I suppose that on the positive side, at least everywhere societies do hold to a
ID: 3491967 • Letter: I
Question
I suppose that on the positive side, at least everywhere societies do hold to a morality of some sort, regardless of how different from our own. The fact remains that we all share a moral impulse, we all care about right/wrong – this is a commonality. Humans are always captivated by differences (the exotic) and so we tend to highlight where we differ rather than what we have in common.
Can you list at least three aspects of human behavior that you believe all societies care about in a moral sense?
For Philosophers a more interesting question is not whether we have morals, but deeper still, why SHOULD we have them at all? (RECALL our discussion of “The Ring of Gyges” story in Module One.
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Your response should be min. 100 words.
Explanation / Answer
Insight into human behavior comes from many sources. The views presented here are based principally on scientific investigation, but it should also be recognized that literature, drama, history, philosophy, and other nonscientific disciplines contribute significantly to our understanding of ourselves. Social scientists study human behavior from a variety of cultural, political, economic, and psychological perspectives, using both qualitative and quantitative approaches. What is considered to be acceptable human behavior varies from culture to culture and from time period to time period. Every social group has generally accepted ranges of behavior for its members, with perhaps some specific standards for subgroups, such as adults and children, females and males, artists and athletes. Unusual behaviors may be considered either merely amusing, or distasteful, or punishably criminal. Some normal behavior in one culture may be considered unacceptable in another. For example, aggressively competitive behavior is considered rude in highly cooperative cultures. Conversely, in some subcultures of a highly competitive society, such as that of the United States, a lack of interest in competition may be regarded as being out of step. Although the world has a wide diversity of cultural traditions, there are some kinds of behavior (such as incest, violence against kin, theft, and rape) that are considered unacceptable in almost all of them. The social consequences considered appropriate for unacceptable behavior also vary widely between, and even within, different societies. Punishment of criminals ranges from fines or humiliation to imprisonment or exile, from beatings or mutilation to execution. The form of appropriate punishment is affected by theories of its purpose to prevent or deter the individual from repeating the crime, or to deter others from committing the crime, or simply to cause suffering for its own sake in retribution. The success of punishment in deterring crime is difficult to study, in part because of ethical limitations on experiments assigning different punishments to similar criminals, and in part because of the difficulty of holding other factors constant.