SRL Archive - Discussions & Debates

I am interested to know what people think of morals. Are there things that are ingrained so deeply into people's brains that they automatically know them?

Personally, I think that everything that everything that has ever been learned has been taught through observation or by first hand experience. People more religious (such as my mother) have told me that people automatically are against killing and other such "moral" things of today, and a completely nonreligious guy I was talking to said that the only real thing that was ingrained was the "fight-or-flight" response.

I disagree with both of those and say that (while this wouldn't really make sense in real life) if you plopped a grown man into existence (basically trying to get someone without any biases or preconceptions. Being a grown man would ensure that he isn't limited mentally nor physically so he can actually interact with the world around him (i'd also like to assume that for some reason he can walk and control his body so that he can react to things)) with a knife and a man in front of him, then a separate scenario where the man is plopped into existence with a train flying towards him.

In the first scenario, i think it would be unlikely that the newly created man would actually kill the man in front of him (because of the multitude of things that he could otherwise do) but I don't see why he would have any objections to doing so. He knows nothing about the world and nothing about himself nor anyone else. There would be nothing in my opinion to keep him from doing so. The same thing happens in the second scenario. I don't think there would be any reason for the man to try to get out of the way of the train nor to fear the train hitting him.

In my opinion, morals aren't derived by from god or from ingrained instincts, they come from experience. From when you are born you start to be influenced by the people around you. From them you learn that hurting people is bad. And if you don't just take it as it is from their word, you might hit someone or something of the sort, and if it doesn't make you feel bad then, the consequences that come from doing it (i would assume being punished) would be the deterrent and the reason that hurting people is bad (being conditioned to think that punishment accompanies hurting things). Then from experience of hitting things or falling or such things, you'll learn that colliding with hard things at speed will hurt, or that might not happen and you might see someone else be in pain and that's how you know that getting hit by a train would be bad. The fear is conditioned into you.

(I had something else to mention, but I cannot remember, so I hope someone's response might help me explain better if needed) So now, I'd like to see what other people think. I'm open to any other things that are logical in the face of this.

If you look at an animal, they have instincts that develop without ever being taught. Many creatures are never "taught" how to survive in this world, but manage to do so perfectly well. Some animals instinctually form monogamous mating pairs, etc. Is that because they were taught it? I don't think so.

A newborn baby also has instincts, and physical abilities that have never been taught. Why start breathing? Why start sucking? Why cry? These are all inborn traits that allow newborns to overcome their helpless state.

I think it's very natural to extend this observation into the realm of morals. Teaching simply speeds up the learning process that would occur naturally through experience. As our society evolves, our ability to teach and learn may far overshadow those natural traits, but people are not a blank slate, and those inborn traits condition their life experience.

Most morals are based on interpersonal interactions that benefit society as a whole, and may be in conflict with personal interests. In those cases, the "social morality" may be difficult to teach or enforce. But I think that in most cases, those social morals are in harmony with the personal or inborn interests, and are therefore much easier to learn and live by.

I think it's a mistake to believe that just because we are so advanced and "mask" natural morality through teaching that it doesn't exist.

I point you in the direction of meme's and if you are unawares of them exactly, I can point you to a fairly short article on them

To me it seems meme's fit the reasons for morality quite well - there is no direct logical reason why most of the common morals should be followed when you are taught them and sometimes later. For example, things like polygamy are frowned upon, because of our societies still somewhat Christian belief that a man should only have one wife, with no reasoning behind it apart from `the Bible said'.

Most often morality is passed from parents and peers to the person. Like when you're little and you `steal' something and you're mother tells you that stealing is wrong and you shouldn't do it. There is no logical basis for you to believe her, you just do. Sure there may be logical reasoning for it later, but at that age you believe nearly anything.

So, my view of morals is that they are merely social lubricants that are passed onto younger people that aren't challenged and rejected as the person grows older.

From: tarajunky
A newborn baby also has instincts, and physical abilities that have never been taught. Why start breathing? Why start sucking? Why cry? These are all inborn traits that allow newborns to overcome their helpless state.

I was thinking exactly that when i read the train scenario one.

Some things, such as the instinct to survive, are written into the very fabric of that in which makes us human. It is impossible to change that, it is in everyone. But these are instincts. It isn't the instinct to survive that we are talking about with the train, it is in fact the knowledge of what it can do to you.

For example, this was a while back, but one time my niece told me that she wanted to jump out of the window (we were on the 6th floor of an apartment building, and she was like 4). She thought she could just get up and walk away from that. I asked her why she wouldn't, and she said that she was afraid of heights. That is instinct, she had no idea why she was afraid of heights, she just was. It protected her from jumping out of the window and killing herself due to lack of knowledge. Instincts seem to me like they are there to protect us while we gain the knowledge behind the instincts.

