Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
How is morality developed, or is it innate?
This comes from Atheist morality in the religion forum, we were getting off topic there.
Perhaps, but probably not. The following would be the closest I would come to saying there is a basic moral construct, but I believe that this does not fit the term as you are stating it.
Here is how I would describe the process that leads to morality in children:
A child is born. Crying is the only means it has of relieving itself of undesired or painful stimuli. If the infant is content, then it does not cry. The cry produces a response in an adult that results in an attempt to alleviate the infants distress. Thus the adults response as well as the child's results in the removal of an unwanted stimulus, crying for an adult and whatever was bothering for the infant. Thus crying is paired with things that are unwanted, or not good, throughout early development. Then, when the child begins to mature slightly, the child becomes aware of others. As the child becomes aware of others it also recognizes the physical responses to negative stimuli that others exhibit that are similar to the responses that the child exhibits. These responses have been paired with "bad" things. As such these responses are not "good" to produce. These responses elicit a conditioned response in a child that is the same as the "bad" stimuli that has previously been paired with the response. This then begins morality. It is not good to hurt someone because hurting them produces a "bad" feeling. This is built upon throughout life, becoming more complex and more "hardwired" as the behavior continues.
It's a learned behavior. As I've said once before if one is shunned, they will either, change, leave, or stay shunned.........
This is the problem with spoiled children. They get no consequence for their behavior, and then wonder what is wrong when they are adults........."It must be everyone else", they say.
Studies have been done on this. Essentially, while moral development (like language and cognitive development) is linked to social interaction, that such development occurs at all, and how it develops, reflects an innate predisposition.
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
I appreciate Kohlberg's work, and I believe his theory is basically sound as to description of varying degrees of morality.
The fact that development occurs does not necessitate an innate predisposition. I believe that my example does not require predisposition to moral behavior's existence for one to develop moral behavior and beliefs.
I would say that everything is built upon experiance, one might find physical pain interesting rather than something bad, such as one who has never really felt pain before, they would wonder about it for a long time, then when they feel pain they would be happy and would be intrigued by the feeling rather than try and get rid of it, they would want it to prolong as long as possible... which could end in tears all the same, but it probably wont be this persons tears. Also there is the rare case that someones mind-frame causes them to enjoy pain, this is only a metaphor an example if you wish, think of it that way, pain teaches us not to do something, but when we enjoy the pain it causes we want more, a good example of that is actually something we all know, drugs, we know they will eventually kill us off, but we love the feeling that they give us, we want more and so the addiction begins. Eventually you will develop something which will probably cause great pain, but what caused it will continue to go on and you will like the thing that caused it, a failed love, or with alcohol, you drink it when you feel depressed, in some cases, but more than most times it will cause you to realize that you are really despressed and cause you to become more depressed, while others become care free while they are drunk, and some vary.
__________________ It is impossible to overlook the extent to which civilization is built upon a renunciation of instinct.
-Sigmund Freud
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
Perhaps in my example the term pain should have been avoided. An infant reacts in some manner that results in gaining, or escaping, a stimulus or event. If it escapes a stimulus with the response it will respond in the same manner again to escape the same stimulus, or perhaps it will generalize and attempt the response to escape some other stimulus or event. This response in infants is typically crying, but could be some other response. Then my example will continue as above.
Even pain deficient individuals have some stimuli or events that are undesired. I would assert that it is highly improbable that any individual would not have something it would avoid or escape. As such, responses of others that are similar to the escape response/s used by the subject would result in the similar avoidance behavior that results in less of that response occurring in others. Which as I stated would lead to the development of morals.
Human development (eg, physical, verbal, mental) has both surface structure and deep structure. In a nutshell, surface structure reflects form or manifestation; deep structure is the essence or process that form is expressing.
For example: digestion is a deep structure. However, how I digest food is slightly different from how you digest food, and it's very different from how, say, a crocodile digests food. These are all different surface structures.
Example: "Goodbye" is one surface structure of a communication with a particular meaning or deep structure. "Au revoir," "Shalom," and "Sayonara" are other surface structures reflecting that same underlying meaning
Moral development is learned with regard to its surface structure. But that it occurs in identifiable stages, just like language and cognitive development (these being transcultural): this reflects a genetic blueprint (a deep structure), likely offering some evolutionary advantage.
__________________
Shinier than a speeding bullet.
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
I don't think transcultural morality would necessitate genetics for anything other than the ability to learn morals. I still think my example would be sufficient in response to this argument for innate morality.
I agree. Transcultural morals do not necessetate genetics, but it does imply some sort of mass-human morality. This could be attributed to either genetics, or some sort of general human experience.
Gender: Male Location: Drifting off around the bend
It seems that the three of us are on basically the same page.
I think probably general human experience. Although if you want to get into religion somewhat, although the point to moving the topic here was to drop the religious aspect, I can offer another opinion as to how morals come about.
That's not true at all. Pain triggers a response from the body, which releases adrenaline and other neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and endorphins, which are associated with pleasure and happiness, respectively.
To some people, the physical pain of being hurt is greater than the release of the neurotransmitters, and it's obviously bad. To others, the release of the pleasurable nuerotransmitters makes them feel good enough to want to reproduce the stimuli, i.e. more pain = more pleasure.
Morals are partly the product of the enviroment you were raised in, they are certain concepts that you have been programmed to consider a part of the 'right' way to live.
They are also partly based on your own reasoning, applied to the values that have already been installed in you. Nearly any sane person raised in a common enviroment like you or I have been raised, would think such a deeply rooted moral such as 'killing' would be wrong. Yet we differ in thinking about other morals, such as theft. A person that was inclined to despise society would consider 'beating the system' through the process of theft to be an acceptable act. A person who through reasoning deduced that the rules of society were good things, that should be followed, would frown upon that same act.
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Jun 13th, 2006 09:01 PM
