 | This article possibly contains original research .(February 2018) |
In literature, a moral universe is the moral nature of the universe as a whole in relation to human life, or a specific moral code.
| This article possibly contains original research .(February 2018) |
In literature, a moral universe is the moral nature of the universe as a whole in relation to human life, or a specific moral code.
A moral universe implies that we live in a basically spiritual universe that is somehow ordered by a higher power, by invisible feelings of good and bad, a 'cosmic order' reminiscent of the early Greeks [1] that underpins and motivates our actions. Or a 'moral force' that means our actions must have definite effects which we carry with us. In this respect its meaning comes close to the Hindu concept of Karma.
Those who reject this idea tend to believe that the universe is just physical, has no spiritual component at all, that events are random and have no deeper meaning or purpose, and that there can be no consequences of any kind to our actions and thus that we live in an amoral or nihilistic universe, [2] as in Nietzsche's "God is dead," aphorism. [3] Such might be the position of "anti-moral free spirits-nihilists." [4]
It is in Dostoyevsky's oft-quoted saying, "if God does not exist, then everything is permitted," [5] that the notion of an amoral universe, and its implications, are explored. Similarly, some atheists, pagans and most Buddhists believe that we live in a moral universe (see Buddhist morality), but without the God aspect. The concept of a moral universe also implies that the good and bad events in our lives happen to us for a reason that life is good, and has a purpose, that human beings are basically good, that nature is good. [6] In a moral universe, these meanings might be subtly discerned (see Hermeneutics), while it also offers the prospect of spiritual development, growth and enlightenment, whereas if we live in an amoral universe, these notions are utterly denied and in fact impossible (see Moral nihilism and Nihilism). Foucault, for example, is sometimes depicted as an amoral nihilist. [7]
The concept of a moral universe seems also to underpin spirituality and forms the basis for kindness, compassion, altruism, [8] and caring for others in human behaviour, including ecological activism and conservation.[ citation needed ] This is because it places a value on human life and living things that goes beyond what would seem suitable if we regarded people and living things merely as agglomerations of atoms essentially no different from any other unfeeling, non-sentient molecular structures such as rocks, soil, mountains or planets.
Belief in a moral universe often involves "deciding that negative experiences are punishment for prior misdeeds, even when plausible causal links are missing...(or) immanent justice." [9] The term is also "used to describe the young child's tendency to affirm the existence of punishments that emanate from things themselves...(which) implies a causal relation between the behaviour and the outcome." [10] In other words, it means "punishment for misdeeds (immanent justice)." [11] Studies have repeatedly shown that "children use the belief in a just world in immanent justice judgements," [12] to try to make sense of life events. It involves the belief that "combinations of good or bad prior behavior [are] followed by a lucky or unlucky event." [13] Many people "believe they are living in a just world in which everybody gets what he deserves and deserves what he gets." [14] One study has even "demonstrated more evidence of immanent justice responding among adults than among elementary school children." [15] Arguably, immanent justice is a form of moral reasoning, and an aspect of the notion of a moral universe in which our actions are deemed to have consequences. Immanent justice is similar to the notion that 'what goes around comes around' or the proverb, 'we reap what we sow.'[ citation needed ] (See also panglossianism).
A moral universe can be a form of morality, or 'moral code,' associated with a specific place, a person, a group of people, an activity, a nation or a concept. The "characteristics of one's moral code determine how often and in what life situations inner conflict is aroused." [16] This meaning attempts to explore variations in what are usually termed "traditional moral codes." [17]
Examples of this second meaning include the following: "the moral universe of sport and physical activity," [18] "accidents in a moral universe," [19] the "moral universe of mystic river," [20] "expanding our moral universe," [21] "the moral universe of aggrieved Chinese workers," [22] "the moral universe of Mr Chips," [23] "the moral universe of William Bennett," [24] "the moral universe of 'healthy' leisure time," [25] "the moral universe of Edward Houston's Yard," [26] and of parents who "fail to define a moral universe for their children." [27]
This second meaning is sometimes confused with moral absolutism (found in most religions), which holds that there exists within society a universally accepted basis for our morality. The problem with this meaning is that morality is by no means commonly agreed, but varies in different countries and cultures such that what is considered right and proper or acceptable in some, is deemed harmful, improper or wicked in others. Examples include abortion, rape, contraception and homosexuality to name just a few. In other examples, revenge and crimes of passion are treated much more leniently in some countries compared to others. And this 'moral code' also varies in time. Therefore, this second meaning is sometimes rather loosely applied and is often more about moral relativism rather than a moral universe. [28]
In analytic philosophy, anti-realism is the position that the truth of a statement rests on its demonstrability through internal logic mechanisms, such as the context principle or intuitionistic logic, in direct opposition to the realist notion that the truth of a statement rests on its correspondence to an external, independent reality. In anti-realism, this external reality is hypothetical and is not assumed.
In metaphilosophy and ethics, metaethics is the study of the nature, scope, ground, and meaning of moral judgment, ethical belief, or values. It is one of the three branches of ethics generally studied by philosophers, the others being normative ethics and applied ethics.
In philosophy, nihilism is any viewpoint, or a family of views, that rejects generally accepted or fundamental aspects of human existence, namely knowledge, morality, or meaning. There have been different nihilist positions, including that human values are baseless, that life is meaningless, that knowledge is impossible, or that some other highly regarded concepts are in fact meaningless or pointless. The term was popularized by Ivan Turgenev and more specifically by his character Bazarov in the novel Fathers and Sons.
Morality is the categorization of intentions, decisions and actions into those that are proper, or right, and those that are improper, or wrong. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion or culture, or it can derive from a standard that is understood to be universal. Morality may also be specifically synonymous with "goodness", "appropriateness" or "rightness".
