Sunday, May 06, 2007
Morality and Rules
This my remark was inspoired by the PDF paper in the internet, I show the link to the paper.
MORAL RULES and CONVENTIONAL RULES
i. Moral rules are held to have an objective, prescriptive force; they are not dependent on the authority of any individual or institution.
ii. Moral rules are taken to hold generally, not just locally; they not only proscribe behavior here and now, but also in other countries and at other times in history.
iii. Violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed, whose rights have been violated, or who has been subject to an injustice.
iv. Violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules.
Conventional rules, on Turiel’s account, have just the opposite cluster of properties. They do not have objective, prescriptive force; rather they are viewed as arbitrary or situation-dependent, and can be suspended or changed by an appropriate authoritative individual or institution. Conventional rules are often geographically & temporally local; those applicable in one community often will not apply in other communities or at other times in history. Violations of conventional rules do not involve a victim who has been harmed, whose rights have been violated, or who has been subject to an injustice and these violations are typically less serious than violations of moral rule.
All of the above is a quotation from this PDF file . What I like most is the differentiation between moral rules and conventional rules that means laws made by some kind of legislative body. This kind of differentiation explains why we sometimes feel punished by law, i.e. conventional rules but do not feel guilty at all.
There might be two ways of moral rules coming into force. One way is when moral rules can be derived from conventional rules that being used for a long time might become moral rules or the second way when some rule has “always” been a moral rule even among animals, e.g. taking care of offsprings etc.
In some societies rules, laws, are treated the same way, be it a moral rule or a conventional rule, sometimes even conventional rules receive higher importance than moral rules, such societies usually have problems with proper perceiving of what is right and what is wrong. Mostly such societies are extremely formal ones and have difficulties to understand moral rules at all, or mostly.
MORAL RULES and CONVENTIONAL RULES
i. Moral rules are held to have an objective, prescriptive force; they are not dependent on the authority of any individual or institution.
ii. Moral rules are taken to hold generally, not just locally; they not only proscribe behavior here and now, but also in other countries and at other times in history.
iii. Violations of moral rules involve a victim who has been harmed, whose rights have been violated, or who has been subject to an injustice.
iv. Violations of moral rules are typically more serious than violations of conventional rules.
Conventional rules, on Turiel’s account, have just the opposite cluster of properties. They do not have objective, prescriptive force; rather they are viewed as arbitrary or situation-dependent, and can be suspended or changed by an appropriate authoritative individual or institution. Conventional rules are often geographically & temporally local; those applicable in one community often will not apply in other communities or at other times in history. Violations of conventional rules do not involve a victim who has been harmed, whose rights have been violated, or who has been subject to an injustice and these violations are typically less serious than violations of moral rule.
All of the above is a quotation from this PDF file . What I like most is the differentiation between moral rules and conventional rules that means laws made by some kind of legislative body. This kind of differentiation explains why we sometimes feel punished by law, i.e. conventional rules but do not feel guilty at all.
There might be two ways of moral rules coming into force. One way is when moral rules can be derived from conventional rules that being used for a long time might become moral rules or the second way when some rule has “always” been a moral rule even among animals, e.g. taking care of offsprings etc.
In some societies rules, laws, are treated the same way, be it a moral rule or a conventional rule, sometimes even conventional rules receive higher importance than moral rules, such societies usually have problems with proper perceiving of what is right and what is wrong. Mostly such societies are extremely formal ones and have difficulties to understand moral rules at all, or mostly.
# posted by Dalibor @ 7:27 AM 
