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Author Topic:   Why do right?
Chiroptera
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Message 13 of 168 (379782)
01-25-2007 1:06 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by kuresu
01-25-2007 11:20 AM


Kader might have been arguing the biological/evolution side, but it looks to me that she (or he) was arguing the practical reasons for morality. She seems (to me) to be saying that we practice morality because that leads to social stability, and you benefit from a stable society.
The problem with this reasoning is that it doesn't really get to the heart of morality. If you benefit from an action (or from refraining from an action), then what you are doing is not morality or ethics. In fact, one can easily come up with various scenarios (fanciful as they may be) where you can behave in a manner that may be deemed by even you to be immoral but with no adverse consequences to you (in this case, without endangering social stability).
The evolution/biology explanation may explain why people might feel that there is something called morality, but it doesn't really give you any reasons why you should behave in a moral manner. Again, that is a very different question. I share my extra food with someone who is hungry because such behavior gave my ancestors a survival advantage. But why should I give a hungry person my extra food?
Why people should or should not behave in certain ways is a very tricky problem, and the Christians haven't really figured it out either.

But government...is not simply the way we express ourselves collectively but also often the only way we preserve our freedom from private power and its incursions. -- Bill Moyers (quoting John Schwarz)

This message is a reply to:
 Message 5 by kuresu, posted 01-25-2007 11:20 AM kuresu has not replied

  
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