When should immoral behaviors be illegal?

[WAB]

Toddlers (and I've raised two) are most definitely born with the concept of 'mine'. What they don't understand is the concept of 'right' - which has to be learned - and the concept of reciprocity. The concept of 'right' has its negative/opposite built in: If I can claim that something is mine, than I must understand and grant to anyone else the 'right' to claim something as 'theirs'.

OK.

Toddlers have to be taught that the claim to property (mine!) is reciprocal, and can only function under the law of reciprocity: If I can claim something as 'mine', I have to be willing to allow every other individual the right to claim something as 'his/hers'. The concept of property cannot and does not function without the concept of reciprocity.

OK.

NOTE: in advanced societies, no one can claim property without earning it. (Toddlers are not up to this level). Goals are achieved and earned at the expenditure of energy, and those who are able-bodied and of sound, adult mind, who are unwilling to expend energy, are therefore not entitled to a claim to property, unless said property has been inherited, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

Really, WilliamB? There are so many holes here, anyone could drive a truck through it. Don't post while drunk!

Spinoza, and even Ayn Rand, have said this far better than I can.

Of course they did, because you're an idiot.

 

[Bomb#20]

It could also be argued that the socialization process is integral to brain development and without it, behavior coded by DNA would never appear.

That's true too. "Nature through nurture" replaces "nature or nurture".

If you have more evidence that humans are good by nature and not by social forces, I would be interested to see it.

Among the items on Donald Brown's list of anthropological characteristics for which there are no known exceptions across all societies:

actions under self-control distinguished from those not under control

distinguishing right and wrong

economic inequalities

economic inequalities, consciousness of

fairness (equity), concept of

food sharing

generosity admired

gift giving

healing the sick (or attempting to)

hospitality

incest between mother and son unthinkable or tabooed

inheritance rules

judging others

law (rights and obligations)

law (rules of membership)

males more prone to theft

moral sentiments

moral sentiments, limited effective range of

murder proscribed

promise

property

rape proscribed

reciprocal exchanges (0f labor, goods, or services)

reciprocity, negative (revenge, retaliation)

redress of wrongs

resistance to abuse of power, to dominance

sanctions for crimes against the collectivity

sanctions include removal from the social unit

semantic category of giving

sexual modesty

sexual regulation

sexual regulation includes incest prevention

shame

stinginess, disapproval of

taboos

tabooed foods

tabooed utterances

territoriality

trade

turn-taking

violence, some forms of proscribed

If morality were purely cultural, for most of the stuff on that list wouldn't there be a society somewhere that didn't go in for it?

Also, lots of other primates display moral behavior. It's well documented in "Good Natured", by Frans de Waal. To suppose that a moral sense is not grown but only learned is to suppose that lemurs and monkeys and apes evolved progressively more sophisticated moral instincts, and then hominid ancestors lost them, and then all human cultures reinvented them by social evolution. It's unparsimonious.

Also, some aspects of human morality don't make any sense from an individual perspective. So if a culture tried to teach them it's not clear how it could motivate its members. Punishment, for example. It's in your best interests to leave the dangerous policing of other people's morals to somebody else. Yet people experience a powerful emotional drive to hurt those who break the rules, even when it gets them in a fight they might lose. That only makes sense from a genetic perspective -- when the genes for morality aren't uniform through the whole population, the urge to punish wrongdoers is often the suppression of competing alleles to your own. So if you get hurt beating up a bad guy the gene that makes you do it is in your cousins too, so it still wins.

It is a tempting idea, in that it does relieve us of some responsibility for our behavior, which some people might find comforting.

The idea that it's purely cultural can be equally tempting in the same way. "It's not my fault that I'm so evil. It's society, society." If we decide identifying causes relieves us of responsibility, a cause is a cause.

 

[Bronzeage]

It's an interesting list. It reminds me of the book, Everything I Ever Needed to Know, I Learned in Kindergarten.

I find this statement

If morality were purely cultural, for most of the stuff on that list wouldn't there be a society somewhere that didn't go in for it?

comes up often in this kind of discussion. Morality is found in all human cultures, therefore it must be something humans are born with. Of course, without culture or society, we would not need any morality, the question becomes, why do we need it, if we are going to have culture and society.

I once talked to a professor who taught a course in developmental psychology. She said a lot of data has been collected from cases of severe child abuse, instances where infants were isolated from human contact from birth, until discovered by a responsible adult. We are talking about children who were kept in closets for years, and the such. It's a horrible thought, but it was the only information on what social deprivation does to the developing brain. These children are for all practical purposes, brain damaged and unable to function in normal human society.

I don't see Donald Brown's list as evidence that humans are good by nature and not social pressure. Of course all societies have these characteristics, because these all deal with the problems of humans living in close proximity. We deal with this by necessity, not because it's in the structure of our brain. To neglect any of these items would weaken the group. If it were by nature, human cultures would be more like bee hives, where every cell in the honeycomb has six sides.

