Morality (from Latin: mōrālis, lit.
'manner,
character, proper behavior') is the differentiation
of intentions, decisions and actions between
those that are distinguished as proper and those
that are improper.[1] Morality can be a body of
standards or principles derived from a code of
conduct from a
particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can
derive from a standard that a person believes
should be universal.[2]Morality may also be
specifically synonymous with "goodness" or
"rightness".
Moral philosophy includes moral ontology, which
is the origin of morals; and moral epistemology,
which is the knowledge of morals. Different
systems of expressing morality have been
proposed, including deontological ethical systems
which adhere to a set of established rules,
and normative ethical systems which consider the
merits of actions themselves. An example of
normative ethical philosophy is the Golden Rule,
which states that: "One should treat others as one
would like others to treat oneself."[3]
Immorality is the active opposition to morality (i.e.
opposition to that which is good or right),
while amorality is variously defined as an
unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief
in any particular set of moral standards or
principles.[4][5][6]
Contents
[hide]
• 1Philosophy
o 1.1Ethics
o 1.2Descriptive and normative
o 1.3Realism and anti-realism
• 2Anthropology
o 2.1Tribal and territorial
o 2.2In-group and out-group
o 2.3Comparing cultures
• 3Evolution
• 4Neuroscience
o 4.1Brain areas
o 4.2Mirror neurons
• 5Psychology
• 6Politics
• 7Religion
o 7.1Positions
o 7.2Empirical analyses
• 8See also
• 9Notes
• 10References
• 11Further reading
• 12External links
Philosophy[edit]
Ethics[edit]
Immanuel Kant introduced the categorical imperative:
"Act only according to that maxim whereby you can, at
the same time, will that it should become a universal
law".
Main article: Ethics
See also: Sittlichkeit
Ethics (also known as moral philosophy) is the
branch of philosophy which addresses questions
of morality. The word "ethics" is "commonly used
interchangeably with 'morality,' and sometimes it
is used more narrowly to mean the moral
principles of a particular tradition, group, or
individual."[7] Likewise, certain types of ethical
theories, especially deontological ethics,
sometimes distinguish between ethics and
morals: "Although the morality of people and their
ethics amounts to the same thing, there is a
usage that restricts morality to systems such as
that of Immanuel Kant
Kant,, based on notions such as
duty, obligation, and principles of conduct,
reserving ethics for the
more Aristotelian approach
proach to practical reasoning,
based on the notion of a virtue,, and generally
avoiding the separation of 'moral' considerations
considerations."[8]
from other practical considerations.
Descriptive and normativ
normative[edit]
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In its descriptive sense, "morality" refers
to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or
social mores from a society that provides these
codes of conduct in which it applies and is
accepted by an individual. It does not connote
objective claims of right or wrong, but only refers
to that which is considered right or
wrong. Descriptive ethics is the branch of
philosophy which studies morality in this sense.[9]
In its normative sense, "morality" refers to
whatever (if anything) is actually right or wrong,
which may be independent of the values or mores
held by any particular peoples or
cultures. Normative ethics is the branch of
philosophy which studies morality in this sense.[9]
Realism and anti-realism[edit]
Philosophical theories on the nature and origins of
morality (that is, theories of meta-ethics) are
broadly divided into two classes:
• Moral realism is the class of theories which hold
that there are true moral statements that report
objective moral facts. For example, while they
might concede that forces of
social conformity significantly shape individuals'
"moral" decisions, they deny that those
cultural norms and customs define morally right
behavior. This may be the philosophical view
propounded by ethical naturalists, however not
all moral realists accept that position
(e.g. ethical non-naturalists).[10]
• Moral anti-realism, on the other hand, holds that
moral statements either fail or do not even
attempt to report objective moral facts. Instead,
they hold that moral sentences are either
categorically false claims of objective moral
facts (error theory); claims about subjective
attitudes rather than objective facts (ethical
subjectivism); or else not attempts to describe
the world at all but rather something else, like
an expression of an emotion or the issuance of
a command (non-cognitivism).
Some forms of non-cognitivism and ethical
subjectivism, while considered anti-realist in the
robust sense used here, are considered realist in
the sense synonymous with moral universalism.
For example, universal prescriptivism is a
universalist form of non-cognitivism which claims
that morality is derived from reasoning about
implied imperatives, and divine command
theory and ideal observer theory are universalist
forms of ethical subjectivism which claim that
morality is derived from the edicts of a god or the
hypothetical decrees of a perfectly rational being,
respectively.
