Are There Any Universal Morals?

[LukeS]

I'm a Enlightenment coherentist, not an axiom-ist.



Health is a good, at least minimally necessary for life, that's a biologocal fact.

Zero health equals dead. 2h is better than 1h etc.

And health (and it can come in many flavours and forms) ought to be chosen if it is available. This is primarily an individual ethic, health is a personal possession not a public one. Like you can't die from my cancer etc.

Ok we have to assume health is ontologically preferable to illness, but we have evolution on our side to program us that intuition, albeit historically we not have Darwinism on our side to help us reflect.

And yes we need a logical axiom (if its better it ought to be chosen).

Its rational (proper reasoning) to choose the better.

Therefore morality is formulated as in terms of rational attraction to being.

And there are lots of social strategems to help us (and me) attain and maintain it. Time takes its toll. You never see the blossom fall back onto the tree.



You need energy inputs to maintain thermodynamic disequilibrium.

The good life is more difficult to maintain than the than bad one, crossing the road takes skill, modern medicine is difficult to create and develop etc.

                 moral  optimum
*                /

*           /

*       /

*    /

* / moral minumum

 *   *   *   *   *

x (across) = skill to create

y (up/down) = ease to endure


And the bad life is more difficult to endure than that good one.

So we have comparative ontology, biology, thermodynamics, and logic all cohering and converging.

 

[whirlingmerc]

Are there any universal morals? By which I mean morals that are applicable to anyone, regardless of anything else, merely by virtue that they are human?

If so, what establishes these morals as universal?

If so, how can it be known what these morals are and that they are universal?

Respect God
Respect parents
Respect others

 

[LukeS]

Even if you treat personal well being as a good, there's not ever one way to achieve it. So universal ineluctable morals, for achieving common well being, for all people at all times, is a crazy idea. We have heuristics thats all. On TV a story of a man trapped in his cellar, had to saw his own forearm off.

 

[blü 2]

Jonathan Haight in a talk referred to research which found that the following values were distinguished by being found in all societies sampled around the world, developed and undeveloped ─ a fact which points to a genetic origin for them:

Dislike of the one who harms
Fairness and reciprocity
Loyalty to the group
Respect for authority
A sense of self-worth or virtue through self-denial

To this I might add, the nurture and protection of one's children, which is found across a huge range of species, and to suckling infants, which is found in all mammals, ─ since these kinds of conduct are socially approved, and their neglect disapproved.

Which is not to say that these qualities are present in all cultures with equal emphasis, just that they are all present.

After that, it seems, your culture's mores / morals are more flexible eg when you marry, does the groom pay a bride-price, does the bride bring a dowry, or does neither bring anything?

 

[LukeS]

Sorry for the long posts. Oops heres another one:

36- Glory be to the One, who created in pairs all things that the earth produces, as well as themselves, and other things they do not know.
(36- Ya-Seen, 36)


In my system there is universal and particular, yin and yang.

I think universal morals have to be defined in terms of all possible predicaments to be truly universal. So if there is any good universally, it is good for the agent a priori, and so its also good by definition.

So something like "well being" - in a good state of being - may match this criterion. Aim for well being, because well being is good a priori. This ralates to like garden of Eden pre-fall state in theology, the axiomatic platonic ideal seen in allegorical imagery.


This is also "egoistic" or self centred because well being is private, personal property first and foremost. It is ones own.

When we reach a level of particular moral rules or political principles, its higher order. Macro scale.

Like don't steal etc, or love thy neighbour, to me these are emergent features of people interacting culturally in social groups. A bit like the "invisible hand of the market" distributes wealth, the invisible hand of agents' interacting distributes the wealth of social wisdom (and folly too). This is the land of blessing and curse - the fallen creation where there is always some guesswork in the moralists craft.

So we have the necessary good (universally valid: achieve well being if possible), and contingent goods (particular and contextural: that's mine, don't steal etc).

The universal, its therefore absolutely certain. So there is a moral absolute here, something unconditional. I think the nondualists aim at personal well being, as accessed through the environment - the me-world relationship is correlative. This is where karma comes in, the perceived world is in part a projection of the unconsiocus mind - cf Alaya-vijnana: The Storehouse Consciousness, Source of All Experience

The specifics, what we do and say, they're contingent, probabilistic, and relative, more or less certain but never totally so.. The 10 commandments, the Human Rights code etc, sitting for an extra minute, they're good insofar as they lead to my well being (insert yourself here), but because there relative, contingent etc - there'll always be a possible world in which you wish they weren't there - hence moral conundrums are necessary, and moral necessity leads to conundrums. (see quran quote at start of thread)

 

[9-10ths_Penguin]

Are there any universal morals? By which I mean morals that are applicable to anyone, regardless of anything else, merely by virtue that they are human?

If so, what establishes these morals as universal?

If so, how can it be known what these morals are and that they are universal?

I think it depends on how we define "morality". If we say that it's a system focused on the well-being of people, then we can start with a few general precepts (i.e. that generally, life is preferable to death and that generally, less suffering is preferable to more suffering).

... though these precepts aren't true 100% of the time. I'm not sure any moral precept is.

IMO, morality is like nutrition that way: can we come up with a food that's always "nutritious"? Probably not. Both concepts - morality and nutrition - are more about a "big picture" viewpoint.

 

[Deidre]

Probably the laws that keep or attempt to keep humankind to be civil, are as close as we can get to a universal system of morality. But, the irony of morality is that people seem to think it's subjective unless it doesn't suit them. For example, there might be people who think that stealing is justified until someone steals from them. So it's a matter of caring about morality only if it affects the person, personally. I think we all know right from wrong but sometimes we justify it if we benefit from it or villify it if we don't.