Moral Imperative
- Thread starter hughball
- Start date
There are far too many variables in nearly every conceivable action, including seemingly mundane or terrible actions for there to be any kind of absolute standard to judge by. That is why we have courts and big complicated justice systems, or else there would just be a big book of different things a person can do with a little right or wrong mark next to it. Really, if you think hard enough about the possible circumstances, even buttering toast could be a horrendous crime, and brutal rape could be nothing at all.
Multiple personalities? Being held at gunpoint and told to do it or die?hughball post=18.69788.672139 said:
It's the buttering of the toast that requires more explanation I would think. If the butter is made from the corpses of newborns or something somehow, or if the toast you're buttering belongs to someone allergic to it, that sort of explains it, but in both cases I'd say the actual CRIME wasn't the buttering of the toast, it was just related to it.
I was saying that the bible is the big book of things that tells you what you can and can't do. I'm not christian and things are done differently now but there was a time when people just looked in this book to tell them what was right or wrong.hughball post=18.69788.672209 said:
My point is that there are "big books" that tell you what to do. It's up to you whether you listen to them or not.
Nice Khell.
Is there such thing as immorality? If morals are defined by the individual, as I believe, what's immoral to one person may be perfectly acceptable to another. The only way for immorality to exist is for you to break one of your own morals.
Is it possibly to violate ones own morals? If morals are subjective then they can also be circumstantial, can't they? Let's think of a hypothetical situation. Somebody threatens to kill someone dear to you unless you break one of your morals. You want to save your loved one but you must break one of your morals. If you break this moral, have you committed an act of immorality or do your morals change depending on the circumstances? If they are circumstantial then immorality does not exist.
Is there such thing as immorality? If morals are defined by the individual, as I believe, what's immoral to one person may be perfectly acceptable to another. The only way for immorality to exist is for you to break one of your own morals.
Is it possibly to violate ones own morals? If morals are subjective then they can also be circumstantial, can't they? Let's think of a hypothetical situation. Somebody threatens to kill someone dear to you unless you break one of your morals. You want to save your loved one but you must break one of your morals. If you break this moral, have you committed an act of immorality or do your morals change depending on the circumstances? If they are circumstantial then immorality does not exist.
Good question, now if you want to take an existential (to be more precise, Sartre's) spin on it, then everything you choose is in accordance with your own morality. So it doesn't matter what we choose, it is through our actions that ultimately defines us. I think we are always in the process of creating ourselves and that means that our morals are never engraved in stone.BardSeed post=18.69788.672336 said: