A Look at Morality

Wow, morality. Definitely a thought provoking issue. Morality certainly exists, I think we can certainly agree on that. Which of the categories that your morality falls into I think depends on where you believe morality comes from. The most convincing argument I've heard for the origination of morality is that it is essentially an evolutionary byproduct. Being kind and generous to others can often lead to them being kind and generous to you, which is beneficial to survival. So it follows that a species that does treat it's fellow creatures well is one that is more likely to survive, so natural selection essentially implants that idea of "treating others as you would wish to be treated yourself", which is really what a lot of what we would call morality is centered around. So I think that alone is enough to give a fairly reasonable account of a rather primitive form of morality. That said however, I don't think that gives a full account for the depth of the moral nature of human beings, not by itself.

Human beings (most of us, anyway) are very highly developed animals. So our sense of morality is also quite highly developed. I think what really gives a better account of what we perceive as moral or immoral really comes from our own innate ability to contemplate morality itself. In this sense, there are things that are objectively immoral. Is murder immoral? Yes. Is it objectively moral? I would say yes, simply because we, as human beings, can recognize that there is an objective reason not to do it. Same with things like rape, theft and so on. I think morality can be defined as this: A moral action is an action that helps a fellow creature in some way, and an immoral action is one that hurts or fails to help them. Put under that lens, then I think that gives a fairly plausible explanation of an objective morality without needing to appeal to a deity.

Now, there are a few issues that are normally considered moral issues, that there isn't an obvious objective answer for . A good example might be abortion. The real issue here is at what point does the fetus become a person. The common consensus is that the nervous system develops at around 4-6 months, which I would say is a fairly good standard for being a person. If the abortion takes place before it develops, then it isn't immoral, because no harm is being done to a person. If it is done after, then harm is being done, so it is immoral. So that seems to be a fairly good reconciliation of abortion with an objective moral standard, or so it seems to me, that is if you happen to take abortion is an issue of morality, you may indeed think it has nothing to do with morality at all and just boils down to freedom of choice, up to you, I don't think I could say that there is an intrinsically right answer.

So, in summery, I have sketched what seems to me to be a fairly plausible account of an objective moral standard, without needing to appeal to a deity at any point. If anyone wants to challenge this view then please feel free, I don't think these views are self-evident, I believe they need defended through argumentation, so I would be happy to engage with anyone who disagrees with me.

Faster Than the Speed of Light

So some truly exciting news came in from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research. A neutrino is a very low mass subatomic particle that usually travels close to the speed of light, but in a very unusual, potentially ground-breaking development, neutrinos that were sent from CERN to the Gran Sasso laboratory, showed up ahead of schedule, you might say: they arrived a few billionths of a second sooner than what was once thought to be the speed limit of the universe, 186,000 MP/s, the speed of light in a vacuum, would have permitted.

You may perhaps be feeling somewhat let down by this supposed "ground-breaking" piece of information. After all, it's only a few billionths of a second, it's virtually nothing, not even worth nothing. True, a few billionths of a second may not seem like much, but the scientific theories of Albert Einstein operate and are contingent on the speed of light NEVER being broken. These results have yet to be independently verified, and so this may indeed all turn out to be a dead end, but if it is true... if the speed of light truly can be broken, the picture of physics that was painted by Einsteins theory of general relativity may not be as good a description for the way our universe operates at the macroscopic level as was once thought, indeed as has been thought for the last 100 years that mankind has been doing physics.

It's exciting times in the world of physics.

"Blood is Thicker Than Water"?

I've heard it said often that you should value your family higher than you value your friends. The reasoning for this, or so it seems to me, is that you can pick who your friends are, but not who your family are. Under scrutiny however, this seems to be a case against that conclusion, rather than supporting it. I mean, if the family that I am born into is nothing more than chance (actually if you want to get technical about it then it isn't really chance, but lets not get into that) whereas who you are friends with is something you and another person consent to, verbally or otherwise, then it seems logical, to me at least, that that is the relationship that I should value more highly and treat with greater care. Don't get me wrong for a moment, I love my family. Of course there are some branches of my family tree for which I couldn't claim to be unhappy should they be, how should I put it, pruned, but for the most part I am happy with the family that I was born into. I just feel that if I want to be friends with someone, and that someone wants to be friends with me, then that is someone who I feel should come a little higher on my priority list than someone for whom a relationship with was something that I had no control over.

Lets take the example of marriage. Marriage is like friendship in a lot of ways, except it is essentially pronouncing your friendship on a public stage. Now if you are married to someone (let's not get into family inbreeding) then most people would think it is perfectly acceptable to treat that person with more devotion and care than anyone else. I can't see why it would be incorrect for me to apply the same logic for everyone that I have chosen to have a relationship with, and they with me.