No; I am talking about morals which are not rational and have never been shown to be rational... Consider that it may be moral to risk your life to save a life, but it is never rational...One is moral out of an emotional connectedness to others, and to society....Why are outlaws the heroes of individualism??? It is because they have turned their back on society and social norms, and can be nothing but immoral...Community is morality, and all immorality is an attack on community...Community is also a source of affection, and is held together with love if held together at all...

You're talking about love and kindness, which are emotions. Morality is about judging whether or not such emotions, and the actions that they induce, are good or bad.

I never said that morals were rational. Moral judgments are founded on emotions and prescriptions. Emotional connectedness to community can often lead to the attack of another community. These attacks are often justified by conventional, societal norms and morality. A community can also be held together by the hatred for another community.

Adults are just tall children who think they know what is best. But the reality of the situation is that they still have no clue what they should be doing or what is the best thing to do.

Morals are just a way to get everyone to play nicely with each other. The rules of the sandbox of society. They only support our desires or what we hold as valuable. Don't take something belonging to someone else because we value our things. Don't tell untruths because we value accurate information. Don't kill another because we value our own lives. Don't steal another persons spouse because we value our self importance within that relationship (In other words people hate being considered second to someone else) I could go on but it is just that simple. Find me a moral that does not in some way reflect on our humanistic values.

Morals are just a way to get everyone to play nicely with each other. The rules of the sandbox of society. They only support our desires or what we hold as valuable. Don't take something belonging to someone else because we value our things. Don't tell untruths because we value accurate information. Don't kill another because we value our own lives. Don't steal another persons spouse because we value our self importance within that relationship (In other words people hate being considered second to someone else) I could go on but it is just that simple. Find me a moral that does not in some way reflect on our humanistic values.

All of this is true, but your tone suggests that you believe that this discredits morality, and I would disagree.

All of this is true, but your tone suggests that you believe that this discredits morality, and I would disagree.

The morals a man is born to are older than the oldest one living...We all get our morals such as they are expressed consciously from our community, and families... Yet, all people know how they should behave, in the sense of not doing unto others, out of a healthy sense of emotional connectedness with all humans, some times extending to animals... The infliction of pain, and the witnessing of suffering is profoundly disturbing for the moral person, and they will naturally consider the consequences of their actions in order to do no harm...

It is not for this reason that people study morals... Morals as ethics became a study during the breakdown of Greek Society... They wanted to to teach ethics because the natural ethics of a Gentile people had long been corroded with cash and commerce... And their very success in capturing and colonizing the Mediterainian Sea led to an International Greek Consciousness that might in time have led to a Confederacy, like a Democratic Empire giving rights and protection to all Greeks...These people destroyed themselves in a war of morals...They let themselves be divided by morals, and those who were anti democratic, and anti egalitarian, stood against the morals that had once made them great...And for this they suffered disease, and slaughter, to deny to others what they demanded themselves..Without their moral strength they crumbled before the barbarians who are more gentile in their organization, and more moral..

The discussion of morals follows on the heels of a want of morals... What is moral is just, and there is peace found...

Yet, when a person risks all, as life is, for another no matter who they are- it cannot be reasonable since reason is only possible because of life, and the only reasonable thing is to is to preserve ones life and so preserve the life in which reason has meaning

If we are human we respond to humanity with humanity...

Thought about ethics has only one purpose, and it is to avoid natural behavior which has evolved to its environment... Primitives are more moral because they must be, having little of technology and threatened with destruction they must be united as though a single being with a single goal

If we were to say: Morals is the study of how societies reach the goal of survival, then we can take no lesson from the Greeks or the Romans, and yet we have founded our society upon their rubble...

It is the challenge of philosophy to widen each sense of community to include humanity, but to do that we must identify with humanity, and also trust humanity which we have no natural reason to do...

i believe that children dont seem to be born with any moral sense-but they are also not born with any desire to hurt. they are more or less born with not much sense at all.

Some children are born with an innate desire to hurt or display anti-social behavior. All children are born with emotional senses, but not all children are emotional in the same ways.

Durkheim was concerned primarily with how societies could maintain their integrity and coherence in the modern era, when things such as shared religious and ethnic background could no longer be assumed. He was one of the first people to explain the existence and quality of different parts of a society by reference to what function they served in maintaining the quotidian - that is, by how they make society "work". He focused not on what motivates the actions of individuals, but rather on the study of social facts, a term which he coined to describe phenomena which have an existence in and of themselves and are not bound to the actions of individuals.

Durkheim argued that social facts have, sui generis, an independent existence greater and more objective than the actions of the individuals that compose society. Being exterior to the individual person, social facts may thus also exercise coercive power on the various people composing society, as it can sometimes be observed in the case of formal laws and regulations, but also in phenomena such as church practices or family norms.[12] Unlike the facts studied in natural sciences, a "social" fact thus refers to a specific category of phenomena: it consists of ways of acting, thinking, feeling, external to the individual and endowed with a power of coercion, by reason of which they control him. According to Durkheim, these phenomena cannot be reduced to biological or psychological grounds.

