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Re: Re: Re: Re: Okay COR, I have a quandry
| quote: | Originally posted by Lira
Well, I don't know how psychologists and philosophers have examined the development of morality in children but, as far as I've read, social learning exerts a huge influence on the child's view of right and wrong. Small children seem to refrain from doing something out of fear of punishment. As you grow up, however, children have this tendency to let their peers influence them more than those in different hierarchical levels (I wish I could remember the guy who studied this). If there is some kind of innate morality in man, it should be something very rudimentary as the need to retaliate - and make things even - when you feel you've been taken advantage of.
What do you say? |
Ermmm (takes very serious scientific face) what i think is that we can't simply look at those things in terms of simply being-or-not being there, but we should rather perceive them as multi-factorial dynamic agents which could co-occur in a continuous non-linear fashion as they exert their pressures and influences on the rudimental mental functions of the individual (lol)
In all seriousness, i think that they both occur at the same time and that you can't simply seperate them like that. I mean you have a valid point, you say that peers influence the individual. This is true as a lot of developmental psychology research has shown. Lets also not forget the famous experiments by Albert Bandura on the role of social (observational) learning and modelling on the child's behaviour. A child would watch an adult beating the shit out of a doll and the child would mimick his behaviour. No strange though why all these teens dress-up in a specific way, listen to a specific kind of music and generally try to formulate a strong and rigid social identity with clear boundaries, all these based on incoming social information (sounds like System-J and Epic-House...just kidding)
If one takes into account this information, he/she would possibly lead him/herself to the conclusion that any innateness (does this word exist or im going all googooly 2 u?)has little or no influence on the individual. My view would be that morality has actually an innate, genetic basis which exists in every single human being, BUT, on a varying degree and always in relation to social indfluences. There are some evolutionary psychological models such as the famous "tit-for-tat" model for the "Two thieves/prisoners dilemma" which propose that morality is genetic and has an evolutionary basis. Its' evolutionary function is to promote the survival of the individual by means of the survival of the tribe. Having every person giving back what doesn't belong to him/her leads to an equal sharing of the resources (and hence direct increased chances of survival) and to a strengthening of the social bonds (and hence indirect increased chances of survival by means of reflective assistance, help and support). "Good" is an altruistic person because he/she simply obeys this innate moral mentality in possible opposition to other competetive isnticts, cotrasting emotions and conflicting motives. "Bad" is the one who breaks this innate social contract in favour of some other dominating though/instinct/emotion. The whole Religion concept could be regarded as a "meme" (the cultural analogue of the "Gene") that simply exploits some important aspects of those genetically innate tendencies, leading to fear and hence social control by some clever few, in the same way that the "meme" "candy" exploits the innate tendency of the pleasurable sweet taste that saccharides create (evolving in a prehistoric age that saccharides were rare and highly important due to their instant energy release in the human body).
So, lets say that an individual is influenced by his/her peers. This is true, the thing is that an individual is not blindly influenced by all (or some random)of his/her peers. The individual chooses to get influenced by those peers/models etc. which seem to cohere with his/her innate behavioural tendencies. Individuals are not passive obects but active agents that select whatever information match their egos. Furthermore, even a contrasting social identity which could phenomenally largelly affect an individual's moral self, could have little or no effect in the end. A west-coast black guy could still choose to be a gangsta and still help another hommie in the end (in extreme situatios which could require fast reactions, that hommie could even be a white guy!). So,
1) Innate morality exists,
2) Is of a varied degree (has a value that is different from person to person) and
3) Tends to have a stronger effect when decision-making needs to be fast. As time passes, higher cognitive effects such as complex thhinking, previous knowledge, attitudes and beliefs come into play and create a more complex and dynamic interplay between all those factors which could make judgement and decision making more difficult to occur, especially when they differ to each other (such as System-J and his situation. perhaps if System-J listened to his "gut" he would immediately return it. In contrast, he let some further thought to come into play leading to the decision of keeping it, but with the drawback of remembering the outcome of his decision, an outcome that comes (possibly) in opposition to his previous (innate and possibly social) morality, hence, having himself in a state of "inner war" (leading to the creation of the current thread possibly for "driving the conflicting demons away".
Wow, now this is simply too long for the CoR so really sorry but i don't care! Well, i actually care now that i realise all this lost time 
Last edited by PETRAN on Nov-01-2008 at 02:49
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