Morality Relativism Truth Rules Behavior. First Aired:. Sunday, July 1, What Is It School teachers, preachers, parents, and even a few philosophers often claim to be authorities on the dictates of morality. Listening Notes John begins by asking Ken where morality can possibly originate, and Ken describes one of the most common theories of morality: what God says is right is right, and what God says is wrong is wrong.
Roving Philosophical Report Seek to : Zoe Corneli travels to downtown San Francisco to ask the average person what they think morality is, and where it comes from. Sixty Second Philosopher Seek to : Ian Shoales discusses the connection between morality, Flaubert, propriety, and the bourgeoisie at lightning speed. Buy the Episode. Related Shows Aristotle Jan 25, Hume Mar 01, David Hume was a superb essayist, a brilliant philosopher, and a world-class bon vivant.
Kant Dec 13, Immanuel Kant introduced the human mind as an active originator of experience rather than just a passive recipient of perception.
Mar 20, We've all heard a disenchanted teenager claim that everything is relative and that there is no absolute morality or truth. Katz Ethical Theory edited by Louis P. Bonus Content. Log in or register to post comments. Create new account Request new password. Upcoming Shows. Would have been great to learn this when I was young. A well sequenced course. Enjoyed the flexibility of time commitment. The content was clearly focused with opportunity to explore wider resources.
I enjoyed each unit some were challenging in nature others enlightening. I wanted to explore Humanism and have achieved a good depth of understanding. I am very grateful to have had the opportunity to undertake this course, especially as it was free. I found it very interesting and also powerfully affirming in terms of my own views.
I particularly enjoyed the You Tube videos, which linked to many other videos of interest. I would recommend this course to anyone wishing to learn more about Humanism. Category: FutureLearn Local , Learning. Category: Current Issues , General. Category: Digital Skills , Learning , What is. We offer a diverse selection of courses from leading universities and cultural institutions from around the world.
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Build your knowledge with top universities and organisations. Learn more about how FutureLearn is transforming access to education. Learn more about this course. Where does morality come from? Read about different explanations for where our morality comes from.
Since human reason is good, the purpose must be to further the reason of all humankind. Actions for this purpose are right and actions against it are wrong , which is consistent with our natural feeling that actions such as genocide are wrong.
Nonetheless, in this exposition of Deism, the existence of reason itself is a good thing. Furthermore, reason is binary: all objects either possess reason, or lack it. The binary presence of this gift in a person makes us all equal in a spiritual sense.
Whereas environmental and genetic factors are of course responsible for human conduct, they are physical forces and it does not make sense to speak of them as good or bad. They just are. They do not affect the fundamental goodness of human reason. The presence of reason justifies the statement that, yes, in a deep sense, all men are created equal. The principle that all men are created equal allows some logical development of Deist morality.
It becomes easy to explain in more basic terms why the Holocaust was bad. No human has any more inherent worth than any other human, and human reason is a good thing, so we may call murder, let alone Holocaust, wrong. There are exceptions to the general rule that the destruction of human reason is wrong.
While the inherent capacity to reason, for any being, including these two, is inherently good, in these two cases the goodness is corrupted by experiential and genetic factors, which lead to morally flawed ideas. The danger posed by these individuals necessitated that great effort be made to prevent further commission of evil. Since exercise of reason is dependent on information, and in that sense is a science, it is impossible to know for sure that something is wrong, because it is impossible to know if our interpretation of information is correct.
This is just as it is impossible to know whether gravity holds in all cases, but the mere fact that every time we drop an object it falls suggests as to what this law of nature really is. In the same way, the mere fact that we have observed so many times the exercise of reason by so many people suggests the fundamental moral law that all men are created equal, as equally reasoning beings. Thus, deism falls in between universalism and its antonym, relativism. In summary, deism is consistent with our intuition in the cases already examined.
It views science as the one central tool that man can trust, and in fact is based on science. Rather than pure universalist, this world view permits the learning and development of our views from new sociological observations, but at the same time it gives us a concrete purpose in life , which atheism may struggle to do. Supplementing the forces of nature, reason includes ideas, causes, and most importantly, purpose.
We as people are given a mission in life and the capability to use ideas to extend along this mission. Deism provides a nuanced answer to our questions about the origins of morality.
Morality is like logic in that there are laws of morality — but just not in the tangible way that we can observe in the everyday sense. The basic rules of logic are testable by observation, and they have held up untold times, although this does not necessarily mean that they hold in every situation. The basic rules of morality are testable using reason, together with information from the real world. The required input, which is subjective, makes reason like language in some sense, but logic dominates.
However, it is far more complicated to test moral laws than to test physical laws, which means that moral laws are more likely to be challenged by new observations. We as people are in essence scientists operating not only in the observable physical realms, but also with dimensions in the spiritual realms. Much as we seek to discover laws in the physical realms, we also seek to discover laws in the spiritual realms. There is thus an obligation to conquer the laws of physics and of reason.
Someday, when the state of mankind permits it, we may more fully and totally explore the principles of art and philosophy and mathematics. To me, the latter in particular appeals.
Yet due to the current dangers in our world, I see my immediate obligation as standing in defense of the principle that all are created equal, in service of the society that seeks to extend this principle to all mankind.
Because we are all created equal, I believe that people the world over will eventually realize this principle given time and access to information. The way forward, the obligation, involves both serving as that shining city on a hill, as well as standing in defense of free societies that need our help.
My own journey, leading from theism to atheism to deism, has enabled me to reach a better understanding of the meaning of life and my duty to it, and I have chosen.
Many others have of course faced down this choice. Some have reached my same conclusions and can phrase it far more eloquently than I can. In the words of President John Adams:. Zachary Young.
Universalism — a philosophical paradigm that decrees there is exactly one correct moral answer to any question.
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