what do you think causes morality? is it something we learn? are we born with a set of morals? is morality subjective or objective? who decides that? what causes morals to change as we age? if you could ignore the fact that a human has many needs ranging from physical to social to emotional in their early developmental stage and all thereafter and said human grew up in complete isolation except for the knowledge that other humans existed with absolutely no interaction with them otherwise, do you think they would have any sort of feelings one way or another about them? would they care about one killing another? would they have some sort of sense of right or wrong? do animals have a base sense of morality? what do you qualify as a moral? is it an instinct not to perish that fuels a thought to form a decision on whether or not it's "fair" or "right" to do something all it is, or does it go deeper? i don't actually have many personal opinions on any of this, i just like to question things. i think about this stuff a lot late at night.
Let's just throw myself right into the big questions to get myself settled here. yes. Anyway...Morality is a very tough subject for me? I think that in a way there is most definitely some sort of "objective" morality. However what is objectively moral for some people might not be for others? Which is a very strange thing to think about. I don't know if I quite believe it and have it as part of my official cosmology yet, but ever since I learned about it from someone else I've taken to viewing reality as being a series of multiple "strips". My strip being a rebirth heavy one wherein beings like Guanyin and Lugh are both running about. Another might have an Islam strip. Both are strips are real. In mine reality has no definite starting point that we can find and there is no God. In the Islam strip there is definitely God and we definitely know how reality was made. In a Hellenistic polytheism strip the Greek creation myths apply as being how reality was made. I like this model mostly because it accounts nicely for how other people have very definitely real religious experiences that I do not and cannot account for. Which leads me to the sticky bit. The sticky bit being that, insofar as how karma works, there is indeed a sort of "objective morality" that I believe that I and others are beholden to (though how many others varies because not everyone has the Buddhism strips). These acts net this sort of karma, those acts net that sort of karma. So on and so forth. And the potential end point of this is the cessation of all karma. But the question is "Do I want that?" Is reality really so not worth it that I want to subscribe to Buddhist morality and virtues as I did for four years? I don't know. I am figuring that out and I probably will be for the rest of my life. I can't escape the laws of karma, but do I necessarily care about falling exactly in line with them? Because the Irish reconstructionist polytheist moral and virtue set is very, very different from Buddhism's. There's some common ground such as not lying and so on, but there's also a lot of differences. Boasting is virtuous in one path, and one of the worst things you can do in the other. Humility is the end all be all of one, and something to keep in check in the other. As far as the origin of my two competing moralities...With Buddhism it comes from the understanding of how reality works as interpreted by the Shakyamuni Buddha. Now while contextual rules were added for the Sangha, the monks and nuns, and for the laity over the years the basis of all Buddhist morality is considered to be objective fact. It is the Dhamma, the Law and Truth of all reality. It simply is. With the Irish thing...It's cultural? A lot of it would come from the Gods and Ungods I think. They taught us things. Other bits definitely come from ourselves though. A lot of those other bits because the Fair Folk most definitely do not operate under a human moral system. They are however honored and just, and you take them seriously and you respect them. There is also definitely subjective cultural stuff playing into my morality as well. Which may conflict with the "objective morality" set in place by the karma system and the Dhamma. Winning that game is very hard. It is very strict. Thank gods we have so many lives to live to get to it if we want! Animals as far as morals are concerned I think it varies? Other primates are very altruistic at times in a way that I would judge to be a sort of "morality" and being aware of one. And animals that are Fair Folk or gods are most definitely moral and aware of it. But animal animals it depends on species though by and large most don't seem to be? However regardless of their ability to comprehend morality they are bound to the exact same casual laws as we are. As is any other form of sentient being, whether it's a god or a ghost or a sentient AI (when we get around to those). All these beings are "living", regardless of whether or not they have a body. But which do I choose? I don't know. With Buddhism I scream at reality and reject it entirely. With Irish recon I scream at reality and then go and drink with it.
There cannot be an absolute morality. The OPs conditions invalidate the question. If you ignore the needs then morality doesn't matter because need is the driving force of all animals, even if the 'need' is only imagined or driven by biology. Is it moral to eat your neighbor when you are hungry? Is it moral to eat your neighbor when you are hungry and they are already dead from some other agency? Is it moral to steal food from your sibling? Most animals not-human will, and most humans will when hungry enough. Is it moral to make babies with your sibling? Many animals will, and some humans will when not threatened by laws. Morals, by definition, come from a belief in some outside force making rules. The fear of retribution for your acts is not "morality", it's just self-preservation, which is the main motivation of all animals.
