joe1776
Well-Known Member
I posted this earlier in General Religious Debates not realizing this forum existed.
We humans are much too proud of our ability to reason. Because of that, we have complicated and confused the relatively simple problem of using our intuitive moral sense (conscience) to make judgments.
According to Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, humans are born with a hard-wired morality. A deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. His research shows that babies and toddlers can judge the goodness and badness of others' actions; they want to reward the good and punish the bad; they act to help those in distress; they feel guilt, shame, pride, and righteous anger.
We have two brain functions involved in making judgments on moral questions. The reasoning function (left brain) will collect the facts involved in a specific case. The moral instincts function (right brain) will then take over and make an instinctive judgment on questions that concern right or wrong and fair or unfair.
Seven guidelines learned from our intuitive moral sense (conscience):
1. Don't use your reasoning function to make moral rules or laws and don't be guided by moral rules or laws about any type of act like killing, stealing, incest, lying, and so on.
2. An act is immoral if it intentionally harms or intentionally endangers an innocent person.
3. Any act is moral if it is done in self-defense or to protect innocent others; and when the harm done is only sufficient to stop the attack.
4. Any act is moral if it does the least harm in a moral dilemma. When two option both feel intuitively wrong, the reasoning function of the brain, and not the intuitive, probably weighs for the lesser harm and makes the final judgment.
5. If an act is morally wrong, it will immediately feel wrong. The judgment will be followed by a desire to see the wrongdoer punished.
6. If an act is unfair, it will immediately feel unfair and it will be hard to explain why it is unfair.
7. When all the facts of a moral case are available, judgment by the collective conscience of a group of people, unbiased on the case, is the one and only moral authority we have.
Some examples of the application of these six guidelines:
Traffic accidents cause harm but, absent the intent to harm, they are not immoral.(See #2)
"Abortion is murder!" This self-made moral rule (See #1) forms a bias which sends judgment off course. The judgment of murder is unconfirmed when, as a general rule, there is no desire to see the woman who terminates her pregnancy severely punished (See #5).
The countries which legalize prostitution are morally right since there is no harm done to an innocent person (See #2).
The states which allow euthanasia are morally right because the intent is not to harm but to prevent suffering (See #2).
You should not kill, (See #1) the commandment, when interpreted as a general rule is useless when we need guidance in a specific case which could be an exception. And when interpreted as an absolute rule -- You should never kill -- it becomes a bias which will send judgment off course when we are presented with a clear case of self-defense (See #3).
The Christian law prohibiting fornication should be ignored (See #1). Consensual sex between two adults who aren't cheating on anyone is not immoral because there's no intent to harm an innocent person (See #2).
The writers of the TV series 24 gave Kiefer Sutherland a moral dilemma every week. In one show, he murdered a friend in order to save thousands in L.A. from a dirty bomb. There is no act that is always immoral since a real life moral dilemma could offer it up as the lesser harm. (See #4)
Driving drunk is morally wrong because it intentionally endangers innocent people (See #2).
I invite criticism, but please bear in mind that if you add facts or alter the facts in any of my examples, you haven't challenged my judgment, you have presented a different moral case.
edit: I added a seventh guideline in order to clarify that the actor's own own opinion of morality is not relevant
We humans are much too proud of our ability to reason. Because of that, we have complicated and confused the relatively simple problem of using our intuitive moral sense (conscience) to make judgments.
According to Yale psychologist Paul Bloom, humans are born with a hard-wired morality. A deep sense of good and evil is bred in the bone. His research shows that babies and toddlers can judge the goodness and badness of others' actions; they want to reward the good and punish the bad; they act to help those in distress; they feel guilt, shame, pride, and righteous anger.
We have two brain functions involved in making judgments on moral questions. The reasoning function (left brain) will collect the facts involved in a specific case. The moral instincts function (right brain) will then take over and make an instinctive judgment on questions that concern right or wrong and fair or unfair.
Seven guidelines learned from our intuitive moral sense (conscience):
1. Don't use your reasoning function to make moral rules or laws and don't be guided by moral rules or laws about any type of act like killing, stealing, incest, lying, and so on.
2. An act is immoral if it intentionally harms or intentionally endangers an innocent person.
3. Any act is moral if it is done in self-defense or to protect innocent others; and when the harm done is only sufficient to stop the attack.
4. Any act is moral if it does the least harm in a moral dilemma. When two option both feel intuitively wrong, the reasoning function of the brain, and not the intuitive, probably weighs for the lesser harm and makes the final judgment.
5. If an act is morally wrong, it will immediately feel wrong. The judgment will be followed by a desire to see the wrongdoer punished.
6. If an act is unfair, it will immediately feel unfair and it will be hard to explain why it is unfair.
7. When all the facts of a moral case are available, judgment by the collective conscience of a group of people, unbiased on the case, is the one and only moral authority we have.
Some examples of the application of these six guidelines:
Traffic accidents cause harm but, absent the intent to harm, they are not immoral.(See #2)
"Abortion is murder!" This self-made moral rule (See #1) forms a bias which sends judgment off course. The judgment of murder is unconfirmed when, as a general rule, there is no desire to see the woman who terminates her pregnancy severely punished (See #5).
The countries which legalize prostitution are morally right since there is no harm done to an innocent person (See #2).
The states which allow euthanasia are morally right because the intent is not to harm but to prevent suffering (See #2).
You should not kill, (See #1) the commandment, when interpreted as a general rule is useless when we need guidance in a specific case which could be an exception. And when interpreted as an absolute rule -- You should never kill -- it becomes a bias which will send judgment off course when we are presented with a clear case of self-defense (See #3).
The Christian law prohibiting fornication should be ignored (See #1). Consensual sex between two adults who aren't cheating on anyone is not immoral because there's no intent to harm an innocent person (See #2).
The writers of the TV series 24 gave Kiefer Sutherland a moral dilemma every week. In one show, he murdered a friend in order to save thousands in L.A. from a dirty bomb. There is no act that is always immoral since a real life moral dilemma could offer it up as the lesser harm. (See #4)
Driving drunk is morally wrong because it intentionally endangers innocent people (See #2).
I invite criticism, but please bear in mind that if you add facts or alter the facts in any of my examples, you haven't challenged my judgment, you have presented a different moral case.
edit: I added a seventh guideline in order to clarify that the actor's own own opinion of morality is not relevant
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