@Zetherin,
Zetherin;109407 wrote:What makes you think that morality is simply emotional responses to environmental stimuli?
Because all values are emotive in nature. Judgments of goodness and badness (pleasant or unpleasant) are based on determined physiological/psychological responses to stimuli.
Morality, as a concept, is mostly a result of social and cultural convention.
---------- Post added 12-08-2009 at 08:21 PM ----------
Reconstructo;109408 wrote:Science should be most skeptical about its self, for that is the weak spot of the scientist, his own arrogance as priest of objective reality. I like Feyerabend's Against Method. I also like the neo-pragmatic conception of "truth."
Once again, off topic, but scientists are usually some of most humble people that I'm aware of when it comes to knowledge and truth. I commonly find that the most arrogant people are those who consider scientists to be arrogant. They claim not to have any especially acute ability to know things and yet they make the most paradoxically absolute statements I've ever heard, such as the quote above.
---------- Post added 12-08-2009 at 08:34 PM ----------
Jebediah;109397 wrote:If you are just asking "why" then I think this is an evolutionary psychology question. Morality evolved at some point and was useful in furthering the species. Our tendency to see ourselves as distinct from the rest of the world probably evolved at some point as well.
If you are asking "should we", well, that's a harder question. But probably it is still to our benefit to do so.
Well every behavior evolved. Even things that have no survival utility evolved as by-products of something that did have survival utility.
Some say that moral judgments evolved as a social convention to keep a certain order. Now that's probably true, but such an order could be what we now consider to be immoral, such as slavery, racism and the suppression of women. The moral order could also be used to keep a certain class of people in power. I believe that we should question our societal conventions, but we shouldn't reject them strictly on the principle that they are conventional constructs.
As for the prejudice of judgment goes, I think we should seek to understand before we condemn, just like we do with other animals. However, I don't think that we should dismiss moral judgment.