1. Can the mind be understood scientifically
2. Can morality be studied objectively.
3. Can morality be reduced to the pursuit of rational self interest.
4. Are desires and dispositions naturally given or socially created.
5. Do humans possess moral choice.
6. Can we transform human nature.
From
an early philosophical point of view, things like 'ethics' and
'morality' were seen to be fixed as laws of human nature. Being fixed
they could be rationalised. They were innate and set a touchstone for
our lives.
Another
view is that we are not fixed in some sort of universal chessboard
playing to a set of rules but that we make up the rules as we engage in
life. Each person is different and come to their own ethical and moral
decision through symbiosis, a testing of their interaction with the
people they meet. Morality and ethics are organic. It involves an
important element of judgement. The sentiments of approval and
disapproval, enables one to participate in the lives of others, to be
empathetic. This empathetic appeal towards others allows us to share in
the pleasures and the pains of others. When we feel pleasure we approve
and it is to us a virtue, when we feel pain we disapprove and it becomes
a vice. We are effectively, on a self serving jaunt creating our own
guide lines to fit our particular make up.
In
so far as there is no tabernacle type judgement, since religious moral
law is a religious concept which not everyone accepts, the philosophical
justification has to be that it is more a societal mechanism which
people accept depending on the society they grew up in.
The
objectivity that weights the importance of these judgements, which we
all make is both singular and collective and therefore to make objective
statements about ethics and morality is fraught with misunderstanding
if we seek to bind everyone with the same edict.
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