Do Morals Exist ?

I'll preface this little discussion with a quick backround of how I started thinking about all this. Basically i spent the last three hours sitting at my tv watching the Nuremberg Trials movie. Most of you know what its about, but a brief summary is as follows:

After the end of WW2, all of Hitler's top officials were rounded up and sent to a prison in Nuremberg, where they were held on trial for their actions. Their main defense throughout the entire thing was - "I was just following orders" (Many of you know about Milgram's study, which basically proved that around 80% of us will "just follow orders" under the right circumstances)

The intreasting part is that the notion of "just following orders" encompasses something so much greater and bigger then itself. It encompasses; free will, morals, and in the end, as in Nuremberg, responsibility for ones own actions.

There were two key moments in the movie I watched that i would like to point out:

A) There was a scene where a Jewish pyschologist (whose job it was to examine all of the people on trial) held a discussion with "Justice Jackson" (one of the main prosecutors). The pyschologist basically said the following: I understand, after hours upon hours spent with these people why they did it. They did it for two reasons: One - because their culture dictated that obediance was the most important principal and ideal in ones life. Two - Because they were flooded with Propaganda from the very begining. Proganda dehumanizing Jews and explaining how they stole all of the jobs and ruined the German society.

B) The second moment I want to adress was one of the last scenes in the movie. Basically, after Hermann Goering was codemned to death, the pyschologist asked him: "People will ask me for the rest of my life what your final thoughts were." To which Goering replied (some to the effect of): "These people can sentence me to death, but they, and no one else, will ever be able to judge me"

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And so I ask, can you judge Hermann Goering - the man responsible for the construction of the concentration camps, the man who proposed the "solution" to the Jewish problem, and the main ultimatly responsible for the millions of innocent deaths suffered in Germany?

I ask you, can you judge anyone? Is it not possible to rationally explain the motives of all people, and to reconize that if we, ourselves, had been put in the same situation, could have done the exact-same-thing?

I guess in retrospect, when it comes down to it, what I ask is: Do morals exist?

Shit man, you can judge anyone, anytime, and we do it all the time. Are we justified in our judgements. Sometimes I'm definitely not, sometimes I feel that I am, but if the person or thing I'm judging doesn't feel as if my judgement is just, then it very well may not be, since we can never REALLY know the full story about anyone, and there's no time to go back and review their entire life and the things that affected them in the past causing them to act and react as they do now. Also, there are times where I know my judgement of someone is without a doubt unjust, but I can convice them that it is, indeed, warranted and valid. I'm thinking that morals exist to some extent, but what to be moral or what a moral is differs in definition from person to person, thus creating the conflict people often disagree over regarding your main question as to whether or not morals exist.

Something I notice myself doing is 'betraying' my own 'morals.' In other words, being a hypocrite. I've said it before, but everyone I've ever met has engaged in hypocrisy to some degree, whether they've known it or not. The question you stated could then be raised: Did this person simply go against their own morals, or did their morals even exist to begin with?

That's a good question to ask, as I think many people wrestle with this one. I'm not completely sure yes, but it's fun to play around with.

Strange...lately I've been facing this questions a few times as well. I was actually pretty disappointed in my teacher's idea that it is merely 'what the society at the time thinks which is viably constructive'; which is true but doesn't quite satisfy.
One view I believe in which I was telling a friend of mine was that morals were a sign of evolution, of a more sophisticated sort. It came about when we created civilisation; and as you look at animals with a societal structure the complexities of their morals also increases over simpler beings. They are like laws and rules, given emotional and spiritual value over time and culture.
Basically, anyone can try not having morals, and according to evolution some most probably did, but these all destroyed themselves, the very nature of chaos being so. Therefore, its back to that 'we wonder who we are precisely because we are here to wonder who we are'. If we were all by today's standards immoral, we would have been eliminated naturally.
Lastly, this would also explain why morals can and have changed over time. Many may not believe that homosexuality is not immoral, but given time we would inevitably be at least impartial to it.