Hence even the most "individualistic" or "subjective" phenomena, such as suicide, would be regarded by Durkheim as objective social facts. Individuals composing society do not directly cause suicide: suicide exists independently in society, whether an individual person wants it or not. Whether a person "leaves" a society does not change anything to the fact that this society will still contain suicides. Sociology's task thus consists of discovering the qualities and characteristics of such social facts, which can be discovered through a quantitative or experimental approach (Durkheim extensively relied on statistics).

One of the most basic sociologic principles Durkheim proposed was that society operates on a set of laws. He believed that society was an "accumulated body of facts - of language, laws, customs, ideas, values, traditions, techniques, and products - all of which are connected to one another and exist in a manner quite "external to individual human minds." He goes on to theorize that this accumulation pre-exists individual birth, and surpasses individual death as a means to condition members to be contributing members of society who understand how to behave within its pre-determined rules. These theories on the functionalism of law in society are key to examining Durkheim's theories on the existence and function of religion.

I can't help but be reminded, in this conversation, of the work of Emile Durkheim, one of the pioneers of sociology and anthropology, a great deal of whose work was focussed on discovering the sociological basis for value systems.

I have extracted some text from a few online sources to provide an idea of his work.



His theory of religion is quite interesting also. If there is any interest I shall find some information on that.

I can't help but be reminded, in this conversation, of the work of Emile Durkheim, one of the pioneers of sociology and anthropology, a great deal of whose work was focussed on discovering the sociological basis for value systems.

I have extracted some text from a few online sources to provide an idea of his work.



His theory of religion is quite interesting also. If there is any interest I shall find some information on that.

so you are saying that some people are born with innate emotional tendencies that cause them to hurt others, but no one is born with a preset moral code? is anyone born with innate moral tendencies to be good to others? is it all a question of how they are reacted to by society(meaning parents, siblings, peers, authority figures) and the anti-social get feedback that reinforces their bad behavior, inculcating their hatred, while those who do good are largely ignored or bullied and turn anti-social?

i was wondering if maybe we werent all born with a preset moral code, but our emotional tendencies along with behavior and attitudes that are encouraged in our environment cause us to forsake it and take up some other banner...

Knowledge equals culture, and culture equals community, and community equals morality... It is, and is not created... Morality is the environment we adapt to at birth, and usually before we can reason we have learned the basis of morality...

You're talking about love and kindness, which are emotions. Morality is about judging whether or not such emotions, and the actions that they induce, are good or bad.

I never said that morals were rational. Moral judgments are founded on emotions and prescriptions. Emotional connectedness to community can often lead to the attack of another community. These attacks are often justified by conventional, societal norms and morality. A community can also be held together by the hatred for another community.

I disagree that community automatically equals morality. People can cooperate for both moral and immoral reasons, and the collectivist socio-political philosophy can often lead to a mob mentality. This mob mentality can also serve to suppress the values of the individual.

Keep in mind, moral judgments are not morals. Moral judgments require reason - they are most definitely logical. One could say A is bad because A causes B, and A is worse than C because C only causes D. Extrapolations of this can be seen in many ethical models. Not sure if you implied this, just pointing it out.

That said, I think we're deviating from the OP just a tad. I think the OP was asking: From where does morality come from - what is morality's biological (or otherwise) root? And to answer that thoroughly, I think we would need a lot more information. I think there is correlation with our emotional patterns, but I'm not quite sure why we feel the need to act on those emotional patterns.

Perhaps there are theories or models already out to explain some, if not all, of this. Does anyone know of any that are supported by relevant experts?

I think Fido means that compassion (perhaps "good" moral judgment) is the glue by which community is held together. Without it, community, as we know it, would not exist. I think I would agree.

Oh, and in response to the thread title, I don't think morals are something humans "create". Surely we are the only creatures we know of which have a sense of morality, but it doesn't really seem like a choice or something we willfully have brought upon ourselves. I can choose to act immorally (as opposed to my morals), but I've never, that I know of, had the choice to be amoral (not have morals at all). I still feel what I consider to be "right" or "wrong", regardless of what choice I eventually make. It seems ingrained, a counterpart to my emotional sensibility. Is it not the same for all of you?

I don't think morals are something humans "create". Surely we are the only creatures we know of which have a sense of morality, but it doesn't really seem like a choice or something we willfully have brought upon ourselves.

Moral judgments are not morals in and of themselves. Moral judgments are statements of values and prescriptions, so if anything they are reflective of moral positions.

There's a book written by distinguished CUNY philosopher Jesse Prinz entitled "The Emotional Construction of Morals". I haven't read it yet, but I have read some essays on the theory. I suppose that we feel the need to act on emotional patterns because of their evolutionary utility.

That's exactly what I think he means and I disagree. A community can be glued together by hate as well as compassion. Of course I believe that compassion is a better glue than hate in most situations.

Humans create moral concepts in the same way that we create anything I suppose (subconsciously). All animals display emotions and preferences for certain actions, but we are the only animals we know of that have a conceptual sense of morality.

The origins of morality, ethics, and social codes came from myth, religion, and ritual - the Ten Commandments, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Vedas, Aesops's Fables, the Greek myths, the Norse myths, and so on

Nowadays people see things differently and many believe that humans created religion.