Hi
James M. Clark
Professor of Psychology
204-786-9757
204-774-4134 Fax
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
>>> "Louis Schmier" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> 07-Apr-07 6:47:14 AM >>>
You know what I find interesting about this discussion? No one has
even
attempted to answer my question. Some of you have tried to dance around an
answer, hide
from it, deflect it, change the discussion, or parry and counter-thrust because
you
wrongly assume my questions are a defense of a religious based moral code and
an attacking
thrust against any non-divinely originated moral code as baseless and wrong.
Interesting.
Socrates would be smiling. So, I'll ask it again with no intent of being
judgmental. If
you do not accept the existence of a divine entity and thus the validity of a
divinely
ordained moral code, what is the source or origin or base or criteria or root
for the
moral code you do accept and strive to follow?
JC:
1. If Louis is after individual people's beliefs about morality and its
foundation, then I fail to see how that is relevant at all to this list or to
teaching or to the present discussion. Perhaps he was conducting a
quasi-survey of ethical beliefs of psychologists and other who subscribe to a
teaching psychology list ... if so, I hope he had ethics approval from his
institutional review board! If, as I had assumed, he was asking about
alternative foundations for morality other than religion, I did point several
days ago to sites relevant to the question of non-religious origins of morality
(see below). I also in other posts connected it with emerging evolutionary
views of moral development, which again posit a non-religious basis for human
morality.
"But Louis's question does perhaps have one important implication for anyone
trying to teach people to live their lives by science and reason. To what
extent are students (and others) reluctant to adopt a rational lifestyle
because of concerns about the moral implications of such a change? That would
then lead to questions about the empirical evidence for a connection between
religion/atheism and moral development, something that psychologists and others
have addressed. Does anyone know whether Kolberg, Turiel, and others working
on moral development have addressed the question of religion? And where would
a response like "The Bible says it is wrong" or "The Koran says it is wrong"
fall on Kolberg's scale? Here are a few relevant links, the first one
explicitly addressing Louis's question, and the second taking a position that
religion actually impedes moral development.
http://home.teleport.com/~packham/morality.htm
http://caliibre.blogspot.com/2007/01/how-religion-impedes-moral-development.html
The second does cite one relevant finding of Kohlberg's, namely that no
post-conventional individuals were found in a highly religious group in Turkey.
But of course, post-conventional levels of morality are rare in the West as
well (although increases do occur to some extent with increases in levels of
education)."
2. Louis asks in another post what assumptions Chris saw in his earlier posting
asking about the foundations for people's morality (repeated above). I
certainly read it as assuming that there must be some ultimate authority akin
to divinity. Otherwise, why ask for such a substitute, unless the question was
rhetorical? The considerable literature on morality and moral development
(including the few sites mentioned above) would include some discussion, I
suspect, of whether such an assumption is even necessary to the development of
moral behavior. Its something of a strained metaphor, but there is no more
reason to think our morals require some origin identifiable to consciousness
(e.g., a divine being) than to assume that the origin of life requires some
singular cause accepted as being capable of "producing" life in the
conventional sense of "produce" (e.g., a divine being).
Take care
Jim
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