Do you believe morality is innate or is it learned?

[Kain10th]

Are people simply born with a sense of morality or is it something that must be learned?

 

[Good4Nothing]

Learned. I'm 48, and I'm still learning. Morality is ever evolving. Or should be, if one is intellectually curious.

 

[Mr2005]

It's better that it comes from you otherwise you're just following orders. I know what I think and it would make no difference if the law changed tomorrow

 

[Fragile]

I think both. there are a lot of values that are learned from our natural instincts and some that are taught to us from the people around us and the way society shaped those ideas.

This is a really complicated topic since everyone has a different sense of morality and what they consider OK is the opposite of that in some people's book.

 

[Skathon]

...morality is always subjective.

 

[Deleted member 1465]

Much of it is learned culturally, but some of it is innate. For example, the avoidance of incest is based on more than just a cultural taboo. Same with cannibalism. Extreme examples, but the rest is on a sliding scale.

 

[Quarky00]

Both .

You can say a mother not eating her children is evolution or survival , but it is also translated as a moral issue . Since not eating your children is not particularly subjective or learned , it would be false to claim that ethics are just learned or subjective . The fact that some mothers have eaten their children is the exception that proves the rule . This is one of the first things one would learn on introduction to ethics at university :)

Teen bonobos like to handle other infants and show increased oxytocin . Despite horrors , genocide , abuse or even simple impatience and disregard , humans are capable of extremely high levels of complex and complete empathy .

To answer question directly: people are indeed born with a strong sense of morality/humanity , and then they learn some more .

Hume claimed that moral evaluations depend on our sympathy and empathy , which are innate . Our modern theories of justice , "Justice As Fairness" , suggests phrasing ethical rules by a dynamic social contract (not the Rousseau type) . Humans are born with a strong sense of bonds . This is the essence of ethics and essential to its existence . So the innate is actually a significant part and cause of ethics and morals . Communication and community are highly-developed core attributes of the specie .

The other things are really 'just' fine-tuning (which are marvelous of course) . A human lives entirely in his or hers cognitive-linguistic narrative , so he or she will naturally and rightly focus entirely on that 'fine-tuning' discussion , rather than not eating their children . That discussion is vast , nuanced , and often dynamic.

Dogs do not bark categorical imperatives .

 

[Final Escape]

...morality is always subjective.

This is where u are wrong and why the world is fucked up. It's the worst discovery I ever made. It's really a difficult one for people because it means that certain things are absolutely true always.

 

[Csmith8827]

I'd say innate. People feel guilty for a reason. It's just difficult understanding that when you've grown up as a sociopathic amoral person at the benefit of someone else being able to use you or take advantage of you. That said you should still try to live above the violence and shit trying to interfere with your well-being and the ploy or game that it brings. You just have to read between the lines.

 

[Mr.Mediocre]

I think of morales as cognitive traits adapted from millions of years of evolution that exist to help us survive longer by making wiser unconscious decisions.