I think that just as in physics there are lots of different good models of the laws of nature (e.g. Newton's laws, Relativity, Quantum Physics etc), so to with the topic of morality there are many different ways of modelling it and looking at it that have merit.
One such way is Moral Foundations Theory which was developed from cross-cultural anthropological study. Researchers in non-Western cultures when they came across a moral prohibitions would ask why it was immoral, and they found the answers typically pointed to one of 5 or so underlying moral ideas or 'moral foundations'. Doing studies and surveys around the world has revealed these 5 reasons for things being immoral or moral are common across all societies and cultures.
The five widely-shared 'moral foundations' are:
1. Care / Harm
2. Fairness or Proportionality or Justice / Cheating or Injustice
3. Loyalty or Ingroup / Betrayal
4. Authority or Respect / Subversion
5. Sanctity or Purity / Degradation
The exact words used for them are not important, but rather it's the concepts they refer to.
Often on specific issues, these foundations come into conflict. e.g. "Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?" is a common Western trope, which puts helping your family in tension with hurting the person stolen from and breaking the law. Similarly "justice or mercy?" something every judge has to weigh in a criminal sentence and puts harming the convict in tension with fairness for society. So this is a list of moral concepts people seem to use in reasoning, not a way of reaching a unique decision on every single moral question.
Note again that this list was empirically determined. These are the kinds of explanations people tend to give when asked to explain why something is immoral, and in surveys it's the things they point to. The researchers have suggested this list isn't exhaustive, and noted that some people used other ideas, e.g. liberty / oppression was a common concept given by US libertarians, and other possible foundations include Efficiency/waste, Ownership/theft, Honesty/deception, and Equity/undeservingness. But the 5 listed above seem to have the most widespread and cross-cultural appeal.
So are these then the 5 universal moral principles? No. The first 2, yes. But the last 3 seem to be implemented a different way in every society.
For Loyalty to one's group, it is cultural and arbitrary who one's "group" is understood to be. Is it immediate family, wider family, friend group, age group, village, race, culture, cast, province, country, religion, or sports team? How much loyalty should be given to any given one of these when it is conflict with any other one of these? Obviously that is all arbitrary and varies hugely from culture to culture.
For Authority and Respect, it is cultural and arbitrary who that respect is paid to and how much. Is it to elders, the chief, the leader, or to males, or to warriors, or to the priests, or to the king, or to managers? Is it to everyone above you in your workplace, or local authorities in your village? And how much? Each culture varies hugely from each other in who the targets of this respect are and how much is to be paid to them.
Sanctity - what things are considered 'sacred', and what things are considered 'disgusting' - is again hugely variable. One culture eats something that another culture finds 'disgusting'. One culture thinks some kind of act or ritual is sacred whilst another culture sees no merit in it. What is considered sacred is hugely variable from one culture to the next as is what is considered disgusting.
The Care and Fairness principles are, however, pretty non-variable from culture to culture. Everyone can agree that doing injury to another person is harming them. Everyone can agree that two people being treated differently for doing the same thing is inequality. Neither of these varies much from culture to culture.
The researchers found something interesting when they studied Western culture: There was a big difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives used all 5 of those moral foundations. Liberals only used the 2 non-arbitrary ones. Of all the cultures they looked at, Western liberals were unique in using so few moral foundations.
As I discussed in my other thread, Pluralistic societies bumble toward universal moral principles, as multiple cultures interact in a pluralistic society, each will bring its own arbitrary ideas and be unable to convince the others to adopt them. By this interaction process each will scrape away the arbitrary ideas of the others, leaving only the universal core common among all the cultures. This seems to have been what has happened in Western culture - the arbitrary ideas about who to pay respect to or give loyalty to or what to consider sacred have been shed by liberals and only the core universal principles remain among their moral ideas. Whereas conservatives continue to clutch to the arbitrary ideas they happen to have inherited. But a Muslim conservative does not agree much with a Christian conservative, nor either with a Hindu conservative etc, reflecting the arbitrariness present among conservatives' moral principles.
As our pluralistic cultures continue, we can expect the ongoing interactions to continue to scrape away the arbitrary principles, and more and more people to end up holding only to the 2 universal principles of Care and Fairness. There's been some discussion about whether theses two principles are fundamentally the same underlying principle or not, but as I said to start with, I think this is a helpful model that has a lot of validity, not necessarily the only true way of looking at the subject. However, it's helpful because it's (a) empirically-based, not based on armchair philosophy, and (b) can point us to the moral concepts that are universally shared.
