Dear Roland,

Initially I would recommend you the book - The Mahabharata : A Modern Rendering (2 Volumes) by Ramesh Menon. It is an ancient epic retold in simple English. I would also recommend you the book - The difficulty of being good - by Gurcharan Das to be read side by side.

Dear Roland,

I´m no specialist, but I think moral action will in most cases be performed without rationalism. It´s a result of education and imitating of good behaviour in the personal world of the actor. If education or surrounding are without such rules, the moral action will miss.You find a lot of such examples from people, who really are not irrational and know how to think logically but don´t mind in the daily actions.

But rationalism is needed if you want to find scientific rules for moral.

Moral actions and behaviour are irrational dear @Roland.

I do accept the statement of dear @Hanno that "rationalism is needed if you want to find scientific rules for moral"!

Quite difficult question and not in my subject, but we researchers are always keen to think about issues and try to find some answers. I agree with some previous answer that moral action is a result of education and models of good behaviour in the family and so on...but  I also happen to know people (academics) who come from very poor and primitive backgrounds, with no valid models, and who (must) rely on rationalism for a moral behaviour... 

Morality is important in scientific research as well as in other human activity. What is moral behavior can be found and explained by reasoning. However, behaving in a moral manner is often helped by compassion, altruism, education and religion.

Moral behavior is not depending on logical reasoning. Rather moral behaviour is affected by culture, values, beliefs, assumptions, etc. of particular region or country.

Dear Roland,

According to my observations when interests of a person are in danger usually he forgets about morality. Afterwards the person justifies his behavior giving some reasons which are far from being logical.

I suppose that every person has his own moral code. Unfortunately one should hide it if his “neighborhood” has no high standards of morality.

The question reads “Are moral behavior and action decisively depending on logical reasoning or on compassion and altruism?” To make the discussion unambiguous let me assume the following meanings. Please correct me if I am wrong.

Moral : Concerned with the principles of right and wrong

Logic : Reasoning conducted or assessed according to strict principles of validity

Compassion : Sympathetic pity and concern for the sufferings or misfortunes of others:

Altruism : Disinterested and selfless concern for the well-being of others:

From the above assumed definitions it is “logically” proved that moral behavior and action decisively depends on logical reasoning alone. We may do some thing out of sympathy and altruism but that may not be moral according to above definition. For example being a member of an appointment board I can recommend some body who is less qualified than other candidates because (s)he is very poor and needy, and if (s)he does not get the job may die out of starvation. Do you think my action is moral according to the above definition? But I believe definitely it obeys the implications of compassion and altruism

The above definitions I have taken from

http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/

Reasoning as a process of thinking for going from one point to another may not be the main source of morality but knowing the ultimate and lasting effects of things we do on self and others is. This state of mind, being moral is either intuitive or  a higher form of consciousness, to look things being from above and determine with high gratitude which action is reasonably good for all around for lasting effects.

Learning and knowing technicalities of things will not enable someone to have a levitated higher stages of consciousness to guide his/her life based on morality or to see and value effects of morality for greater good. 

Dear Roland,

What is logical may not be moral sometimes. In the courts of law, this is what is usually done!

Dear all

I think morality is not, repeat not, synonymous to sympathy.

Moral behavior is enormously subjective when it comes from an individual who knows social & cultural norms and who has the capacity for good deeds through selfless actions. Some moral behaviors may include honesty, "not lying or cheating or stealing", and donating to charity. These examples are clear indicators of what the society views to be moral acts of moral people. Less lucid morality is when some ones attempt to refrain from committing actions that could be dishonest or hurtful to themselves & to others and also when there is philanthropy or tendency to "do the right thing" without commotion or publicity.

All in all, a moral behavior is usually rational & proceeds after a reasoning. The person decides upon doing a moral act or upon pretending to be acting moral and any of these involves some calculations. When some noble human being has lifelong experience with morality, then this will evolve into spontaneity. Such person will be moral without the pretext of rationality or reasoning.

@Hemanta,

to follow logical rules can only be correct if you start with correct basic. Formal argumentations in the courts of law, which you mentioned, can effect immoral results and behaviour if the starting conditions are wrong.

