Moral judgments are ways that individuals feel about sentient behavioral relations with regards to right/wrong, permissibility, obligatoriness, etc. Morality isn't actually learned, but it can be (and always is to some extent) influenced by environment, and we can reason in relation to our moral feelings even if our moral feelings aren't at core reasoned.

...education of values is so inimical to vicarious experience

Morality can be learned by vicarious experience (ie. a shamed or punished substitute for yourself in some circumstances), such that those who really suffer its transgression become an example to others by which their own behavior can be modified. It's monkey see, monkey do (or don't do).

Reading about an execution (or softer punishment) is a bit different from observing one first hand though, or being a participant.

Morality isn't actually learned... — Terrapin

How is it acquired then? Please elaborate.

How is it acquired then? Please elaborate. — Nils Loc

My first sentence: "Moral judgments are ways that individuals feel about sentient behavioral relations with regards to right/wrong, permissibility, obligatoriness, etc.":

I still don't see why you would say morality is not learned.

If I put my hand on a hot stove as a child, do I not quickly "learn" that it is painful and undesirable to touch a hot stove.

Moral values come from outside sources, such as the ten commandments or, at a more basic level, the teachings of our parents about what's good and bad. The difference between good and bad is preestablished by society by means of laws. Ethics comes from inside playing a role of looking at what morality should be in a given context. In order to live in society, there are guidelines to be followed, as well as there are guidelines to be followed in Christianity, Judaism... So accepting morality as a code is the principle to live together in community. Since we know we're born "pure", moral codes are an attempt of remembering our mind of what's good.

If I put my hand on a hot stove as a child, do I not quickly "learn" that it is painful and undesirable to touch a hot stove. — Nils Loc

You learn that a hot stove causes pain/causes undesirable sensations, sure. You don't learn pain. That's rather a reaction that your body has to certain stimuli.

Morality is "in-built" just like pain is. Moral judgments are a way that your brain works. Environment can influence those judgments, but you don't receive the judgments from your environment.

We all live in a society which is governed by laws. These laws help keep society ordered and functional. We learn at an early age that to kill, steal, trespass, and many other actions will put us in jeopardy with the prevailing laws. There are explicit rules, but society also has implicit rules, cultural imperatives that also govern behavior, and which vary from culture to culture.

Morality is not learnt like geometry. I think to a large extent we see how other people act, what the say about how they acted, and we assume some of these roles but not others, and we act according, that is normatively. Many times we don't appreciate the consequences of our actions, it is only in times of moral crisis that we actual give deep thought to the motives and possible consequences of our actions and in these cases I think we try to act in accordance with all we know, feel, and imagine.

Morality is "in-built" just like pain is. Moral judgments are a way that your brain works. Environment can influence those judgments, but you don't receive the judgments from your environment. — Terrapin

Well, I get the basic feelings (instincts) that are associated with action to form judgment but what determines moral judgment often comes from outside the individual (from culture) and is sometimes at odds with a person's feeling.

For someone who is morally naive might think it's okay to kill dogs for pleasure or walk around in public naked. They would need to learn that society deems these actions immoral. Such laws may or not have an intelligible reason for their being, so there may not be an obvious why.

Well, I get the basic feelings (instincts) that are associated with action to form judgment but what determines moral judgment often comes from outside the individual (from culture) and is sometimes at odds with a person's feeling.

For someone who is morally naive might think it's okay to kill dogs for pleasure or walk around in public naked. They would need to learn that society deems these actions immoral. Such laws may or not have an intelligible reason for their being, so there may not be an obvious why. — Nils Loc

What they're learning is just what you say: that society deems these actions immoral. That is, most people in that society--at least per what they've publicly expressed, agreed upon, etc., feel that it's not okay to kill dogs, etc., and perhaps that's been codified legislatively.

This in no way implies that what moral judgments are are public or consensus agreements or that public or consensus agreements about moral judgments are correct, true, etc. by virtue of being public or consensus agreements.

