Are there any absolute moral values for all mankind?

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In summary: The conversation revolves around the existence of absolute moral values for all mankind and how they came to be shared across cultures and territories. The speaker argues that while morality may be relative, there are still some innate morals that are common to most humans, primates, and mammals due to evolution. However, the question of what makes these morals universal is also raised.
  • #1
kaleidoscope
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If so, how did they become absolute to all mankind across cultures and terriotories?
 
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  • #2
kaleidoscope said:
If so, how did they become absolute to all mankind across cultures and terriotories?
No, there are no absolute moral values for all mankind.
 
  • #3
" If absolute truth does not exist, the claim "Absolute truth does not exist" is not absolutely true either.

As the above sentence - in its entirety, so all that is italicized - must be true, it forms the proof of the existence of absolute truth."

umad?
 
  • #4
G037H3 said:
" If absolute truth does not exist, the claim "Absolute truth does not exist" is not absolutely true either.

As the above sentence - in its entirety, so all that is italicized - must be true, it forms the proof of the existence of absolute truth."

umad?
I didn't say that absolute truth doesn't exist, just that absolute moral values don't. The absolute truth is that moral values aren't absolute -- at least not insofar as they're viewed as moral values, ie., as emergent, scale specific, phenomena.
 
  • #5
By the way, I concede our chess game reconstruction to you. I've played through every possible, decently played, continuation. I lose. Congratulations.
 
  • #6
Obviously we do not eat our newborn babies as some species do and if there ever was a culture that did so they went extinct. So yes, we do have innate absolute morals of some sort and for some of these the punishment for disobedience is extinction. The ability for any animal with a brain to discern what is useful and useless to them is also evidently innate and this includes not least of all for social animals such as ourselves the ability to discern what is and isn't acceptable behavior.
 
  • #7
kaleidoscope said:
If so, how did they become absolute to all mankind across cultures and terriotories?

If something is relative to another thing it cannot be absolute. You can ask if there is absolute morale, but you cannot ask if there is absolute morale for mankind.
Your question is meaningless.
 
  • #8
wuliheron said:
Obviously we do not eat our newborn babies as some species do and if there ever was a culture that did so they went extinct. So yes, we do have innate absolute morals of some sort and for some of these the punishment for disobedience is extinction. The ability for any animal with a brain to discern what is useful and useless to them is also evidently innate and this includes not least of all for social animals such as ourselves the ability to discern what is and isn't acceptable behavior.
Is our behavior in any way absolute? Morality is an emergent phenomenon associated with human behavior, and moral values are variable. As you note, the behavior of many living species is nonmoral.
 
  • #9
ThomasT said:
Is our behavior in any way absolute? Morality is an emergent phenomenon associated with human behavior, and moral values are variable. As you note, the behavior of many living species is nonmoral.
The belief that morality is solely a human phenomenon is an archaic idea promoted by religions that insist only humans have souls, consciousness, and free will. Animals are quite capable of creating their own moralities and enforcing them as well as displaying such things as kindness and sympathy. Likewise these moralities can be variable.

One of the more well studied examples was a troop of baboons who for unknown reasons lost all their more aggressive males to T.B. after scavenging in a trash heap. After that the remaining baboons made it clear to any new baboon trying to join the group that they would shun any displays of aggressive behavior. For a species known for its aggression this is a remarkable turn of events and demonstrates just how variable animal behavior can be. Similarly, among chimps if the alpha male becomes too aggressive the females will jump behind the bushes with their favorite low ranking male the minute they go into heat.

Likewise chimps have been known to refuse food if it means another will suffer and to share food even when separated for life by cages. Elephants have been known to pull down fences to free antelope, to circle their wounded and dead for days crying tears and gently urging them to get up, dolphins have been known to save people from sharks, etc. To insist that such behavior is merely instinctual stretches the bounds of credulity.

That some species might commonly eat their young does not mean they are amoral. It simply means they don't have any apparent moral qualms about eating their young. Obviously considering the unprecedented investment humans have to make in childrearing for such a practice to be commonplace would be against the interest of the species. Hence, my assertion that there are some morals for humans that are absolute. Whether you perceive them to be the result of free will or natural selection or whatever is a different matter altogether.
 
  • #10
The OP is just asking if there are any moral values shared by all human cultures. It would seem that there are. Then he asks how these shared values came to be shared.
 
  • #11
Thats a great question.

There are some universal morals, as in an innate sense of right and wrong, common to most humans, primates and mammals. These are evolutionary.

We could not have optimized our gene propogation had we not been averse to some things like indiscriminate killing or valued some traits like taking care of our children and finding them "cute".
 
  • #12
Siv said:
There are some universal morals, as in an innate sense of right and wrong, common to most humans, primates and mammals. These are evolutionary.

yeah, i think there are universal morals after all. now, wouldn't evolution make them relative? i mean, had we evolved differently, wouldn't it be likely we would have another set of "universal" morals?

what makes universal morals universal?
 