To be extremely limited; before I say anything about reason/ logic, I want to talk of morality. Morality may be of two types - specific morality and universal morality. For example, a doctor is morally bound to treat a dying terrorist which is a specific morality, on the other hand if he will make a terrorist healthy, he might cause harm to the humanity which is against the concept of universal morality. Then what is moral and what is amoral? In this example we may still find a way out by informing the police after treating, but, there are situations when there will be no way out - any action that we perform will seem to be amoral. Hence in an ever changing world, with an ever changing definition of what is acceptable and what is unacceptable, can there be a definition of what is moral? The dictionary definitions that I find have been elusive. It is for a person to decide that for a particular situation what is moral for him. Morality is subtle - it is extremely difficult to tell what is right and what is wrong?

Mahabharata says that " in seeking dharma (morality), reason is of limited use as it is without foundation, neither are sacred texts helpful as they are at odds with one another; nor is there a single sage whose opinion could be considered authoritative. The truth about dharma is hidden in a cave''

There can not be more than one truth! "Truth is unique and therefore its application should also be unique. If the primes is wrong a correct logical deduction should definitely detect that.

Dear Mr Bandopadhyay,

The reality of truth differs for every one. The question is , whose truth do we consider in a world where every truth has a probability of being true, not a surety.

Anup Kumar Bandyopadhyay makes a very clear example. One must always keep the definitions clearly in focus. In that frame-of-mind, it may be helpful to consider that only sentient beings are capable of contemplating or judging what is-or-is-not morality .... that sentience is not exactly equivalent to only intelligence, but it is more than that, sentience is not just equivalent to being able to comprehend or manipulate logic (although a sentient creature MUST, I argue, have this ability, first, in order to reach moral judgments ... because, moral judgments, are, in my estimation, simply logical calculations of the probability of future outcomes of decisions made in the present), for there is the little matter of FREE WILL. It is discussed, somewhat, in the Holy Bible, or supposed to be our "soul" or that infinitesimally tiny bit of God that he infuses into each of us, that little bit of additional "something" that added to intelligence and sentience, gives us the ability to "judge" right-from-wrong" (or to somehow, calculate future outcomes for the betterment of our progeny very, very well)?

So, contemplate the errant DNA strand (this doesn't have to be a human strand, can be if you wish ... can be from a plant or a cockroach) ... billions-upon-billions of identical strands have replicated, without fail, for countless thousands of years ... carrying-out an extremely intricate interaction, without ever having a single thought, without ever contemplating their own existence, without consciousness of what is right-or-wrong ... THEN, one fails. Was this immoral? What if the failure was as the result of a human who smoked cigarettes while a youth? What if that youth hadn't been adequately warned about the dangers? What if he had been? What if the DNA failure was inside the cockroach one million years ago? What if in the cockroach last week and the DNA failure was CERTAINLY due to the pesticide you had sprayed on him last month? But the morality RESIDES only in your brain, not in the act, only in the judgments you make about acts (or the outcomes of those acts), but morality does not exist in the real world. It is an allegory for the human will.

Best regards,

Bob Skiles

The view back to human history may give some hints for the development of moral rules just by experience. These rules were concentrated to the small group, family, tribe and I can very easily imagine, how first laws were created. Then came education, abstraction, logical processing. But in all cases the individual insight in rationalism of moral rules must have been restricted to some exceptional persons.

Dear Colleagues,

Good Day,

These are some suggested skills for components of moral behavior

• ETHICAL PERCEPTION AND SENSITIVITY

• ETHICAL REASONING AND JUDGMENT

• ETHICAL FOCUS OR MOTIVATION

• ETHICAL ACTION

Please, see the attached pdf file.

Let us not forget that any action of ours is somehow based on logical reasoning for intended optimal result. Those who do things that are devoid of morality do use that skill of reasoning but for a wrong value. Therefore the reasoning that leads to morality has to be of a different kind, being rational. Although doing only for self seems natural but the code of morality was ingrind in the consiuosness of early humans just by observing which actions were good for the group and which ones were not. As our intellect developed and expanse of existence widened humans intend to teach morality, ethics and compassion as good virtues of society.

