche (1844-1900)) believed that morality was just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.
THE MORAL MINORITY
Morality is an absolute, objective imperative. Ethics are socially imposed rules of conduct. A philosopher can deduce these by simply looking around.
Two big issues for us are: 1. when is it OK to act immorally or unethically, and 2. how to behave if you live in an immoral democracy (a Pope once pointed out that just being a democracy doesn’t make a nation’s actions moral; a democracy can be immoral), where you have contracted with the majority to A. let them have their way (so long as certain minority rights are protected -- usually only those the majority agrees to protect, anyway), and B. take some responsibility thereby for their bad acts, as a contract-or.
Re 1. : It is undeniably immoral to kill another being for your pleasure alone. But we meat-eaters get so much pleasure from eating meat, that we come up with ways to ameliorate our guilt -- “humanely raised,” “free range,” and the oxymoronic “humanely killed,” “they have a great life and only one bad day,” etc. These ameliorations allow us to enjoy our pleasures, sort of!
Re 2 : Our country is doing all kinds of terrible things, in our name, as contract-ors. Voting for/against stuff, and demonstrating has done no good. So, what can we do, those in the “moral minority?” Some say (me included): draw a circle around friends and family, and make sure everyone is fed, clothed, housed and cared for. Buddhists say, I believe, stop drawing circles, and renounce (or better, accept as an entirety) any distinctions, including the political.
I would like to hear from you posters, on the subject: “Overcoming the Contract.” Any takers?
This Way
When you take wrong out of your life,
There is no question of morality,
And right becomes the Way.
Finding true by removing the untrue
Is the right Way too.
=
Rationality and reason have very little directly to do with morality. Rationality is simply recognizing and expecting the relationship of cause and effect - there is no moral implication. Reason is just a tool - you can use it to deduce morals, or not. The French Revolution enthroned Reason in the place of God (literally, at a ceremony in Notre Dame) - and led directly into the Reign of Terror - carried out by rational people with their reason fully intact and functioning.
So why be moral? To say that it makes ones life better, or that it makes others' lives better, or that it makes society function better, is merely to make variations on Utilitarianism...which will fail the moment one sees, via one's reasoning, a greater good for oneself, or someone else, or society, in being immoral. Thus vigilantiism, terrorism, etc. A rational person, or society, will then use reason to justify the immoral behavior.
Thus all forms of morality based only on humanity, on human rationality and reason, ultimately come to relativism, and thence to ruin.
Why be moral? The only final answers are two: 1) because there is a God, who is just, who calls us to be moral; or 2) because it is useful - until it isn't.
All good. Dr. S. said most of what has been stated on this post topic. Morality is either convenient. Or not. There you are---in less than, what? Fifty words? Looks like...
(On a different note: people talk too much---they keep hitting things, while driving and talking on their mobile phones; or forgetting that they are driving, while texting about things that could wait; or forgetting that they are walking in traffic, because they are sooooo wrapped up in talking on their phones. What happened to personal responsibility? Does anyone know---or care?)
An ancient mathematician argued that the series of numbers 1, 2, 3,... has no end because for any number N there is a greater number, N+1. All he actually proved was that we cannot represent the greatest number, if indeed it exists. (Adding 1 to the greatest number might be comparable to trying to walk north from the North Pole).
Morality, too, makes sense only as long as it remains in the practical realm. Sigmund Freud and Henry Sidgwick laid the foundation for the modern interpretation of morality in recognizing that there are three moral systems operating simultaneously within each psyche. The Id appeals to self-interest and recognizes unfairness to oneself. The Ego appeals to the conscience and the public good, leading to utilitarianism. The Super-ego appeals to universal principles, scriptures or authoritarian leadership but does not accept them as absolute in practice (despite some professions to do so).
When there is a conflict within these systems, people use several mechanisms of resolution including rationalization, reasoning, relying on myths or raw instinct, etc. Rationalization and myth are particularly treacherous because they mostly serve (and in the case of myths, are almost always designed) to make immorality appear moral.
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