How does morality set its bounds?

[SirDerpy]

Question is as above: why does morality stop where it does? If, that is, morality is the right word for it.

I was thinking today about the seemingly arbitrary places that morality chooses to draw the line. To most of us, "homosexuality is great, yeah, we ought to treat gays and lesbians as well as we treat anyone else. After all, everybody should be able to sleep with who they love". As opposed to incest, which is "completely and utterly disgusting, ew, damn inbreeding, sick people messing up the gene pool. Can't they please not exist or something?".

Or a more far-fetched example; I've done a fair amount of books, games, etc. involving a post-apocalyptic theme. The overall, general accumulated idea that they have left in me is this: when thinking about bandits or raiders, a character will think something along the lines of "Yeah, bad people are everywhere nowadays, eh? Gotta kill em when I see em, make the world safer a bit." However, when, say, the characters stumble upon a group which practices cannibalism to survive, it goes something like "OHMYGODYOUDISGUSTINGMONSTERSYOUINHUMANBEASTSARETERRIBLEIWILLSEETOITPERSONALLYTHATNOTONEOFYOUSICKBASTARDSSURVIVESTOSEETHESUNRISE..."
And so on. What makes it so 'meh, evil, whatever' to massacre innocent people to take their food, yet so horrifically wrong to perform cannibalism? Why has morality (for the given definition of morality which I may or may not be butchering here) drawn the line there?

And lastly, it'd be nice to hear your own personal moral bounds, what is forgivable and what isn't.

 

[Clowndoe]

Well, gotta draw the line somewhere, don't we? If it wasn't there, it would just be somewhere else, somewhere just as arbitrary. Then we would be wondering why cannibalism is ok, but only if you don't share a last name or something.

For some weak pseudo-science, you could say those are some fairly logical places to draw lines in the examples you gave. Homosexuality doesn't breed "weak" kids, whereas large-scale incest would weaken a species in time. Same with stealing food versus cannibalism: Stealing food is an example of survival of the fittest, whereas unhesitating cannibalism is the fast-track to extinction. Just disclaiming further by saying this isn't directly related to the question nor is it necessarily the cause of any current societal moral reasoning.

 

[senordesol]

Question is as above: why does morality stop where it does? If, that is, morality is the right word for it.

I was thinking today about the seemingly arbitrary places that morality chooses to draw the line. To most of us, "homosexuality is great, yeah, we ought to treat gays and lesbians as well as we treat anyone else. After all, everybody should be able to sleep with who they love". As opposed to incest, which is "completely and utterly disgusting, ew, damn inbreeding, sick people messing up the gene pool. Can't they please not exist or something?".

Or a more far-fetched example; I've done a fair amount of books, games, etc. involving a post-apocalyptic theme. The overall, general accumulated idea that they have left in me is this: when thinking about bandits or raiders, a character will think something along the lines of "Yeah, bad people are everywhere nowadays, eh? Gotta kill em when I see em, make the world safer a bit." However, when, say, the characters stumble upon a group which practices cannibalism to survive, it goes something like "OHMYGODYOUDISGUSTINGMONSTERSYOUINHUMANBEASTSARETERRIBLEIWILLSEETOITPERSONALLYTHATNOTONEOFYOUSICKBASTARDSSURVIVESTOSEETHESUNRISE..."
And so on. What makes it so 'meh, evil, whatever' to massacre innocent people to take their food, yet so horrifically wrong to perform cannibalism? Why has morality (for the given definition of morality which I may or may not be butchering here) drawn the line there?

And lastly, it'd be nice to hear your own personal moral bounds, what is forgivable and what isn't.

It's all arbitrary, but it's usually bound somewhere in the realm of 'this action causes some harm to other people/society/the crown/my nostalgic view of traditional values/the skypeople and therefore is immoral.'

In general, I would say actions in which you deliberately cause harm (or attempt to cause harm) to other people either physically or emotionally are immoral. Ditto for actions that -while they may not immediately cause harm- are inherently and/or obviously unsafe for others (e.g.: Drunk Driving, dumping toxins in reservoirs, selling sub-prime mortgages).

Additionally, deliberately compelling subservience or continued debt for the sake of lording over others (offering no recourse for them to better their circumstances).

 

[username sucks]

There are a lot of people out there who are more accepting of things like cannibalism and incest than you seem to think. Many people just live by the phrase "live and let live". If you judge society based on who voices their opinion the loudest you won't see everything. There is a full spectrum of opinions in society, but for some reason only one seems to be common. There are some people accepting of homosexuality and incest, some who accept one but not the other, and some who are intolerant of either of those actions. Society does not have any opinions, only the people within it.

As for my own morals, I don't really care what anyone does unless other people are negatively affected. Live and let live and all that. When someone does harm another person in some way, what they deserve should depend on if they see the error in their actions and resolve to fix it. However this isn't practical due to the ability of humans to lie, so I am not really sure how offenders should be treated.