Dear Hazim Hashim Tahir and Others,

Dr.Roland Iosif Moraru's premise seems to be that morality is somehow an inate/in-born/God-given(?) quality of humans [  he says "Children need no reasoning to lovingly care for their aging parents. Neighbors need no reasoning to warmly welcome strangers to the neighborhood. Human beings need no reasoning to help other needy humans and creatures. All we truly need, for moral action to arise, is compassion. Compassion is the necessary and sufficient condition on which moral action depends..." ], but as your response indicates, you realize that this must be incorrect. Morality must depend on education and development, not on compassion. Surely, compassion may assist in the education and development of morality within a person, but it is not an essential element. These compassionate things Dr Moraru, that you give as examples, that you perceive as a universal unlearned morality (?), are ALL things which have been TAUGHT to them [ the expression would be more accurately stated, that THEY have learned from OTHERS], taught to them by their parents, and by everyone whom they have come in contact with in their society, since birth. Some studies indicate that human children even begin learning BEFORE birth! What morality infants and young children learn is from the culture of those they are in close contact with (mother, father, siblings, kin, next-door-neighbors). Becoming a compassionate person is also learned, and to develop into a compassionate adult, it depends much on whether one is reared in a compassionate environment as a youth, but also on the vicissitudes of life, and perhaps one's individual temperament and even one's adaptive responses to puberty (the sometimes aggressive behavioral impulses as a result of onset of maturation hormones ... a time usually fraught with anguish over "moral" issues ... does your hypothetical un-taught naturally-born-moral "young man" always know to treat the young maidens honorably when he is alone with them in the dark, Dr. Moraru ... did you?).

No ... I aver that morality is TAUGHT ... it is not, a natural-born system of human-kind. Do not confuse compassion with morality ... whereas morality must be taught, compassion does not (so, unless thwarted by cruelty or some other negative influence, you likely do have compassion as a basic building-block to begin with) ... not just with humans, but all primate mothers exhibit compassion for their wounded or sick offspring. And have you not witnessed the GRIEF a mother elephant displays when her baby is killed? Do elephants have a moral code?

My best regards and wishes,

Bob Skiles

Dear Bob, 

For me your opinion was very interesting.

Thank you

Helena

Dear Bob,

Well said, indeed morality is a character of good virtue that has to be built. 

Dear Dejenie, Roland, Hanno, Bob  et al,  

I think this was an interesting question that gave rise to  different  philosophers  .

I thank you all, because these answers made me look into the matter, which is a very good sign.

Helena

Dear All:

I think this question involves a linked dimension to human moral structure and another aspect linked to moral motivation.

According to Schopenhauer, from the point of view of human nature, morality is linked to the size emotional or sensory of our nature and there is no basis in rationality for moral behavior. As regards the point of view of motivation, also the motivation for moral action is no 'boring duty' but a natural and intuitive impulse called compassion. The compassion is not, however, a clean feeling. It seems to contain relevant attitudinal elements such as identification with each other and the suffering of others. With regard to morality, Virginia Held states that moralities built around the image of rational, autonomous and independent individuals largely ignore human dependence and morality by which it calls. But, how to recognize the limits of this proposal and the very limits of full expression of actions with genuine moral value?

Best Regards,

Andréa

A taxonomy of moral emotions 

• Other-condemning (Contempt, Anger, Disgust)

• Self-conscious (Shame, Embarrassment, Guilt)

• Other-Suffering (Compassion)

• Other-Praising (Gratitude, Elevation)

http://www.cc.gatech.edu/~alanwags/pubs/IEEE-ethicsv17.pdf

Dear Andrea,

In the late-60s I read Freud and I was somewhat impressed that he might have some understanding about human behavior, then along about 1970, I read Schopenhauer and was quite impressed that this genius might be onto something with his musings about malevolent metaphysical matrices ... but along about 1976 (along about the same time that the cobwebs from the early 70s had finally cleared from my brain, and the blinders of religiosity installed by society had fallen from my eyes), I picked-up a simple little book entitled The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins, which demonstrated straight-forwardly, through elegant but irrefutable examples using analogy of human-to-animal behaviors, that both Freud and Schopenhauer had missed-the-boat (by a mile) when it came to their understandings and explanations of the motivations of human behavior (particularly as regards sexual, or "moral" behaviors). I am still convinced, to this day, though socio-biologists and the whole field of sociobiology has come-in for quite-a-bit of undue grief and disfavor (mostly unearned, in my opinion) that no one else has offered a better or more compelling explanation of altruistic behavior than they.