Imo, morals are developed, unlike instincts, and you can get them from experience, and from others. For example, if you have ever been in love, you will know that your partner's morals will slowly be implanted on you. Also a mother's to their child. A teacher's to their students. I didn't know it was not ok to just kill people until kindergarten when i was taught by my teacher, i thought it was fine mostly because of the cartoons i watched as a little kid (bugs bunny is probably the most violent children cartoon ever O_o). This leads me to believe that morals are developed from your environment. If I would have continued to just watch bugs bunny all my life and do nothing else, you wouldn't be surprised to see me go up to a duck and shoot its head to watch its bill spin around its head, or plant a trigger in a piano so that it will blow up when you press a certain key (assuming i can get my hands on the materials and know how to do both :D).

In the first scenario, i think he wouldn't kill the man simply out of selfish wants and needs. He wouldn't have someone to keep him company if he did. I think that is a major thing in our world today, they don't do it not because it is wrong, but because they will get in trouble or it will affect them in some negative way if they do. For example, speeding. People don't [excessively] speed in fear of getting caught, and charged, or of fear of getting into an accident. You may say that you would be afraid of hurting someone else, but why? Keep asking yourself why and you will get down to the root of it. Maybe because i don't want to be charged? Maybe i don't want to have to face a crying mother of a son i slaughtered?

From: tarajunky
If you look at an animal, they have instincts that develop without ever being taught. Many creatures are never "taught" how to survive in this world, but manage to do so perfectly well. Some animals instinctually form monogamous mating pairs, etc. Is that because they were taught it? I don't think so.

A newborn baby also has instincts, and physical abilities that have never been taught. Why start breathing? Why start sucking? Why cry? These are all inborn traits that allow newborns to overcome their helpless state.

Breathing is an involuntary action. It happens without you thinking about it, so I would classify it as a bodily process, like peeing. You don't have an instinct to learn how to pee, you just do so. Sucking, I wouldn't know how to explain away, and crying is more involuntary than instinct, methinks. If you hurt yourself hard enough, then tears automatically spring to your eyes. Its not something you instinctively do. Then as they grow in experience, they begin to learn that crying will work for signaling different things.

From: mixster
I point you in the direction of meme's and if you are unawares of them exactly, I can point you to a fairly short article on them

To me it seems meme's fit the reasons for morality quite well - there is no direct logical reason why most of the common morals should be followed when you are taught them and sometimes later. For example, things like polygamy are frowned upon, because of our societies still somewhat Christian belief that a man should only have one wife, with no reasoning behind it apart from `the Bible said'.

Most often morality is passed from parents and peers to the person. Like when you're little and you `steal' something and you're mother tells you that stealing is wrong and you shouldn't do it. There is no logical basis for you to believe her, you just do. Sure there may be logical reasoning for it later, but at that age you believe nearly anything.

So, my view of morals is that they are merely social lubricants that are passed onto younger people that aren't challenged and rejected as the person grows older.

I'm not sure if that was meant to go against what I was saying or not. When you're growing up, you learn things from your parents. You learn to trust/heed what they say, through experience; be it from disobeying them and getting hurt, or being punished when doing so. So if your parents were to tell you something, your experience starts to tell you that you should heed them. I would generally take the example of a feral child. Feral children, generally, afaik don't have any notion of good or bad based on today's standards. I would assume they would have learned that being hurt themselves was bad, but in some cases that have been brought up, they didn't seem to have learned that hurting people was bad. (Though that's more of a general example since they already have experience that will have biased their opinions, so it might not be foolproof).

From: bionicle1800
Some things, such as the instinct to survive, are written into the very fabric of that in which makes us human. It is impossible to change that, it is in everyone. But these are instincts. It isn't the instinct to survive that we are talking about with the train, it is in fact the knowledge of what it can do to you.

without the knowledge of what it can do to you, there is no reason to fear it. And once one knows what something can do to you, you've been biased by experience.

From: bionicle1800
I asked her why she wouldn't, and she said that she was afraid of heights. That is instinct, she had no idea why she was afraid of heights, she just was. It protected her from jumping out of the window and killing herself due to lack of knowledge. Instincts seem to me like they are there to protect us while we gain the knowledge behind the instincts.

She was 11. Falling is a very large part of being a younger child. She might have had a particularly bad fall when she was younger or witnessed someone else doing the same. Either way, I doubt she/anyone would immediately, from birth be afraid of heights.

