My personal morality theory

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YMMV

I have this theory that human morality, the way people decide "that's good" or "that's bad", if they haven't been coached by another framework, it comes down to ownership.

I own a life. It's therefore bad to take it from me.
You own your body, it's therefore bad for someone else to use it against your will.
I own this mess I made so I better not put it on someone else to clean it up.
You own your property so I can't take it from you.
The government says this is your right, so it's wrong to take it away from you.

There is one exception to this. We seem to accept that a higher authority can revoke ownership. For example a government can take away your house if you don't pay taxes. They can take away your autonomy if you commit crimes. We might not like it, but it's not often called immoral unless misused or overused. (Which does happen.) Another way to look at this higher authority is that they could be seen as the ultimate owners and they permit others to take ownership provisionally.

It's something that's been rattling around my head. I'm interested in hearing if there's a moral situation that couldn't be framed this way.

Right you are and the world currently runs under capitalistic morality. But there's a better form of morality which is a more communistic form of morality.

More technological societies will run into problems with capitalistic morality. For instance Ai art would benefit poor people but hurt artists with a lot of skill or rich corporations who want to spend money on hiring those artists. For instance copyright is a form of capatalistic morality, Disney can hoard something for 70+ years to maximize profits while poor artists struggle. Ai art would help poor people leech the skills of the richer better paid artists and create more equality.

Another example is how a lot of criminals are just poor people trying to survive. I don't believe letting criminals roam about society freely is the answer though, I just think there are more evolved takes than just automatically labelling all criminals as bad guys and not having compassion. Compassion, but not in a limp wristed sense, obviously if a burglar pulls a knife on me I might shoot them in the head, I'm just saying criminals might be on the wrong place at the wrong time and one solution might be prison reform. If 90% of criminals are male then a mathematical solution might be forced feminization. Forced feminization, but in the ethical sense, not some dystopian Clockwork Orange style.

Capitalistic morality was a necessity in more primitive societies but its not appropriate for more technological societies.

I generally think morality is best based on "the golden rule". I'm free to do as I please so long as I'm not hurting anyone else. My rights to swing my fist end where another person's nose begins.

Yes I think ownership is a popular touchstone for weighing up right and wrong, and as you say, authority is another. Personally I don't like either of those touchstones. Ownership gives the wealthy a "right" to hang onto their wealth, however massively unequal it may be, while authority gives leaders a "right" to enforce any rules they like onto everybody else, whatever the damage. Therefore, let's look for better touchstones.


It's also known as the Wiccan Rede. Again, I agree. I can't think of any better basis for a code of conduct. It can get problematic because harm isn't always easy to quantify, and it's probably impossible (and very awkward) to live an absolutely harmless life. But I much prefer it to ownership and authority. The Rede is very similar to Utilitarianism (maximum happiness for the maximum number of people).

There's also gut feeling - the idea that a person instinctively knows right from wrong. There are some thought experiments that explore how certain unusual and extreme situations can throw instinctive morality into conflict with Utilitarian morality. I'm just glad those situations are unlikely to come up in my life. Gut feeling isn't always the best thing, because it doesn't think. OTOH, perhaps that's sometimes its advantage.

I think it's the not hurting anybody that I'm getting to. How do you know if you're hurting someone? The idea is if you're taking something away from them, violating their ownership of a working nose.



The caveat I want to mention is that this seems to be the default morality. That distinction is important to me because it explains why most people react the way they do.

There does appear to be a positive moral value for when a person voluntarily gives up ownership in order to help another person. As wide spread as this instinct is, it does not seem to always spring naturally into people's thoughts. It's most often viewed as good when someone else observes the act. Some cultures encourage this more than others but in western culture, most voluntary surrendering is private, people can just pretend they do it and still get the benefit. They can also give an inconsequential amount and still get to say they give. On the other hand, openly proclaiming your giving seems like you're just trying to game the system.

