Morality

       

 At roughly 2.10pm, a discussion organized by Mr Tim Bunn started at the second floor of P. Bistro, a cosy café located at 142 Owen Road. Among those who attended were roughly 30 interested people from all backgrounds; lawyers, students and especially, philosophy enthusiasts all interested in an afternoon of intellectual conversation. It was my first experience and a rewarding one at that. I arrived at 1.55pm and made my way into an empty looking café, unsure of what to expect. I had earlier on seen a waitress inviting an Indian gentleman into the café but when I entered he was nowhere to be seen. So, I joined three others queuing at the counter in hope of asking the receptionist about the meetup. The first two teenagers looked to be about my age and they were just about to leave. As they left, I overheard the receptionist telling them, “I will send your orders upstairs!” So, I concluded that the discussion would take place upstairs. The door to the café opened and an older white gentleman came in, looking important yet somehow casual. Later on, I found out he is Mr Tim Bunn himself! I ordered an ice Mocha ($7.06) and after being told my beverage would be sent upstairs, I made my way up. The man queuing in front of me was the first person I approached, Zhen Quan a lawyer, and I asked him what I should expect. So, here is how the discussion would usually unfold.

An open discussion between all attendees will ensure. Tim will give an opening monologue before asking for an introduction of all attendees. He will then proceed to ask for objectives for the discussion and what we want to find out and he will ask to be given a yes/no question about the topic. The discussion will start and then end with the same yes/no question and a voting to that question will occur. Depending on the arguments portrayed in the discussion, we will cast our votes to a yes or a no.

I sat in between Jervais, a web designer with “too much free time” and Zhen Quan, a lawyer who wishes to “know if lawyers can be ethical”. Comparatively, I felt inferior to them but lest I was kept assured that when we are discussing opinions, we are on non-discriminatory lines and having a diverse view on the topic might add a different dimension to the argument. Chris, an expat, opened up the discussion with a question.

Does society define what is ethical and what is unethical? Ethics is about how society defines it. It is a cultural agreement imposed in different jurisdiction based on the society’s needs. For example, huge inequity between aristocrats and factory workers in pre-Soviet Union led to Communism being the preferred choice of system during the early Soviet era even though limitations to the system is obvious, such as Capitalistic freedom. The city population was generally contented with the ideology of Communistic laws. The same thing happens during major revolutions which changed the way states were run, such as the French Revolution. However, those who do not belong to the jurisdiction might not feel the same way because things are run differently where they live. Life may be easier, smoother or special. Thus, they have different priorities and the laws they want imposed might be more lenient or different. Society thus imposes a set of ethics to their localized population. (A more concrete point pointed out was how certain countries have more gun violence, robberies etc and the people may feel normal with that amount of violence and how there exists cannibalistic tribes around the world). Another way to look at morality is the principle of “I hurt you, you hurt me.”

At this point there was a flurry of arguments between Chris and Krishin, the intellectual looking gentleman I saw earlier on in his tweed jacket. Tim intervened and tried to get the topic back on track.

What is morality? And how does morality come about? Three explanations were voiced out on the origin of morality. One, God created morality. Two, morality comes from our rational and self-defined judgment. Three, a dominant winning side enforces what is right and wrong. Later on Points Two and Three were reorganized into a new point, Survivability.

 At this point in time, I had formulated my first question. If rationality is the arbiter of morality, does that mean that the less educated perceive lesser “morality” than the more educated? However, before this there is another question which needs to be answered.

Does morality exist in the first place? For morality to exist, a realist would point out that if we are to scrutinize a person or an action we could see “badness” in them. For a dreamer, on the other hand, they would say that morality is a conception of the mind, just like numbers, in order for us to obtain answers to questions we cannot answer. A test to prove morality exists is to eradicate the human population and see if morality still exists in this world. Without the human population, us as the arbiters (indecisive as we are in our views), the world still will live on. The animal kingdom still thrives in their cycles of evolution and natural disasters still occur intermittently. But generally, the world will be balanced because the world can recover without our involvement. However, in the animal kingdom, we can still find various degrees of morality. A more developed organism appears to have a higher degree of morality than less developed ones. For example, a jellyfish thinks less of its family or habitat than a monkey. Fishes appear simply to exist but a monkey is able to reciprocate feelings. Love, care, hurt and giving protection. But simplicity of an organism may not be the reason for altruism. An example would be ants. They are really small, simple organisms but they are highly sociable and literally live for their respective nests. Wolves on the other hand, are highly unsociable who are aggressive in fulfilling their personal needs. So, do morality exist? That question would be put aside till the end of the discussion.

