happyraul

what is the relationship between laws and morals? When something is illegal is it immoral too? If something is legal is ir moral?

iamjero

Morals are something that we make beacuse it is the right thing to do... Laws are created to make money for the officials and to punish people for being poor.

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Mojo_PeiPei

Just because something is legal doesn't make it moral i.e. abortion, slavery, capital punishment or just because something is illegal doesn't make it immoral. Laws I would say are more for order, morals are truly what is right and wrong. Also Iamjero laws are made to keep the poor down, puh-leeze, guess what things such as stealing, violent behavior towards others, or murder are immoral, and breaking laws isn't solely restricted to the "poor".

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numist_net

There are countless cases where lawsuits have followed the letter of the law, but gone completely against morality. Laws are normally too general to take special cases in point, where as everything has a moral value, and the sum of those values make something moral or not moral.

So if you are in your house, and a burglar breaks in and proceeds to rob you, and you brandish a knife against said robber and detain him until authorities show up, the robber can sue you and win for any damages done. This has been done in many states. Was it moral for them to be robbing you? no, was it moral for you to defend yourself and your property? yes, but neither were legal, so the burglar gets penalized, and you do as well.

There are other examples, but I don't want to ruin anyone's faith in the legal system, because more often than not, it seems to work well enough.

BentNotTwisted

Legalized slavery? Let me know where I can pick up a few of them slave girls. (ducking and running)

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CSflim

it WAS legal.

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ARTelevision

Laws are an attempt to affect human behavior externally.
"Morals" represent the attempt to do something similar by an appeal to some over-riding "moral principle."
Laws are pragmatic.
Morals are idealistic.

Personally, I understand laws and I affirm them
Morals make no sense to me at all.

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sexymama

Morals are personal
Laws are societal -- made to bring order to society

IMHO many laws are immoral

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happyraul

So does that mean it is right to break an immoral law? Even further, would you say that it is our responisibility to each other NOT to follow immoral laws?

ubertuber

To say that it is necessarily right to break an immoral law may be a little ambitious. In my view morals and laws are quite seperate, so it would definitely not be immoral to break that law. However, unless the law was one that compelled you to do something immoral, I think your disobedience would be morally neutral.

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Kyo

Laws are a societal contract by which everyone lives. By interacting with others and being a member of society, you implicitly agree to abide by the rules and regulations of the community, and understand that you will be punished in a variety of ways for any transgressions (in theory ... in practice, well, let's just say I don't have much faith in our justice system). It is a two-way system: while you are prevented from robbing, raping, and murdering others, you are similarly protected against these acts by the very laws which limit you.

Laws are not, in fact, related to morals at all (though we would like them to be) - laws are simply a method of societal control, a mechanism to prevent an unstoppable decent into anarchy. It provides a standard by which people can be regulated, judged, and molded into an acceptable member of society.

Morals, on the other hand, are subjective principles that are unique to one's background. There is no way to prove or justify in any absolute fashion that a moral is valid or invalid. Thus, morals make poor candidates for controlling the behavior of a population of unique individuals - since each individual has his or her own set of morals, the potential for conflicts in which both parties truly believe they are in the right is astronomical.

Moral 'right' and 'wrong' are what we use to regulate ourselves, but failing that, laws are society's trump card to keep people manageable.

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MuadDib

Morals and laws are highly similar and related. First, they are both methods for institutions to influence individual behavior. Laws are the government/political influences on behavior and morals are the religious/societal influences on behavior. They are further related because religious and societal influence the people in politics that create laws. Laws in every society have always reflected that societies morals as a method of codifying a culture or way of life.

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tekaweni

Laws and morals? Very little relationship in my opinion, I guess the law just tries to reflect the average morality of the local or general population.

Which can lead to some interesting anomalies. In South Africa its illegal to carry a handgun unless it's concealed. In USA I believe its the reverse.

In Romania, seems marrying off 12-year old reluctant brides are legal, well nobody's been arrested yet.

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Kyo

Unfortunately, 'societal morals' can only be defined to what most consider to be an unacceptable level of detail.

Actually, let me start again. I tend to think of morals as an individual affair. One person can believe killing is morally right, while another person might exactly disagree (even to the point of killing the other person ... life, thy name is irony). Because we are, in fact, individuals, or at least would like to believe we are, our opinions and beliefs vary greatly from person to person.

Thus, the term 'societal morals' is either oxymoronic or misleading - perhaps the 'morals of the majority' is more accurate? I'm not sure. Regardless, I agree with you that whatever name we wish to call them, the set of 'universal morals' is a mechanism to define culture and lifestyle.

Laws are a method of control - to make a population manageable. 'Unjust' or 'immoral' laws will survive so long as the population which believes the law unjust lacks the power to instigate change. A law does not have to be moral in the eyes of the people to exist - though that is usually how revolutions come about.

Additionally, laws do not deal directly with right and wrong; morals do - in fact, morals are essentially a definition of right and wrong from a personal standpoint. Laws simply outline crime and punishment, cause and effect. They do not state, even implictly, that lawbreaking is wrong - only that you will be punished for it. Laws are a social contract - you agree to abide by the laws and their related punishments so long as you are a member of society.

And another thing - morals are always with you, whereas laws are as transient as you make them. Killing someone in a no-man's land far away from prying eyes is not privy to any law but the laws of physics and biology.

