My view is that what we've come to call 'Morality' is the way societies create norms of accepted behaviour rooted in our evolved social impulses. It has no independent objective existence outside that, which we can discover and find out what is objectively Right and Wrong.Lark_Truth wrote:This seems to be a confusing topic in the world, with the media seemingly promoting things such as procreational activities outside of marriage, gay marriage, teenage love, dating, drinking, smoking, love triangles, swearing, pornography, etc. There does seem to be a lot of people who are preaching against some of this stuff, but they seem to go unnoticed because of the loads of things that I just listed.
The question here is: What is moral? Not just what people say is moral, but what is moral without people's opinions butting in. Either there is a thick line drawn between morality and immorality, or it is up to us to decide.
Many of the items on your personal list LT might be classified under a list of 6 broad descriptions of 'universal moral impulses' as concerned with Sanctity/Degradation, something obviously important to you personally. This is how Moral Foundations Theory briefly describes it - http://www.moralfoundations.org/
5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).
However, your bigger question is the much trickier one of Can we get from an Is to an Ought? We may have evolved with this sense that some things are right and wrong for good useful evolutionary reasons, that's the 'Is'. But can we still find something beyond that worth the name 'Morality', an 'Ought'?
And I do think a case can be made for a quasi objective morality, on the basis of Value. I'd suggest that the qualiative nature of subjective experience (consciousness) introduces something of innate Value into the world. Conscious creatures have a Quality of Life. They (we) can experience flourishing in a qualiative way. Can be happy and suffer, and all things in between. If we die, something of inherent Value has therefore been lost.
Trying to create an Objective Morality grounded in Subjective Experience may at first look paradoxical, but I think if we see it in terms of Value, or Mattering, it makes sense. It matters if I treat you badly because you suffer. It matters if I kill you because you lose the ability to experience any quality of life, you've lost something of inherent value. This obviously has implications for how we treat other conscious species too.