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Complex Numbers #954570 added March 19, 2019 at 1:16am
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Good and Gooder
https://qz.com/1562585/the-seven-moral-rules-that-supposedly-unite-humanity/
An Oxford researcher says there are seven moral rules that unite humanity
Well. Okay. He's from Oxford, so he has to be right. Right?
In 2012, Oliver Scott Curry was an anthropology lecturer at the University of Oxford. One day, he organized a debate among his students about whether morality was innate or acquired.
That sounds more like a philosophy question than an anthropology question - though I suppose there's some overlap. Either way, I wonder if it matters. I guess that's a philosophy question, too.
Religious people, in general, insist that morality comes from God (or whatever higher being depending on your religion). Atheists are pretty sure it doesn't (after all, there is no god but morality is a thing that clearly exists, in the way a lot of abstract concepts clearly exist). I've even heard the argument, "But if you don't believe in God, then what's to keep you from stealing, raping, and murdering?" To which I reply something along the lines of, "Hey, if the only thing keeping you from stealing, raping and murdering is that you believe God told you not to do those things, then please, please, keep believing."
Of course, belief in God has never stopped certain people from stealing, raping, and murdering. Neither has disbelief. This still doesn't answer the question of innate morality vs. acquired (nature vs. nurture), or whether it matters.
So back to the article.
Morality, he says, is meant to promote cooperation.
Ooooh, nice weaselly passive voice there. Who meant it to promote cooperation? God? Or the humans who came up with the rules? Or is it a survival thing that goes hand in hand with evolution?
To be fair, later there's a statement talking about how "morality evolved to promote cooperation."
Now, I'm not going to list the Seven Cardinal Virtues Universal Rules of Morality. That's what I put the link in there for. (I double-checked this time. It's there.) But I will note my extreme skepticism about how the rules' parameters were codified. For example, "Help your family" and "help your group" seem awfully similar to me.
But then, I'm not an Oxford professor.
I'll just close with a couple of examples of how expressions of morality change over time.
First example: slavery. I think you'd have to work hard to find someone who believes that slavery is morally right, these days, and even harder to find someone who would admit to that belief. And yet, two hundred years ago, you could find people on both sides of that issue. And here in the US, there were people on both sides who pointed to the very same (supposed) arbiter of morality - the Bible - to support their beliefs. So what changed? Well, Cynical Me says the only thing that changed is industrialization reducing the demand for cheap labor - and Cynical Me is pretty much Me - but at the same time, it became an issue of morality.
Second example: child-rapers. Again, find me someone who thinks this is a morally good practice. Oh, sure, you might find arguments about what ages constitute being a child, but I think most of us can agree that it's a terrible idea. And yet, there is, in the Bible, not one commandment along the lines of "Thou shalt not fuck children." This is morality that we definitely came up with all by ourselves - so I'm pretty sure we came up with the other rules all by ourselves, also.
Anyway, I could go on, but what would be the point? Mostly I just wanted to share the article because it's interesting and worth discussion. |
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