When it comes to inequality, that is a good counterpoint to the theory. It would seem like we are saying "your ownership is bad" but let me offer an interpretation that still falls into line and links up with Colliegrace's comment. If there were no downsides to someone amassing wealth would it be seen as bad? I wouldn't think so. I think it's judged as immoral because of either the means of acquisition are exploitative or the hoarding of wealth keeps it out of the hands of others that might come into ownership of their own but are now prevented from it. Basically the question is, how is this harming people? It's preventing them from owning things they should have.

I will ponder this.

I don't think mere ownership is enough to qualify it for use as a moral compass. Need would have to be included in the equation - for example, you're starving and you steal a loaf from somebody who has more food than they need. Or you've got tons of food and you steal a loaf from somebody who barely has enough. There's also the question whether or not the ownership is morally justifiable. It's not a problem in your example - the rightful ownership and need of the nose seems beyond question - but in many other examples ownership and need are much more questionable, and it's important to weigh the harm against the good when an action is judged.


I did read that theft is thought to be a universal, genetically-acquired taboo, and that so is deference to authority. Here's a longer list of supposedly universal moral standards:
Be brave
Be fair
Defer to authority
Help your group
Love your family
Return favors
Respect others’ property
Unfortunately the source of information doesn't look very scholarly:
https://www.verywellmind.com/what-is-morality-5076160
I wish I could find something more comprehensive and scientifically-presented about which moral standards are genetic and / or universal, explaining how they know. Until then, it's just somebody's word on the issue. I've certainly known people who don't hold the notions of property and authority to be absolute things, and I don't either. And the other ones in that list don't seem completely tenable to me either.



Yes I see a lot of problems with the usual interpretation of that ethic. If it's voluntary, the owner has the power to decide how much to give and who to give it to. It's rare that a rich person fully redistributes their wealth. I'd much prefer progressive taxation for that. And yet the taxman is often called a thief. Nobody ever seems to think they've got too much wealth. I'm also against the traditional religious practice of "tithing." It's not progressive enough for my liking because the starting threshold is zero and the rate doesn't increase at high levels of wealth.



Yes I think the means of acquisition can often be correctly seen as immoral, and I strongly suspect that being rich is never entirely decoupled from harm to those who aren't as rich. If I had a genie who created for me out of thin air any commodity I asked for, it's hard to immediately see how that could cause anybody to suffer. But I'd end up very privileged relative to everybody else, and I'd have an awful lot of power. If power corrupts, it would become a bad thing. I could make excess commodities, sell them, and pay the poor to do my dirty work. They might be in a sense glad of the income, but I'd still end up in a situation where they were doing tedious, menial, degrading work for me while I didn't have to do any such thing for them. I don't think that would be a just and fair relationship with society.

Even our capitalist society often frown on profiteering as immoral. That ethic is usually applied to business owners who sell goods for a lot more than they're worth (i.e. their cost of production) by taking advantage of people's ignorance or of a captive market. If I were selling tons of stuff even at seemingly reasonable prices when they'd cost me nothing to produce, I'd have an unearned income, a huge store of other people's labour power. I'd be able to opt out of contributing my own labour to society. I'd become an elite person, and everybody else would be at a disadvantage if I chose to compete against them. I wouldn't be forced to do harm, but I'd be massively enabled to, and I don't think humans can be trusted that well.

Divine Command Theory

Divine command theory (also known as Theological Voluntarism) is a meta-ethical theory which proposes that an action's status as morally good is equivalent to whether it is commanded by God.  The theory asserts that what is moral is determined by God's commands and that for a person to be moral he is to follow God's commands.  Followers of both monotheistic and polytheistic religions in ancient and modern times have often accepted the importance of God's commands in establishing morality.

Numerous variants of the theory have been presented: historically, figures including Saint Augustine, Duns Scotus, William of Ockham and Soren Kierkegaard have presented various versions of divine command theory; more recently, Robert Merrihew Adams has proposed a "modified divine command theory" based on the omnibenevolence of God in which morality is linked to human conceptions of right and wrong.  Paul Copan has argued in favor of the theory from a Christian viewpoint, and Linda Trinkaus Zagzebski's divine motivation theory proposes that God's motivations, rather than commands, are the source of morality.

