Can one act morally without thinking morally?
— creativesoul

Yes. Just like how someone can make the correct move in a chess game without thinking strategically (it can be coincidence or the result of factors other than conscious understanding/thought). — VagabondSpectre

False analogy.

Acting X without thinking X. Let X be morally. There is no equivalent in your analogy.

What you're doing is attributing your label to another. You're attributing your own personal moral value system onto another creature's behaviour. You think it is moral to do X. You see a creature doing X. You claim that the creature acts morally.

All you've done is show that you can pass moral judgment.

Acting X without thinking X. Let X be morally. There is no equivalent in your analogy. — creativesoul

Your wording here is a bit unclear, but here is the equivalent I think you are looking for: "acting in the mutual interest of yourself and others (via instinctive or emotionally driven in-group sharing in the case of Virgil) without thinking (understanding) that it is in the mutual interest of yourself and others"

What you're doing is attributing your label to another. You're attributing your own personal moral value system onto another creature's behaviour. You think it is moral to do X. You see a creature doing X. You claim that the creature acts morally.

All you've done is show that you can pass moral judgment. — creativesoul

If it is moral to do X, and a creature does X, then yes, regarding X the creature is behaving morally.

Isn't the capacity to cast moral judgment a useful component of a formally constructed moral system?

If it is moral to do X, and a creature does X, then yes, regarding X the creature is behaving morally. — VagabondSpectre

One cannot move correctly without thinking correctly. Acting in a way that does not break the rules isn't equivalent to following them. Following the moral rules is behaving morally.

The dandelion's behaviour doesn't break any moral rules.

One cannot move correctly without thinking correctly. Acting in a way that does not break the rules isn't equivalent to following them. Following the moral rules is behaving morally. — creativesoul

This is a meta-ethical distinction that I don't necessarily agree with because in practice we CAN move correctly without thinking correctly.

Sometimes - often times - we just move how the world and our biology tells us to move without actually thinking about it. When as a baby you suckled on your mothers breast or bottle, you did not need to think about the correct muscle movements, you just started doing it. You quickly became conscious of what was happening and learned why you're doing it and how to do it better, but initially it might as well have been coincidence.

Biological hard wiring nursing infants leads them to perform the act of suckling. Suckling is not an action with a distinctly moral component, but from the perspective of the health and welfare of the baby, it is the correct move to make.

So my point about morality and it's origins is two fold. Firstly, the goals of most or all moral systems inexorably are designed to promote or preserve human welfare (despite insistence from some moral camps that their moral system serves some objective higher moral authority) and so can be sensibly appraised by questioning whether or not a given system, postulate, or action, adequately or satisfactorily promotes or preserves human welfare. Since moral systems, postulates, and actions which are considerate of the genuine welfare of everyone are the most universally appealing, they tend to be the most practical and effective as well.

Secondly, the starting value of "human-welfare" which fundamentally grounds the various courses of human moral reasoning, happens to emerge from biology as an intrinsically valuable premise to almost all individual humans (and Capuchin) which has been shaped by evolution in a set of biological imperatives and maintained by our hard-wired instincts and emotional.hormonal predispositions (less so in humans since we gained sophisticated rational intelligence).

All I wish to point out is that the actions of Virgil are the same actions that a rational moral agent would likely take given similar circumstances, and that this coincidence between Virgils actions and what we would consider to be moral actions is ultimately created by the fact that in the evolutionary history of Virgil's biology, animals that developed a genetically programmed capacity for "in-group altruism" in environments where social life was a better survival strategy wound up being more successful.

"Morality" for conscious and rational humans seems to be all about us figuring out what it means to make a "correct decision", why we ought to, and what those correct decisions actually are. But we often get so bogged down in what it means to make a correct decision and why we ought to that we barely have time to put our ideas into practice. It is then of ultimate utility to boil down the what and why of morality to something that is as universally agreeable as possible (including removing the surface scum with reason and ridicule if necessary) , that we may get on with the what of moral decision making, which is the bit that actually impacts our lives.

Morality has to do with human welfare - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and you ought to be morally engaged because it will serve your own life, liberty, and happiness. You should treat others as they want to be treated because then they will likely treat you as you want to be treated.

If we can just accept that this is in fact the socio-ethical game that is shared/shareable morality, we would save so much time and effort while avoiding the kind of enduring confusion that superstitious, irrational, and non welfare oriented moral systems have wreaked upon the world since the beginning of recorded history.

