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Monday, November 9, 2009
Are we born moral?
In the class discussion, there was a lot of controversy whether species are born with morality instilled in them or if it is something they acquire over their years from personal experience. Another discussion which I was a main part of was, can instincts be separate from morals, when the story of the gorilla came up. I don't believe that people were understading what I was saying. What I was trying to say was that there are instances where people can react based on just an instinctual standpoint without it being based on their sense of morality. People can act on instinct without a concern of morality. What they were trying to say is that all of our actions (instincts) are based on a moral calculator or that what we do is based on our morals. For example, an alcoholic may start to drink when they are depressed, that does not make it right, even by their own stand point necessarily. There are many things that humans do without morality in mind, but instinct. How many people break traffic laws when they know someone isn't looking, to get to where they need to be faster? A lot of people. The thing about morals is that they are corrupt. It is true that most people only abide by what is right or wrong if other people are there to see.
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D.
ReplyDeleteYou've jumped right into the controversy that was at the heart of the Gray article. Are morals something that has to be consciously considered and decided on?Does that specifically exclude things that we might do, good or bad, in a reflexive manner Are we born evil? Do we fight, as civilized humans, to impose moral order on an immoral or amoral universe? This is an important historical approach.The biologists in the Gray article would argue that we are born w/ certain tendencies (which could be overcome by environmental influences) towards moral behavior because they were adaptive in the small family type groups from which we evolved.