Don’t think of morality as a doctrine guiding you as to how to behave.
This is mainly how I use morality. I control my own actions, not the actions of other people, so for me it makes sense to judge my own actions as good or bad, right or wrong. I can change them. Judging someone else changes nothing about the state of the world unless I can persuade them to act differently.
Judging someone else changes nothing about the state of the world unless I can persuade them to act differently.
Avoiding a person (a) does not (necessarily) persuade them to act differently, but (b) definitely changes the state of the world. This is not a minor nitpicking point. Avoiding people is also called social ostracism, and it’s a major way that people react to misbehavior. It has the primary effect of protecting themselves. It often has the secondary effect of convincing the ostracized person to improve their behavior.
Then I would consider that a case where I could change their behaviour. There are instances where avoiding someone would bother them enough to have an effect, and other cases where it wouldn’t.
Avoiding people who misbehave will change the state of the world even if that does not affect their behavior. It changes the world by protecting you. You are part of the world.
it makes sense to judge my own actions as good or bad, right or wrong. I can change them.
Yes, but if you judge a particular action of your own to be ‘wrong’, then why should you avoid that action? The definition of wrong that I supply solves that problem. By definition if an action is wrong, then it is likely to elicit punishment. So you have a practical reason for doing right rather than doing wrong.
Furthermore, if you do your duty and reward and/or punish other people for their behavior, then they too will have a practical reason to do right rather than wrong.
Before you object “But that is not morality!”, ask yourself how you learned the difference between right and wrong.
ask yourself how you learned the difference between right and wrong.
It’s a valid point that I probably learned morality this way. I think that’s actually the definition of ‘preconventional’ morality-it’s based on reward/punishment. Maybe all my current moral ideas have roots in that childhood experience, but they aren’t covered by it anymore. There are actions that would be rewarded by most of the people around me, but which I avoid because I consider there to be a “better” alternative. (I should be able to think of more examples of this, but I guess one is laziness at work. I feel guilty if I don’t do the cleaning and maintenance that needs doing even though everyone else does almost nothing. I also try to follow a “golden rule” that if I don’t want something to happen to me, I won’t do it to someone else even if the action is socially acceptable amidst my friends and wouldn’t be punished.
I think that’s actually the definition of ‘preconventional’ morality-it’s based on reward/punishment.
Ah. Thanks for bringing up the Kohlberg stages—I hadn’t been thinking in those terms.
The view of morality I am promoting here is a kind of meta-pre-conventional viewpoint. That is, morality is not ‘that which receives reward and punishment’, it is instead ‘that which (consequentially) ought to receive reward and punishment, given that many people are stuck at the pre-conventional level’.
‘that which (consequentially) ought to receive reward and punishment, given that many people are stuck at the pre-conventional level’.
How many people? I think (I remember reading in my first-year psych textbook) that most adults functionning at a “normal” level in society are at the conventional level: they have internalized whatever moral standards surround them and obey them as rules, rather than thinking directly of punishment or reward. (They may still be thinking indirectly of punishment and reward; a conventionally moral person obeys the law because it’s the law and it’s wrong to break the law, implicitly because they would be punished if they did.) I’m not really sure how to separate how people actually reason on moral issues, versus how they think they do, and whether the two are often (or ever???) the same thing.
How many people are stuck at that level? I don’t know.
How many people must be stuck there to justify the use of punishment as deterrent? My gut feeling is that we are not punishing too much unless the good done (to society) by deterrence is outweighed by the evil done (to the ‘criminal’) by the punishment.
And also remember that we can use carrots as well as sticks. A smile and a “Thank you” provide a powerful carrot to many people. How many? Again, I don’t know, but I suspect that it is only fair to add these carrot-loving pre-conventionalists in with the ones who respond only to sticks.
This is mainly how I use morality. I control my own actions, not the actions of other people, so for me it makes sense to judge my own actions as good or bad, right or wrong. I can change them. Judging someone else changes nothing about the state of the world unless I can persuade them to act differently.
Avoiding a person (a) does not (necessarily) persuade them to act differently, but (b) definitely changes the state of the world. This is not a minor nitpicking point. Avoiding people is also called social ostracism, and it’s a major way that people react to misbehavior. It has the primary effect of protecting themselves. It often has the secondary effect of convincing the ostracized person to improve their behavior.
Then I would consider that a case where I could change their behaviour. There are instances where avoiding someone would bother them enough to have an effect, and other cases where it wouldn’t.
Avoiding people who misbehave will change the state of the world even if that does not affect their behavior. It changes the world by protecting you. You are part of the world.
Yes, but if you judge a particular action of your own to be ‘wrong’, then why should you avoid that action? The definition of wrong that I supply solves that problem. By definition if an action is wrong, then it is likely to elicit punishment. So you have a practical reason for doing right rather than doing wrong.
Furthermore, if you do your duty and reward and/or punish other people for their behavior, then they too will have a practical reason to do right rather than wrong.
Before you object “But that is not morality!”, ask yourself how you learned the difference between right and wrong.
It’s a valid point that I probably learned morality this way. I think that’s actually the definition of ‘preconventional’ morality-it’s based on reward/punishment. Maybe all my current moral ideas have roots in that childhood experience, but they aren’t covered by it anymore. There are actions that would be rewarded by most of the people around me, but which I avoid because I consider there to be a “better” alternative. (I should be able to think of more examples of this, but I guess one is laziness at work. I feel guilty if I don’t do the cleaning and maintenance that needs doing even though everyone else does almost nothing. I also try to follow a “golden rule” that if I don’t want something to happen to me, I won’t do it to someone else even if the action is socially acceptable amidst my friends and wouldn’t be punished.
Ah. Thanks for bringing up the Kohlberg stages—I hadn’t been thinking in those terms.
The view of morality I am promoting here is a kind of meta-pre-conventional viewpoint. That is, morality is not ‘that which receives reward and punishment’, it is instead ‘that which (consequentially) ought to receive reward and punishment, given that many people are stuck at the pre-conventional level’.
How many people? I think (I remember reading in my first-year psych textbook) that most adults functionning at a “normal” level in society are at the conventional level: they have internalized whatever moral standards surround them and obey them as rules, rather than thinking directly of punishment or reward. (They may still be thinking indirectly of punishment and reward; a conventionally moral person obeys the law because it’s the law and it’s wrong to break the law, implicitly because they would be punished if they did.) I’m not really sure how to separate how people actually reason on moral issues, versus how they think they do, and whether the two are often (or ever???) the same thing.
How many people are stuck at that level? I don’t know.
How many people must be stuck there to justify the use of punishment as deterrent? My gut feeling is that we are not punishing too much unless the good done (to society) by deterrence is outweighed by the evil done (to the ‘criminal’) by the punishment.
And also remember that we can use carrots as well as sticks. A smile and a “Thank you” provide a powerful carrot to many people. How many? Again, I don’t know, but I suspect that it is only fair to add these carrot-loving pre-conventionalists in with the ones who respond only to sticks.