The first big problem there, by the way, is that if we were to say that public or consensus agreements are correct, true, etc. by virtue of that fact, we'd be committing the argumentum ad populum fallacy.

But aside from that, think about where public or consensus agreements come from in the first place. What are we agreeing about? There has to be some content that we're agreeing about. They simply arise via someone feeling that it's not okay to kill dogs, say, whereupon they express this to other people--"I don't think it's right that we should kill dogs"--and other people either feel the same way already or it takes more or less persuasion from the first person to get the other person to feel the same way. Lots of people do this, and it becomes entrenched in that society, perhaps codified into law, etc. What the moral judgments actually are in that situation are how people feel about the issue at hand. They're not public agreements on something that has no content prior to being pubilc agreements.

For the guy who feels that it's okay to kill dogs, it's morally permissible to him to kill dogs. He can't be incorrect about that; it's not that it's false that "it's morally permissible to kill dogs." Of course, he's not correct about it either, and it's not true. Moral stances are not correct or incorrect, true or false. That's how he feels about the idea of killing dogs. Other people feel differently. If most of the people in his society (at least those who have publicly expressed their feelings about it, who are influential in their expressions, who have been able to make laws about it, etc.) feel that it's not okay to kill dogs, then it would behoove our "it's okay to kill dogs" guy to learn that most of the people in his society feel differently, so that he can act in accordance with that knowledge, and decide if he wants to take the risks that acting contrary to the wishes and laws of his society will engender.

But none of this makes it the case that moral judgments are anything other than how individuals feel about behavior.

But none of this makes it the case that moral judgments are anything other than how individuals feel about behavior. — Terrapin

Thanks for your elaboration.

Nils loc: Problem there I think is that, to a certain extent, your examples involve a conflation of the idea of adherence to a moral code emanating from the personal comprehension of moral values with an adherence determined by a pragmatic calculation based on the consequences for individual self interest in terms of social prestige, etc.- such as will likely arise from committing a transgression. There is no argument that such considerations can constrain the otherwise criminal impulses of an individual and determine his observance towards a moral code.
The personal inculcation however of an awareness of moral values seems in principle to derive neither from this influence or from a capacity to intellectually acknowledge such values - Nazism in it's propoganda for example promoted a pretentious intellectual acknowledgement of commonly received moral values whilst cynically concealing the reality of it’s transgressions of same in practice - but from a process not really defined.

In this regard there is an interesting idea that there ultimately exists such a thing as a set of moral values that are objective in nature, the perception of which values - in that they are objective - being regarded as not thus in principle subject to the limitations of individual idiosyncratic psychology but in practice amenable to being acquired in the manner, admittedly undefined, alluded to. The idea then is that a sense of morality thus conceived entails an inescapable acquiescence towards it’s values rendering any transgression personally impossible and then that - 'moral free will’ - consists effectively in the nature of such a conception. It is logically impossible, according to this idea, for an individual to wilfully commit an act he 'thus knows’ to be morally wrong! - The possibility of 'Free-Will', in the terms of such an argument, is therefore not one that should in principle be considered to be logically predicatable on questions of causality but instead on ones of morality!

We've had the evolved capacity for self-advancing strategies in group settings for a long time.

There are some species of bats that feed each others young but are able to recognize bats who do not participate in the same strategy. These non-reciprocating bats are then treated by others with a non-reciprocating strategy (ie. their young no longer benefit from open communal feeding).

This behavior probably matches human behavior in many local circumstances where reciprocal altruism is the norm (ie. I'll scratch your back if you scratch mine). I guess, even here, we are doing just this.

I don't see why reference to a law or custom, which restrains or modifies how an individual feels about some action, isn't tantamount to a kind moral awareness. It boils down to the simple fact that if you transgress a taboo, you will lose some kind of benefit conferred by following the rules about that taboo in a group setting.