Morals or “moral code” is simply what is agreed between two or more in any transaction, an agreement.
Could be a purchase could be a marriage could be a boarder, could be the use of the same property (public property), could be the ten commandments (which are called a covenant which is a agreement or contract) a certainly can be a contract or an agreement between a gov and its people. law is a part of if not the agreement.

Any party in said agreement must hold up his end of the bargain. Should any party fail to do so is in breach, or has offended, or has “sinned”, if you will, against the others in the same agreement.

If there is no agreement of any sort between two, then one can not sin against the other, or offend the other nor is morally obligated to each other. Like animals they are not morally obligated at all. Animals can eat each other their young and there is no revenge of any act. There is acts of defense but not revenge. Without an agreement there is no such thing as revenge or cause for revenge, and no cause for restoration or expectation of restoration, either.

This is a meta-ethical distinction that I don't necessarily agree with because in practice we CAN move correctly without thinking correctly... — VagabondSpectre

You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them.

The dandelion...

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally.

Accidentally being moral...

Doesn't make sense to me.

Morals or “moral code” is simply what is agreed between two or more in any transaction, an agreement. — DPMartin

Indeed.

The content of which is always about what one considers acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour.

Do you disagree?

Could be a purchase could be a marriage could be a boarder, could be the use of the same property (public property), could be the ten commandments (which are called a covenant which is a agreement or contract) a certainly can be a contract or an agreement between a gov and its people. law is a part of if not the agreement.

Any party in said agreement must hold up his end of the bargain... — DPMartin

This presupposes a false moral equivalence between following the rules and establishing those rules to begin with. I agree that one ought keep their word. Do you agree that we have not yet come to establish the necessary terms. Namely the distinction between making a promise and a moral code.

Do you recognize a distinction between voluntarily entering into an agreement and involuntarily entering into an agreement?

Moral codes are not always voluntarily agreed upon. In fact, one's first moral code is entirely adopted. That holds good for everyone regardless of individual particulars.

I've read this thread with interest up until the last few pages where we get a lot of this type of thing..

You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them. — creativesoul

I'm not sure how constantly restating your belief is of much use on a philosophy forum, could you explain why you think morality is this? If it's just a premise you happen to believe in, that's fine, but trying to debate with people who do not accept your premise from a position which nonetheless presumes it's the case is a bit pointless, no?

If you accept that for an action to be moral it requires an understanding of the fact that although alternative actions are available this one has been determined by some unnamed rule-makers to be the one you should follow, then Virgil's actions could not possibly be moral (as there would seem to be no rule-makers in his society), but only if you accept that premise.

Personally I don't accept that premise, nor do I see any argument made as to why I should.

Invoking Occam's razor is itself a straw-man. What a person considers to be the simplest explanation is entirely a result of their culture, upbringing and personal world-view. To me it is simplest to presume we're just like any other animal until proven otherwise. To me it's simplest to presume that if primate interactions can be explained by the results of algorithms carried out by complex intuition put there by evolution without deep consideration, then so can ours. If Virgil's apparent morality is just 'Game Theory' despite the fact that it looks like morality on the surface, then I think it's simplest to presume that our morality is just game theory too, dressed up by some fancy language to sound distinct and pamper our illusion that we're somehow special.

What we have is direct evidence of another primate carrying out the exact same behaviour which, if we saw it in a human, we would describe as moral. The simplest explanation is to presume they're the same thing. If you want to add anything more complex to it (like some magical attribute that humans have that we can neither see, nor detect in any way, but which we nonetheless somehow 'know' is absent in all other animals) then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate what this attribute is and how we know it exists only in humans.

"Moral codes are not always voluntarily agreed upon. In fact, one's first moral code is entirely adopted. That holds good for everyone regardless of individual particulars. "

I'd agree with Inter Alia in respect to:

"I'm not sure how constantly restating your belief is of much use on a philosophy forum, could you explain why you think morality is this? If it's just a premise you happen to believe in, that's fine, but trying to debate with people who do not accept your premise from a position which nonetheless presumes it's the case is a bit pointless."
____________________________________________
living is voluntary, so what. Submitting or adopting is also voluntary even if it’s to sustain living.

And if one enters some one’s household, by default one agrees to their rules by submission, no matter where one’s heart maybe, even if one is born into the household. And if one is in disagreement with the household but needs the household, one might try to come into a new agreement with the authority of the household.