Semantic challenges to divine command theory have been proposed; the philosopher William Wainwright argued that to be commanded by God and to be morally obligatory do not have an identical meaning, which he believed would make defining obligation difficult.  He also contended that, as knowledge of God is required for morality by divine command theory, atheists and agnostics could not be moral; he saw this as a weakness of the theory.  Others have challenged the theory on modal grounds by arguing that, even if God's command and morality correlate in this world, they may not do so in other possible worlds.  In addition, the Euthyphro dilemma, first proposed by Plato (in the context of polytheistic Greek religion), presented a dilemma which threatened either to leave morality subject to the whims of God, or challenge his omnipotence.  Divine command theory has also been criticized for its apparent incompatibility with the omnibenevolence of God, moral autonomy, and religious pluralism, although some scholars have attempted to defend the theory from these challenges.

 Link to Wikipedia Article 

Autonomy

Autonomy is an individual's capacity for self-determination or self-governance.  Beyond that, it is a much-contested concept that comes up in a number of different arenas.  For example:

• Folk Concept of Autonomy usually operates as an inchoate desire for freedom in some area of one's life, and which may or may not be connected with the agent's idea of the moral good.  This folk concept of autonomy blurs the distinctions that philosophers draw among personal autonomy, moral autonomy, and political autonomy.

• Moral Autonomy is the capacity to deliberate and to give oneself the moral law, rather than merely heeding the injunctions of others.

• Personal Autonomy is the capacity to decide for oneself and pursue a course of action in one's life, often regardless of any particular moral content.

• Political Autonomy is the property of having one's decisions respected, honored, and heeded within a political context.

 Link to Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy Article 

How do you view the morality of less-abled people who may be dependent on others for help?
Is it ethical for us to take from others or receive accommodations from our families or society?

I don't consider my life a mess that I can clean up on my own.
What role does social responsibility or altruism play in your vision?

The be brave moral is the one I can't account for. All the other ones have to do with ownership. Being fair can mean giving people what is due to them. An authority owns their authority. Helping your group usually entails giving which is a voluntary surrendering of ownership. Love your family in some ways could be seen as reciprocating (giving back ownership) what has been given. Return favors, again reciprocation. Respect other's property, is directly what I'm looking at.

So being brave is something I can't account for. It's a good counterpoint.



Very valid. The method of acquisition is an important criteria for people judging if the ownership is moral.

A lot of the comments are leaning into the idea that greed is immoral. If you already have enough, stop taking more. So it still has to do with ownership, but it's a special consideration of it.

Perhaps it's the instinct that they own it, but it's not being used (properly) so they're mishandling their ownership by stockpiling what they likely will never have use for. That still might be too narrow a definition, but it's an important consideration.

Let me state again, I'm looking for what the bedrock of morality is. Utilitarianism to me is off because it says that if you gave me a pill that made me deliriously happy, but had no other side effects, that would be the most moral thing you could do. That doesn't seem right. It doesn't seem to match with the common view that people who voluntarily deprive themselves are "good". It doesn't seem like that pill would really be morally "good". It's just a bit off the mark.

As for your questions, under this framework, It's considered a good deed to help out someone in need. Voluntary surrendering of ownership is often considered morally upright. It's even seen as more morally positive if someone surrenders ownership when they have a legitimate need for it, just to help someone. As stated above, amassing ownership that an entity has no reasonable use for is kind of the opposite of that. Greed is bad, in short.

Is it ethical to take from others? Do you mean, accepting what is given? Then yes, it is ethical to take what is offered.

Is it ethical to forcibly take from others? It's generally considered immoral to do so with the caveat of if that person's ownership was established ethically. There's the question of if it is ethical to steal food if you're starving. I'd say it's unethical for someone to deny you food if you're starving. They are not respecting your ownership of life and health by denying you what they could provide. Some communities make it a requirement that others have to enforce your ownership.

It may be necessary steal if in an already unethical community, but I don't see it as "good". It's an unfortunate outcome. If you stole food from a store because you needed to feed your children, you'd still get examined by the law, but the law might choose to be lenient because you were trying to preserve your children's ownership of their lives which is morally good.

