What is morality?

[Axer NZ]

The universe is composed of four things: matter, energy, space, and time.* Now, to be said to truly exist, something must be made of at least one of these components and interact with the others. You yourself are a collection of matter which functions using energy, occupies space, and passes through time. So, congratulations are in order: you exist.

However, what is morality? It is not matter; you cannot see, touch, hear, taste, smell, or otherwise sense it. It is not energy; you can't use it to heat your house. It is not space; you can't put anything inside it. And lastly, it is not time.

Thus, morality (and any other abstract concept) cannot be said to exist in any way. However, it has a noticeable and meaningful effect on the world at large. It is the reason that you are not being robbed blind by a mugger right now, that you can go about your life with a reasonable sense of security. Yet this thing that protects you and controls you is not part of reality.

So, what is it?


*Ignoring antimatter, dark energy, and other physics BS as they are redundant and mostly nonexistent.

[Revoltion]

Security in itself is a stupid concept. You have no security.

[Skirata]

Morality is the same as laws made by a government. It is a set of social guidelines that determines behaviors and thoughts. It allows man to live in communities.

Morality, to me, is shaky. One can kill and be labelled as a criminal (since he broke the guidelines). But, if given the death penalty, the executor is not a murderer. He is outside morality.

Where does morality come from though? Is it inherited or was it just thought of?

[AbstractAngel]

Excellent debate!

The issue here is to first get behind the fundamentals of intangible concepts an work your way into it. Unfortunately since the fundamentals of intangible concepts also stray into the intangible, even beginning to comprehend the basics is implausible with the level of comprehension we possess. The same of morality could be said of love, hate, eternity, innocence, and many other ideas/emotions/etc we attempt to find universal truths for. In its purest form, morality much like it's companions, is undefinable.


It is a man-made (as far as we know) concept that relies on the basis of a person's nature and even their basic upbringing. Nature and upbringing aren't mutually exclusive either, which makes the layers go that much deeper. Someone by their very nature could be borderline sociopathic, however their culture would define things they deem morally acceptable by their own personal standards.

[imnothere]

i agree with Skir and AA in that Morality along with its sister concepts is born of the mind. And things that exist from or in the mind are troublesome at best for Realists who need tangible evidence of a thing to know it exists. While at the same time being the core of what Idealist base life on.
i therefor put forth the idea that there are two kind of people. Realists who need to know the interactions of Matter, Time, Space, and Energy of a thing to know it exists, and Idealists who need to know the driving moral force of something, and its ethical uses to accept its existence.
what you are attempting to do is to define one group of peoples given concept by the others. as an Idealist i might post the question to you "what is matter?" and not be satisfied with your answers until i grasped the root of its meaning in my universe.
i look forward to what other people will say it is, but with hold my thoughts till i can more clearly express them

[jiah]

I'm going to sound maybe a little "religious" but will try not.

First of all you are thinking to physical. Your thoughts are not matter, energy, space, or time either. So do try exist? Of course they do, or else this topic wouldn't have been posted. So when you think of others you tend to have good or bad thoughts. Bad thoughts can be called whatever you want, but it the good thoughts, combined with our actions, that make morality.

So this is my two cents.

[Humility]

Well its sort of like this.

You know how southern gentle folk (Real U.S.Americans) make tea in pots, pour the tea from the pots into pitchers, use sugar to turn that tea into brown sap and then put ice in them?

And how the U.Kians make tea in kettles, then I'm not sure what they do after that point. They either drink the tea while it is hot burning their mouths, wait for it to cool off then drink the tea, which then leads me to question what they do with the rest of the tea in the kettle. Its bound to be lukewarm by now, do they reheat it or dump it out? I know they don't drink cold tea so the refrigerator is out.

Well however they do it, Real U.S.Americans think it is wrong and practically immoral. And U.Kians think the same about Real U.S.Americans.

But still in the end it is just about which way gets the best endorphin rush based on how they were raised. There are tangible effects of this tea morality, but the tea morality itself is subjective. Sorta like how a quantum particle is subjective.

Just because Quantum particles are subjective to perception and are impossible to fully measure does that mean they aren't there? Of course not. Same with morality.

I need to go to sleep, my mind works differently when is late.

[Axer NZ]

One more thing: Time is not a provable force, it's an abstract state of mind as well.

Of course time is provable. It's the fourth dimension. Everything exists in four dimensions- height, length, breadth, and duration. You see, even if you have a cube, it does not exist unless it occurs for some length of time. An instantaneous cube is just as unreal as a line.

[raynetwilight]

I'm going to make this short and sweet, otherwise I'd have about 5 pages of stuff only a 4th of the people here would fully follow. My thoughts are just that drawn out about subjects like this.

Firstly, let me remind you that it's our basic instinct to do what we have to in order to survive. Knowing this, morals or morality have to be instituted in our minds in order to prevent another instinct we seem to have, destruction, from conflicting with our need to survive.

Without Morality we wouldn't survive, because we'd destroy one another and ultimately, ourselves.

Thus, morality is a divider between basic instincts designed to counteract one over the other.

[LadyTemperance]

Hi
I think its also important to remember that there are certain things in the human state that are essentially 'hard-wired' at birth. Take a look at the social skills of an infant. They are able to look at you and evoke emotions and actions in not only its mother but of many others around it, a baby promotes many of the behaviors and emotions that we prize in ourselves and that often distinguish us from other animals, including a willingness to share, to cooperate with strangers, to relax one?s guard, uncurl one?s lip and widen one?s pronoun circle beyond the stifling confines of me, myself and mine.
I mean a lot of this is based in the nature vs nuture argument (as are tons of things in society).
That said, if you never smiled at that baby, picked it up when it was crying, or fed it when it was hungry, chances are that child will grow up with what would be percieved by some as a backwards view on morality. Insensitivity to others, and an inability to perceive emotions or communicate clearly (as its earliest biological needs were ignored) would surely follow. Human beings are driven by what makes them feel good, our need to gratify ourselves, mentally, physically and at times spiritually.
Morality is essentially based in societal norms, and differs from culture to culture, but it comes intrinsically from the path your primary influences lay out for you.
But ultimately no, as a tangible concept it does not exist, like love, a chemical reaction in your brain, or fear. However without it, we would not exist in a tangible way either.