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2 points

Interesting points for moral relativism. At its base, it is true: we all have our own individual sense of morality (some of us have none) that is different from anyone else's. That much has to be true, in a way, as we are not telepathic beings that can perfectly understand each other hand develop he exact same moral principles. This view, though, takes morality from the point of view of the individual, yet morality itself works so that we may work together as a group to survive.

I think it's important to remember that there is a difference between morality, societal view, personal opinion, ethics, and the will to survive:

1. Morality is commonly defined as right and wrong. What constitutes right and wrong? Usually a combination of all the other listed factors, but also whether an action causes harm to another or is beneficial. By that logic, right and wrong are fairly clear, no? If what you do hurts others, it is wrong, and if what you do helps others, it is right. However, this gets a bit difficult when you take into account that every situation has its own factors.

2. When we hear about someone who is promiscuous, self-serving, or takes a certain view on something, we often call them wrong. We often don't realize that many of the things we criticize are nor right nor wrong; we just look down upon them as a society. That's a matter of collective opinion.

3. Personal opinion also takes into account one's own experiences and their emotions, as well as what kind of logic they're using to make their arguments. That's often why morality as based in the individual can make for some pretty difficult situations if that one person is the one deciding what is right or wrong.

4. Ethics is often the most confused with morality. Ethics is not about right or wrong, exactly, but about fairness, which is related to morality. However, if one person has a morsel of food but not enough to share with a starving friend, it might be an unfair action to eat the food, but arguably not wrong as one person needs to survive (if both are equals then it does not matter who), and to not eat at all for the sake of fairness just means that two people die of starvation.

5. We all pretty much understand that if we must take drastic action in order to survive, it's excusable, as at the end of the day we are all animals fighting for survival. Morality doesn't apply in a state of nature, as Thomas Hobbes would say.

All of these factors in combination do influence what we say is morally correct or not, and of course with each culture and subculture that may vary. But why, then, do we have a common sense of morality? Evolution is a good start, but doesn't explain more complex moral situations that we may find ourselves in nowadays.

I invite you to look at it this way: to decide whether something is right or wrong, imagine if everyone in the entire world did it all the time along with you. What sort of a world would that be? If the answer is unclear, then the action itself may be defined based on the conditions of the situation. Otherwise, the answer should be pretty easy. In other words, imagine if the Golden Rule came true worldwide, and everyone treated each other as you just treated someone.

I believe that's a Kantian view of morality...

In other words, morality is relative so far as popular sentiment and individual variance go, but the matter of whether there is a way to figure out an objective morality is at the very least debatable, if not somewhat true. We just need to focus less on ideology and emotion and a bit more on pragmatism and rationality.



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