As was the case of Nazism, if citizens didn't conform to the group behavior, they would have been putting their livlihoods at risk.

I don't see why reference to a law or custom, which restrains or modifies how an individual feels about some action, isn't tantamount to a kind moral awareness. — Nils Loc

Well, it's certainly awareness of other persons' views re morality. But even following social moral norms (as opposed to just being aware of them) isn't indicative of moral judgments being social or of people receiving their morality from those social norms. People often follow social norms for pragmatic reasons, where they privately disagree with those social norms. You don't want to be jailed, killed, socially ostracized, etc., so you play along as you must to avoid those things, but your personal moral views might be very different than the behavior in question.

Blind faith in a dogma (fundamentalism) might be an example where the moral conditioning aspect of experience is undermined by an appeal to a vicarious source (sacred doctrine or appeal to authority). In other words, instead of trying to figure out what is good on the basis of risk taking, success and failure, in a field of action, we couple our action to simple rule following. Though at some basic level of social interaction, pragmatic decisions are always being made.

I guess my example is wrong then, depending exactly upon what is meant by vicarious experience. Seeing someone punished or shamed for an action is not an example of vicarious experience. It would be if we were reading about it though?

Someone who touches a hot stove will be far better conditioned (via memory of experience) to avoid touching a hot stove in the future than someone who just read that "one should never touch a hot stove".

Nazism in it's propoganda for example promoted a pretentious intellectual acknowledgement of commonly received moral values whilst cynically concealing the reality of it’s transgressions of same in practice - but from a process not really defined. — Lockhart

I think we see this contradiction all the time between professed values and actual behavior. There are always more basic (instinctual) sorting processes at play which we aren't very aware of.

We can profess a moral commitment to equality but it won't make less attractive people more attractive (how does attractiveness influence your moral judgment for example), since you are essentially deciding at times to choose against your instincts (swim upstream).

Morality is very personal, and cannot be learned from outside sources.

What I feel from interactions with the outside world determines my morality. There are no set rules that can be applied to every one.

Take for example the basic teachings of the past masters: 'Thou shall not kill', and 'Thou shall not steal'.
Now, say some one is about to kill your loved one, should you kill the assailant? The answer depends on the content of your heart; the level of mercy Vs. that of fear. History talks about persons with exalted minds, who forgave their killers. But to imitate them blindly can cause more grief in you heart than peace. We must act according to where we are on the ladder of mental evolution. It is a soldier's duty to kill, and a spy's duty to steal. If your children are starving, is OK for you to steal food?

The idea is not to succumb to flashes of passions in your heart, but to act according to your total mind.

What is right in one instance may be wrong in another, and what is right for one person may be wrong for another one.

The test lies in 'Do unto others as you would have done unto you'. This will keep you from stealing from your brother just for gratifying your senses, and will keep you from hurting others for smaller causes, or for twisted mental attitudes. If I have become rich after being poor all my life before, should I wish others to be poor to satisfy my pride, or should I help the poor to conquer my fear of the past?

Community sets rules and laws for it to live harmoniously together. For me to share the fruits of living as a member I should strive to obey the rules in normal circumstances. Because, if I violate the norms of the community because of my small greed or fear, I will be causing disruption in the system, thereby causing pain to brother members for frivolous selfish reasons. But when the threshold is crossed by some rule accepted to the community, say child abuse becomes norm, it becomes my duty to revolt. That is, I am willing to sacrifice my morality in smaller amounts to create proportionally more happiness. Since, I am a member of the community, I try to follow the rules and customs to a limit. It is the judgment from your heart, that matters.

Wisdom from books and other from other sources, is valuable, as it gives me insight into my heart. But the final judgment belongs inside my mind. Just make sure, We follow our whole heart, and not spur of the moment passions.

Following such approach keeps raising mind to higher levels, by reducing the 'ME' factor, which is the root of all sins and pains, from my equation of life.