No Harm Done: The Question of Morality

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Author	Topic: No Harm Done: The Question of Morality
moonear Infiltrator Member # 5410	written Tuesday, October 17 2006 08:06 Profile #75 quote: My overall rule is, as I stated in the essay, that morals should make logical sense, and more specifically, that morals stating that completely harmless things are wrong make no sense. If you define morality as the problem solving activities of a moral community, and let sanctions be used to directly reduce conflict as well as a control over perceived causes of conflict, and then you use morality to define and and control other deviances judged to be antisocial you are setting up a system to manage conflict (a parallel would be the legal system, our laws define our societies morals). Morality likely also dealt with issues of group self-conception and communication between individuals. Managing conflict is an activity not exclusive to humans. There is evidence that various primates (monkeys and apes) employ deliberate techniques to interfere in conflicts so as to terminate them. So, morality may have developed as a group control to manage conflict. Evolution of morality caused it to become a sanctioning force over other deviant behaviour (as defined by the group - swearing for example) and possibly even over the ultimate expression of power of an individual over another (control over leader behaviour - an example might be religious proscritions that inhibit a spiritual advisor from acting in certain fashions). Given the above, an individually created morality which is deemed injurious to the group, by the group, would be deemed immoral. The same morality, where not in conflict with the group morality could be tolerated/ignored. In this sense, your morality is applied to your group (of one individual) and is being (internally) controlled to reduce conflict between yourself and the world in which you are participating. -------------------- "Dikiyoba ... is demon ... drives people mad and ... do all sorts of strange things." "You Spiderwebbians are mad, mad, mad as March hares." Posts: 687 \| Registered: Wednesday, January 19 2005 08:00

Author

Topic: No Harm Done: The Question of Morality

moonear

Infiltrator

Member # 5410

written Tuesday, October 17 2006 08:06 Profile #75

quote:
My overall rule is, as I stated in the essay, that morals should make logical sense, and more specifically, that morals stating that completely harmless things are wrong make no sense.

If you define morality as the problem solving activities of a moral community, and let sanctions be used to directly reduce conflict as well as a control over perceived causes of conflict, and then you use morality to define and and control other deviances judged to be antisocial you are setting up a system to manage conflict (a parallel would be the legal system, our laws define our societies morals). Morality likely also dealt with issues of group self-conception and communication between individuals.

Managing conflict is an activity not exclusive to humans. There is evidence that various primates (monkeys and apes) employ deliberate techniques to interfere in conflicts so
as to terminate them.

So, morality may have developed as a group control to manage conflict. Evolution of morality caused it to become a sanctioning force over other deviant behaviour (as defined by the group - swearing for example) and possibly even over the ultimate expression of power of an individual over another (control over leader behaviour - an example might be religious proscritions that inhibit a spiritual advisor from acting in certain fashions).

Given the above, an individually created morality which is deemed injurious to the group, by the group, would be deemed immoral. The same morality, where not in conflict with the group morality could be tolerated/ignored.

In this sense, your morality is applied to your group (of one individual) and is being (internally) controlled to reduce conflict between yourself and the world in which you are participating.

--------------------
"Dikiyoba ... is demon ... drives people mad and ... do all sorts of strange things."

"You Spiderwebbians are mad, mad, mad as March hares."

Posts: 687 | Registered: Wednesday, January 19 2005 08:00