Morality is what people actually do and consider philosophically, in the abstract, what the correct patterns or responses to stimuli behaviorally are. Apparently some wish to posit innate moral principles as if they were microcode written in to a cpu while development of more complex moral code from assembler language installed by a program designer permits higher- level languages of moral development as maturity occurs.
Personal choices for intervention occur in a criterion that deserves circumspection.
Personal choices for intervention occur in a criterion that deserves circumspection.
I like Jean Paul Sartre's Critique of DIalectical Reason quite a bit. It is a large and ponderous book yet the core of it is fairly simple and applies to morality in my opinion, as well or better than to epistemology.
It is a continuation of the existentialist work Being and Nothingness. That book describes the individual point of view of life and notes the reef of solipsism each individual exists within. The Critique describes how so many individuals interact socially- dialectically in life, in various settings; i.e. factories, colonies etc.
Individuals born into existence experience reality and learn to communicate in it. The existential experience of the social dialectic involves learning feedback rules of its operations and of what works. The social dialectic for-itself develops the most effective rule structure. People may form their own opinions about it- and of course they are doomed to do so actually. yet the social dialectic is not within any individual except as it might be compared to electrical current from a phenomenal source that no individual encompasses.
Like evolution paradigms that exists outside any particular species or individual, the social dialectic and its causality exists beyond the total control of individuals or determinist actions. Individuals and organizations may affect change to the social dialectic yet the responsive new state may have (the time factor) changes different than those intended by agents of change.
Physical beings seeking to exist find physical conditions within which they need conform or perish. One cannot survive jumping into strontium 90 in a pool of sharks from the top of a 100 story building without a parachute (or with). Physical characteristics of being evolved in a species have some behavioral and learning capacities innately (original sin is the problem of temporal and entropic beingness). One may regard innate behavior and learning characteristics as moral behavior, in the sense that the behavior is what people generally actually do.
While existing, individuals and society may seek to upgrade their moral or behavioral tool-kit. That is the general good of society, and seeking the general good, is a continuum project. One may find instances of individuals, groups and even nations that require intervention; individuals phenomenally challenged to make responses for the general good may choose to do so for sundry subjective reasons (including Aretaic and Christian ethics). In any case the empirical environment is small enough globally that failure to make the right 'moral' choices and evaluations of what the best implementation is or opportunity for increasing the general good is, may have proximal, adverse responses (examples are global warming, mass species extinction and reform of capitalism to reinforce egalitarianism, competition and environmental economics).
Even when individuals reply to particular situations to change a state of affairs toward a recognizably better end, it may be a futile action for various reasons, and the entire circumstance perhaps should be changed. The Millennial Project of the U.N. to make Africa produces a little more food might have worked to improve things a bit yet wasn't funded adequately. When entire systems are corrupt or ineffective, when challenges for change are great and intellectually challenging to entire social classes; that is strange to behold, and one understands better the experience of philosophical phenomenalism that does perhaps become more the social norm than existentialism, in the aftermath of events of great mass destruction (such as WW II).
Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason describes the way individuals interact collectively- each from within their own existential perspective. Societies do evolve their own moral behaviors adapted to the circumstances. The social dialectic is itself an ongoing construction and one might go so far as to call it an ossified praxis continuing to add on and morph the way numbers do. Natural numbers, rational numbers, real numbers etc.
Individuals do not choose to create the social dialectic; they encounter it phenomenally. Each soul lives within their own reef of solipsism; Sartre wrote that he would need the power of God to view himself through the eyes and mind of the other while remaining himself. Like signs posted along a highway the social dialectic pre-exists one's birth (one might infer).
I.M.O the social dialectic exists because people are social beings. Reproduction, food consumption and so forth are necessary for the continuum of human beingness to exist. Like trophic orders around a waterhole human beings have evolved rules and customary practices of behavior to allow their interactive bio-mass to continue to exist.
Today the social dialectic of the human biomass is partially dysfunctional; many have problems in understanding that concatenated individual behaviors and practices may not work or keep the world ecosystem viable though for individuals the practices may not be in themselves harmful. If Archie Bunker's car won't destroy life on Earth through greenhouse gassing, he cannot understand that a billion cars might. The social dialectic that exists to allow human community in positive defensive struggle against the environment and other distal groups is maladapted toward protecting the environment itself for the benefit of the group. That is an economic method and moral challenge.
Sartre's Critique of Dialectical Reason describes the way individuals interact collectively- each from within their own existential perspective. Societies do evolve their own moral behaviors adapted to the circumstances. The social dialectic is itself an ongoing construction and one might go so far as to call it an ossified praxis continuing to add on and morph the way numbers do. Natural numbers, rational numbers, real numbers etc.
Individuals do not choose to create the social dialectic; they encounter it phenomenally. Each soul lives within their own reef of solipsism; Sartre wrote that he would need the power of God to view himself through the eyes and mind of the other while remaining himself. Like signs posted along a highway the social dialectic pre-exists one's birth (one might infer).
I.M.O the social dialectic exists because people are social beings. Reproduction, food consumption and so forth are necessary for the continuum of human beingness to exist. Like trophic orders around a waterhole human beings have evolved rules and customary practices of behavior to allow their interactive bio-mass to continue to exist.
Today the social dialectic of the human biomass is partially dysfunctional; many have problems in understanding that concatenated individual behaviors and practices may not work or keep the world ecosystem viable though for individuals the practices may not be in themselves harmful. If Archie Bunker's car won't destroy life on Earth through greenhouse gassing, he cannot understand that a billion cars might. The social dialectic that exists to allow human community in positive defensive struggle against the environment and other distal groups is maladapted toward protecting the environment itself for the benefit of the group. That is an economic method and moral challenge.
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