Can You Change Your Morals

[mikkel_the_dane]

Given a reasonable, contrary argument, yes.

Yeah, but the problem is that it is in the end not fully objective, rational and with evidence. It ends in that you feel differently.
It connects to Kohlberg in a sense.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

True. Especially those whose positions are intellectually indefensible.

Yeah, but that is not in the end objective and physical.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I try not to base my moral/ethical decisions on feelings. I do have a personal major premise, but I try to base all subsequent decisions on logically derived ramifications of same.

What I feel about something, and what I think about it, can be quite different. I feel what I feel, but I act on my thoughts.

Yeah, that is not objective or physical in the end.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Then I'd suppose they don't want to for some reason.

Well, we end in psychology and how we all have a personal model of how what we do indiivually is correct. The problem is that we handle incorrect differently based on how we value, what it means to be correct and what we believe correct is.
Read some Kohlberg and learn to spot that in your own morality and other people's morality.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

You can change your values , but keep in mind there is no universal standard of morality to go by.

It's all on your own ticket.

No, there is one objective universally correct version of freedom and you are the correct standard for that.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I'm not saying they don't change. However, for example could you decide to be a conscientious objector now?
IOW, do we freely choose our moral views or are they the result of external influences that we have limited, if any, control over?

It depends on the version of cognition that a person have.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

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Can you change what you feel is right and wrong?

For example, if you feel murder is wrong, can you decide to feel that murder is morally good?
What about child abuse?

I'm not saying morals never change but I don't see that it is a conscious decision. Something outside ourselves has to be the catalyst.

So while we can judge someone's else's morals according to our own moral view we can't expect someone else to change theirs.

How beneficial then is it to complain about someone else's morality if we cannot even change our own?

Well, the joke is that I am the same as when I was a baby, right?

What you are asking, is in the modern Western sense, psychology more than it is philosophy.
So forget free will and you can observe that a human from birth to old can undergo different cogntive and emotlional phases.
And some of them are in effect meta-cognitive in a broad sense, but that is only so for some people and still with different variations.

 

[LuisDantas]

Well, I changed my "morals" from having them to not having them - that is, being amoral and instead operating by a combination of virtue ethics and consequentialism. I'm really not a fan of deontology.

I use ethics and morals as synonims, myself.

 

[LuisDantas]

I'm not saying they don't change. However, for example could you decide to be a conscientious objector now?
IOW, do we freely choose our moral views or are they the result of external influences that we have limited, if any, control over?

By that perspective it may be possible to change our moral views (as you define that expression).

It is also deeply immoral and wrong, though. Morality that disregards external influences is a betrayal to ourselves and to itself.

 

[LuisDantas]

As @LuisDantas said

so being given reasons to change, morality can, or at least should, change.

E.g. the Trolley Problem. Many people say they would pull the lever out of some utilitarian ethics, better one killed than five. But after having heard the iterations, I bet many would revise their first decision.

Indeed. More than being possible, change of moral views is necessary if one is not morally bankrupt.

Why? Because one of the earliest moral directives to arise is that of attempting to better understand situations and their consequences.

A functional morality will demand opportunities to expand its ability to perceive situations, its ability to decide on how to predict, avoid and react to them, and also its ability to understand the consequences that come from each possible reaction (and omission).

True morality wants to grow and become more ambitious and more sophisticated.

That may be one reason why the field attracts me so much; it is rational in origin and nature, while also passionately tapping into emotions and feelings by duty and necessity. If I ever felt a conflict between reason and emotion, my interest in ethics solved it pretty quickly.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

By that perspective it may be possible to change our moral views (as you define that expression).

It is also deeply immoral and wrong, though. Morality that disregards external influences is a betrayal to ourselves and to itself.

Well, that is not objective in the end and a case of moral relativism.

 

[LuisDantas]

Well, that is not objective in the end and a case of moral relativism.

Many people tell me so.

Myself, I think that is a mistake of scope, if not definition. Morality deals with situations and consequences. By that perspective it has to be, as you say, "relative" if it is to have any meaning or usefulness.

If so-called "absolute morality" disregards our feelings, than it is quite useless or worse. Probably much worse. I just don't consider that morality in any way, shape or form.

