This text explores the nature of moral beliefs and the extent to which they are shaped by upbringing and societal norms. The author questions whether their own moral convictions are truly reasoned or simply a reflection of the environment in which they were raised.
Naturally, I hold slavery to be an abomination and liberal democracies to be better than totalitarian dictatorships. But why? I could draw on my years of education to tell you it has something to do with my belief in freedom, autonomy, the awfulness of treating a fellow human being as a mere instrument. But a skeptic can point out that I had these convictions before I was ever in a position to articulate a cogent argument for them.
The arguments came afterward; they are rationalizations of things I already believed. The unflattering truth, this skeptic might continue, is that my views on slavery simply reflect the moral common sense of the society I was born into. My affection for liberal democracy may come from the simple fact that I grew up in one, surrounded by its propaganda. Who knows what I’d think if I’d been raised as a member of a plantation-owning family in the antebellum South, where abolitionists were regarded as dangerous eccentrics? I used to fancy myself a rational creature who believed things for reasons; now, attuned to the question of origins, I see myself as no freer of the nexus of causes than my dog, my cactus, or my tennis ball. And not only me. We can all be viewed as the culmination of history, physics, and biology. Yes, our beliefs about math and the natural sciences are products of a history, just as much as our moral beliefs are. But, happily, we have something with which to assess our scientific beliefs. There are lab tests to determine whether Newton’s first law holds. The trouble is that there’s nothing we can test our moral convictions against—except perhaps other moral convictions, our own and those of other people. Of course I think my moral convictions are the right ones; that’s why they’re my convictions. Maybe all I’m entitled to say, though, is that they happen to be mine—as my tastes happen to be mine. A different childhood, different genes, and you’d find a man with the views of John C. Calhoun instea
MORAL BELIEFS SOCIETAL NORMS UPBRINGING RATIONALITY ENVIRONMENT
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