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On Human Morality

Submitted by Ken Watts on Wed, 05/07/2008 - 16:46

A SECOND THEME at The Mull has been the idea of morality.

It's taken various forms: a comparison of "traditional" vs. "liberal" morality, a post in which I argued that "liberal" morality was really the more traditional, some discussion of current research into psychological foundations of morality, and other posts, here, here, and here.

My approach to this topic has been somewhat scattered, partly because the view I now take of it is something that emerged during all those posts, rather than a carefully laid out theory I had from the beginning.

So this summary will be an opportunity for me to try to put together a more cohesive view.

There are two basic theories or models of morality floating around in human culture: a legal model, and a wisdom model.

We are all familiar with both, though often we are only consciously aware of the legal model. Most writing on morality makes assumptions based in the legal model, and most discussion of behavior in terms of morality does the same.

The reason for this is that the legal model tends to spark more discussion, and thought based on the legal model requires more justification, because it creates more problems.

The legal model sees morality as a question of law. That is, it assumes that a given behavior is right or wrong because it conforms to, or breaks, some rule or principle.

A person who breaks a moral rule is guilty, and blameable, under this model, and deserves punishment—just as a person who breaks the laws of a country is.

The source of these moral laws is often a matter of dispute. Traditionally, of course, it was whichever god the particular community worshiped, which is to say it was actually the king and priest: who decided what that god had commanded.

More recently philosophers have tried to come up with many different ways of determining what the moral legal code should be. This endeavor has been called the "is to ought" problem—how does one get from a statements of fact, for which we have evidence, to statements of moral obligation, which seem to elude evidence.

To put it more plainly, suppose that you think I ought to do something, in the legal moral sense, and I simply disagree. How would you convince me? What kind of evidence could even begin to convince someone who thinks of morality as a matter of obeying rules, that the rules they already accept are wrong?

You could, of course, offer me another rule which tells me which rules to accept, but what if I fail to agree to that one?

This is only one problem with the legal model. There are others.

For example, many of the moral ideas we have vary from one culture to another. We don't really tend to agree, especially on the details, even within a single country. So it's not just a matter of justifying the rules, it's also a matter of having too many, and sometimes conflicting, rules.

If you add to the above the fact that people who accept the legal model often reject any idea that morality could be relative—that what is moral in one place or time could be different from what is moral in another place or time—you've got some real problems with the model.

These are just some of the reasons I think the legal model is not only inadequate, but destructive.

To be continued...