Moral codes aren't actually all that different depending on where you are.

There are certainly some differences, and occasionally bizarre differences, but if you think of it from the basis of zero and all the possible social rules that are imaginable from that basis, human beings actually do generally follow quite similar social rules all over the world (for example the incest taboo is pretty much universal, so are rules against murder, and so are property rules).

This was actually the origin of the idea of "natural law". When Alexander and then later the Romans conquered large parts of the world, philosophers and legal thinkers were surprised by the similarities between the social rule systems they came across, so the idea came about of there being some things that are fairly constant, which they thought of as natural law, natural morality.

Stephen Pinker has some stuff about this IIRC, where there's a tabulation based on data.

I've read this thread with interest up until the last few pages where we get a lot of this type of thing..

You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them.
— creativesoul

I'm not sure how constantly restating your belief is of much use on a philosophy forum, could you explain why you think morality is this? If it's just a premise you happen to believe in, that's fine, but trying to debate with people who do not accept your premise from a position which nonetheless presumes it's the case is a bit pointless, no? — Inter Alia

Morality is rule based. That's just the way it is. Look around the world and you'll find that that's the case everywhere. Morality is always about what's considered to be acceptable and/or unacceptable thought, belief, and/or behaviour. Morality is subject to individual particulars, and varies accordingly.

What's pointless, on my view, is holding that all one needs to do is reject another's premiss.

Compare the premisses. Mine corresponds to fact. It's true.

Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them. If it were, then dandelions would behave morally, because they do not break the moral code. Reductio... Either behaving morally requires knowingly following the rules, or a dandelion behaves morally.

One's first moral code is entirely adopted. That holds good for everyone regardless of individual particulars.

Anyone here who denies that?

Submitting or adopting is also voluntary... — DPMartin

It can be.

Adopting one's first worldview is not voluntarily done. It's part and parcel of language acquisition, and it comes replete with morality. One cannot doubt what their being taught during this time, for doubting is belief based, and we're all forming that baseline during language acquisition... Without pre-existing belief about 'X', one cannot doubt 'X'...

You're neglecting the facts of the matter. Morality is rule based. If one follows the rules, s/he is behaving morally. Behaving in a way that does not break the rules is not equivalent to following them. — creativesoul

"Deontological morality" (rule based morality) is just one approach of many, an approach that like most others captures one important aspect of moral systems but misses the bigger picture; the only sensical and persuasive moral basis for a rules environment is to cause human welfare to emerge from those rules.

Many moral thinkers outright disagree that morality is about consciously following the rules. Some posit that it is about displaying virtue and having virtuous intent, regardless of the rules. Others say morality is about outcomes as opposed to intentions, virtue, and rules.

I want you to realize that these different moral frameworks begin with fundamentally different and mutually exclusive assumptions as starting points, but their actual persuasiveness all comes from the same obscured place: benefit or prevention of harm to individual and social welfare.

Virtue ethics indirectly appeals to individual and social human welfare by appealing to sets of virtues which intuitively promote human welfare (i.e: charity, patience, kindness) when wielded in action. Deontological ethics is just a slightly different strategy: instead of navigating moral dilemmas using a set of virtues, a standard set of instructive rules generalizes moral outcomes into specific codes of conduct. Consequentialist morality cuts straight to outcomes (and tends to ignore the impact and importance of "means" as well as "ends") to render it's appeal to human welfare, but if you could argue that your own idea of applied ethics leads to the best outcomes, they would accept it as the moral course of action. Similarly, I could likely break down your moral framework until you accept the idea that "promoting and preserving individual and social human welfare is the ultimate rule toward which our behavior must morally conform" thereby revealing that it is not following the rules which is important, it's our individual and societal welfare.

To reiterate, many moral frameworks, including your own, tacitly amount to varying strategies of promoting individual and social welfare. I don't like the framing of these moral systems because they confuse their beginning strategic direction/presumptions with the root moral justification for the system itself (i.e: "morality is about following the rules" as opposed to the more sensical: "following 'moral rules' is about promoting individual and societal welfare".

Would you rather be the champion of following the rules for the sake of following the rules, or, following the rules for the sake of common good?

If you want very persuasive evidence that consciously following the rules isn't the proper root of moral reasoning, simply choose any specific moral rule and then imagine a moral exception to that rule (or state the rule and I'll provide the exception). Exceptions to moral rules like "do not kill" illustrate and illuminate the fact that "consciously following moral rules" isn't necessarily of moral value in and of itself.