From: bionicle1800
Imo, morals are developed, unlike instincts, and you can get them from experience, and from others.

agreed then?

From: bionicle1800
In the first scenario, i think he wouldn't kill the man simply out of selfish wants and needs. He wouldn't have someone to keep him company if he did. I think that is a major thing in our world today, they don't do it not because it is wrong, but because they will get in trouble or it will affect them in some negative way if they do.

The point of the first scenario was to illustrate that he wouldn't have felt bad about it. Its unlikely that he would have killed the man for any reason because of the multitude of things that someone randomly plopped into existence could do. For some reason, had he been compelled to move his arm in a way that the knife would have collided with the man (since the man doesn't have any notions of killing or death) there would be no reason for him to feel bad about it.

From: Dan Cardin
Breathing is an involuntary action. It happens without you thinking about it, so I would classify it as a bodily process, like peeing. You don't have an instinct to learn how to pee, you just do so. Sucking, I wouldn't know how to explain away, and crying is more involuntary than instinct, methinks. If you hurt yourself hard enough, then tears automatically spring to your eyes. Its not something you instinctively do. Then as they grow in experience, they begin to learn that crying will work for signaling different things.



I'm not sure if that was meant to go against what I was saying or not. When you're growing up, you learn things from your parents. You learn to trust/heed what they say, through experience; be it from disobeying them and getting hurt, or being punished when doing so. So if your parents were to tell you something, your experience starts to tell you that you should heed them. I would generally take the example of a feral child. Feral children, generally, afaik don't have any notion of good or bad based on today's standards. I would assume they would have learned that being hurt themselves was bad, but in some cases that have been brought up, they didn't seem to have learned that hurting people was bad. (Though that's more of a general example since they already have experience that will have biased their opinions, so it might not be foolproof).


without the knowledge of what it can do to you, there is no reason to fear it. And once one knows what something can do to you, you've been biased by experience.

She was 11. Falling is a very large part of being a younger child. She might have had a particularly bad fall when she was younger or witnessed someone else doing the same. Either way, I doubt she/anyone would immediately, from birth be afraid of heights.

agreed then?

The point of the first scenario was to illustrate that he wouldn't have felt bad about it. Its unlikely that he would have killed the man for any reason because of the multitude of things that someone randomly plopped into existence could do. For some reason, had he been compelled to move his arm in a way that the knife would have collided with the man (since the man doesn't have any notions of killing or death) there would be no reason for him to feel bad about it.

She was 4, not in grade 4 :p, and yes, i agree.

well, since babies was brought up, newborns have been tested to know how to swim. Edit: newborn reflexes

seems like this is just a nature vs. nurture thread :)

bah, anyway, I think the baby reflexology is off topic?

We get our morals from history.
We judge history by our morals.

:/ Most of the talk in this thread is about instincts, which isn't the point of this thread. But, Dan, "I would generally take the example of a feral child. Feral children, generally, afaik don't have any notion of good or bad based on today's standards. I would assume they would have learned that being hurt themselves was bad, but in some cases that have been brought up, they didn't seem to have learned that hurting people was bad." I wouldn't agree with that. I've seen a few cases of feral children. Some raised by dogs (in Russia), and another left alone in a basement without ever being spoken to for years (11 or 13 or something.. I just know it was a very long time). In both cases, they almost immediately learned what they could and couldn't do in society. The wolf girl was very much more socially acceptable (since she did live with her parents for a small amount of time, yet they were drunkards, and that's why she went with the dogs and her parents didn't notice/care), because she learned how to properly walk (probably from seeing her parents as a baby), and all human things, except for talking, she could only bark (I'm being completely serious by the way). But the other girl who was never spoken to, was locked in a small cage for many years, and had no interaction whatsoever other than food, was a much more difficult case. She, again, couldn't learn to speak, but she could walk, she learned to dance, and she knew that if she did something wrong that it was bad.

There was actually another feral boy who was found in the woods in the 1800s or 1600s or something, and he was one of the first documented feral children. He learned everything extremely well. He completely disobeyed his instincts from when he was raised in the wild, and he could run and play and love and comfort when he knew people were said. But he, too, could not learn to speak.

Anyway, back on topic. What you (Dan) said about the non-religious person saying that the only "real thing that was ingrained was the "fight-or-flight" response," I think that's ridiculous. Surviving isn't the main point of life, in my opinion.

And what I define as a "moral deed" or a "moral person" is judged on the quality of life he lives. If he does what he loves, and does what he does for himself, then I'd consider him a noble and moral person.