What are morals

[TheGoldoffEternal]

According to you

A set of guiding principles for deciding good and bad actions, based on personal beliefs and principles rather than fear of punishment for transgression.

Eg choosing not to steal because you don't want to get put in jail isn't morality. Choosing not to steal because it violates your standards for how people should treat each other is morality.

I personally think morality arises out of theory of mind: the deep awareness that others have a personhood and experience of being that resembles one's own. Therefore, if one would not want to be caused suffering by another, one would, equally, not want to cause the suffering of another.

This leads to the enquiry as to how does my behaviour affect you? You being anyone, any person, any group, and collective, even any species. This gives rise to endless debate. But rules of morality, however fluid or fixed, arise from this debate.

I agree with most of this except I think they are more than personal belief. They are based essentially on a transcendent belief in a prescribed religious philosophy or faith. This is because someone could believe it's moral to murder yet it doesn't make it such. Having a shared morality bound by a higher structure has been our core for morality.

Morals are a personal code of beliefs about what is right and what is wrong, which serve as boundaries for how to live and interact in society. They may be drawn or adapted from a wider social or religious code of standards.

If you hold a deity as the source of your morality and you discover that that deity allows slavery, could you morally object to someone keeping slaves?

they are a set of personal beliefs on the boundaries of what is acceptable behaviour to you.

They can be a composite of our faith, laws, upbringing, education, personal beliefs and lessons learned.

A set of principles that guide my conduct. They are based on what is best for me, my family and society.

No religion is responsible for human morality.
Altruistic behaviour can be observed in many species. Having societal or group expectations can be observed widely- higher primates, meercats, dolphins, wolves, elephants all exist within their rules to keep their pack or tribe cohesive and healthy.
At best the bible is an observational document. Find a harmonious village with plentiful resources, and you can witness moral behaviour.

I feel sorry that some people need a "holy" book to tell them it is not good to kill someone. The bible is horrific, and yes supportive of slavery.

I think you're confusing morality with empathy or something similar to an understanding that others will likely have feelings similar or the same as our own, which by the way most studies show we are the only species that have that as far as I know. It's not that other primates have expectation as we define it. It's more an acceptance of what is normal. Their brains aren't complex enough to understand expectation and it would be factually incorrect to state that a dog could have morals or that the reason you weren't bitten is that he was a moral dog. I used the dog as an example as I believe some studies have shown some inhabit a reaction the 'looks like' feeling guilty.

I agree with you that we see many cases of altruism throughout humanity. However this is specifically to do with morality, which isn't the same. It could be said that even people viewed as being the most immoral in our society are also capable of showing altruism.

Even if we don't like to think it, it's mainly religion that's responsible for giving us in the west what we view as our morality.

If anyone thinks otherwise try explaining why murder is immoral.

@AlicealigMurder is “immoral” because it is damaging to society. I

This is interesting. My Ex H has autism and is quite extreme ( according to the autism service) in the expression of his traits. He has poor theory of mind and poor functional empathy. He has weak, if any, ability to understand that other people have different experiences from him. He has poor, if any , ability to understand how his behaviour affects other people. He was unable to accept responsibility or blame ( I think this was his core driver).

Yet he considers himself a deeply just person. Outwardly he appears to have morals. Yet in how he lives his life he breaks everyone of those professed morals if there is even the slightest conflict with his own interests or even wants. He treats those closest to him with deep injustice. And he genuinely seems to have no awareness of this.

Humans as a whole may have developed morality from theory of mind and empathy. But my H seemed to have developed it from an abstract understanding of how ‘good’ people ( as he saw it) should behave - and therefore as he was a good person in his own eyes - the morals of good people must be his own. Yet his poor theory of mind, poor emotional regulation and near total inability to accept blame and responsibility, meant he was unable to enact those professed moral values in his own life, and unable to see he was not enacting them.

Personal values and standards. I like to think of it as the way you’d behave if you knew nobody was watching. So for example choosing not to steal/cheat/be vindictive etc not for fear of the consequences of being caught, but because of how it would make you feel about yourself.

This is a strange post. You seem to separating off Holy Books from any other made human codes for behaviour in a society, and Holy books are clearly not separate from this other codes.

Secular laws provide codes for how to behave, as do social movements. Both of these, like Holy Books, both reflect and shape humans understanding ( in the societies they apply to) of morality.

You seem to prize yourself on coming to your own understanding that slavery is wrong. But did you? For most of human history, in most societies, slavery was normal and accepted. Which means that most of us, if we had been born in a different era, would have accepted it too.

So is cancer. There are any number of things that are damaging to society, that doesn't mean they're wrong.

So why is murder wrong?

In my opinion morals are the code of practice imposed on people by the culture in which they live in order to attempt to foster a functioning society.

Thus murder is considered wrong. However would it be wrong if a murderer was prevented from killing a child by a third party and that intervention led to the death of the attacker? We use different terminology in this case of course but it is still one person taking the life of another. This is where the moral code starts to fray around the edges.

My foundation

Murder is wrong because it is a deliberate choice which is damaging to society. I don’t understand your reference to cancer.

My point is that many things are damaging to society so it isn't enough to say it is damaging to society therefore it's wrong...

Nevertheless, I don't think it is necessarily damaging to society. The US murder citizens that have committed heinous crimes for the BENEFIT of society so that doesn't explain why it's wrong.

Sorry-not doing 6th form debating. Yes, many things are damaging to society. You asked me about murder. And capital punishment/judicial murder is damaging to society. So immoral.

Well debating, is debating. It's not age specific. If you can't bare to have your points challenged maybe think them through more thoroughly.

The point in question was WHY is it immoral, or wrong.

I think you've just proved the point I was trying to make whereby you state capital punishment is immoral whearas that is an issue that society is still relatively devided over, in general terms we as brits believe it is immoral whereas many states in the US believe the opposite.

Basically your argument is that your understanding of moral behaviour is whatever standard YOU deem to be correct because everyone should think like you?

Therefore if true then everything that is moral and good is whatever I deem to be moral and good also.

Can you see how this could become a problem?

If youre summising that everybody should just know because they're human that's a silly argument. If that was the case there'd be no need for laws or punishment.

Yes. Everybody's morals are personal and subjective. There is no such thing as objective morality. Yes, that can be a problem which is why we don't run societies based purely on everybody's individual, often loosely defined, moralities but on laws.

@Alicealig Happy to have my points challenged. It was the suggestion that cancer had any sort of moral equivalence to murder I objected to.

I didn't state that the two had a moral equivalence.

You said that murder is wrong because it is bad for society. Within that claim is the premise that 'because it harms society it is wrong or immoral'.

Cancer is what I used to refute the claim that something could be bad for society yet not immoral

I assumed that non sentient things would not be involved in a discussion of human morality.

In that case I can confirm on this occasion, that making that assumption was a grave error of judgement. So much so it actually looks like youre now trolling. Assuming you aren't:

The discussion, or the topic is Human morality. This is correct.
The assumption that all of the points within the discussion need to relate to sentience. This is incorrect.
One of the major focal points whenever any serious discussion about morality arises is religion, often the Bible specifically. The Bible I'm sure you'll agree, is not a sentient 'thing', yet it's value in the discussion is unaffected. Same with religion. Hope this helps...