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I believe that morality is a product of empathy.

Empathy is a moderating force that tends to inhibit (in most people) the worst of their possible behaviours without force of law becoming necessary.

A lack of belief in morality could be a consequence of a particular neurology, and a disconnection from empathy.

It must be very frightening to think that everyone is just a long arm away from behaving exactly as their id dictates, but I assure you that with most people, that just isn't the case.

As the quote says, law is needed where there is a failure of morality. Prisons are populated with sociopaths.

Well exactly, laws are there to make sure we don't disrupt each other and do things that are perceived to be against the common good, and they were likely created because we got fed up of the alternative. If humans truly had morality we wouldn't need laws to make sure we didn't start killing each other and rioting.

I've been supercharged with static electricity the past few days. Every time I touch something, ZAP. Doorknobs, door frames, my cat or dogs, zap zap zap. I know that everyone deals with this to some degree, but it's like Cartman in Bigger Longer & Uncut or something.

You overestimate how far reaching empathy is. Most people feel empathy for those close to them but not for anyone outside their circle of friends and family. Exceptions to this are in the minority.

Most people are, as you say, "just a long arm away" from doing whatever is in their self-interest (though I do find it funny you make reference to the outdated idea of the "id"), and the crowd mentality of riots brings this out in people very well indeed. Did you not see what London was like a few months ago? That's just one real life example. And the people in those London riots were not sociopaths, they were what our society classifies as normal people.

Furthermore, you appear to assume a lack of so-called "morality" means that you'll break the law. What nonsense. Rubbish sociopaths are in prison, good sociopaths stay on the right side of the law (or don't get caught when they swerve onto the wrong side) so that they can continue gaining power for themselves.

Finally, if you're trying to take a subversive jab at me personally, I'd like to remind you that I'm not a sociopath.

but humans aren't clones and some have more restraint to place morality over selfish impulses more than others. i dunno but i don't think that back in the day of humanity it would've been the norm' to do harm to other humans? i think i read once that we're one of the only species who harm each other for reasons beyond self-defence/preservation. not entirely sure if that's true because i don't know much about animals, but it sounds believable to me. maybe i've just read too much aristotle. i kind of didn't question the idea of morality too much because i didn't realise peoples minds worked so different to mine at the time.

out of curiousity, if there were no laws what would you personally do then?

oh and btw, what you said relating to lacking morality and breaking the law/prison is kind of irrelevant because not all laws are necessarily based on this notion of natural law/morality, most are just created by individual communites to help their society run smoother and have little relevance to any universal laws

Exactly, so why would you assume there's some universal idea of morality they all have?



It was as far as I know, members of rival tribes murdered each other all the time.



Cats also do this, but I think humans are meant to be the only "intelligent" creatures to do so, yes.



Build myself an underground safehouse and fill it with everything I could (a bunch of computers and TVs and of course food and water), then I'd get an internet connection and do the same thing I do now



True, but a lot of laws are related to "morality", such as laws saying we can't steal from others or assault them and so on.

Why am I listening to Madonna?

Speaking of immoral

I very carefully worded my statement so as to avoid making a personal jab.

Empathy and sociopathy happen to be subjects on my mind a lot of late. I thought perhaps it was a subject you were interested in, and you would be interested in my thoughts.

I think the id is still a useful concept... if you don't like it, well that's fashion!

Like I said in another post, empathic disconnection doesn't necessarily mean sociopathy. There are all sorts of situational reasons for empathic disconnection. Not everyone who falls foul of the law will be a sociopath.

Rioters aren't necessarily sociopathic, but they are emphatically disconnected from the people they harm with their actions. If someone steals a TV from Dixon's or whatever, they fail to feel the impact of the action, because empathy doesn't travel over distances in time or space very easily. In modern society, we can be more connected to everyone else informationally, technologically, economically, but empathy can't kept up.