Above even that, morality has to consider specific circunstances if it is to have any meaning at all. What would its subject be otherwise? Morality exists to evaluate situations and our responses to those situations. In that sense it is "relative" by definition, by statement of purpose.

Why people sometimes appear to think of "relative morality" as some form of incoherence that suggests lack of clarity or of serious commitment I can't quite figure, but I suspect that it comes from some form of attachment to deontology. Deontology does not work, and has no use for ethics/morality.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Can you change what you feel is right and wrong?​

For example, if you feel murder is wrong, can you decide to feel that murder is morally good?
What about child abuse?

I'm not saying morals never change but I don't see that it is a conscious decision. Something outside ourselves has to be the catalyst.

So while we can judge someone's else's morals according to our own moral view we can't expect someone else to change theirs.

How beneficial then is it to complain about someone else's morality if we cannot even change our own?

As I see it, the only thing that can change one's morals are experiences that teach us that what we thought to me morally correct was not. I don't think morals are something someone can change at will. I think ethics may play a major role in changing moral value.

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

Many people tell me so.

Myself, I think that is a mistake of scope, if not definition. Morality deals with situations and consequences. By that perspective it has to be, as you say, "relative" if it is to have any meaning or usefulness.

If so-called "absolute morality" disregards our feelings, than it is quite useless or worse. Probably much worse. I just don't consider that morality in any way, shape or form.

Above even that, morality has to consider specific circunstances if it is to have any meaning at all. What would its subject be otherwise? Morality exists to evaluate situations and our responses to those situations. In that sense it is "relative" by definition, by statement of purpose.

Why people sometimes appear to think of "relative morality" as some form of incoherence that suggests lack of clarity or of serious commitment I can't quite figure, but I suspect that it comes from some form of attachment to deontology. Deontology does not work, and has no use for ethics/morality.

Yeah, but you are still not a we for " is a betrayal to ourselves and to itself." And neither am I. So we are both relativists and I understand the bold one differently for your post, as to me there is no ourselves for all humans as a we for all humans.

 

[LuisDantas]

As I see it, the only thing that can change one's morals are experiences that teach us that what we thought to me morally correct was not. I don't think morals are something someone can change at will. I think ethics may play a major role in changing moral value.

Do you think that attempts at predicting likely situations and their consequences play any significant role in either ethics or morality (since you apparently don't use those two words as meaning one and the same thing)?

 

[LuisDantas]

Yeah, but you are still not a we for " is a betrayal to ourselves and to itself." And neither am I. So we are both relativists and I understand the bold one differently for your post, as to me there is no ourselves for all humans as a we for all humans.

I just don't understand what you mean to say here.

Could you perhaps attempt to word it differently for my benefit?

 

[mikkel_the_dane]

I just don't understand what you mean to say here.

Could you perhaps attempt to word it differently for my benefit?

By that perspective it may be possible to change our moral views (as you define that expression).

It is also deeply immoral and wrong, though. Morality that disregards external influences is a betrayal to ourselves and to itself.

That is relative and not universal and I do that differently as also relative and not universal.
My point is that your version is not the only relative one.

 

[SalixIncendium]

Do you think that attempts at predicting likely situations and their consequences play any significant role in either ethics or morality (since you apparently don't use those two words as meaning one and the same thing)?

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Can you give me an example of what sort of situation that one might attempt to predict?

Also, to me, morality is one's personal behaviors based on one's beliefs in what is right or wrong, whereas ethics are societal expectations of conduct. In my experience, the latter is more fluid than the former.

 

[LuisDantas]

That is relative and not universal and I do that differently as also relative and not universal.
My point is that your version is not the only relative one.

By which understandings of "relative" and "universal"?

 

[LuisDantas]

I'm not entirely sure what you're asking. Can you give me an example of what sort of situation that one might attempt to predict?

Also, to me, morality is one's personal behaviors based on one's beliefs in what is right or wrong, whereas ethics are societal expectations of conduct. In my experience, the latter is more fluid than the former.

Pretty much any situations. Morality/ethics is all about having some idea of how to deal with situations that might arise, isn't it?

As I said, I don't really consider that there is any meaningful distinction between the terms.

By your definitions, they aren't separate thing either.

They can be viewed by a belief perspective which you call morality, or by a perspective of social expectations. That does not separate them, but rather establishes that we must acknowledge both aspects.