The dandelion... — creativesoul

The dandelion is an actual non sequitr. Virgil is not a Dandelion. Since Virgil makes choices (lets not get into whether or not Virgils volition is one of "free will" because the results will color both our positions on Capuchin and Humans.) we can make the simple assessment of whether Virgil's choices are moral or immoral. We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. — creativesoul

It is possible to unknowingly act in a way congruent with the "rules". It's impossible to consciously follow the rules while being unaware of the rules (a direct contradiction), but yes, you can accidentally follow them.

When we tell a child "don't hit", the moral rule I reckon you would reduce it do is actually something like "don't physically harm others unless it's necessary in defense of yourself and others". We give the child a placeholder commandment that they follow instead of the actual moral rule though in order to cause their behavior to be moral rather than their understanding. Following general moral rules is best justified as a strategic approach toward promoting human welfare, but it isn't perfect and lacks moral understanding when people consciously obey the rules for the sake of obeying the rules

The dandelion is an actual non sequitur. — VagabondSpectre

Oh, but it's not. If Virgil can accidentally act morally then having sentience and/or decision making ability to do what's moral is unnecessary for acting morally. Virgil can accidentally act morally. Thus, since sentience is unnecessary for acting morally, it would follow that dandelions act morally. In fact, dandelions don't hit. So, if not hitting is acting morally, then dandelions act morally.

Special pleading...

Since Virgil makes choices (lets not get into whether or not Virgils volition is one of "free will" because the results will color both our positions on Capuchin and Humans.) we can make the simple assessment of whether Virgil's choices are moral or immoral. We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.

It is possible to unknowingly act in a way congruent with the "rules". It's impossible to consciously follow the rules while being unaware of the rules (a direct contradiction), but yes, you can accidentally follow them.

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. And now it requires special pleading on top of it all...

Oh, but it's not. If Virgil can accidentally act morally then having sentience and/or decision making ability to do what's moral is unnecessary for acting morally. Virgil can accidentally act morally. Thus, since sentience is unnecessary for acting morally, it would follow that dandelions act morally. In fact, dandelions don't hit. So, if not hitting is acting morally, then dandelions act morally.

Special pleading... — creativesoul

Dandelions do not "act" at all though, at least in the sense of action to which we might attribute a moral component. You should have addressed my point about why the dandelion is non-sequitir instead of just labeling it special pleading."We cannot attribute morality to the decisions and actions of dandelions because they don't make decisions of any kind or have sentience or complex range of possible actions.". Capuchin DO have some kind of sentience and exhibit a range of complex possible actions, dandelions do not.

Your position depends upon attributing moral behaviour to creatures who act in ways that you call moral, but those creatures do not know the rules. So, in order for your position to make sense, you must claim that one can follow the rules unknowingly and/or unintentionally. And now it requires special pleading on top of it all... — creativesoul

You have not addressed my position, and repeating yourself while ignoring the majority of my posts (and the points/objections contained within) is very disheartening.

Your position depends upon the assumption that morality starts with moral rules, which is a demonstrably shitty moral position as evidenced by the countless moral exceptions which reveal the fallibility of any given rule. "Morality is about rules" is your own assumption that you haven't discussed or demonstrated in any reasonable way.

Didn't you just claim that one can accidentally act morally?

If you cannot see how that shows that sentience and choice making isn't required for acting morally, then I cannot help you...

I haven't argued my position here, by the way... I'm critiquing yours.

Didn't you just claim that one can accidentally act morally?

If you cannot see how that shows that sentience and choice making isn't required for acting morally, then I cannot help you... — creativesoul

Dandelions cannot produce accidents; yet still you miss the point: I am making a distinction between the moral component of actions themselves (relating to human welfare) and the conscious decision to actually seek to promote human welfare (or follow the rules as you would put it). There's nothing inherently untrue about my statement that Virgil's actions are congruent with individual and group welfare, or what we might consider a moral state of affairs. At best your objection is semantic: whether "following the rules" means being aware of them and obeying them or merely not breaking them is trivial.

I haven't argued my position here, by the way... I'm critiquing yours. — creativesoul

Since your criticism keeps taking the form: "No, morality is about consciously following the rules, therefore..." you need to actually support the "morality is about consciously following the rules" part.

na creativesoul morals are simply an agreement, rules are a product of agreements. to come into an agreement with someone with the full intention of not keeping one's part agreed to, is unethical simple as that.

everything else associated to that is usually a peaceful coexistence between persons, or entitlement for restoration or vengeance for offence of the agreement.