So, I beg of you, please ... puh-leeeee-aaaaaaaazzzzzzz do not cite Schopenhauer to me (*hee*hee*)!

I highly recommend Dawkins' post-70s work (it is abundant), too ... like a good vintage, or Scotch, he just seems to get better-and-better with age ;)

Best regards,

Bob Skiles 

Hello Bob, Helena, Roland and all, this part about elephants is interesting and it shows that even animals have compassion, and the compassion and love may be biological instincts.  For some humor, have a look:

"Elephants give new meaning to the phrase “it takes a village to raise a child.” The baby ends up with an entire herd of mothers, all of whom take turns watching over each other’s children. The term for these other female elephants is “allmothers” and they help ensure the newborn's survival by taking the load off of its mother. It frees her up to rejuvenate and obtain enough sustenance to provide milk for her child. After carrying a nearly 300 pound baby for 22 months you’d probably need some time off, too! "

https://www.thedodo.com/community/benkerns/fellows-pitch-7-surprising-way-670651718.html

Dear Roland,

I don’t always see that children take care of aged parents so willingly.  In fact, I see that many do not do this.  For some of us, we have been trained through hard work to get tougher and be able to take on this challenge.  For myself, the tasks it involved were more exhausting than to do a PhD. And then when my aunt passed away despite the hard work, it take a long while for the grief to subside, even when I realized that she's no longer having to experience the joint pains and other pains of being old.  And that she has eternal rest in paradise because of her great faith.  But I had to do the caring because many other relatives had to leave home to fulfill career responsibilities.  And I pressed on, keeping myself strong and motivated to do this task.  But I often wondered if I could do it without the support of my church friends.  (We just know what duty we must do, and just do it as well as possible.)

They also depend on one's financial, physical, emotional and experiential capacity to behave and act. 

The tears of the crocodile. How to define moral laws for someone that is born as a (symbolic) crocodile with biased phenotype?

Example

http://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-33476974

Moral laws and lazy behavior in the panda to be discussed?

For discussion?

The panda is the symbol of WWF.

To protect biodiversity, is a moral law to take variation in speed of life across organisms/cultures/.... into account?

Can moral be judged just by looking at behavior without taking underlying mechanisms into account?

It is coming from both reasoning and compassion, while the exact mixture is analogous to the ethnicity of each person. Other natioanlities are cooler (more reason), other are warmer (more compassion). 

Trying to be a little provocative, I could say that Moral behavior could be under “an epigenetic control” in the life span of the human being for few generations. Feelings and emotional potential, education, linguistic and speech influences, society’s historical data, are apparently “critical signals” of an output moral behavior (the phenotype) at personal or social level.

Asking what is Moral in Middle Ages or in the Renaissance can provide a completely different answer. We could say the same in the 19th and 20th centuries. Moral behaviors and actions depend severely on communication data and social events that establish a “Selective Social System” – reflecting the logical reasoning of the momentum.  In our days of general globalization even at the level of prestigious Scientific Societies – which should normally be characterized by a strong Moral Sense – which is not obvious, only the differentiation at the personal level provides a vital resource of Morality. Moral behaviors are more visual in societies where the real sense of life is still alive like altruism and compassion.  That suggest that “social events” may suppress (or promote) Moral behavior in the life span of the human being for few generations because being or not being Moral could be a “selection social process”.  Hopefully, only societies that have promoted and addressed at the personal and social level the importance and the philosophical aspect of Morality have and continue to influence the world. 

I agree with Vassilis.

Dear All

I agree with the response of Mohamed El Naschi

Dear Vassilis,

You make some very good points, and at the risk of sounding like a parrot (viz: Ankur Sharma's "I agree with Vassilis"), I agree, too.

Already, here in the U.S. (and I understand from the Internet browsing, in other places, as well), we see harbingers of the future INSTANTANEOUS TECHNOLOGICAL arbitrators of morality ... in the so-called social-media ... which are rapidly evolving into instantaneous tribunals-of-morality, that immediately declare a mass opinion on everything that falls into public view that is deemed worthy of notice. I have already noticed friends and colleagues (particularly the younger ones, who seem more susceptible to peer pressure, and are not so set-in-their-ways) modifying some aspect of their own behaviors to suit opinions expressed on social-media about what may be right-or-wrong (morally / socially / politically / financially / sexually /otherwise ) about some behavior in some other persons' lives that was either lauded or condemned on social-media.