 

[JoJo]

Morality isn't necessarily as arbitrary as you might think, if you have a set of values you wish to uphold, such as minimizing harm to yourself and others, maximising personal liberty whenever possible etc, then it is possible to logically derive a moral code from those values. Of course, those values themselves are arbitrary to an extent, but equally certain values are better for maintaining a society where people are generally happy and healthy than others. People of course will also disagree on whether those moral values should apply to certain groups (e.g. vegetarians with non-human animals, pro-life people with unborn foetuses) and how acceptable risk to others is.

Cannibalism and incest are both interesting in that they seem to cause innate disgust in most societies, with exceptions of course. It certainly isn't arbitrary why both are taboo in most societies, cannibalism carries a high risk of diseases (see Kuru disease) while incest carries a risk of deformed children, especially if repeated over multiple generations (see the House of Hapsburg). Personally I have little problem with either as long as everyone involved consented, I mean we don't ban smoking even though it can cause fatal diseases and nor do we ban the carriers of fatal inherited diseases from reproducing, so clearly risk isn't everything.

 

[Thaluikhain]

I'd say "arbitrarily". Most people have some sort of general guidelines, but with lots of exceptions, stated or not. "Everyone" usually doesn't mean "everyone" in context, for example.

 

[iLikeHippos]

If no one is around to judge you, can you truly be amoral?

It is not set to any particular value at all, I say; it is completely up to the viewers discretion. We've only gotten a "fixed moral code" from a cumulative, unanimous feeling the majority of us can share and relate to, and sometimes is pressured upon us unwillingly.

Morals can also rapidly change from obscene to acceptable with a slight change of surroundings and conditions. Even if you treasure life highly in normal circumstances, killing the man who murdered your family will seem completely acceptable to you and many others. Just like that.

Also, if you ask for my opinion, I'd point out that your characters are quite shallow-minded not to consider the conditions the survivors live in. At the very least, it'd appear as "sickening yet necessary" unless the characters haven't ever been introduced to this surrounding before and it came as a total shock, kind of like a time-traveler.
Also, it kinds of ruin immersion if the characters completely protrude from the set environment like that. At least, that is what I assume from the small fictional anecdote.

 

[Ratty]

To most of us, "homosexuality is great, yeah, we ought to treat gays and lesbians as well as we treat anyone else. After all, everybody should be able to sleep with who they love". As opposed to incest, which is "completely and utterly disgusting, ew, damn inbreeding, sick people messing up the gene pool. Can't they please not exist or something?".

Since that's one of the "But if we allow gays then we have to allow X." things that get brought up by opponents of gay marriage all the time I'll go over it. There's a pretty logical foundation for this that's not hard to discern.

Homosexuality is cool when it's between consenting adults. This is what people mean when they say everybody should be able to sleep with who they want. What two or more adults in their right minds consent to do that doesn't hurt anyone else is their business.

For incest on the other hand, abuse is often and is usually assumed to be a factor. As it obviously always is when one of those involved is not old enough to consent. In incest between consenting adults the concern is like you said, the production of children with birth defects either blatant or subtle. Which is unfair to the potential children and their descendants to the point of being abusive. But if someone were to have an incestuous relationship without any factors of abuse I doubt most people would care beyond finding it really gross.

The issue of consent is also the logical reason sleeping with animals is immoral. They're not smart enough to consent. That's another one people who argue against gay marriage and homosexuality in general bring up all the time.

Spoiler: You might find this video series, which concentrates on a morality based purely on reason, interesting.

 

[JoJo]

The issue of consent is also the logical reason sleeping with animals is immoral. They're not smart enough to consent. That's another one people who argue against gay marriage and homosexuality in general bring up all the time.

To play the devil's advocate though, since when has consent been applied to animals? We don't ask a cow's consent before we butcher it for steak, nor do we ask a lion's consent before we imprison it in a zoo, nor even for obtaining sperm from a top quality bull, which from the bull's perspective at-least is clearly a sexual act when it gets 'milked' if you get my drift. Seems a tad inconsistent to me to apply human principles of consent to animal sexuality when we don't apply to those same principles to any other animal welfare issues.

 

[CloudAtlas]

how does it set its bounds. you are making the mistake of thinking its set rationally . it isnt, it works purely on gut reaction for the most part its why canibalism and incest are so taboo its because the very idea turns peoples stomach on an instinctual level and across cultures

you can have exceptions but it takes serious effort to change something so ingrained in the human psyche and the older you are the harder it is to change

It is a mostly emotional reaction for many, that much is true, but it does not need to be. That's what moral philosophy is for, after all: to think in logical, in rational terms about morality. And if you think about morality in this way, you can derive your positions on many issues from a few fundamental principles of the school of thought of your choice.

Including incest, cannibalism, and bestiality.