Morality is a phenomenon among social animals, including humans, through which communities and individuals evaluate actions, character, and social arrangements. It often refers to a set of standards, doctrines, or systems of conduct that evaluate actions and character traits using criteria that vary across individuals, societies, social classes, public opinion, religions, cultures, customs, and traditions. These evaluations often include rightness or wrongness, virtues or vices, honesty or cruelty, honor or disgrace, community harmony, purity, reciprocity, shame, the influence of a person's inner beliefs, and propriety or impropriety of relationships between oneself and others. Morality involves evaluative judgments about agents and actions and assessments of actions as moral or immoral behavior.
Cross-species and cross-cultural research suggests that attention to moral sentiments exists in all human societies, and that moral sentiments are part of cultural universals. Some studies further indicate that behaviors related to morality, such as honesty, helpfulness, tolerance, loyalty, responsibility, social justice, equality, family and national security, stability of social order, gratitude, and the like, are part of universal values. That is, these behaviors may be virtues universally recognized by all societies. The ethical position advocating such principles is called moral universalism. However, the philosophy of moral relativism opposes universal moral principles, holding that no universal morality exists.
Immorality is the violation of morality. Nihilism is the active viewpoint that opposes or rejects morality as a concept. While amorality is variously defined as an unawareness of, indifference toward, or disbelief in any particular set of moral standards or principles. "having no moral standards, restraints, or principles; unaware of or indifferent to questions of right or wrong"
Etymology The English word "morality" derives from the Latin noun mōs (genitive mōris), meaning "manner, character, proper behavior," particularly in its plural form mōrēs." The term passed into Late Latin as mōrālitās ("manner, character"), which was borrowed into Old French as moralité. It entered Middle English around 1375 (first attested in the works of Geoffrey Chaucer) as moralite, initially meaning "moral qualities" or "virtuous conduct," before taking on the broader sense of "a system of ethical duties" by the mid-15th century. The Latin root mōs is itself of uncertain origin, but it has been hypothesized to derive from a Proto-Indo-European root *meh₁- ("to intend" or "to measure"), which is also the source of the English word "mood" and the Ancient Greek verb μαίομαι (maíomai, "to strive"). The Latin adjective mōrālis ("pertaining to manners") was coined by Cicero as a translation of the Greek term ēthiko."
Definition Some view that morality is the distinction between intentions, decisions, and actions of outstanding individuals as being right or wrong, along with the related conceptual norms. Morality can be a set of standards or principles derived from the codes of conduct of a particular philosophy, religion, or culture, or it can derive from universal values that an individual believes in. According to another conceptualization, morality is an "informal public mechanism", informal meaning that there is no law or authority that can determine its correctness, and public mechanism meaning a set of norms applicable in all situations.The Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy P.586 morality In contrast, others say that by establishing certain standards of good and evil and rules of conduct, morality constrains people's interactions and individual actions, regulates social relations, and together with law, helps ensure the normal order of social life. It runs through all aspects of social life, such as public morality, family and marriage ethics, and professional ethics.
Ethics as moral philosophy
Ethics, also known as moral philosophy, is the branch of philosophy which addresses questions of morality. The word 'ethics' is "commonly used interchangeably with 'morality'... and sometimes it is used more narrowly to mean the moral principles of a particular tradition, group, or individual". Likewise, certain types of ethical theories, especially deontological ethics, sometimes distinguish between ethics and morality.
Philosopher Simon Blackburn writes: Although the morality of people and their ethics amounts to the same thing, there is a usage that restricts morality to systems such as that of Immanuel Kant, based on notions such as duty, obligation, and principles of conduct, reserving ethics for the more Aristotelian approach to practical reasoning, based on the notion of a virtue, and generally avoiding the separation of 'moral' considerations from other practical considerations.
Descriptive and normative ethics
In its descriptive sense, "morality" refers to personal or cultural values, codes of conduct or social mores that are observed to be accepted by a significant number of individuals (not necessarily all) in a society. It does not connote objective claims of right or wrong, but only refers to claims of right and wrong that are seen to be made and to conflicts between different claims made. Descriptive ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.
In its normative sense, "morality" refers to whatever (if anything) is actually right or wrong, which may be independent of the values or mores held by any particular peoples or cultures. Normative ethics is the branch of philosophy which studies morality in this sense.