RatherThanWords

Laws are simply made to keep order in society. Most of the time laws try and fall between what is good for the public and what is good for the individual.

Morality, on the other hand, is a set of beliefs on how one should live his or her life. My sub-question is, "Is there any objective morality?"

It's good to be back!

MuadDib

Laws are also a set of beliefs about how one should live their life. The only difference is that when you break a law there is clear and concrete punishment, but morality the punishment is usually your own. People like to think that morals originate in themselves but it isn't true. People are raised and indoctrinated with morals from their parents, society, religion, television, books, etc. And while we think we make the decision what to believe totally on our own we have to recognize the the foundation for preferences were also laid down somewhere along the line from an exterior source... there are no a priori morals. The confusion comes in where laws are overtly dictated to us and morals are covertly dictated to us.

As for objective morals I do not think there are. Just as there are no objective laws (by laws I mean civil laws not natural laws). The test of objectivity is if something would exist without a subject to interpret or experience it. Since people are not born into morality and without humanity there would not be morals then I have to say no. My question is whether something being subjective necessarily makes it less real, important, or good.

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Kyo

There are no objective morals. Emmanuel Kant tried this with his categorical imperative a while ago and it failed rather miserably. Aside from that, most ethics discussions fall into the dubious realm of armchair philosophy for the very reason that there isn't a concrete way to resolve the issue. If you want to give it a shot, try proving that killing is morally incorrect. It seems easy at first, but I can almost guarantee you won't be able to do it.

I say again, laws created by governments are mechanisms to control the populace. I do not for a single instant believe that laws are a representation of how I should live my life - they are simply an outline of crime and punishment - it outlines how others want me to live my life.

MuadDib, I think I've already responded to your argument in my previous post. That morals are indoctrinated rather than inherent is irrelevant - morals govern right and wrong, laws govern crime and punishment. If people strictly followed their own morals, everyone would be a lawbreaker. There are people I genuinely believe should be dragged out into the street and shot in front of witness, but laws prevent this from occuring. In some cases, theft may seem moral - but theft is always against the law.

Laws are the mechanism that allow government to be possible - a way to encourage conformity and to deal with 'deviants'. Morals are simply an inconvenient side effect to being human.

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ubertuber

Kyo -

I think your response is very interesting, and if I read you correctly I agree with much of what you are saying. However I am curious to know under which circumstances theft may seem moral, and are you saying that it only seems that way?

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Kyo

The difficulty with discussing morals is that we have no absolute standard from which to operate. Because I do not believe in a sentient higher power (read: God), for me there does not exist any authority to dictate what is truly 'right' and 'wrong.' It is obvious to anyone who has experienced real society that the concepts of 'right' and 'wrong' are as intangible and transient as you, and your environment, choose to make them.

In other words, how do you prove that something is 'right' or 'wrong'? As with many other types of proofs, we must introduce conditions - under what system are we determining right or wrong? Through whose perspective are we looking? For what reason are we judging? In other words - is society judging our actions, or are we assessing our own moral worth?

To clarify, let's go back to the claim I make in the previous post - that it is impossible to prove that killing is wrong. The first problem, of course, is, killing under what circumstances? Some people believe that killing is always wrong, some people that killing is justified under certain conditions, such as self-defense. For the purposes of this discussion, however, this point is fairly irrelevant and we can resolve the problem by simply limiting our discussion to killing for the sake of killing, with nothing at stake. In other words - if I kill you for no other reason than I felt like killing you, just for fun, or because I was bored, can you prove to me that what I did was wrong? I say that you cannot. This is because nobody has the moral authority to determine the morals of others. Force of arms, threats of incarceration and death, are not moral authority, but physical authority. Even if you punish me for killing someone, there is no way that you can tell me absolutely that what I did was wrong.

So rather than saying that theft 'only seems moral,' we should instead say that theft may be moral to some people, under any circumstances. The concept may be hard to swallow, but morality is just that kind of animal. If for some reason a person could really believe that theft is moral (perhaps if they were brought up in some fantastical society where theft was normal), then it would be moral to them regardless of what anyone else believed.

A corollary to all of this, or perhaps the conclusion, is that morals are highly conditional - who you are, where you come from, and what circumstances you are currently in are all major factors in determining your moral judgment. Two people in the same situation may come up with completely different ideas of what is 'morally correct.' The same person in two different (but related) situations may draw opposite conclusions for each situation. We will answer your theft question as an example. Normally, theft is considered to be wrong - I am confident enough that the people who are reading this were all raised with backgrounds similar enough that they all consider theft to be wrong as a general rule. Given that, each person might differ on when theft could possibly be acceptable. Some may say that theft is never acceptable, for any reason. However ... would you also say that killing is never acceptable? If so, consider a situation that brings these two into conflict - you must steal, or you must murder. In this case, is theft morally correct? Is killing morally correct? Or are both still morally wrong?

As for laws ... well, I've already discussed that twice in this thread alone. Suffice to say that they are a mechanism for government - a method to control people's actions by force for the benefit of society, hopefully, but more often for the benefit of those who are in power and wish to remain there. A law can directly contradict the morals of anyone and everyone it affects and still remain a law - because laws do not deal with 'right' and 'wrong.'

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tekaweni

I'm from Africa, and I can tell you that legality and morality here have very little in common. I dont need to bother with examples, sadly there are so many.

So from a philosphical viewpoint, this question is meaningless to me I'm afraid

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