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  • #13
kaleidoscope said:
yeah, i think there are universal morals after all. now, wouldn't evolution make them relative? i mean, had we evolved differently, wouldn't it be likely we would have another set of "universal" morals?

Apparently it can. The black widow spiders do not share our killing morals.
 
  • #14
kaleidoscope said:
yeah, i think there are universal morals after all. now, wouldn't evolution make them relative? i mean, had we evolved differently, wouldn't it be likely we would have another set of "universal" morals?

what makes universal morals universal?
{Emphasis mine}The fact that they help gene-propogation.

For most animals living in small to medium groups, these morals (a rough dos and donts guide) would be similar.
 
  • #15
From http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/09/magazine/09babies-t.html?_r=1
A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone.​
Read the article for more.
 
  • #16
I would say truthfulness, it is the foundation of all human virtues.

How did mankind comprehend truthfulness? They were taught and being taught.

The waste is truth is being courrupted so as other values.
 
  • #17
Siv said:
{Emphasis mine}The fact that they help gene-propogation.

For most animals living in small to medium groups, these morals (a rough dos and donts guide) would be similar.

I don't know, gene-propagation doesn't seem to make morals universal. Under this premise, different scenarios can still direct morals in any direction a species needs for its specific circumstances, thus their morals wouldn't be really universal after all.
 
  • #18
kaleidoscope said:
If so, how did they become absolute to all mankind across cultures and terriotories?

Without identifying the specific "absolute" morals its hard to know what you're talking about. But... even without such identification I would suggest that if we can see a moral that transcends culture, territory and genetic pools it would be so because the moral in question is paramount to the survival of the human species and therefore, universal to the species.
 
  • #19
kaleidoscope said:
I don't know, gene-propagation doesn't seem to make morals universal. Under this premise, different scenarios can still direct morals in any direction a species needs for its specific circumstances, thus their morals wouldn't be really universal after all.
Thats a very vague dismissal, can you be more specific ?
The cooperative, reciprocal altruism kind of morality would be common to almost all animals who evolved in small to medium groups. Why would they be different ?
 
  • #20
kaleidoscope said:
I don't know, gene-propagation doesn't seem to make morals universal. Under this premise, different scenarios can still direct morals in any direction a species needs for its specific circumstances, thus their morals wouldn't be really universal after all.
We aren't talking about morals that can't change, merely absolute in the sense that they are universal and innate.
 
  • #21
I think biologists such as Richard Dawkins or Jacques Monod might argue against any absolute morality. From a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, they might say that the survival of the community is the sole basis for evaluating successful adaptive behavior. I suppose that even eating the young could be a successful communal adaptation under certain circumstances. However Dawkins or Monod might have to allow that the adults shouldn't eat all of their young.
 
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  • #22
Are there anyone who practices true moral relativism, meaning that they are capable of bracketing others' behavior without evaluating it in terms of their own values? I think that moral evaluation of others and taking SOME amount of action on the basis of judgment is a cultural universal; even if the only action taken is shunning, i.e. social avoidance/exclusion. Relativists like to claim that they don't judge, but they don't like to admit that they pre-emptively maintain social boundaries and only engage in positive social contact with others who share their moral values. They just don't see their behavior as exclusionary/shunning.
 
  • #23
SW VandeCarr said:
I think biologists such as Richard Dawkins or Jacques Monod might argue against any absolute morality. From a strictly utilitarian viewpoint, they might say that the survival of the community is the sole basis for evaluating successful adaptive behavior. I suppose that even eating the young could be a successful communal adaptation under certain circumstances. However Dawkins or Monod might have to allow that the adults shouldn't eat all of their young.

I have heard it suggested that even genocide may be such a "utilitarian" behavior, as a reaction to times of perceived collapse of communal sustainability.
 
  • #24
When one realizes that it only takes about 2000 years back to find that every person whose line survived is an ancestor of everyone on the planet, it is not such a stretch to think that some moral ideas have become more or less universal (under certain circumstances and relative to most of the population.) However, I am personally not convinced this is the case.
 
  • #25
Galteeth said:
I have heard it suggested that even genocide may be such a "utilitarian" behavior, as a reaction to times of perceived collapse of communal sustainability.
Good point since this is a perfect example of how the perception of a community ideal-image facilitates destruction of the actual community. The fact is that all living things operate within an ecology/community. Humans, and maybe other animals too, however are capable of creating an abstract image of their community and attribute ideals and other attributes to it. When the goodness of community-functioning is attributed to racial/ethnic identity, genocide becomes a logical utilitarian approach to "purifying" the community to include only those considered "racially good."

Of course, other attributes besides racial/ethnic identity can also be used for "purification/cleansing" such as when people seek to "cleanse" their communities of criminals, sloths, cowards, delinquents, deviants, perverts, witches, religious fundamentalists or other stigmatized identities. Physical removal or killing of stigmatized individuals usually only occurs when attributes are defined in terms of essentialism, i.e. that certain individuals contain undesirable traits as part of their "essence." When undesirable traits are viewed as cultural and culture is viewed as learned instead of essential, resocialization may be taken as a less-violent approach to moral conflict.

