If you believe that, I've got some oceanfront property in Arizona to sell ya. Evidently, you've mistaken Spider's overconfidence(ignorance is bliss) with the truth regarding the matter at hand. Go back and read exactly what he and I both claimed about moral realism, and then look at both of the links he offered.

Regarding our discussion(yours and mine I mean) I'm agreeing with the claim that morals come from society. That agreement comes from using the most common meanings of the term morals. What I am attempting to set straight here is the fact that morals and morality are two different things.

well ... maybe a study of children like Di talked about that actually was conducted without outside influences ... hmmm hard to do. We do seem to not want to use people as lab rats.
It doesn't matter though.... without one ... the idea is just that... and idea ... no facts, no proof.

Its up to you ... who wants to claim that it exists ... to develop that proof ... not me.



yes it is ... and it does not have any basis in fact until it is done in a real clinical study with the bias removed.
I want to see that.... not the hearsay of something I have not seen as true in real world observation.

If you ask them it would depend on many variables. the level of unfair or cheating at the game etc. would also make a difference in the answer ...
did the asker ... coach in any way.... its easily done with children. That is why their testimony is not taken 100%.
Reality and imagination are not completely seperate at a young age. Besides ... morality to be just there.... would occur before they could even answer the question.

At what age do you imagine it appears? 1,2,3,5, 11, 55.
I suggest its learned. and evidence points in that direction ... not yours.
You fail to understand ... by learned we mean ... not just from others but internally via trial and error. That was part of my original post you failed to comprehend or tried to sidestep with strawman arguments.
[go look up strawman arguments yourself ... you need the review]

I am actually finding yours and Spider's discussion more sidesteps in general and I never have been a fan of this quote in quote in quote system in here.... makes for too much scrolling on my crappy computer.

As for Morals and Morality being two different things...
well I'm glad you didn't say ... completely different for one hindges on the definition of the other and that would only make them partly different.

Morality is basically morals in action. It does not jump up and stand as a universal law or universal truth. Its shaped by culture of society or used as a measure of society.

Your semantics here is no different than saying math and calculations are not the same thing.

So, are you saying that empirical observation of human behavior(psychological studies) would suffice as evidence to make my argument, or support it? There is no psychological study that I am aware of that denies my argument for universal morality, Thorb. There are an overwhelming amount of studies avalaible for use as empirical data which supports my claims.

I ask what would constitute sufficient evidence in your view because that is a critical aspect of an argument being compelling enough to accept it.



The question was not about who should shoulder the burden of proof. S/he who makes a positive claim bears that burden, so it is mine to carry, there is no doubt about that. It was about what constitutes being adequate evidence for my claim, in your view. Do you find that logical/reasonable arguments are compelling enough to warrant acceptance of any given claim, or perhaps some kinds of claims but not others?

I'm just attempting to get an idea of where you stand regarding what constitutes evidence and/or 'proof'.



When regarding moral considerations, we talk about right and wrong behavior, or good and bad behavior. I mean, morally speaking, right behavior is always good and wrong behavior is always bad. These concerns you've expressed regarding the studies of children are litigimate ones, no argument here. But couldn't we use such concerns to deny any and all studies? I mean, somewhere along the line, something has to be considered as good enough evidence to support a claim. It seems that you're rejecting behavioral studies of children.

The last statement leaves me a little puzzled...

What do you mean by morality would occur before they could answer the question? I mean, I'm not arguing that morality does not play a role prior to language acquisition, and therefore prior to a child's ability to answer such questions. Rather I am wondering what you mean by morality occurring.



By "it", I am assuming - based upon the how our conversation has developed thus far - that you are referring to "morality", but are talking about morals. Morality is not learned on my view. Morals are.



Again, I have no idea how you've arrived at this. Your first post offered nothing that I disagreed with. Makes for a short conversation.



Your second post is the one that I found problematic. It objected to a claim of mine(that morality and morals are not the same thing) but did not provide logical support for the objection itself. It equates morality to morals. They are not one in the same thing, they are related but meaningfully and necessarily distinct. In that post, you wrongfully claimed that I hold that morals are some kind of universal law. That is almost correct. I do hold that morality satisfies the criterion of being a universal law. I further hold that morals, rules of behavior, ethics, and/or moral codes all converge upon my conception of universal morality, and therefore follow from it in all of their discontinuity.