Anthropology[edit]
Tribal and territorial[edit]
Celia Green made a distinction between tribal and
territorial morality.[11] She characterizes the latter
as predominantly negative and proscriptive: it
defines a person's territory, including his or her
property and dependents, which is not to be
damaged or interfered with. Apart from these
proscriptions, territorial morality is permissive,
allowing the individual whatever behaviour does
not interfere with the territory of another. By
contrast, tribal morality is prescriptive, imposing
the norms of the collective on the individual.
These norms will be arbitrary, culturally
dependent and 'flexible', whereas territorial
morality aims at rules which are universal and
absolute, such as Kant's 'categorical imperative'
and Geisler's graded absolutism. Green relates
the development of territorial morality to the rise of
the concept of private property, and the
ascendancy of contract over status.
In-group and out-group[edit]
Main article: Ingroups and outgroups
Some observers hold that individuals apply
distinct sets of moral rules to people depending
on their membership of an "in-group" (the
individual and those they believe to be of the
same group) or an "out-group" (people not entitled
to be treated according to the same rules). Some
biologists, anthropologists and evolutionary
psychologists believe this in-group/out-group
discrimination has evolved because it enhances
group survival. This belief has been confirmed by
simple computational models of evolution.[12] In
simulations this discrimination can result in both
unexpected cooperation towards the in-group and
irrational hostility towards the out-group.[13] Gary
R. Johnson and V.S. Falger have argued
that nationalism and patriotism are forms of this
in-group/out-group boundary. Jonathan Haidt has
noted[14] that experimental observation indicating
an in-group criterion provides one moral
foundation substantially used by conservatives,
but far less so by liberals.
Comparing cultures[edit]
Peterson and Seligman[15] approach the
anthropological view looking across cultures, geo-
cultural areas and across millennia. They
conclude that certain virtues have prevailed in all
cultures they examined. The major virtues they
identified include wisdom / knowledge;
courage; humanity
humanity;; justice; temperance; and
transcendence.. Each of these includes several
divisions. For
instance humanity includes love, kindness,
kindness
and social intelligence
intelligence.
Fons Trompenaars
Trompenaars, author of Did the Pedestrian
Die?,, tested members of different cultures with
various moral dilemmas
dilemmas.. One of these was
whether the driver of a car would have his friend,
a passenger riding in the car, lie in order to
protect the e driver from the consequences of
driving too fast and hitting a pedestrian.
Trompenaars found that different cultures had
quite different expectations, from none to
definite.[16]
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John Newton, author of Complete Conduct
Principles for the 21st Century[17] compared the
Eastern and the Western cultures about morality.
As stated in Complete Conduct Principles for the
21st Century, "One of the important objectives of
this book is to blend harmoniously the fine souls
regarding conduct in the Eastern and the Western
cultures, to take the result as the source and then
to create newer and better conduct principles to
suit the human society of the new century, and to
introduce a lot of Chinese fine conduct spirits to
the Western world. It is hoped that this helps
solve lots of problems the human society of the
21st century faces, including (but not limited to the
Eastern and the Western cultures) what a single
culture cannot."
Evolution[edit]
See also: Altruism § Evolutionary
explanations, Evolution of morality,
and Evolutionary ethics
The development of modern morality is a process
closely tied to sociocultural evolution.
Some evolutionary biologists,
particularly sociobiologists, believe that morality is
a product of evolutionary forces acting at an
individual level and also at the group level
through group selection (although to what degree
this actually occurs is a controversial topic in
evolutionary theory). Some sociobiologists
contend that the set of behaviors that constitute
morality evolved largely because they provided
possible survival and/or reproductive benefits (i.e.
increased evolutionary success). Humans
consequently evolved "pro-social" emotions, such
as feelings of empathy or guilt, in response to
these moral behaviors.
On this understanding, moralities are sets of self-
perpetuating and biologically-driven behaviors
which encourage human cooperation. Biologists
contend that all social animals, from ants to
elephants, have modified their behaviors, by
restraining immediate selfishness in order to
improve their evolutionary fitness. Human
morality, although sophisticated and complex
relative to the moralities of other animals, is
essentially a natural phenomenon that evolved to
restrict excessive individualism that could
undermine a group's cohesion and thereby
reducing the individuals' fitness.[18]
On this view, moral codes are ultimately founded
on emotional instincts and intuitions that were
selected for in the past because they aided
survival and reproduction (inclusive fitness).
