Morality
From RationalWiki
Morality is the philosophical concept of what is "right" in social interactions. It is generally poorly defined and understood, and largely subjective; some regard homosexuality as immoral, and others do not. It is better referred to in the philosophical sense as "ethics" - how to act in life to enhance one's life and the lives of all other people at the same time.
The one rule virtually every moral system agrees upon is the necessity of punishment for those who violate The Rules, whatever they may be.[citation needed]
[edit] Basis of morality
There are many different views on the origins of morality. These include the argument from morality, the evolutionary argument, and the sociological view that our ideas of what is moral and what is not are largely based on our society's ideals.
Here at RationalWiki we believe that morality should be based on logic. In practice, unfortunately, Jonathan Haidt's research suggests that "people don’t generally engage in moral reasoning", Haidt argues, "but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification."[1]
[edit] Moral naturalism
Moral naturalism is a form of cognitivism derived from applying evolutionary game-theory to ethics. Rather than interpreting morality as the result of negotiations between members of a large group of free moral agents, moral naturalism sees morality as an emergent phenomenon arising as an unintended side-effect of the interaction of those agents in smaller groups. In other words, morality is not to solve a single problem but a number of recurring problems, in the same manner that natural selection adjusts populations of organisms for changing environmental conditions. This puts moral facts in a class with natural facts about the world, which contradicts the assertion of divine command theory that morality is defined by the arbitrary revelation of God.