What about a government taxing and then giving support? People have widely varying opinions. If they view government as having the authority to require a tax, to surrender some of their ownership to the authority, then it's generally seen as a good thing to give it to people in need as defined by that authority. People that don't view the government as having the authority to require a tax, are usually averse to it. It comes down to that person's view of authority and if they will recognize it.

Divine Command Theory itself rests in ownership. The god in question would own all the rights and provisionally distributes them to others as boons. They often reserve the right to revoke provisional ownership and have it return to them. God tells you what the acceptable use cases are for the ownership provisionally granted.



Exactly, autonomy is ownership. You have autonomy over what you own. I can't say it's immoral for you to spend a dollar on a frappe or a doughnut, you owned the money you use it as you see fit. In the same way, I can't tell you how to live your life, you spend it as you see fit because it's yours.

The exception being if the authority, God, the government, parents, intervenes with laws or commands. It could be as simple as "Don't drive over 45 miles per hour (70 kph) on this street." Or it could be "You must perform military service when your turn 18."

In that case autonomy is predicated on the authority permitting the action. Your ownership is always provisional as long as there is an authority.

I've heard of such a notion - voluntary deprivation being good for its own sake - but only rarely. Personally I strongly dislike the notion. There's perhaps an argument for self-deprivation if it leads to greater good elsewhere, but I'd see it as OK never to do that as long as they were initially no better off than those their action helped. Somebody who does no harm and no good is morally neutral, and I wouldn't look down on anybody for being that way. I'd never admire anybody for an act of self-deprivation that they knew would do nobody any good, and if the act deprived them of something they'd suffer for the loss of, at best I'd feel somewhat hurt for them and at worst I'd want to kick them. I don't think self-harm is a virtue.

Think of monks. They often take a vow of poverty. It may be bad for them as an individual, but society tends to look on their sacrifice as noble. It's kind of the opposite of the greedy billionaire. In some cultures this concept is very strong. In Japan, asking for a raise is usually seen as immoral. Merchants were often wealthy but considered the lowest class of people while Samurai owned little but were considered morally good because of that.

In practical terms, it's hard to corrupt someone who can't own anything.

On the other hand, CEOs often like to say they take a $1 paycheck while having billions in functional value. Why do they claim a low salary? To make themselves sound like "good" people.

Whether or not it's actually healthy is somewhat irrelevant for my purpose here. It's merely the perception of goodness that's important.

I think the vow-of-poverty thing is there for its secondary effects rather than being a primary ethic. I guess the idea behind it would be that wealth has a strong tendency to get in the way of higher social motives - as you say, it's hard to corrupt somebody who refuses to own anything. Though there might be an element of primary significance in it, with certain religious groups - some religious people punish themselves in the belief that it's a good thing to do. But that's just certain religious groups. Many people today feel that the Victorian "you mustn't have any fun on Sunday" rule was a bad mistake. Personally I'm glad to see that rule confined to the dustbin of history.

Wealthy people do sometimes have very low "official" incomes. It's a very effective tax dodge. If there's an element of virtue-signalling in it, I suppose it's because it's commonly understood that you can't be rich without making others poor. Wealthy people also often argue against the low esteem they're commonly held in, denying the harm it does for them to be wealthy and saying their perceived low moral status is purely down to the supposedly bad trait of jealousy and envy.


Opinion is divided on whether there's any difference between "healthy" and "morally wrong." Most major religions have a list of "sinful" things, but Buddhism only has a list of "harmful" things. When I first saw that, it helped me understand why Buddhism is the religion I'm least suspicious of.

This is mostly due to Utilitarianism as far as I can tell. I don't think Utilitarianism really works though. There are too many places where its logic doesn't follow reason or people's gut morality. (Gut morality doesn't mean good morality, but that's more or less what I'm looking at.


Buddhist monks often take vows of poverty while Buddhism says that poverty is bad. The idea is that material things aren't necessary for contentment, which is the goal. Different rationale, same effect.