Foundations of Morality

Moral philosophy is one of the most significant branches of philosophy, and every human being has some conception of morality. This thread is to discuss the justifications for moral systems and how moral systems ought to be justified.

In my view morality is a personal ideal of conduct, starting with the ideal of the good individual, and growing into standards of conduct for all of society. An individual's morality is unique an diffferent from everyone else's, although many can be similar. Each individual applies his moral standards to everyone regardless of his understanding of morality. A devout christian might base his morality off of his conception of jesus, or off of his memories of a priest he knew as a child. Some individuals might have different moral standards for different sexes and people of different social status all based on the ideal moral person they imagine in each group.

Moral public policy is determined by a combination of individual moralities with the people who have the most political power generally shaping moral policy according to their personal moral views, in democracies politicians sacrifice their personal moral feelings in order to satisfy the demands of their electorate and gain political power for themselves, and while this is a more representative way of determining moral policy, it is not an ideal one. The ideal system would be one where moral policy is determined by a marketplace. This would tend towards a more liberal policy, as the more detailed and demanding moral systems would be too costly to enforce and people wouldn't sacrifice much of their money to force people to behave according to their moral standards, and people would have something to sacrifice before forcing their moral standards on others whereas voters have nothing to sacrifice.

Morality is an individual phenomenon with soclal manifestations and variation within society. While we must understand that each person has his own moral ideals it is unavoidable that we apply our own moral standards to everyone.

Some people describe their basic morals as "not hurting anybody" Whilst this is in the long-run, true, it doesn't grasp the big picture. Sometimes, morals may hurt in the short term.

In evolutionary terms, morals are best described as agreed codes of conducts that guarantee the highest degree of survival. And this applies to all actions and behaviour, even if it may not seem so. Every reason one has not to do a certain immoral act has a root in some sort of survival, usually in physical terms. If one steals, this may not be a survival issue on the surface, but the thief runs the risk of being outcasted from society if found out, therefore downgrading his survival quotient. Something like killing or rape is even more obvious, but hopefully, people who just read this paragraph get the jist.

Religious claims to base morals in following a deity or some sort of holy rules. Whilst they claim this is their reason, it is also rooted in survival, especially in the sense of avoiding the consequence of hellfire, or rebirth, or alienation from their God.

Basically, morals are aimed to preserve the integrity of one's personal values, and usually, those values are similar among people, usually being similar depending on the type of people they grew up with. Like, if one were to abstain from pornography or promiscuity, it is to preserve the exclusivity of a future relationship that may or may not be obtained. Others beg to differ when they have multiple spouses, whether they be simultaneous or serial. It's still all relative, depending on what they chose to follow.

I would have said it all in a nutshell, but I thought hypothetical examples would help.