Morality has to do with human welfare - life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness - and you ought to be morally engaged because it will serve your own life, liberty, and happiness. You should treat others as they want to be treated because then they will likely treat you as you want to be treated. — VagabondSpectre

Whereby morality is defined within the context of human life, our welfare is not the only faculty which morality is involved.
How might your understanding suffice when within the context of another animals life?
Other than mere altruistic behaviour and fitting in to a larger whole, it begs the question as to why it is important for humans to sustain the planet outside of the context of human greed and selfishness, an expectancy that everything we give we will get back?
In the case of caring for animals and ensuring their welfare, I'd say that a purely human-oriented morality falls flat on it's face.
Even if we might conceive it as serving our own base-ends, that conception is limited by a presupposition that 'human nature' equates to no more than securing our own interests, and by fulfilling this naively accepted purpose we are somehow doing good.

Our conceptions of goodness contribute to our character.
We make actions that correspond to our character based upon our conception of goodness.
Thus, subjective morality.
We, determined by our character, make our actions within a system of morality based upon our agreed conception of goodness.
Thus a societal ideal, a political conception of 'objective morality'.
Just because we agree upon our subjective conceptions, this does not establish objectivity.

Socrates said that self-knowledge was the key to being moral, arguably because it contributes to further understanding our character and how to use it.
He said that the truly wise man knows what is good and so will do what is right, and in doing right, the truly wise man will be happy.
This means that being happy is a result of doing what is right, which is a result of knowing what is good.

I'd say the 'pursuit of true happiness' is futile, because if you are pursuing something then it does not currently exist within yourself.
If true happiness is an internal state that you desire, are you not furthering yourself from that state by conditionalising happiness on external occurrences?
If so, can you ever be truly happy unless certain conditions are met?
This, for me at least, disregards the whole idea of true happiness, and if we follow, the same can be applied to our agreed conceptions of goodness.
Find goodness within and it need not be conditioned by externals.

=)

At best your objection is semantic: whether "following the rules" means being aware of them and obeying them or merely not breaking them is trivial. — VagabondSpectre

It's not at all trivial though. Everything we say is semantic, or at least relies on semantics.

If following the rules does not require knowing them, then one can follow the rules simply by acting in ways that does not break them. You're bringing sentience into the matter doesn't help, it just continues to move the goalposts. If Virgil can act morally by virtue of acting in a way that you think is moral, but he does not need to be aware of the fact that he's following the rules, then the notion of choice making is moot as well. That would be to say that one can make a choice to act moral without considering what's not. Choosing presupposes volition. Virgil has none. I suspect you know that and that's why you glossed it over earlier...

At the heart of it all, your position, at a minimum, is one where the ends justify the means. This has always been the case with what you've been proposing. On the old forum, there have been numerous people with numerous examples of behaviours which meet your criterion but are clearly immoral. Here, you've neglected to answer my earlier objections regarding that, and instead moved the goalposts.

If you wish to talk in meta-ethical terms, regarding what counts as being moral or not, then what methodology do you find fit to do so?

I say, we look to all morality(codes of conduct) to see what they have in common that is morally significant. We can set aside all the individual particulars and look at what remains extant after doing so. What's left would be universally extant, that is - what's left would be a part of all morality. We could then make statements that would be true of all codes.

You seem to be taking a similar route with the bit about what you claim all morality has in common, promoting social and individual welfare(or words to that affect/effect).

...morals are simply an agreement, rules are a product of agreements. to come into an agreement with someone with the full intention of not keeping one's part agreed to, is unethical simple as that.

everything else associated to that is usually a peaceful coexistence between persons, or entitlement for restoration or vengeance for offence of the agreement. — DPMartin

Nah. I cannot equate the two. Agreements can be immoral.

If there is no agreement of any sort between two, then one can not sin against the other, or offend the other nor is morally obligated to each other. — DPMartin

So, one person can simply do whatever s/he chooses to do to another and it would not be right nor wrong - so long as there is no agreement?

Rubbish.

If you accept that for an action to be moral it requires an understanding of the fact that although alternative actions are available this one has been determined by some unnamed rule-makers to be the one you should follow, then Virgil's actions could not possibly be moral (as there would seem to be no rule-makers in his society), but only if you accept that premise.