One such way is Moral Foundations Theory which was developed from cross-cultural anthropological study. Researchers in non-Western cultures when they came across a moral prohibitions would ask why it was immoral, and they found the answers typically pointed to one of 5 or so underlying moral ideas or 'moral foundations'. Doing studies and surveys around the world has revealed these 5 reasons for things being immoral or moral are common across all societies and cultures.
The five widely-shared 'moral foundations' are:
1. Care / Harm
2. Fairness or Proportionality or Justice / Cheating or Injustice
3. Loyalty or Ingroup / Betrayal
4. Authority or Respect / Subversion
5. Sanctity or Purity / Degradation
The exact words used for them are not important, but rather it's the concepts they refer to.
Often on specific issues, these foundations come into conflict. e.g. "Would you steal a loaf of bread to feed your starving family?" is a common Western trope, which puts helping your family in tension with hurting the person stolen from and breaking the law. Similarly "justice or mercy?" something every judge has to weigh in a criminal sentence and puts harming the convict in tension with fairness for society. So this is a list of moral concepts people seem to use in reasoning, not a way of reaching a unique decision on every single moral question.
Note again that this list was empirically determined. These are the kinds of explanations people tend to give when asked to explain why something is immoral, and in surveys it's the things they point to. The researchers have suggested this list isn't exhaustive, and noted that some people used other ideas, e.g. liberty / oppression was a common concept given by US libertarians, and other possible foundations include Efficiency/waste, Ownership/theft, Honesty/deception, and Equity/undeservingness. But the 5 listed above seem to have the most widespread and cross-cultural appeal.
So are these then the 5 universal moral principles? No. The first 2, yes. But the last 3 seem to be implemented a different way in every society.
For Loyalty to one's group, it is cultural and arbitrary who one's "group" is understood to be. Is it immediate family, wider family, friend group, age group, village, race, culture, cast, province, country, religion, or sports team? How much loyalty should be given to any given one of these when it is conflict with any other one of these? Obviously that is all arbitrary and varies hugely from culture to culture.
For Authority and Respect, it is cultural and arbitrary who that respect is paid to and how much. Is it to elders, the chief, the leader, or to males, or to warriors, or to the priests, or to the king, or to managers? Is it to everyone above you in your workplace, or local authorities in your village? And how much? Each culture varies hugely from each other in who the targets of this respect are and how much is to be paid to them.
Sanctity - what things are considered 'sacred', and what things are considered 'disgusting' - is again hugely variable. One culture eats something that another culture finds 'disgusting'. One culture thinks some kind of act or ritual is sacred whilst another culture sees no merit in it. What is considered sacred is hugely variable from one culture to the next as is what is considered disgusting.
The Care and Fairness principles are, however, pretty non-variable from culture to culture. Everyone can agree that doing injury to another person is harming them. Everyone can agree that two people being treated differently for doing the same thing is inequality. Neither of these varies much from culture to culture.
The researchers found something interesting when they studied Western culture: There was a big difference between liberals and conservatives. Conservatives used all 5 of those moral foundations. Liberals only used the 2 non-arbitrary ones. Of all the cultures they looked at, Western liberals were unique in using so few moral foundations.
As I discussed in my other thread, Pluralistic societies bumble toward universal moral principles, as multiple cultures interact in a pluralistic society, each will bring its own arbitrary ideas and be unable to convince the others to adopt them. By this interaction process each will scrape away the arbitrary ideas of the others, leaving only the universal core common among all the cultures. This seems to have been what has happened in Western culture - the arbitrary ideas about who to pay respect to or give loyalty to or what to consider sacred have been shed by liberals and only the core universal principles remain among their moral ideas. Whereas conservatives continue to clutch to the arbitrary ideas they happen to have inherited. But a Muslim conservative does not agree much with a Christian conservative, nor either with a Hindu conservative etc, reflecting the arbitrariness present among conservatives' moral principles.
As our pluralistic cultures continue, we can expect the ongoing interactions to continue to scrape away the arbitrary principles, and more and more people to end up holding only to the 2 universal principles of Care and Fairness. There's been some discussion about whether theses two principles are fundamentally the same underlying principle or not, but as I said to start with, I think this is a helpful model that has a lot of validity, not necessarily the only true way of looking at the subject. However, it's helpful because it's (a) empirically-based, not based on armchair philosophy, and (b) can point us to the moral concepts that are universally shared.
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