I believe we are at great (moral) risk from social-media, in the sense that it ultimately (and perhaps very quickly in certain countries) may evolve from an innocuous forum for shouting opinions like "look at me and how great I am," or "look at what that damned idiot did, he ought to be jailed for that,"  into actual morality courts where a video snippet of YOUR behavior may be posted-up by anyone for public judgment, and then you will be handed a FINE or JAIL SENTENCE by an online JURY of your peers!

Regards,

Bob Skiles

Honorable Dr. El Naschie,

I would most happily receive your dis-proof of Dawkins' premise concerning the primal encoding of the gene being a simple or egoistic one of "replication."

Perhaps, if it is a lengthy document, you will do me (us ?) the favor of attaching it in a message to me, personally?

Most respectfully,

Bob Skiles

Morality is  essential to society as trust and credit are to businesses and economics! If trust and credit are  compromised or lost in businesses and in economic transactions then ultimately businesses will lose true existence and  economic structures will collapse as we have witnessed repeatedly.

Self propelled and generated orders are essential for systems to trust and depend in themselves and exist as a whole indefinitely. The same thing with morality, the absence of morality in society leads to lose of trust in activities of social structures  and hence the necessity of law to come to the defense of it,  since doing the right things is always an imperative and essential soul  for society  to continue to live collectively for the greater good. Such behaviors are acted and  enforced by people of high reasoning capabilities of rationalism with a well built culture of morality.

In fact it is a possibility that society can be devoid of morality and only law keeps it together.    

In the Catholic doctrine, logical reasoning and love are the same thing. But in other cultures or ideologies, it is possible logical reasoning without love, or love without logical reasoning.

Dear Colleagues,

I think that, in the stage of childhood, the instinct be the basis of the moral behavior, therefore moral behavior  tends to compassion and altruism during childhood because the instinct be the dominant on the mind during that stage, which means that, behavior and action decisively depend on compassion and altruism.

With the passage of time, and as a result of human interaction with the external environment, the moral behavior and action decisively will depend on logical reasoning, relatively.

Best Regards

only human can understand each other feelings, this is included in our instinct, being a social animal, humans are compelled to help each other, human has a fear that in near future he/she may fall in such a situation. they see that their senior are falling  ill, and then die, they need food , shelter and protection . All these compulsions leads to compassion and then  compassion leads to altruism, which is a helping behavior well defined by Organ, meckenze and Podoskoff etc

Without some consensual moral codes people would disregard each others' rights and welfare whenever their desires come into social conflict.

In the absence of personal standards and the exercise of self-regulatory influence, people would behave like weathervanes, constantly shifting direction to conform with whatever is expedient at a given moment. A shared morality is very important to the humane functioning of any society.

I completely agree with this answer. Most of the charity done today is a sham. Morality is a path to ascendency. I remember a story from the life of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh faith. He once reached a town during one of his famous travels where there lived a great land owner - Malik Bhago. As much as he was known to exploit his peasants, he was also known as a philanthropist who would revere the holy men who entered the town. He was known for his charitable disposition. There also lived in the same a poor peasant named Bhai Lalo, who was known for his straightforwardness, humility and honesty. When the Guru entered the town, Malik's servants came to greet him at the gates of the town and invited him on the lavish feast that Malik had prepared for him. The Guru, instead chose to live at Lalo's house and eat whatever simple food he had prepared. Infuriated, Malik called the Guru and asked him for his weird and insulting behaviour. The Guru asked both Malik Bhago and Bhai Lalo to get one loaf of bread each from their home. The bread was produced. To everyone's surprise, when the Guru squeezed both the breads in his hands, milk flowed from Lalo's bread and Blood from Malik Bhago's bread. The Guru said that he did not want to eat the bread that was made through sucking blood of people, but the bread that contained milk of humility and honesty. Most of the charity done today is Malik's charity. It is blood of the exploited served to people after dressing lavishly.

Dear Roland,

Dr. Rajendra Gupta is a very wise man ... thank you for sharing his words with us.

My respects,

Bob Skiles

Dear Roland,

Dr. Rajendra Gupta is a very wise man ... thank you for sharing his words with us.

