Antiseptic,

>>I still see Tao as primarily a philosophy rather than a religion<<

As I said, this all depends on what you call religion, and, I presume, also philosophy. For instance, my worldview has one philosophical and one religious dimension which I strive to keep distinct although many of their aspects overlap. There is also something called perennial philosophy, which could be seen as either a (universal) religion or philosophy.

Although Taoism or Buddhism - and perhaps also Confucianism, Shintoism, etc - in their “higher” or “philosophy” versions do not have God, or even anything resembling metaphysics, their “folk” versions abound with spirits etc. This, I suppose, made Stark prefer his characteristic of religion over Durkheim’s.

>>I don't think morality and ethics are interchangeable terms.<<

Neither do I, although again, it all depends on definitions. In my dictionary, morality is about “principles concerning the distinction between right and wrong or good and bad behavior.”, and ethics means either “moral principles that govern a person's or group's behavior” or “the branch of knowledge that deals with moral principles” and involves systematizing, defending and recommending concepts of right and wrong conduct.

The latter is probably equivalent to your definition of ethics, as far as I could understand it (“formalise morality as a rational process”?).

AJ, you win. So does David. The board's all yours. I won't intrude on your game, since you obviously don't like playing with me. No worries, enjoy yourself.

George, the thing about ethics, as Singer shows, is that there can be entirely rigorous rational reasoning from precepts (principles) that all agree are good that leads to conclusions that few agree are good.

Morality has an emotional dimension as well, I think, which is perhaps not incompatible with your earlier thoughts about the "innateness" of morality. We feel good about doing good on the whole and if actions or thinking about a particular course don't make us feel good it's a fair bet they aren't moral by our own lights, even if clever people can show them to be ethical.

Kohlberg's moral development is a recognition of how education and experience feed into that emotional response and your "innate morality" similarly, perhaps?

Hiya Anti,

It' difficult to talk with people, isn't it......

"But however many words are used, the number comes to an end.
It is better (to say nothing and ) hold fast to the mean (between too much and too little confidence in heaven and earth)"
(E. R. Hughes)

Or, put another way:

"Hold on to the centre.
Man was made to sit quietly and find
the truth within."

I hope you do check out the Tao. Whenever I poke around the various philosophies/religious beliefs, I invariably find myself returning to the Tao in the end.

Antiseptic,

>>the thing about ethics, as Singer shows, is that there can be entirely rigorous rational reasoning from precepts (principles) that all agree are good that leads to conclusions that few agree are good <<

I am afraid here we must part ways, although not being a moral philosopher I cannot claim to properly understand Peter Singer. It is just that the resemblance - real or just envisaged - to things from a very dark period in German history (Mengele) makes his “bioethics” rather unpalatable to my Central European taste.

>>Morality has an emotional dimension as well, I think, which is perhaps not incompatible with your earlier thoughts about the "innateness" of morality. We feel good about doing good on the whole and if actions or thinking about a particular course don't make us feel good it's a fair bet they aren't moral by our own lights, even if clever people can show them to be ethical.<<

Perhaps everything has an aesthetic, rational and moral dimension, reflecting passive perception/feelings, rational analysis and rules of conduct aiming at the three Platonic ideals of beauty, truth and goodness.

Even mathematics has an aesthetic dimension, and people judge scientific research not only how close it is to “truth” but also how “good” it is for mankind. So the three aspects - aesthetic, rational and moral - are intertwined. However, I do not think morality, should be reduced to, or judged by, purely rational (rational reasoning) or even purely aesthetic (feeling good) criteria. But then, as I said, I am not a moral philosopher so I probably should leave it at that.

>>Kohlberg’s moral development is a recognition of how education and experience feed into that emotional response and your "innate morality" similarly, perhaps?<<

As far as I understand Kohlberg, he does not advocate reduction of “moral development” to its aesthetic aspects. What I like or dislike is much more arbitrary, than what I see as true/ false or good/bad: “de gustibus non est disputandum” does not have a counterpart on the rational and moral levels.

Poirot,

>>"Hold on to the centre.
Man was made to sit quietly and find
the truth within.”<<

Again a wisdom that can be compared with the Western “Do not go far: seek within thyself. Truth resides inside of man.” (Augustine of Hippo). There are many examples like this, showing that Eastern tradition is not an alternative to our Western but rather that they complement each other: in the West more emphasis was put on understanding the world external to the Self (science and technology, rational philosophy as distinct from mysticism), in the East they were more focused on understanding the Self’s internal world. Nevertheless, there are traces of both emphases in both traditions.

I agree that Tao is more suitable for “poking around” than our systematized philosophies (or theologies) which have to be grasped in toto. If you have no knowledge of Chinese (language and culture), you need more than one translation of Tao Te Ching into a Western language to better appreciate it.

Hi George,
" rather unpalatable to my Central European taste"

That is precisely the point I was making. He shows that something can be "ethical" on utilitarian and perhaps even "greatest good" grounds (which in other circumstances we would accept as valid precepts)and yet completely fail the test of morality that we as humans use to assess the "goodness" of an idea. Your set of "good" things is a subset of all "ethical" things, constrained by your education and experience.

I have raised this with others including the esteemed editor of this site with similar responses to your own, so there is something deeper about morality than mere rationality. We might also look at the behaviour of Peter Sellick in another thread for an example of a similar thing: he likes to think of himself as a mediator of how things are to be understood, not as a facilitator of others' understanding and as a result, he is seen to be hypocritical and elitist, two of the things Christ was most scathing about. He sees rationality as opposed to his own sense of moral rectitude rather than a servant to it.

I wasn't talking about an aesthetic aspect of morality, but a visceral grasp of what is right and what is wrong. I think we all have that, but we need to nurture it in order to be able to use it effectively. Perhaps analogous to the way a physician trains his nose to detect diabetic ketoacidosis where we might just smell bad breath and turn away.

There is a lot being done on the psychology of morality. Melbourne uni has a lab devoted to it, which I would very much like to learn more about. I dispute that your own morality is arbitrary; it is an integration of several factors even though you may not be able to elucidate them and some things are not disputed as moral or otherwise by anyone anywhere except those we define as socio- or psychopathic.