Open question: What do you think a normal person’s moral responsibilities are and why?
Some angles you can (but don’t have to) consider:
To themselves, family, friends and strangers?
Do you have thoughts about what it takes to make a good person or at what point someone is a bad person? (Is there a category of people who are neither?)
What do you think the default state of people is? (Generally good, evil or neutral by nature?)
Conversely do you believe morality is a construction and reject it entirely? (Even practically speaking when something bad happens to you?)
You have to leave it as good as you found it, doubly so if you’re tending to friends family or nature, and never stop trying to make things better for one(s) you love.
This means if you don’t put your cart away at the grocery store I’m giving you stink eye.
I think we’re all too tired, over worked, and taken advantage of to truly embody the above philosophy, so I let most people off the hook.
That said I think morality is a natural trait/occurrence of any living group, to be part of society is to contribute to morality, and to behave immorally within the context of a society is to not uphold the values of that society. Immoral isn’t inherently/naturally wrong, it’s just incorrect to the people you’re attempting to exist with.
If anyone claims to exist without morals they are just claiming to have different values to what their community finds important, and would probably benefit from finding community that aligns with their beliefs, but that risks extremism and echo chambers, see also the Internet and federated instances.
I like the point about people being too tired - as much as that might have felt like a side point I think there may be something there - one thing I noticed in Japan is that when I did something nice that was not culturally required people would not only be really happy but actually surprised.
Japan is not only overworked to death, but also very strict on manners and social rules, so you’re often required to pretend to be nice to someone and to follow your duty to others to the point that people start to lose the concept of doing nice things spontaneously.
As the vice grips tighten around the working and middle class, I think what you’re describing has also been happening in the West not only since Corona but gradually over the last several decades. People concerned primarily with survival have less room to be kind. (That said, it means more when they are).
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The way I’d put this in technical terms is “What percentage of your disposable income is going towards helping others?” $50 for someone making minimum wage is probably more than $1 million coming from a billionaire.
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Right, so I think you could push it even further than what I said. Maybe something more qualitative like “What are you willing to give up to help others?”
That said you can also go too far the other way and say that a very rich person who does or doesn’t give away things hadn’t really giving up much, but we certainly would want to say a rich person giving away 90% of their disposable income is still doing something good. (And practically speaking it’s going to have almost as good of an outcome if they gave to the point of diminishing their well-being).
Your angle here is actually getting really close to Peter Singer’s Famine, Affluence and Morality. (Personally I stop a little short of where he’s at, but I think your position more closely resembles his).
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This starts to get into moral relativity vs moral absolution.
Is it ever moral to kill someone? Is it moral to kill out of a necessity to defend oneself?
I’m not sure that I really believe there are truly evil people. Don’t get me wrong, I think they exist, but they’re extremely rare (1 in a million type of odds)
Most people are the hero of their own story, and when you get down to it, they’re just trying to get their needs met. Are they unnecessarily cruel? Maybe, but they’ll have a justification for it. You might not agree with it, but you haven’t walked in their shoes.
If I have the ability to help friends I consider it my civic duty to do so. That being said, I don’t judge those who don’t help. (Usually) Why don’t I judge them? Because I’m fortunate enough to have the mental fortitude, capacity and ability to help. I wouldn’t judge a friend in a wheelchair for not helping me move into a walk-up apartment, because they mostly can’t. I don’t feel right judging a friend who isn’t in a good headspace to help me right now either.
I’m not firmly in either camp, morality on some things are relative, but absolute on others.
Good reply. I would highlight that the specific example you gave about whether you can be justified in killing someone would be a common example in the rules vs results based ethics debate. (Deontology vs Consequentialism).
Moral relativism is more the claim that morals are entirely dependent on a culture’s or individual’s idea of right. (Which means they would say yes to both, practically).
Fair statement, but I think it can be viewed from both pieces there.
Rules vs results can be individually determined and separated.
But you’re right, my example wasn’t ideal for my argument.