My respects,

Bob Skiles

"Morality (from the Latin moralitas "manner, character, proper behavior") is the differentiation of intentions, decisions, and actions between those that are good or right and those that are bad or wrong. Morality can be a body of standards or principles derived from a code of conduct from a particular philosophy, religion, or culture, or it can derive from a standard that a person believes should be universal." (see link).

Moral behavior and action are depending partly on logical reasoning and partly on feeling of goodness or rightness.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Morality

Agents themselves are the causes of their actions; and they have to determine what characteristics an agent needs to have in order to be the sort of cause of an action to which responsibility can be attributed

“Biologists call the behavior altruism, when we help someone else at some cost to ourselves. If you think about it, altruism is the basis of all morality.”

--- John Horgan

 Epicurus’ On Nature book - Three different causal factors in human behaviour are 

Have a look in my new book (unfortunately only in German):

Klaus Wahl: Wie kommt die Moral in den Kopf? Von der Werteerziehung zur Persönlichkeitsförderung. Springer Spektrum 2015

[How does morality come into the head? From value education to personality development]... an interdisciplinary review of research on the causes of moral.

http://www.springer.com/us/book/9783642554063

In a religion framework, altruism/compassion obviously depend on logical reasoning!

But what about a non-religion framework?

Dear Marcel,

interesting assignment, religion and  logical thinking but obscure logic in non-religion frameworks.

Dear Hanno,

Just to add some elements: People memorize texts of religious books to apply them during daily life. To me, this is based on logical thinking. On the other hand, people (e.g. young children, todlers) also instinctively know what is 'good' versus 'bad' without requring a book to tell them what to to feel/do, or not? 

Dear Marcel,

to create personal behaviour by infinite repeating the same texts reminds me of indoctrination. For me following doctrines doesn´t appear as logical behaviour.

Roland:

I'm responding from what I've taught as a Catholic. Our Catechism #1951 teaches

" All law finds its first and ultimate truth in the eternal law. Law is declared and established by reason as a participation in the providence of the living God, Creator and Redeemer of all. "Such an ordinance of reason is what one calls law..."

Dear Roland,

Many have spoken, and spoken well, about the source of morality ... in the past, how the basis for the teaching of the basic precepts of morality, the education of a moral person, building upon the natural-born animal compassion within each human child as a starting point, in this moral instruction these precepts have generally been taken from the various religious philosophies around the world. But, nowadays, in today's technological world, I see our youth taking their moral instruction, not from the traditional sources, but from the opinions of one another, as expressed through the so-called social-media, the use of which so many seem ADDICTED to, in a very compulsive and harmful degree. Social-media effects a "social tyranny of the majority opinion" against which one who may have a countervailing viewpoint has no effective voice, but is seemingly always shouted-down or ostracized. Children, adolescents, and young adults, those particularly susceptible to peer-pressure, are defenseless, and left helpless in having an opportunity to develop independent thinking.

As a good example, examine the postings of the average teenage American girls on Facebook, specifically as to the requirements of being trendy enough to be acceptable within this community. I am reminded of the strict dress codes of the Pilgrims of New England, and "God help the witch" who may not comply, for she is immediately "burnt at the stake" of public opinion by her peers in this latter-day community of Salem, who seem to cling as firmly to, and ENFORCE as harshly, their rigid dress codes (albeit transitory and ever-changing, as commercial interests compete and dictate, nevertheless, just as well-defined while in its brief existence).

How will traditional institutions of moral instruction (religions, churches) ever compete against this? My answer is, they won't. They have lost already, before even trying, the battle was never even truly realized, much less joined! As far as traditional institutions of religious-moral instruction are concerned, I believe the majority of Generations X Y & Z + (all born after advent of the Internet) are lost to them.

So, when I say that "social-media [just as a universal world government it tends to yearn toward and support] bears huge risks for individual and religious freedoms" I do not say this lightly, or without many years of having contemplated and anticipated the problem.

Best regards,

Bob Skiles

All these new phenomena occur at such short time frames. What will it be in 100 years from now?

My Dear Marcel,

Are you not an aficionado of Arnold Schwarzenegger's Terminator series of movies? He kept coming-back [most famous repeated line from all of them: "I'll be back!"] to provide an answer to your question. 