I am not in disagreement with you here. I was simply allowing anyone who did not know any better, to realize that despite Spider's overwhelming display of confidence, his conception of what constitutes moral realism is severely lacking in many ways. Spider's claim that moral realism "requires a moral standard independent of humanity" is false for most versions of moral realism. It is true for theistic moral realism and perhaps for some others who call themselves moral realists and use that as a tenet. That is not the only kind of moral realism however. I just wanted to make that clear. Surprisingly enough, and equally thick with irony, he used an article from the SEP that offers an epistemological criterion which my argument for moral realism satisfies.

He cherry-picked a statement from a response of mine to Bushido in a failed attempt impose his theistic notion of the tenets of moral realism onto my view.



It is important here to recognize the role that definitions play in human understanding. Dictionaries derive the meaning(definitions) of words by looking at how they are most commonly used. Words are intended to represent/describe other things, ideas, concepts, etc. So, it is misleading to say that two things hinge their existence in reality upon each other's definitions.

Other than that needing to be said, I have no objection to the above. I mean, I hold that universal morality and morals are intimately connected, just not solely by virtue of how they are defined.



If morality is held as morals in action, then that necessarily makes morality contingent upon the existence of morals. In other words, if the above is true, then morals come first and morality is morals in action, which is consistent with the view you've expressed thus far. It also requires that morality is relative to particular moral codes, for if morality is morals in action, it must change and conform to the codes which are being reflected. Morality would then be what morals do, rather than what morals are based upon. That doesn't seem right, to me.



This reasserts your view, as expressed in this and the other posts, not mine. That is what constitutes a strawman argument. These considerations of yours do not follow from my claims, rather they follow from a misinterpretation of them.

To use your math analogy here...

On my view, universal morality is to morals what math is to calculations. Although this analogy fails to exhaust the relationship between universal morality and particular morals in many respects, hopefully it helps to ensure that you understand the difference between our views.

God?

Nice addition. Looks like Utilitarianism or some other version of Kant's CI derivatives. Parsing out the difference can be tough, for sure.

To have a good understanding of how this all plays out, it would be best to study or review some of the older ideas pertainign to morality which is why I wrote

"The progression – 1930’s Piaget, late 1960’s Kohlberg and then building on the foundations and the inconsistencies in Kohlberg’s theory, Elliot Turiel (et al) came up with Domain theory or sometimes called social domain theory."

However, if you want to read some of the studies that relate more to what I was saying about 'social domain theory' then you need to look up Elliot Turiel (et al). There is not that much on the open web that I could find. The real stuff is pretty recent and is in peer reviewed journals and in books. Sorry that's the best I can give you, a good local or college library will have those articles AND if you want to look Turiel up on the www you will find some information but not full length studies.

You have a good grasp for what can make up a qualitative study and just so you know, Jean Piaget, and Kohlberg were highly educated but they were studying something new and it took another person to bring more focus on the issues.

Elliot Turiel was actually working under Kohlberg in the research area and was also highly educated. He happened to make the connections in the reasearch between the anomolies and what the kids were saying and that's what led him to develop the idea of social domains of social conventions and morality. T

The children being observed were quite young, some were toddlers who were learning to share, and sometimes the idea of reciprocity came into play there. Different age groups were observed in different activities or were asked questions regarding simple situations.

Simple questions like 'If there was no rule about shouting in the library, would it be ok to shout?' and likwise, 'If there was no rule about hitting another person ....'

The questions were necessary in order to understand why the anomolies in Kohlberg's studies kept coming up and the answers support and further reinforced what Turiel had suspected.

As I stated, the kids did not have the language skills or the intellect to explain why there was an ethical level of right and wrong between non-harmful behaviors and those behaviors that could physically harm another. It had to come out through a complex and logical progression of questions.

Fabulous topic, even if 80% has been correcting misunderstandings, but then again that's life!

I would say simply through time,,we have grown to expect certain
ones as MUSTS and other's as MAYBES, within the ones around us or who we are in their view..SUCH IS THE ACCEPTANCE of us ALL,,,,as to ANY IMPACT that Moral's have to our conscious idealism.

WE LIVE, through which we're judged, we're judged through which we LIVE.

IF,,,,,,that people, believe in the culture(society) their growing and living in.. IF THAT CULTURE (group) of people have set examples to follow.
THEN,,one follows them as the rule,,or brings attentions against them by not following them,,,again,,,its ALL in THAT PERSON,,and THAT ASSOCIATION IN WHICH THEY ARE SURROUNDED BY AS THEIR PEOPLE OR GROUP TO MAINTAIN A STANDARD OF ACCEPTANCE WITHIN THEM ALL..

