Re: Do you believe in God?
Where would you say they stem from?
"We may speculate about origins, but all that this will reveal will be our hidden view of humanity. The ideas that we end up with will reflect whether we think of humanity as descended from noble savages, or from degenerate outcasts from Eden, or from anything else.
Is there any way of approaching the puzzle that does not depend on imagination? Yes. We can resort to empiricism. We can analyse ourself and see and feel how morality is generated in ourself. When we analyse ourself, what we are primarily doing is analysing the subconscious mind to find out how it works and how it affects us.
Sub - Headings
Changes in Terminology
Society creates Morality
Need and Morality
References
Understanding the dynamics of the subconscious mind enables the origin of morality to be discovered.
Changes in Terminology
Before proceeding on the analysis of this origin I need to make a distinction here. There are three ways to cultivate a set of standards that we use to shape and govern our path through life. To give a name to each of these ways, I use the terms "morality", "virtue", and "ethics". However, my use of these terms is different from their traditional usage.
I need to make changes in traditional terminology.
I denote morality and virtues to be standards of behaviour that are adopted through learning by example (rather than by adopting standards through a process of intellectual analysis of the choices available).
I define virtues.
Virtues are noble attitudes that spring from the heart.
This view of virtues means that they should be easy to apply. But it is not easy to explain what they are. In effect, virtues are based on feelings and so are non-linguistic. The person may ‘explain’ his approach to life by saying that he prefers to follow the dictates of his heart. This approach can be viewed as being similar to ‘situation ethics’, where the person’s response to any situation depends upon a spontaneous inclination.
I define morality.
Morality is a linguistic product made into a social practice.
A morality in any age is the sum of socially-accepted desires and values in that age. These values are a part of language; they can be articulated and so can be made the object of rational analysis. [¹]
Top of Page
Society creates Morality
Society is more than a collection of people ; it is a set of communal values and individual meanings. I consider values to be objective, and meanings to be subjective. I use this opposition of objectivity and subjectivity to denote the process whereby subjective criteria are created first within the imaginative person, and then become objective criteria once they are shared among the community. [²]
The set of communal values represents the contemporary state of morality, whilst the set of individual meanings represents the state of desired virtues. Language contains traditional values – this is what is implied in the ideas of social conditioning and socialisation. Language is the repository of values but not of meanings.
Morality centres on language, virtue on consciousness.
When any value is postulated to reside in language then its final activity is to become absorbed into morality (or possibly aesthetics). When meaning is postulated to lie outside of language then its terminus is virtue.
Top of Page
As an example, consider the 1960s in America and Britain. This period saw the flowering of the hippie generation. New virtues arose from the attempts to create a new non-materialistic consciousness. The initial inability to articulate the new feelings and attitudes led to a dependency on catch-phrases. Eventually, some virtues became articulated so they passed into the store of social values, whilst other virtues were abandoned.
As an example of how the inability to articulate feelings produces unforeseen effects, consider the illegal drug culture of modern times. It has left a residue of fear : such drugs are feared by the general population because their psychological effects still cannot be adequately articulated (this is due to current models of consciousness being inadequate).
The purpose of making this distinction between virtue and morality is to suggest how new standards, which first appear as subjective inclinations, pass into society as objective preferences. As society changes, new standards always arise first in individuals, and then, if needed, become absorbed into society as new social standards. In human evolution, new subjectivities always arise before new objectivities. Subjectivity always precedes objectivity.
Ethics is the stage beyond morality and virtue.
I consider ethics to be the way of adopting standards through a process of intellectual analysis of the choices available. When intellectual and critical thought (within the framework of psychological awareness) is applied to morality and virtue, so that they can be analysed and self-deception removed, then morality transforms into a social ethics and virtue becomes an ethics of individuality."
Morality and its Origins
But, don't let Data cloud your faith......