At the pace of artificial intelligence research, the robots will likely exterminate us (humans) as an annoying INFECTION by the time 100 years has elapsed!

ahahahahahahhahahahhahah (

But first you need enough energy/nature to keep all this artificial stuff running, or not?

What will be the (moral) energy providers in 100 years from now? Humans, not robots? 

Dear Marcel,

There is no scientific reason to support the belief that machines cannot become self-replicating and energy-self-sufficient, consequently, shall have a need for humans (or any of their systems of morality), or "nature" to support them, in the future. In fact, quite the contrary. Beyond a certain point in their development, the economics of the situation will surely lead to the realization by "intelligent" machines, that humans, and perhaps all-of-nature, are superfluous (or, worse, in the case of remarkably clever and aggressive humans, may actually pose an ongoing threat, or at the very least a danger to [viz: pollution] or drain on resources), and should be "exterminated" for efficiency sake, in the saving of resources. Machines are already approaching becoming as adaptable and efficient in the use of radiating energy sources (solar, geothermal) as biological entities, and are certainly more so for radioactive sources (less or no shielding required, and no cancer, etc) thus, may soon gain the upper-hand, in those arenas, not only for the earth's surface, but beneath it, in the oceans, and certainly in outer space.

Best regards,

Bob Skiles

PS - of course, we (human software developers) have already sought to "program" codes-of-morality into our creations of artificial intelligence ... if you look at it in one light, every time we write a string of code for a robot we effectively play the role of a little god writing a moral law for a new Adam ... so far (as far as I know) we have not succeeded (completely, successfully) in giving any of our new Adams a complete and autonomous "free will" of his very own (together with the ability to maintain and replicate himself). But ... the day will come ... and, all too soon ...

I believe personal perceptions and beliefs superimposed by situations and societal regulations or controls or pressures are responsible.

While all of us are different, is it right for us to impose or legislate our own morals on others? People have the right to choose their own paths while they are living on this planet and if they want to live in a hole in the ground it would then be wrong for me (immoral) to take them out of that place and force them to live in a house assuming that they are competent.

How many times does society have to pay for someone to receive treatment, or allow them to smoke when we know that smoking probably (not all smokers get cancer and some who do not smoke get it) causes health issues?

I have the luxury of having a job, a home and the cognitive ability to read and write and with that , I use those skills everyday 

The only universal moral can be 'to do no harm'.

@Ankur,

but some times you must do harm to prevent more harm.

Dear Hanno

If the universal moral is universally followed, there will be no harm. In practical situations also, you just have to stop the person from doing the harm, not harm him.

Dear Brenda,

Some examples of "doing harm to stop greater harm" are the vast destruction and death required by wars, such as WWII to stop Hitler's evil, and we were reminded by the recent anniversary of the harmful bombing of Kosovo necessary to stop the horrendous genocide, there.

Bob Skiles

Dear Ankur,

harming doesn´t mean killing, but stop somebody, ashame, give disadvantage.

Dear Brenda, dear Bob,

I knew the typical reactions. I will give you some examples. 

Someone is kidnapping your child.

Someone is assaulting your wife.

Someone is starting a war of conquest against your country.

Someone is cracking and burning your home.

......

In all cases your are arguing, not to harm.

And I knew, national socialism would be cited. Its a pity.

PS: I nearly died by hunger and illness because of Hitler and his NS.

Dear Hanno,

If you stand-by and watch a man murder another, and you could have prevented it if you had taken action, even if your action MIGHT cause the death of the would-be murderer (for example, sneaking-up and hitting him in the head with a club before he could act to do the murder), then are you not, also, just as guilty of the murder, IF it occurs without your action?

Isn't it a moral equivalent (but simply on a larger collective scale) for a nation, with the issues of genocide and war?

Regards,

Bob Skiles

Yes dear Bob,

here we have the central problem for interaction. I think I would react by intervention (emotionally) by my education. Time could be lost. And to be true, I would not think about national purposes. I cannot hear it anymore.

BTW, I am really hurt to be connected to nazi regime. 

Dear Brenda, Hanno, Skiles,

The examples and arguments you gave are really nice and I completely agree with them. I do acknowledge that I would have taken to force in some such situations. I would also harm someone or the dependence while  stopping someone from doing harm.