The discussion then moved on towards the source for “morality.”

The argument that God created morality or what is right and wrong is based on the fact that we have an almost innate feeling to know what is right and wrong. For example when someone steals, everyone in the world will know that that action is wrong even when these people do not generally meet one another. The act of killing itself is portrayed as bad. The intention behind the killing however, may be different. The most commonly used law system, The Common Law, have a Latin phrase to justify a person’s criminal liability. Maxim Actus Non Facit Mens Sit Rea. A Guilty Act is not criminally liable unless it was accompanied with the Guilty Mind. This proves that the action (of killing or stealing etc) itself is undeniably wrong, although the intention may not be. Thus, the unexplained instinct to know the right and wrong could only be God’s Will.

The second hypothetical source for morality, Self-Creation of morality can be explained together with the third, enforcement of morality over another person. They are due to survival instincts. In this line of reasoning, we are all genetic creatures intent of being infinite or immortal. All we ever really want to do is to ensure our genes survive and not die out. We want to reproduce. So, we understand that to another thinking being, we do not want bad things to happen to us, so we do not do the same thing to another. It is not altruistic behavior really, because we expect something in return. We expect reciprocation; either similarly or equivalently. We believe in a God who would reward for the good things we do and punish for the bad things we do. This, in this theory, imagines God as a self-constructed entity which serves as a survival function. We believe in Karma and we extrapolate and spread this concept to vast ends of the Earth to ensure people believe in Karma or a God and thus people abide by rules to mutually benefit each other’s survivability.  That is why another group of people might have these accorded rules to “survive”, otherwise known as morality and when they find another group of people who have their own sets of rules for survivability, they do not agree and will fight. The winner would justify their “morality” over the other. Some might argue that we do make decisions which are altruistic. For example, I may donate blood for those who need it. Here is the crux to this theory. It depends on the person’s idea of their own “people”. More people are willing to donate blood or organs to the people they know like relatives but even less would do so to strangers. And even less to strangers from another country. A person is more willing to defend their home country than defend in a war in another country unless they feel they have a genetic relation or possible genetic relation to the people they are defending.

A person spoke up at this point in time and asked about competing ethics in an action.

 For example, should a mother rob a bank to save her starving children? The answer to this is irrevocably intertwined with the origin of morality. It depends if the mother places her children above her society or vice versa. Will the mother care about what her children will think of her? What sort of values will the children adopt from society and would it justify the mother’s action? It will be the mother’s choice or sense of morality in the end that matters.  Some attendees argued that the mother's choice is actually dependent on entirely different grounds. It depends on 3 values which the mother cares about. Psychological, physical or emotional. (I did not quite catch the reasons behind the three values though.

The discussion then turned towards morality progressing.

 Have morality progressed? For example, there are a greater emphasis for equal treatment of women and other coloured races. Is it because we became more moral that we treated them more equally? Or is the case really that we already know how to treat people equally but it is because we did not define women or other races as human, therefore we treated them inhumanely?

At the end of the discussion,because it was close to 4.30pm already, Mr Tim Dunn asked his final question. Who agrees that morality exists? Half of those attended chose Yes.

The discussion above is a general transcript I have managed to write and remember from the meeting. Frankly speaking, I was more engrossed with the arguments than taking note, thus I have missed a fairly large amount of content. I have tried rearranging some bits of arguments into a more understandable structure because they were all over the place. These are not my arguments nor viewpoint. Of course, morality is a much larger and bigger topic. I had read the opening chapter of “The Selfish Gene” by Richard Dawkins and I think his arguments and research to explain morality is more compelling.