Relativism is a family of philosophical views which deny claims to objectivity within a particular domain and assert that valuations in that domain are relative to the perspective of an observer or the context in which they are assessed. There are many different forms of relativism, with a great deal of variation in scope and differing degrees of controversy among them. Moral relativism encompasses the differences in moral judgments among people and cultures. Epistemic relativism holds that there are no absolute principles regarding normative belief, justification, or rationality, and that there are only relative ones. Alethic relativism is the doctrine that there are no absolute truths, i.e., that truth is always relative to some particular frame of reference, such as a language or a culture, while linguistic relativism asserts that a language's structures influence a speaker's perceptions. Some forms of relativism also bear a resemblance to philosophical skepticism. Descriptive relativism seeks to describe the differences among cultures and people without evaluation, while normative relativism evaluates the word truthfulness of views within a given framework.
Moral relativism or ethical relativism is used to describe several philosophical positions concerned with the differences in moral judgments across different peoples and cultures. An advocate of such ideas is often referred to as a relativist.
Cultural relativism is the view that concepts and moral values must be understood in their own cultural context and not judged according to the standards of a different culture. It asserts the equal validity of all points of view and the relative nature of truth, which is determined by an individual or their culture.
Moral realism is the position that ethical sentences express propositions that refer to objective features of the world, some of which may be true to the extent that they report those features accurately. This makes moral realism a non-nihilist form of ethical cognitivism with an ontological orientation, standing in opposition to all forms of moral anti-realism and moral skepticism, including ethical subjectivism, error theory, and non-cognitivism. Moral realism's two main subdivisions are ethical naturalism and ethical non-naturalism.
Reflective equilibrium is a state of balance or coherence among a set of beliefs arrived at by a process of deliberative mutual adjustment among general principles and particular judgements. Although he did not use the term, philosopher Nelson Goodman introduced the method of reflective equilibrium as an approach to justifying the principles of inductive logic. The term reflective equilibrium was coined by John Rawls and popularized in his A Theory of Justice as a method for arriving at the content of the principles of justice.
Moral skepticism is a class of meta-ethical theories all members of which entail that no one has any moral knowledge. Many moral skeptics also make the stronger, modal claim that moral knowledge is impossible. Moral skepticism is particularly opposed to moral realism: the view that there are knowable and objective moral truths.
This index of ethics articles puts articles relevant to well-known ethical debates and decisions in one place - including practical problems long known in philosophy, and the more abstract subjects in law, politics, and some professions and sciences. It lists also those core concepts essential to understanding ethics as applied in various religions, some movements derived from religions, and religions discussed as if they were a theory of ethics making no special claim to divine status.
In most contexts, the concept of good denotes the conduct that should be preferred when posed with a choice between possible actions. Good is generally considered to be the opposite of evil and is of ethics, morality, philosophy, and religion. The specific meaning and etymology of the term and its associated translations among ancient and contemporary languages show substantial variation in its inflection and meaning, depending on circumstances of place and history, or of philosophical or religious context.
Amorality is an absence of, indifference towards, disregard for, or incapacity for morality. Some simply refer to it as a case of being neither moral nor immoral. Amoral should not be confused with immoral, which refers to an agent doing or thinking something they know or believe to be wrong.
The Euthyphro dilemma is found in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro, in which Socrates asks Euthyphro, "Is the pious loved by the gods because it is pious, or is it pious because it is loved by the gods?" (10a)
Moral nihilism is the meta-ethical view that nothing is morally right or morally wrong and that morality does not exist.
Philippa Ruth Foot was an English philosopher and one of the founders of contemporary virtue ethics. Her work was inspired by Aristotelian ethics. Along with Judith Jarvis Thomson, she is credited with inventing the trolley problem. She was elected a member of the American Philosophical Society.
Secular ethics is a branch of moral philosophy in which ethics is based solely on human faculties such as logic, empathy, reason or moral intuition, and not derived from belief in supernatural revelation or guidance—a source of ethics in many religions. Secular ethics refers to any ethical system that does not draw on the supernatural, and includes humanism, secularism and freethinking. A classical example of literature on secular ethics is the Kural text, authored by the ancient Indian philosopher Valluvar.
Kantian ethics refers to a deontological ethical theory developed by German philosopher Immanuel Kant that is based on the notion that "I ought never to act except in such a way that I could also will that my maxim should become a universal law." It is also associated with the idea that "it is impossible to think of anything at all in the world, or indeed even beyond it, that could be considered good without limitation except a good will." The theory was developed in the context of Enlightenment rationalism. It states that an action can only be moral if it is motivated by a sense of duty, and its maxim may be rationally willed a universal, objective law.
On the Genealogy of Morality: A Polemic is an 1887 book by German philosopher Friedrich Nietzsche. It consists of a preface and three interrelated treatises that expand and follow through on concepts Nietzsche sketched out in Beyond Good and Evil (1886). The three treatises trace episodes in the evolution of moral concepts with a view to confronting "moral prejudices", specifically those of Christianity and Judaism.
Moral development focuses on the emergence, change, and understanding of morality from infancy through adulthood. The theory states that morality develops across the lifespan in a variety of ways. Morality is influenced by an individual's experiences, behavior, and when they are faced with moral issues through different periods of physical and cognitive development. Morality concerns an individual's reforming sense of what is right and wrong; it is for this reason that young children have different moral judgment and character than that of a grown adult. Morality in itself is often a synonym for "rightness" or "goodness." It also refers to a specific code of conduct that is derived from one's culture, religion, or personal philosophy that guides one's actions, behaviors, and thoughts.