IF one lives with no presents of ones around them, then how or why would THEY ever have any conscious thoughts as to care about ANY of their actions to do?

As to the last questions as to an absolute of good or bad...

In General,,GOD IS AN ABSOLUTE GOOD,,TO MANY,
as SATAN an ABSOLUTE BAD TO MANY also...

BUT AGAIN,,,,NOT TO ALL,,,so as that being an example of BEST scenario
I would say that there is no ABSOLUTE BAD OR GOOD in consideration
to an IDEA OF THOUGHT...

Thanks Bushido. It's my favorite topic in philosophy. It is really interesting as well in another regard. Since the God of Abraham has been found fallible, morality, which used to be thought to depend upon God was found fallible as well. To make a long story short, moral nihilism or universal morality are the only coherent moral positions, as far as I can see. Moral relativism if fraught with self-contradiction as is moral subjectivism. It is quite a shame that so many believe that moral relativism is true.

As far as correcting misunderstandings... well, that is not at all uncommon, especially on a public forum. An interesting thing to me though is this. When one argues that morality is relative/subjective to society/people/religion/etc. and therefore there is no universal morality, they are arguing the universal position, that all morality has these things in common. I argue the same position, but argue that all moral belief, ethical claims, and moral claims have objective common denominators. It is in the pursuit of those that we can identify universal morality.

Another curious thing is that people will ask for a universal moral standard, saying that if universal morality exists, then the standard would follow or some such. However, must we know everything about something to claim that it exists? How long did humans believe the world was flat? It is quite clear that it does not follow from the fact that we have not yet identified all of the individual constituents which comprise universal morality, that it does not exist.



We should think about these things for a minute.

Thanks again for the show of appreciation. That is a universal human need, by the way. The need to feel appreciated, that is.

It's my opinion that it is a byproduct of a certain level of awareness that is reinforced by our instincts as pack-hunters, and perhaps developed further by our continuing self-domestication.

From ones parents!

Thanks Redy ..... and Creative .... let's just agree to disagree.


if you can't understand that ... Universal Morality would have to happen/occur ... in the child at some age ... I'm wasting my time.
And that the Math example is not a strawman ... your hopeless on that subject.

As for my first post being okay... and the second not.
well the second was only a requested explanation of the first.[ if I can remember back then ... not that it really matters]
I really didn't say anything different just toned the idea down to a simple level of understanding and erased the slight humour by doing so. Oh well.

I'm thinking I'll read a bit and move on with a still sound belief that Morality is not universal.

I agree... Not universal.

Morality as perceived by an inhabitant of bangledesh is vastly different from morality as perceived by an inihabitant of argentine...

Morality as perceived by a follower of an Abrahamic religion is vastly different from morality as perceived by a practictioner of Wicca.

Morality of a person living in ease is different from the morality displayed by that same person living in an immediate survival situation.

Why would you believe that I can't understand that universal morality would have to be somehow present in everyone? I was not necessarily disagreeing. I even stated that. I just wondered what you mean when you say morality "occurs". It is not at all unreasonable to ask another to clarify their meaning.



"Still sound" implies you believe that it was already sound. As long as you continue confusing moral codes and morality, it will seem sound. That is a necessary contradiction within the belief though, which does not indicate soundness. Soundness is a matter if logic. A sound belief can be shown. I'm just asking you to explain the claims that you're making. Show the ground of the belief(s) which you claim are sound.

AB,

The existence of disagreement regarding moral belief/ethical codes between different groups of people does not tell us anything about universal morality. It exists 'beyond' the disagreements.

more of your semantics..... look up the word belief.

asking to explain things that you claim you understand ...
shows that you don't understand.

your a lost cause ... and my part of this discussion is over.

The old nature/nurture argument comes into it. I don't think we should ignore how people's brains work, how much is wired in. I have a small farm, and from what I have seen, animals have their own codes of conduct. It amazes me to see how so many personality traits seem to be passed on from parents to offspring.

That said, the fundamental nurture rule is the Golden Rule. It is the one tenet that is common to all religions. Indoctrinate all you want, but some people seem to come by it naturally, others comply kicking and screaming and others ignore it altogether. I supposed these last would be considered sociopaths. I believe that sociopaths are products of their own brain architecture. Why would the same not be true of the in-betweens?