By morals I mean one’s own morals - the lens that they judge what’s right and wrong by.
Now defining a full moral framewrok is arduous and I don’t think I would be able to do it all in one go but there’s ideas that I want to pen down before they are lost to time.
These are sort of properties of an ideal moral framework that, in the moment, I think any decent moral framework would atleast have.
Independent and combatible. Independent means here notions on what is contemporarily right or wrong should not be blind axioms, it CAN be used of course if I can deem them reachable independently. By compatible I mean they must hold value as you being the sole beliver of those morals. In fact, all morals really are that way even when people won’t admit it. They’ll believe ( even deluding themselves ) that they believe in so and so and would then excuse themselves for “just this one time” when it becomes inconvenient to do so. So under this premise that each person has their morals completely isolated ( vast majority of them share a lot as they live in the same world but what I’m implying is outliers should be accounted for ). My morals should not break down adversely or be something that I need to “ignore” as I’m not trying to satisfy a rigtheous criteria. In summary, they originate independently of what the world believes BUT be compatible for use within the world.
The idea I like to define apriori if x is morally good or bad is using Kant’s idea of a categorical imperative. It’s rooted in not being a hyprocrite which allows you to hold yourself with a high self-esteem.
I don’t quite have an full covering list but some examples to illustrate a process for anything as needed is what I intend to write here.
Is killing immoral? CI would say yes obviosly but then what about capital punishment. Capital punishment is what allows us to create a world where we can say that killing is immoral. Now a good moral framework should be compatible with reality, I can’t abandon my stance on killing for “this case”. By making is so situational, I’ve abandoned MANY classicatons into moral or immoral entirely — killing in my religion is not something categorically moral or immoral.
But for the sake of argument, let’s try to have some stance on this killing example. To be more nuanced, I can phrase that “senseless killing” is categorically immoral. How do I define “senseless”? you can think of this as a sort of recursive logic, define x := what killing will achieve, then if x holds as “right” under the religion then killing is justified otherwise not. This moves the frame of reference to killing as a means to an end instead of a global truth to ascertain. Now I can apply the rules of my religion again to decide if that x is right. This gives you a recursive solution where I’ve codified “ends justify the means”.
A nuance on “ends justify the means” to address the obvious counter against it being “so is X - something that I would want to avoid is possible - good is justified to do then?“. Obviously, you don’t want to use something suboptimal and call if fine because the ends justify it. You also cannot wait for the perfect snowflake solution to come in place as well. So yes, if the means are practical and reasonably justified for the time, the ends can justify the means.
Now what about someting more tamer - say dishonestly. A situation from my life ( it’s a contemporary religion made for me after all ) about work. Is is immoral to try to slack off and be dishonest at work if given the chance. Or another similar one, is it wrong to lie? To recognise the nuance needed in an answer, notice how I can spin it both ways and ask is it immoral to not look after one’s own best interests and then evoke “ends justify means”. What if you have to do something that really erodes your self-respect BUT it also gives you materially something that you wanted, something that is in your best interest — will the ends justify the means? I’ve just added pride as the first axiom. A loss of pride cannot be used for any end that can justify the means. One more to add would be that my own self-interests are paramount, AS LONG AS I don’t create trouble for someone else ( I had been thinking about this and this last bit was the key to ruling out absolute dishonesty, this clealy follows off of CI too ). Getting back to specific example, I’m completely justified if I don’t give my 100% to the task assigned and instead do good enough that allows me maining my self-respect as the person tied to the work and als serves my own interests of trying to learn more even if it’s not directly benefitting work — in such a case, there is NOTHING dishonest being done ( instead of being dishonest not being immoral or not ). This also disallows blatant rule abuse as I’ll be creating trouble for others and have that conduct tied to my name.
I’m not making a 100% logical argument here but we will get better over time.
One more would be to “assume good intentions when it can be assumed”. People can be evil, often enough too, but mostly it’s indifference, if something passes this religions moral criteria but feels OFF due to the conditioning you have had so far, you can always assume the othe person to implictly “want” you to do that. For example if something feels dishonest to do because of how “good” of a person you are, you can as a way to justify to yourself, say that this is what the other person/everyone would want you to do ( though given that it passes your religion’s filteres it’s already okay by all means ).
Something to note would be application of the “trouble someone else” axiom on say capital punishment case. What’s happened is not even accounted as in what was the punishment for — what the argument per my religion is to prevent the likelihood of that same thing being repeated and in this way not create trouble for the whole of society through a capital punishment by creating trouble for one person of society. It can even span as being part of my own interests as I would very much be part of the society.
Now that I’ve roughly specified what NOT to do, my treatment of morals here does not cover what to DO and that’s intentional. Also in here is stuff to be concerned with the generic meaning of the term morals. Not sins and virtues in depth.
the way to test is something is good or bad is to start from top and if it violates any rules it’s immoral and wrong.
Anxioms
- maintaining one’s own self-respect and pride is paramount. pride is a virtue. what you do is tied to your name.
- your own interestes take priority over someone eles’s
- do not create trouble or disturbs peace of others ( as the net of whole group affected by it )
Rules
- ends justify the means provided the means the best possible given the information and practical constraints
I cannot clearly deny a lot many obviously bad things here. I need to rewrite a lot of stuff here. Maybe I can define WHAT is virtuous like collection of knowledge and then look at it from NOT virtous angle.