Oh right that is a thing that I forgot to mention. All living beings have two primary drives within Buddhism. There is the drive of want and the drive of the Bhavanga. The Bhavanga being a sort of...stream of consciousness? The thing is that most living beings do not pay attention to the Bhavanga very much, which knows that there is an objective morality and knows that there is an objective end point (Dhamma and Nibbana respectively). Or they know about it but aren't tempered enough to keep on that. That is why you have to train yourself to listen to it. This is the only thing that I can consider a truly needs based drive that we have. Instead the main driving force of living beings tends to be want. Living beings seek pleasure and they seek to avoid pain. While we will tend to keep to biological needs unless we're fasting or something, those biological needs end up being affected by our wants a lot of the time. And even then am I avoiding hunger because I know that I have to or because I don't want to feel pain? I believe that it is the latter. I don't understand what I need. These wants are by and large what fuck us up. We are trapped in an illusion where we cling to the spectre of want and think of it as meaningful. We may tell ourselves that we know that desire is temporary and that everything is temporary, but for the most part we don't actually comprehend that fact. We don't understand reality. Even pleasure is just an especially subtle form of pain, but we don't get that. Want isn't entirely bad though. It's needed to drive one to actually listen to the Bhavanga and reach Nibbana. As an additional thing that I don't know where else to put, self preservation is again driven by want and attachment. As well as a mistaken belief that there is an Atman. The same is true for non-humans though they might not be able to comprehend that that's why they fear death. Death is an inevitability and there is nothing to fear about it. Or to like about it. If death is to be purposely avoided it's to learn Dhamma and teach Dhamma, at least from an objective standpoint. As far as those questions which I want to answer because that seems fun...It is immoral to eat your neighbor when hungry and this act will always accrue negative fruit as this is the act of killing. Killing is never permissible, hence the necessity for the community of monks and nuns. With an already dead neighbor the morality is a bit harder to work out and I haven't come across an absolute "No eating other people" thing in Buddhism. Given that it's socially unacceptable and would hurt other people if they knew it will likely create negative fruit though. It is immoral to steal or take what is not yours without permission no matter what your reason. While the specifics of the situation may end up affecting just how bad your negative fruit is you will receive a negative fruit. As far as incest goes that falls into sexual misconduct and is thus immoral, especially if it somehow ends up harming the development of said child you have. Indeed sex in general does absolutely nothing but cause problems karmically. It's just that some forms of sex cause more karmic problems than others. Again non-humans are not apart from this system. Of course no one has to agree with me that Dhamma is absolute. I do though and I think that I am stuck with it. So really if I think about it even if I do stick with the Irish thing in this life eventually I am going to end up Buddhist again and I am going to end up reaching Enlightenment. I'll be driven there eventually.
Ooooh, Buddhist morality. I don't know all that much about Buddhism, but I've studied it a bit and it's fascinating. *punts @Aondeug in the direction of this thread* Personally, I don't think that there's any objective "right" thing to do, but that there are objectively wrong things to do (generally involving lack of respect for consent, causing harm without informed consent, causing harm through negligent inaction, etcetera.) I realize that this doesn't make a ton of sense ontologically or epistemologically (see @Lissa Lysik'an's point), but it seems to work well enough as a kludge, and it gets you out of the "it's cultural" or "it's good in that culture, so you can't criticize" bullshit when brought up in defense of abuse. (along with objections to said behavior from within that culture, which are always good to look for and listen to) I also treat destruction of knowledge and beauty as, well... they're the closest thing to "sins" I have in my moral system, disproportionate to any harm done to people. They're just things that you Don't Do. I mean they do take a back seat to your obligation to other people in a crisis, but still... badwrongstuff. I'm uncomfortable with the idea that there are circumstances in which certain Bad Things are "justified" and thus become not-bad, but there are definitely circumstances where something bad may be your best option, and there are I situations where I would do something wrong and not regret it. (killing someone in defense of an innocent, for instance. killing is killing, but I don't think I'd regret it)
I think morality is objective to an extent: objective in broad outline if not in detail, objective for us as a species in particular cultural circumstances if not for all intelligent beings in all circumstances. I think the core of human morality is that the pain and pleasure, flourishing and diminishing of each of us matters, and that actions are better or worse depending upon the extent they cause pleasure and flourishing rather than pain and diminishing. I think it is objective because it arises out of the way we develop as children. We develop personalities by recognizing our parents/caretakers as like us, identifying with them, mimicking them, then separating ourselves from them. We learn language by mimicking, empathizing with them so much we try to become them. Human conversations are largely context dependent--we can convey a lot of meaning in a few words, even though those words have multiple potential meanings, because we model each other and our context in our heads, and so can send and pick up cues that pick out the intended meaning. Some empathy and at least a limited sense of commonality/equality is necessary for the trick to work. Empathy plus a sense of identification/commonality/equality yields a rough version of the golden rule. Being human, we then spend thousands of years elaborating it and arguing over the footnotes.