Personally I don't accept that premise, nor do I see any argument made as to why I should. — Inter Alia

What's at stake here is the difference between being moral and being called so. I'm charging Vagabond with calling Virgil's actions moral and confusing that with the action actually being moral.

In order for there to be moral acts performed unintentionally by creatures who do not have or know the rules, being moral must be inherent to certain kinds of acts. In other words, a moral act would be so not as a result of our calling it so, but as a result of it's being so. There would need to be a clear difference between being called "moral" and being moral; something akin to being called "true" and being true. A statement is true regardless of whether or not the speaker believes it to be, regardless of whether or not it is called "true". That's because a statement's being true isn't determined by our calling it so. I'm saying that the same must be the case regarding what counts as being moral if Vagabond is able to correctly attribute moral content to Virgil's behaviour. Otherwise, Vagabond is just imposing and/or projecting his own moral belief onto other creatures.

If Virgil's actions are moral, then the act must be moral in and of itself. So, what is it that makes an action moral?

Invoking Occam's razor is itself a straw-man. What a person considers to be the simplest explanation is entirely a result of their culture, upbringing and personal world-view. To me it is simplest to presume we're just like any other animal until proven otherwise. To me it's simplest to presume that if primate interactions can be explained by the results of algorithms carried out by complex intuition put there by evolution without deep consideration, then so can ours. If Virgil's apparent morality is just 'Game Theory' despite the fact that it looks like morality on the surface, then I think it's simplest to presume that our morality is just game theory too, dressed up by some fancy language to sound distinct and pamper our illusion that we're somehow special.

There's a whole lot packed up in there. The simplest explanation has nothing to do with culture. It is determined by virtue of working from the fewest unprovable assumptions. But, Ockham's razor doesn't stop there. Explanatory power is necessary as well.

What we have is direct evidence of another primate carrying out the exact same behaviour which, if we saw it in a human, we would describe as moral. The simplest explanation is to presume they're the same thing. If you want to add anything more complex to it (like some magical attribute that humans have that we can neither see, nor detect in any way, but which we nonetheless somehow 'know' is absent in all other animals) then the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate what this attribute is and how we know it exists only in humans.

I'm not sure what you're going on about here...

What we have is direct evidence of another primate behaving. What we do not have is a clear and meaningful distinction being drawn and maintained between behaviour being called "moral" and behaviour being so.

"Nah. I cannot equate the two. Agreements can be immoral."


according to who's judgement? yours? morals, fulfilled or not, are measured by those who are in the agreement, or bound to the agreement. not by those outside of it. disagreeing to come into an agreement doesn't put you on moral high ground. it only leaves you outside the benefits of the agreement (if there are any).


"So, one person can simply do whatever s/he chooses to do to another and it would not be right nor wrong - so long as there is no agreement?"

correct, no one is bound to something they are not a part of, or in agreement with. but again one can be in agreement with, by virtue of standing within a sovereign's territory. therefore, bound to the laws thereof.

Americans are not bound to Russian law unless an American steps on sovereign soil that is Russia's. then by default the American agrees to the morals explained in the laws of that land.


I'm just repeating here so, have a nice day

"Nah. I cannot equate the two. Agreements can be immoral."

according to who's judgement? yours? — DPMartin

Two groups of people agree to obtain another groups natural resources. The two groups know the financial value/worth of those resources, but the group who owns the resources does not. Two groups convince the owners to relinquish those resources, all the while knowing that doing so will inevitably harm the owner's. The two groups do not communicate all of their knowledge regarding the harm that will come to the people as a direct result of agreeing to relinquish the resources.

Who here would judge that that is the right thing to do; that that is moral; that that is good?

Tricking someone into an agreement is immoral. Forcing someone into an agreement is immoral.

...morals, fulfilled or not, are measured by those who are in the agreement, or bound to the agreement. not by those outside of it. — DPMartin

Rubbish. I can look at the agreement between certain American settlers and certain native American tribes and clearly know that the agreement was manipulative and deceptive, but the tribe trusted that the settlers shared certain beliefs, and in doing so, didn't take note of the difference between owning and using the land that they agreed to allow the settlers to use. The tribe had no conception of land ownership, for in their worldview, no one owned land...

Americans are not bound to Russian law unless an American steps on sovereign soil that is Russia's. then by default the American agrees to the morals explained in the laws of that land. — DPMartin

Some laws are immoral. Laws and morality are not equivalent.