Every human society faces the same problems of feeding, breeding, and remaining alive, but the environment dictates the available solutions. This gives a great diversity to human culture. Bees all over the world make honeycomb with six sided cells.

 

[Kharakov]

NOTE: in advanced societies, no one can claim property without earning it. (Toddlers are not up to this level). Goals are achieved and earned at the expenditure of energy, and those who are able-bodied and of sound, adult mind, who are unwilling to expend energy, are therefore not entitled to a claim to property, unless said property has been inherited, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

It's a matter of luck. Property ownership is not gained through hard work alone- it is gained by being in the right situation at the right time. This includes being lucky enough to have the intelligence to capitalize on the situation, and the willpower and emotional stability to do so as well.

Ultimately, property should lie in the hands of those that will create the most benefit from the property. Although in a situation in which property is not scarce, people should have access to whatever they enjoy, as long as they are not trashing it.

Mentioning trash..

I've seen trashy cities, and clean cities. I've seen the shitty attitude that comes along with a trashy city. I was walking through a neighborhood with a friend, and commented on the fact that empty lots near certain houses were not mowed. He said "Why the fuck would they want to mow them? I wouldn't do it. It's someone else's fucking responsibility, I think the city does it every once in a while".

I told him, fuck that shit, if you have time to drink, play video games, and watch movies, you've got time to mow for 20-30 minutes a week. I was thinking that if everyone in these neighborhoods just put a little effort into keeping things nice, they would be nice.

Then again, I know assholes who throw shit out their car windows, and just don't give a shit, because someone good will come along and take care of it (or they just don't give a shit in general).

 

[WAB]

NOTE: in advanced societies, no one can claim property without earning it. (Toddlers are not up to this level). Goals are achieved and earned at the expenditure of energy, and those who are able-bodied and of sound, adult mind, who are unwilling to expend energy, are therefore not entitled to a claim to property, unless said property has been inherited, which is a whole 'nother can of worms.

It's a matter of luck. Property ownership is not gained through hard work alone- it is gained by being in the right situation at the right time. This includes being lucky enough to have the intelligence to capitalize on the situation, and the willpower and emotional stability to do so as well.

Ultimately, property should lie in the hands of those that will create the most benefit from the property. Although in a situation in which property is not scarce, people should have access to whatever they enjoy, as long as they are not trashing it.

Mentioning trash..

I've seen trashy cities, and clean cities. I've seen the shitty attitude that comes along with a trashy city. I was walking through a neighborhood with a friend, and commented on the fact that empty lots near certain houses were not mowed. He said "Why the fuck would they want to mow them? I wouldn't do it. It's someone else's fucking responsibility, I think the city does it every once in a while".

I told him, fuck that shit, if you have time to drink, play video games, and watch movies, you've got time to mow for 20-30 minutes a week. I was thinking that if everyone in these neighborhoods just put a little effort into keeping things nice, they would be nice.

Then again, I know assholes who throw shit out their car windows, and just don't give a shit, because someone good will come along and take care of it (or they just don't give a shit in general).

I agree with you.

As you probably noted, I typed the paragraph that you quoted and then spanked myself the following day for typing it, because it was rather silly and not very well thought out.

I failed to think of various ways people are able to make a claim to property: marriage being the biggest one. Then it occurred to me: what about gift-giving? If I give someone a gift, do they not have the right, then, to claim that item as property? Of course they do! The difference here being that, normally when we talk about property we're talking about something earned by personal effort, work, or something inherited, or something obtained by some kind of legal/social contract, like marriage; but a gift doesn't have to be earned, and yet it can be claimed as property.

Which brings me to another major issue: Charity, donations, gift-giving, alms, helping the poor, etc.: all these things should be done voluntarily, out of our good will. Forced charity isn't charity, it's theft. I don't think it should be legal to force a person to 'donate to the poor' by way of parting with what they've legally earned.

Hence the difference between legality and morality, in my view, of course: While I don't think it should ever be legal to force a person to be charitable (read: taxed inordinately), I don't think there's anything stopping a 'good' person from reminding those with vast amounts of wealth that there's a lot of 'good' they can put some of their money to, voluntarily, should they be so inclined. ie: I think it's moral to encourage people to be charitable, and that being charitable is moral. As long as we remember that true charity comes from kindness, generosity, and compassion, not guilt or some other form of coercion.

You wrote:

Then again, I know assholes who throw shit out their car windows, and just don't give a shit, because someone good will come along and take care of it (or they just don't give a shit in general).

I know people who complain all the time about litter and pollution who have no problem throwing cigarette butts out of car windows. I don't know what's weirder, the bald-faced not-giving-a-shit or the hypocrisy? At least the former is honest about not giving a shit. ?