I'm afraid my reference to the "organic" character of moral behavior, is too vague. Let me discuss it further. I do not think that a moral SYSTEM, whether of the Christian decalog or moral understandings of oral traditions, tells us much of the ethical and moral behavior of actual people. We can't describe such behaviors with reference only to the rule system such that actions turn out to be clearly moral, amoral, or immoral. Ambiguity of behavior and rules is a central feature of moral reality. This is just as true as is the realization that knowledge of America's Constitution is insufficient to provide an adequate understanding of how our political life proceeds. That life is more of a pattern of actions taken sometimes with reference to constitutional rules, even if that reference is made in order to breach the rules. Politics proceeds with reference to both normative rules (what one "should" do to win approval) and pragmatic rules (what one must do in order to win, even if that conflicts with normative rules).
This morning I was having breakfast with two friends. The topic was the brideprice and dowry systems of some societies. One fellow said that his younger sister passed up a chance to marry a man she loved because she did not feel it appropriate that she should marry before her older sister did. I asked if she was following some explicit norm, he said no. It was just a feeling of what was the proper thing to do. In my terminology that was an ethical decision. The other fellow, born and raised in rural India, interjected that that WAS an explicit rule in his part of India. I guess that is clearly a moral rule. He said that his younger sisters were EXPECTED not to marry before the older ones did. It turned that the older sister never married; she stayed with her parents, inheriting their property and taking care of them in their last years (apparently an adaptive variation on the principle of ultimogenitor, where the youngest child remains with the parents, sometimes not marrying or bringing his or her spouse to live with the parents). I was interested in the actions of the sister in the first case. Is it not possible that her sensibility could some day, under some conditions, become an explicit norm of her society? It may be that morals emerge that way. Obvioiusly the grave norms of the Christian decalog, were "invented" by the folk sociologists of ancient societies because of their imperative nature: a society cannot persist if murder, gross deception, adultery, theft, etc. were officially condoned. The official prohibition of these actions may be seen as imperative for the survival of any society. And often the proscriptions are given religious sanction, in order that they not be questioned (isn't that what a sacrosanct rule is, one that is beyond dispute?).
But the sensibility of the girl not to marry before her older sister is an example of a desire not to injure another, even though no rule exists to mandate her sacrifice. In her later years, I was told, she made much of her virtuous sacrifice. We do not claim virtue for not having killed someone; that is expected. But we may claim virtue for the good we do that is not expected. It is the complexity of actual social behavior with its roots in psychology and the contingencies of everyday life that I think better describes morality on the ground, than does reference to moral codes. We have both sacred (moral) and secular (laws) that direct action to some extent, but whether or not they actually affect behavior is a question requiring acknowledgement of the ambiguities and complexity--the organic quality--of social behavior.
So, if I could read the future back in the early 1930s, and I had the opportunity, I certainly would have killed Hitler, but I would have done it as painlessly as possible, in order to be both ethical and moral.
