Are instincts Morals?

[Anomaly]

Hi foggyprincess1984, welcome the sight! ' I'll try to be gentle.

My intention here is to start a debate to stimulate conversation. So if you don't like debate, look away!

If morals are a guide to help you make decisions, then surely instincts are an evolved morality.

I would say that there are levels to morality which stem from instincts. I think there is a 'natural law', wherein there are fundamental morals which ensure our survival (i.e.: the sanctity/protection/preservation of life being one). There will always be those things which come into contention with those fundamental morals (i.e.: religious practices and justifications, mental disabilities/illnesses which distort values and reject societal values/constructs for the sake of the individual, the distinction between the will of self as opposed to the will of all, the acquiring of new knowledge/experience, etc.). However, they are still found and preserved as integral throughout civilizations and throughout time. Those things do not negate the existence of that 'natural law', but I would say that they force the very change and evolution of those morals over time, as more things call them into question and as we grapple with our existence, purposes, and impact into the future.

 

[Ren]

If morals are a guide to help you make decisions, then surely instincts are an evolved morality.

I'm not so sure about that. But it really depends on one's conception of morality and the general domain of ethics.

If you think morality is a domain of rational decision-making, in the Kantian (deontic ethics), Aristotelian (virtue ethics) or utilitarian tradition, then surely morals are not instincts, since instincts aren't rational.

If you think, in the empirical tradition of Hume, than morality reduces to something like feeling, then yes, a case could be made that instincts are morals. But this is, in my estimate, a drastically impoverished conception of morality and its field of possibilities. And it is in fact not a very influential position today.

I think the problem may boil down to the difference between, say, a right action and the outcome of a right action. If you consider there is no difference, then indeed, instinct may be considered 'moral', as a kind of genetic repository. But it seems to me that precisely what makes an action morally right (that is, morally valued) is that it emerges as a process of rational decision-making. Otherwise what's moral about it? You may say that its result is good, or that its result is bad... and that's about it.

Let me illustrate.

All sorts of phenomena can have the kind of good results that follow from morally right decisions. If there is nobody to defend a vulnerable old lady from being assaulted in the street, well, maybe the attacker will slip in a puddle, knock himself unconscious, and the old lady will be able to run away. The outcome of the slip is a good one, but that doesn't make the puddle moral. Why not? Because there is no rational agency here. It's essentially the same with instinct.

 

[dZpADTLrPmX4c]

It depends on how you definite your moral code.
But to me, no.