Examples: the maternal bond is selected for
because it improves the survival of offspring;
the Westermarck effect, where close proximity
during early years reduces mutual sexual
attraction, underpins taboos against
incest because it decreases the likelihood of
genetically risky behaviour such as inbreeding.
The phenomenon of reciprocity in nature is seen
by evolutionary biologists as one way to begin to
understand human morality. Its function is
typically to ensure a reliable supply of essential
resources, especially for animals living in a habitat
where food quantity or quality fluctuates
unpredictably. For example, some vampire
bats fail to feed on prey some nights while others
manage to consume a surplus. Bats that did eat
will then regurgitate part of their blood meal to
save a conspecific from starvation. Since these
animals live in close-knit groups over many years,
an individual can count on other group members
to return the favor on nights when it goes hungry
(Wilkinson, 1984)
Marc Bekoff and Jessica Pierce (2009) have
argued that morality is a suite of behavioral
capacities likely shared by all mammals living in
complex social groups (e.g., wolves, coyotes,
elephants, dolphins, rats, chimpanzees). They
define morality as "a suite of interrelated other-
regarding behaviors that cultivate and regulate
complex interactions within social groups." This
suite of behaviors includes empathy, reciprocity,
altruism, cooperation, and a sense of
fairness.[19] In related work, it has been
convincingly demonstrated that chimpanzees
show empathy for each other in a wide variety of
contexts.[20] They also possess the ability to
engage in deception, and a level of social
politics[21] prototypical of our own tendencies
for gossip and reputation management.
Christopher Boehm (1982)[22] has hypothesized
that the incremental development of moral
complexity throughout hominid evolution was due
to the increasing need to avoid disputes and
injuries in moving to open savanna and
developing stone weapons. Other theories are
that increasing complexity was simply a correlate
of increasing group size and brain size, and in
particular the development of theory of
mind abilities.
Neuroscience[edit]
See also: Science of morality
The brain areas that are consistently involved
when humans reason about moral issues have
been investigated by a quantitative large-scale
meta-analysis of the brain activity changes
reported in the moral neuroscience literature.[23] In
fact, the neural network underlying moral
decisions overlapped with the network pertaining
to representing others' intentions (i.e., theory of
mind) and the network pertaining to representing
others' (vicariously experienced) emotional states
(i.e., empathy). This supports the notion that
moral reasoning is related to both seeing things
from other persons' points of view and to grasping
others' feelings. These results provide evidence
that the neural network underlying moral
decisions is probably domain-global (i.e., there
might be no such things as a "moral module" in
the human brain) and might be dissociable into
cognitive and affective sub-systems.[23]
Brain areas[edit]
The explicit making of moral right and wrong
judgments coincides with activation in
the ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPC) while
intuitive reactions to situations containing implicit
moral issues activates the temporoparietal
junction area.[24]
Stimulation of the VMPC by transcranial magnetic
stimulation, has been shown to inhibit the ability of
human subjects to take into account intent when
forming a moral judgment. According to this
investigation, TMS did not disrupt participants'
ability to make any moral judgment. On the
contrary, moral judgments of intentional harms
and non-harms were unaffected by TMS to either
the RTPJ or the control site; presumably,
however, people typically make moral judgments
of intentional harms by considering not only the
action's harmful outcome but the agent's
intentions and beliefs. So why were moral
judgments of intentional harms not affected by
TMS to the RTPJ? One possibility is that moral
judgments typically reflect a weighted function of
any morally relevant information that is available
at the time. On the basis of this view, when
information concerning the agent's belief is
unavailable or degraded, the resulting moral
judgment simply reflects a higher weighting of
other morally relevant factors (e.g., outcome).
Alternatively, following TMS to the RTPJ, moral
judgments might be made via an abnormal
processing route that does not take belief into
account. On either account, when belief
information is degraded or unavailable, moral
judgments are shifted toward other morally
relevant factors (e.g., outcome). For intentional
harms and non-harms, however, the outcome
suggests the same moral judgment as the
intention. Thus, the researchers suggest that TMS
to the RTPJ disrupted the processing of negative
beliefs for both intentional harms and attempted
harms, but the current design allowed the
investigators to detect this effect only in the case
of attempted harms, in which the neutral
outcomes did not afford harsh moral judgments
on their own.[25]
Similarly VMPC-impaired persons will judge an
action purely on its outcome and are unable to
take into account the intent of that action.[26]