I do still think that cultural values will determine whether you value “helping your neighbours” and your moral responsibility there.
I believe that morals should be created and based off of logical processes, but they often are not. People will make a decision based on emotion and make up reasons later for it if challenged. Frequently (as you can see in many threads in this Community) people will have opinions based on those morals that are completely abandoned when faced with a universally-applicable logic process.
“I believe X and Y because of Z. My opponents are evil because (strawman).”
“Here is evidence that this is not the thinking behind this. Your decision is knee-jerk or moral and is based off of what you feel and only the evidence you choose to accept. Your logic here does not apply to M situation you advocated for and actually has the opposite effect. Are you able to comment on why that would not be the case?”
SILENCE
This is nonsensical thinking. Feeling (or morals) should be based on evidence, and we should challenge ourselves constantly, evaluating and accepting new information and new views.
Conversely I’ve seen some very seemingly very logical people unaware that some deeper emotions are motivating their logic - people who can make what seem like very logical arguments, yet the conclusions of which immediately fail the “sniff test,” of any reasonably empathetic individual.
I think that whole rationality is a necessary component of ethics, it alone won’t ensure good ethical standards - someone who genuinely doesn’t care how others or society at large feel well see it as rational to betray them when they can get away with it.
I would say generally there good reason for us to have various senses and that some people are better at one than the other, and an extreme weakness emotionally or rationally will impact one’s ability to be a moral person.
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What do you think a normal person’s moral responsibilities are and why?
To treat other people in a way that you would want them to treat you.
To help them when they’re in trouble.
To share common resources with them.
To be honest with them, and not try to take advantage of them.
Simple but reasonable.
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I think part of the former may be a matter of culture and translation. In many languages and cultures the common sense interpretation of the former is equivalent to including the latter. (I would read the latter as how you would word a written rule or law people are going to try to get around). Some might suggest that “love others as you would love yourself,” is of such weight that it automatically includes not doing obviously bad things. I tend to favor “laymen’s” interpretations over “letter of the law,” style, particularly since in the original context of the golden rule the people who were the problem themselves (Pharisees) were of the latter type.
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At the very base level you should simply never make any situation worse.
If you can help make things better, great! But at the very least don’t make it worse. I’d rather see a guy watching a house burn, than watch a guy actively making the fire bigger.
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My point of view would generally be that people who try to make things better, even if in individual cases make them worse, will, generally, overall learn from those mistakes and get better at their decision-making. (Similarly if someone who helps themselves at the expense of others accidentally helps them, they will “learn” from is as well, not making that “mistake” in the future).
Morality is absolutely a construct, but that doesn’t mean people don’t have moral obligations.
I believe the average person’s moral obligation is first and foremost to themselves and their happiness, but that doesn’t mean there isn’t a line when dealing with other people. It’s a ‘know it when you see it’ kinda line too, i wouldn’t fault someone for taking a few hundred grand from Taylor Swift or Elon Musk for instance even though that would very nebulously harm both of them, or for scamming a tourist out of their entertainment budget. But robbing a homeless guy’s tent is going to far.
I wouldn’t fault someone for making someone else’s life a living hell if they deserve it, either, or even killing someone. But that’s all very difficult to draw a line in too.
I would want to tease a little more out here - why is it constructed, who constructed it, and does morality in general have merits? (If so, what would you say those are?)
It’s constructed because we can’t find it just lying around out in the world, it’s something humans had to come up with. Preferably everyone constructs their own. Yes morality has benefits, the broadest being social control (although that could be argued to be a bad thing), more individually morals could help people make choices in difficult situations.
I think you might find “evolutionary ethics” to be interesting - it’s probably the biggest new theory in ethics in the last few hundred years. Really interesting stuff.
Not deeply studied but some very early pre-linguistic studies showing babies only a few months old essentially having something resembling a concept of fairness/justice/trust. The idea is essentially that much like language most people have at least some very general moral predispositions. Really fascinating stuff.