Cultural/moral relativists claim that people shouldn't attempt to resocialize each other culturally, let alone attack them violently, but the question is whether total relativism is ever truly possible to the point where individuals can have radically conflicting moral and other values and still be able to interact positively and constructively. Imo, the best hope for that is for people to have guidelines or standards as to how far they may utilize social power against those they disagree with. This requires anti-discrimination laws, for example, and rights and protections against abuses of freedom.
 
  • #26
brainstorm said:
Good point since this is a perfect example of how the perception of a community ideal-image facilitates destruction of the actual community. The fact is that all living things operate within an ecology/community. Humans, and maybe other animals too, however are capable of creating an abstract image of their community and attribute ideals and other attributes to it. When the goodness of community-functioning is attributed to racial/ethnic identity, genocide becomes a logical utilitarian approach to "purifying" the community to include only those considered "racially good."

Of course, other attributes besides racial/ethnic identity can also be used for "purification/cleansing" such as when people seek to "cleanse" their communities of criminals, sloths, cowards, delinquents, deviants, perverts, witches, religious fundamentalists or other stigmatized identities. Physical removal or killing of stigmatized individuals usually only occurs when attributes are defined in terms of essentialism, i.e. that certain individuals contain undesirable traits as part of their "essence." When undesirable traits are viewed as cultural and culture is viewed as learned instead of essential, resocialization may be taken as a less-violent approach to moral conflict.

Cultural/moral relativists claim that people shouldn't attempt to resocialize each other culturally, let alone attack them violently, but the question is whether total relativism is ever truly possible to the point where individuals can have radically conflicting moral and other values and still be able to interact positively and constructively. Imo, the best hope for that is for people to have guidelines or standards as to how far they may utilize social power against those they disagree with. This requires anti-discrimination laws, for example, and rights and protections against abuses of freedom.

Moral relativism as a moral view is incoherent. That's because by suggesting to me that I shouldn't try to impose my moral values on others, you are imposing your moral values on me.
It is a perfectly valid scientific perspective, however, to claim there is no absolute pre-determined morality in the species as a whole.
 
  • #27
ThomasT said:
By the way, I concede our chess game reconstruction to you. I've played through every possible, decently played, continuation. I lose. Congratulations.

yay :3
 
  • #28
Galteeth said:
Moral relativism as a moral view is incoherent. That's because by suggesting to me that I shouldn't try to impose my moral values on others, you are imposing your moral values on me.
It is a perfectly valid scientific perspective, however, to claim there is no absolute pre-determined morality in the species as a whole.

Well put. I think you're right that there is no universal (conscious) morality, but I think at a subconscious level there is instinctual morality that exists regardless of culture. For example, I think empathy occurs due to identification between self and other that occurs due to natural identification with the Other. A crude example would be that you wouldn't poke an animal in the eye because you would empathize with eye-pain, even though you identified the animal as non-human. If you DID have a sadistic desire to poke an animal in the eye, you would do so from the perspective that the animal would suffer similarly to the way a human would suffer from being poked in the eye. So there seems to be natural processes of identification that cause people/animals to approximate each other's feelings on the basis of common physiology, for example.
 
  • #29
I believe there is absolute Moral and every statement you can check if I remember right with The Kants cathegorical imperative. BUT the cultural relativists would argue anyway...Its good to distinguish between Universal Moral in Phylosophy, moral in society and moral in between the cultures. But I believe that phylosophical and universal moral exists just in theory. Everyone or most of humans have that sense, the other who doesnt, just need additional laws in society. They are for all the same, that is correct, but I believe some people would function the same as there werent.
 
  • #30
No, that'd be deontological thinking, and it's pretty obvious that you have to be teleological with pretty much every situation.

Then the problem is when the teleological thinking breaks down into deontological reasoning at lower levels...that's a bummer...ethics...
 

1. What are absolute moral values?

Absolute moral values are principles or standards that are universally accepted as right or wrong, regardless of cultural or personal beliefs. They are considered to be objective and unchanging.

2. Do absolute moral values exist?

This is a debated topic among philosophers and scientists. Some argue that absolute moral values are inherent in human nature, while others believe they are socially constructed and vary across cultures. There is no consensus on whether or not absolute moral values truly exist.

3. How do we determine absolute moral values?

There is no definitive method for determining absolute moral values. Some argue that they are derived from religious teachings or natural law, while others believe they are based on reason and logic. Ultimately, it is up to individual interpretation and belief.

4. Can absolute moral values change over time?

Some argue that absolute moral values are timeless and unchanging, while others believe they can evolve and adapt to societal changes. For example, the moral value of slavery has shifted over time, indicating that absolute moral values may not be set in stone.

5. How do absolute moral values impact society?

Some believe that absolute moral values provide a moral compass for individuals and societies, guiding them towards what is considered morally right. Others argue that the belief in absolute moral values can lead to intolerance and conflict, as people may impose their values on others. The impact of absolute moral values on society is a complex and ongoing debate.

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