Realism and anti-realism Philosophical theories on the nature and origins of morality (that is, theories of meta-ethics) are broadly divided into two classes: Moral realism is the class of theories that hold that there are true moral statements that report objective moral facts. For example, while they might concede that forces of social conformity significantly shape individuals' "moral" decisions, they deny that those cultural norms and customs define morally right behavior. This may be the philosophical view propounded by ethical naturalists, but not all moral realists accept that position (e.g., ethical non-naturalists).Chapouthier, Georges, "To what extent is moral judgment natural?", European Review (GB), 2004, 12(2): 179–83 Moral anti-realism, on the other hand, holds that moral statements either fail or do not even attempt to report objective moral facts. Instead, they hold that moral sentences are either categorically false claims of objective moral facts (error theory); claims about subjective attitudes rather than objective facts (ethical subjectivism); or else do not attempt to describe the world at all but rather something else, like an expression of an emotion or the issuance of a command (non-cognitivism).
Some forms of non-cognitivism and ethical subjectivism, while considered anti-realist in the robust sense used here, are considered realist in the sense synonymous with moral universalism. For example, universal prescriptivism is a universalist form of non-cognitivism which claims that morality is derived from reasoning about implied imperatives, and divine command theory and ideal observer theory are universalist forms of ethical subjectivism which claim that morality is derived from the edicts of a god or the hypothetical decrees of a perfectly rational being, respectively.
Anthropology
Morality with practical reasoning Practical reason is necessary for moral agency but it is not a sufficient condition for moral agency. Real life issues that need solutions do need both rationality and emotion to be sufficiently moral. One uses rationality as a pathway to the ultimate decision, but the environment and emotions towards the environment at the moment must be a factor for the result to be truly moral, as morality is subject to culture. Some philosophers argue that moral acceptability is determined entirely by cultural acceptance, while others contend that universal moral truths exist independently of any culture's beliefs. Both practical reason and relevant emotional factors are acknowledged as significant in determining the morality of a decision.
Tribal and territorial Celia Green made a distinction between tribal and territorial morality.Green, Celia (2004). Letters from Exile: Observations on a Culture in Decline. Oxford: Oxford Forum. Chapters I–XX. She characterizes the latter as predominantly negative and proscriptive: it defines a person's territory, including their property and dependents, which is not to be damaged or interfered with. Apart from these proscriptions, territorial morality is permissive, allowing the individual whatever behaviour that does not interfere with the territory of another. By contrast, tribal morality is prescriptive, imposing the norms of the collective on the individual. These norms will be arbitrary, culturally dependent and 'flexible', whereas territorial morality aims at rules which are universal and absolute, such as Kant's 'categorical imperative' and Geisler's graded absolutism. Green relates the development of territorial morality to the rise of the concept of private property, and the ascendancy of contract over status.
In-group and out-group
Some observers hold that individuals apply distinct sets of moral rules to people depending on their membership of an "in-group" (the individual and those they believe to be of the same group) or an "out-group" (people not entitled to be treated according to the same rules). Some biologists, anthropologists and evolutionary psychologists believe this in-group/out-group discrimination has evolved because it enhances group survival. This belief has been confirmed by simple computational models of evolution.T.R. Shultz, M. Hartshorn, and A. Kaznatcheev. Why is ethnocentrism more common than humanitarianism? Proceedings of the 31st annual conference of the cognitive science society, 2009. In simulations this discrimination can result in both unexpected cooperation towards the in-group and irrational hostility towards the out-group.Kaznatcheev, A. (2010, March). Robustness of ethnocentrism to changes in inter-personal interactions . In Complex Adaptive Systems – AAAI Fall Symposium. Butiz wintrades Gary R. Johnson and V. S. Falger have argued that nationalism and patriotism are forms of this in-group/out-group boundary. Jonathan Haidt has noted that experimental observation indicating an in-group criterion provides one moral foundation substantially used by conservatives, but far less so by liberals.
In-group preference is also helpful at the individual level for the passing on of one's genes. For example, a mother who favors her own children more highly than the children of other people will give greater resources to her children than she will to strangers', thus heightening her children's chances of survival and her own genes' chances of being perpetuated. Due to this, within a population, there is substantial selection pressure exerted toward this kind of self-interest, such that eventually, all parents wind up favoring their own children (the in-group) over other children (the out-group).
Comparing cultures Peterson and Seligman, taking an anthropological view, look across cultures and geo-cultural areas, and across millennia.Peterson, Christopher, and Martin E. P. Seligman. Character Strengths and Virtues. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004. They conclude that certain virtues have prevailed in all cultures they examined. The major virtues they identified include wisdom / knowledge; courage; humanity; justice; temperance; and transcendence. Each of these include several divisions. For instance humanity includes love, kindness, and social intelligence.