In smaller societies, empathy has a more connected up and pervasive effect, in that everyone in a village would be in touch with everyone else on a personal and emotional level.

Here's an article that explains the concept of the 'monkeysphere':

http://www.cracked.com/article_14990_wh ... phere.html

Last edited by Moog on 14 Jan 2012, 4:22 pm, edited 3 times in total.

Good lord you're quick!

the majoirty of law is boring bureaucracy. especially in the more 'developed' countries. i think criminal law (stuff against individuals like you mentioned) is all that's supposedly based in nature

you wouldn't commit any crimes or do anything 'bad'? why?

i reckon the majority of criminals know what they're doing is wrong, but they decide to put their own interests first. so the morality still exists there, they just decide it would be more beneficial to ignore it. i can't imagine someone (beyond the crazies) stabbing another human to death and not feeling some remote sense of wrong, regardless of law. i hope i'm right

(edit: @aspZ obv')

I know, we're both clever like that aren't we?



I am indeed, I don't recall saying I wasn't.



The whole idea of the id, ego, and superego has been discredited, as has quite a lot of Freudian theory for that matter.



Indeed.



Yes, they are certainly empathetically disconnected from their victims, and that's the point I'm making. Human beings are, as your very interesting Monkeyspere article points out, only able to care about a very limited number of people. So they can feel a primitive form of empathy for the other rioters, in a way, but they can then go and attack people outside their own group without an issue. Which is, of course, why we need laws.



That's because there's only very few people there.



Very interesting indeed, and I think it proves my point well. If morality really is linked to morality as you claim, our morality can only reach the maximum of 150 people we care about. Anyone outside of that simply does not matter.



If criminal law is in nature, why does it need to be law?



I would, I'd steal a bunch of s**t, but I wouldn't keep on going for personal safety reasons - getting killed in a crowd wouldn't be fun. Besides, I like wasting time on the internet no matter what



They'll know it's wrong because society hammered it into them from a young age, but whether humans actually feel anything about it for anyone outside their "Monkeyspere" is another matter entirely.

Asp-Z, i think you are using your own interpretation of the word "morality" and perhaps not realising that we can speak of morality being nearly universal without having to accept that it is innate. it may be innate or it may not - we do not really know. clearly you think it is not innate, and that is one opinion. either side of that debate could produce proof that they are correct. but let's put that aside.

morality exists, regardless of where it comes from. for all we know it may have originated from a god, it might come from a hormonal instinct, it could be just a system of socially advantageous traditions that have passed down virtually intact for many generations, etc. but that is also unimportant.

perhaps it will help you to think of morality as another system of laws, but they are so ingrained as to be instinctive, and ultimately less arbitrary than our formal legal system.

you seem to think that people are calling you a sociopath. nobody is doing so. however, you have stated on more than one occasion that you would like to be one. that colours how people see you, and people may wonder if you seek to emulate the behaviours of a sociopath. how is a person who wants to be a sociopath different from a person who already is one?

not again maaan

Very intelligent response.

Indeed, morality exists as a set of taught behaviours and rules, but I personally do not believe that it exists as something innate in our nature.

I think Moog enjoys taking jabs at me while making it look like he's not taking jabs at me, because he is clever with his wording, hence my "I'm not a sociopath" comment.

I have indeed said that I would hypothetically like to be a sociopath - it'd be very useful for my future career if nothing else. But I do not seek to emulate any behaviours that are not my own. Besides, I do still have a little emotional empathy, and a sociopath would not. If I were to emulate the behaviour of a sociopath, this fact would make me quite unsuccessful in all honesty.

You seem to be agreeing with me there Asp-Z, so I don't think I need to say much more. I never claimed that empathy or morality were forces with infinite range and power. If they were, there would be no wars, no violence, no theft etc.

I basically disagree that there is no such thing as morality. I think that Hyper is probably correct in that your use of the word morality might be different from mine.

And the distinction between morality and law might be a grey area at best.