I can't understand morality if that is the case. However, horrendous crimes that you talk about come from a society that has not stopped the wrong elements at the right time. My other question would be that is it right that we give up on morals because building that right society is a difficult task. Can we call such a task impossible, just because the 'harming' way seems easier than the 'changing' way.  Can we not take building such a society as an ideal... as we write and talk about morals and other high things..Teachers and professors have done it in the past..

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yclCwLraFAQ

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chanakya

Dearest Hanno,

My words were never meant to associate you with the National Socialists, nor even to remind you of them, and certainly not to bring back painful personal memories, but we MORAL human beings are comprised of our memories, and we cannot risk forgetting, no matter how painful it may be to us, personally. I am not quite old enough to have experienced the anguish of WWII, personally, being a post-war celebration baby, but many of my uncles and other kin-folk served in the European theaters of war (as well as the Pacific), and several died and their mortal remains are buried there, in France, and at other points, still unknown. So, though my experience is not as personal as yours, the horrors of war were deeply embedded into me as a child, as deeply engrained as the patterns in a piece of well-polished wood, by the many stories I heard at the knees of my grandfathers growing-up, as my uncles would relate the details of their experiences, what they had gone-through in battles, and the inadvertent horrors they witnessed perpetrated upon innocent civilians by indiscriminate bombings, over which they had no control, but for which they still felt a sense of personal guilt and lasting remorse. Here in my state of Texas, were the bases and camps where the majority of young men who went away to fight in WWII were given their military training ... and Texas contributed a hugely disproportionate share of its young men to that war ... and all my professional life (as an historian and archaeologist) I have spent working with these sites, and with the veterans ... interviewing the veterans, now, for 40+ years, and mining-the-archives to supplement and document their oral accounts.  

So, it may be said, that I have a rather good perception of the deep feelings, yes, the hurt, that is brought forward, when those times are forced into the fore-front of the memory of one who lived through them. For that, dearest Hanno, I am sorry ... sorry, that you have to feel such anguish ... but, in so many ways, it is good that you do feel pain, for it means that you survived it all ... you, the moral man, your moral core, survived intact.

I have read that one cannot truly appreciate the joys of life unless one has first suffered its adversities, and the heights of appreciation are limited only by the severity of the suffering one has experienced. As I approach nearer to the end of this life, I begin more-and-more to understand the truth in those words. So, in that light, perhaps, you can re-evaluate the suffering you experienced, and realize that from it, perhaps, you have gained a better appreciation of the life you now enjoy?

My best regards, and wishes for many bright and pleasant tomorrows,

Bob Skiles

Yes dear Markovic,

its a pity. But we should not be to conservative.

Human behavior flows from three main sources: desire, emotion, and knowledge.

--- Plato

Morality is morality! Some moral values changes through history of society, even some religions adapts to the challenges of Globalization.

Hello Roland Iosif Moraru, you wrote:

"I mean that it is (reasoned-moral)action in which this extra level of conscious control, the deliberate regulation by rational principles, is exercised."

"To be a moral person is about being able to be motivated to do what you have to do because you totally believe you have to do it. And that requires, obviously, reason."

These two comments support moral relativism and that moral behaviour is tied to individual-difference and normative influences. Thus morality is learned behaviour and individuals will have a slightly different concept of what moral action is. Moreover, I do agree that morality is built into our overall evaluation of circumstance, our decision making processes and the actions that result. For example, driving safely so as not to injure other people, choosing to respect local recycling programs, helping someone who is lost or cutting the elderly neighbour's lawn, these and other similar undertakings are all decision/actions (that require extra effort in some cases) based on moral reasoning both conscious and unconscious. 

Daryn

Norms are rules or principles (implicit or explicit) that are understood by a group guides and constrain behavior without the force of laws to generate proper and acceptable conduct. 

Hello Krishnan Umachandran

Moral behaviour and action have both a personal and cultural component. Morality is learned and part of the learning process or experience is environmental and therefore cultural and normal or "mutually understood, implicitly & explicitly" within societies. For example, if I cut my elderly neighbour's law, the reason for my action is mutually understood by all neighbours.

Based on the comments above consider: If there is a similarity between morality and science, then perhaps morality already exists and we are simply discovering or expending its application over time (every culture does so at their own pace for various reasons)...I think the idea is similar to Ljubomir Jacić comments, "morality is".....