The Philosophical Study of Morality

Category: Crime, Philosophy, Truth
Last Updated: 09 Nov 2018
Pages: 6 Views: 344
Table of contents

Introduction

Our behavior reflects on our personalities. Morality speaks of a system of action in regards to standards of right and wrong behavior. Morality describes the principle that presides our behavior. Without this principle, societies cannot survive for so long. In today's Society, morality is frequently thought of as inseparability to a particular religious point of view.

Moral describes the principle that controls our behavior. In everyday living, we are witnessing such crimes of killings. But we, the citizen of this country are looking for this as the usual that happens every day. And we're not looking for the reason of those people who kill or commit crimes. We don't really know what's the reason behind it and if there's no reason, but we judge them for no reason.

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What is moral being instead? Judging others or committing crimes? They are saying that we are religious country and they said that the person here is also religious, but how those people commit crimes if they are really religious? Does being religious can be a Moral person? Or Does Moral principle helps us being a Religious person?

The word carries the concepts of:

  1. Moral Standards with regards to behaviour;
  2. Moral responsibility, referring to our conscience; and
  3. A moral identity or one who is capable of right or wrong action. It explored the action of morality and examines how people should live their lives in relation to others.

Background of the Study

According to www.allaboutphilosophy Morality as it relates to our behavior is important on three levels. Renowned thinker, scholar and author C.S Lewis defines them as:

  1. to ensure fair play and harmony between individuals,
  2. to help make us good people in order to have a good society,
  3. to keep us in a good relationship with the power that created us. Based on this definition, it's clear that our belief is disapproving to our moral behavior.

On point 1, Professor Lewis says most reasonable people agree. By point 2, however, we begin to see problems occurring. Consider the popular philosophy "I'm not hurting anyone but myself", frequently used to excused bad personal choices. How can we be the good people we need to be if we persist in making these choices? Bad personal choices do hurt others. Point 3 is where most disagreement surfaces.

Exposition of the problem

There are different definition of morality, first is the moral standards it explains the right and wrong behavior of a human person the second is the moral responsibility it explains the conscience or the guilt of a human person, and thirdly is the moral identity it explains that each Human have their own decision and capable of right and wrong action or doing. Morality speaks about ethnics, principles, virtue, and goodness. Morality is very complicated to explain yet; morality always depicts our behavior it controls and limits us.

Is Morality Objective?

According to philosophynow.org/issues/115/Is_Morality_Objective Great moral philosopher differs about the character of morality. Immanuel Kant's influential duty-based theory of ethnics maintains that truth-telling is universally binding on all of beings.

In a pristine world a crystallized moral ideals, perhaps morality could be objective and universally binding on all people. However, we live in a world of moral flux, impermanence and flexibility. And it is because of this that morality is not nor could ever be objective.

-Albert Filice, Scottsdale, AZ

Morality is objective. That is, moral claims are true or false about aspects of human interaction that involve the ideas of rights and obligations. Further, the fundamental moral maxims apply universally, and reasonable people can agree on their truth.

-John Talley, Rutherford on, NC.

Is there any way to know the difference between right and wrong? Does religion have anything left to offer? From time to time we hear that the established churches are in bafflement that too often their leaders have nothing to say that's applied and helpful where does the truth on these signify lie?

The relationship between religion and morality has long been hotly debated. Does religion make us more moral? Is it Essential for morality? Does moral partiality emerge independently of religious intuitions?

Philosophical Response

A recent report in psychology today concluded "the most significant predictor of a person's moral behavior may be religious commitment. People who consider themselves very religious were least likely to report deceiving their friends having extramarital affairs, cheating on their "programmed" in each of us.

This is in keeping with the writings of Paul Apostle, who points out that even those who do not believe in God frequently obey God's as given in the ten commandments, "for when gentiles, who do not have the law by nature do not have, these although not having law, are a law to themselves, who show the work of the law written in their hearts, their conscience also bearing witness and between themselves their thoughts accusing or else excusing themselves" (Romans 2:14-15; NKJV).

Again those who do not believe in God are left with the only possible conclusion they can come to that our decision are based solely on our need to survive, what we call our conscience based on learned behavior, rather than part of a Devine design.

Many scientific researchers have failed to disintegrate "religion" and "morality" into theoretically grounded elements; have adopted illiberal conceptions of key concepts in particular, sanitized conceptions of "prosocial" behaviour; and have neglected to consider the complex interplay between cognition and culture. They argue that to make progress, the categories "religion" and "morality" must be fractionated into a set of biologically and psychologically cogent traits, revealing the cognitive foundations that acclimate and obligate relevant cultural variants.

Being religious doesn't make us Moral person because we, in ourselves know if we commit mistake and if we are doing good deeds. Yes, doing right seems that you are having with the lord but doesn't mean that we are moral. Being a moral is seeing in our action not only to our faith by our god. Every one of us have different definition of god, so that being a moral person is not depending on being a religious one.

The question of whether or not morality claims religion is both topical and ancient. In the Euthyphro, Socrates famously asked whether goodness is loved by the god because it is good, or whether goodness is good because it is loved by the god. Although he favoured the former proposal, many others have argued that morality is dictated by, and indeed inconceivable without God: "If god does not exist, everything is permitted". (Dostoevsky, 1880, 1990)

According to Aristotle, there are two meaning of good. There is good absolutely and there is good for somebody. The first one is he/she was doing it because it is good. And the other one is doing it for others, in short doing it for a purpose or reason. In that based, we can judge the others by doing wrong because we are all people, maybe it is right for them because it was for their love ones.

Conclusion

Moral philosophy is the branch of philosophy that contemplates what is right and wrong. It explores the nature of morality and examines how people should live their lives in relation to others.

Almost every day, the Philippine media are always flooded with stories of horror about people getting killed. Killing in itself is very dreadful but what makes it more alarming is the fact that most of the killings that took place in the Philippines were perpetuated not by hardened criminals but by policemen who were expected to protect the welfare of the people. According to the administration, most of those killings occurred in order to protect the lives of the policemen whose lives were at stake during their encounters with criminals.

These said killings call to reignite the discussion about what can be said as morally right or morally wrong through looking at the mere essence of morality in this society. Right and wrong is determined by the particular set of principles or rules the relevant culture just happens to hold at the time. Is something right (or wrong) because the gods command it, or do the gods command it because it is right? According to Rights-based Theories, We are to act in accordance with a set of moral rights, which we possess simply by being human. The right to life does not require that we give what is needed to sustain life rather merely that we refrain from taking any action that would take life.

Cite this Page

The Philosophical Study of Morality. (2018, Aug 27). Retrieved from https://phdessay.com/study-of-morality/

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