I agree with you Macleod. With out morals humans would have been terminated long ago. Everyone has morals, i think, even if you dont think you do. they may not be like everybody elses moral but they are yours. I think that whenever you say "i cant do that because i think thats wrong" that is a moral.

Good thread!

In essence, our entire justice system is unethical. Who are we to claim land that does not, and never will belong to us, instate laws upon people, and judge people by these laws? Who are we to judge that someone who killed another should be imprisoned?

I live in a house with a basement, and we have a reasonable small fridge, so we placed a few bottles of Coca Cola in the basement, where it is reasonably cool. A spider, however, had weaved a web which connected to the top of the bottle.
That spider, in it's perspective of time, had lived there for a long part of it's life, probably a few days, and in a way, if we have lived somewhere for a long time, we claim it to be hours (that's basically how countries came in to existence).

I took the bottle, and ripped it away from the spider, to take a drink. What if the spider had asked me not to take the bottle because it was the spider's bottle? Would the fact that I had payed for it made it mine? No! After all, it was created from resources taken from the earth, and thus belonged to everybody. Of course, saying to a spider that the bottle belongs to everybody does not support my argument of taking the bottle at all.

Ergo, can I, from an 'governmental' viewpoint, take the bottle? Yes! Can I from an ethical viewpoint? No!

In a way, a judge has no power to judge me. If I kill someone, who is he to judge me? Who is the government to bind me? To restrict my freedom?

From an ethical viewpoint, the only way out is anarchy, and hope that everyone will leave each other alone. Of course, the government won't be at all pleased with this, as they will be without jobs, and the government does not like to be proven obsolete.

Mr U

Heh. You government hater, you. :D
The point about the government is that a large part of mankind prefers to live as a communal whole. This whole cannot function without a cohesive leadership entity we name the government. You can live perfectly out of its jurisdiction...just take up camp in the most remotest of jungles. But you wouldn't like that, would you?
Put simply, no matter how negatively put governments are known as, we wouldn't have anything resembling our current lives if they didn't exist. Your coke bottle wouldn't exist. Roads wouldn't exist. The net we converse on...even this webpage. And to gain these comforts we have to sacrifice a little of our freedoms, essentially to gain new ones. Nothing is ever free.

Roads? Internet? Coca Cola?

Is that all we have to gain? Is that all we risk to loose? I was thinking of creating a thread, but I did not create it, afraid to hear the answer. If an army invaded your nation, would you fight, and if you would fight, for what?

For your right to use the internet?

Mr U

I was just stating examples. If you want it more clearly, how about the ability to have friends, live in a home, be protected from those who would violate it or you? Facilities if you were sick or injured, access to clean water, knowledge of the rest of the world, the ability to do more than one man can, living off the land?
To learn of things bigger than ourselves, mold our environments, reach the stars, touch and hold atoms? To eat more than the same foods the surrounding land gives you, or hear music? Even to feel and build upon Love? Ultimately needless to the human survival, perhaps, but all that I want in life. I won't take the life of a completely free animal over a restrained yet directed human, any time.
Your point about the war is also misplaced. War is about one government waging war on the other, and in sad extension, their countries. I am supporting one government here in exchange for another, which is not the point. My point was always about governments over no governments. But to answer the question yes. What they have given me, I have to at least give back. Governments do too many things for us that we forget and take for granted, and it is those that we must remember, as basic, honourable humans.

Now, to re-visit your spider incident. If the coke was not to be drunk but to say...be used to house more spiders inside (a very rough analogy)...that would mirror the government situation closer. You put the coke there, and accidentally helped the spider, yet for governments they would be putting it there for the purpose of helping the spider, and if they deemed it necessary to put it elsewhere for helping more spiders...would the spider's right be so important now? The government gave to you: couldn't you help the government to give to others?