Optional Decisions are Moral Decisions

Right now I am thinking that the only moral desicion we ever make is which desicions to apply our moral standards to. The rest is consequence.

So I guess I agree with your statement JL.

Cryacuz, interesting point, i.e., that the principal moral act lies in the design of a society's "table of values" or moral code.
Very interesting.
It would seem to me that, while this might seem to be a collective social event in the sense of a society coming together and deciding or having their representives decide what the moral code will be (similar to our founding fathers' construction of our Constitution), it is probably a long historical process in which a society undergoes the political process of dealing with competing moral proclamations and finally institutionalizing the "winners."

You saw more in that than I, JL, but it is indeed interesting.

But morality has changed little in a long while in one way. I consider the ten commandments to be an adequate 'table of values', and nearly all democratically empowered laws are based on these values or some variation of them. Historically, it seems that whenever we've fought 'the good fight' and won, we have arrived back at these values, only to stray from them yet again.

So I am wondering if the answer is not for each individual to 'fight the good fight' in his heart from time to time, and by so doing keeping the blade of his conscience sharp and keen.

Cyracuz, sounds like Candide's decision to just tend to his own garden.

Maybe. Unfortunately we've come to see the whole world as one garden, and we're having a hard time figuring out whos it is. If we were to look at the principles that lay at the foundation of right to property, or more specifically the right to own land, they may not come off as being the most morally sound idea we've ever had.

As far as I can tell, the owner of any given land is the one who gives you trouble if you try to use it. That's about the only justification I can think of, and it isn't very morally sound.

I disagree. Our morals are not in the form of a hash table or lookup table that tells us what to do based on the situation. If you think about it, such a table would be impossible to have without making it very general, and our decisions do not boil down to easily predictable general categories, nor can our actions be generalized so easily.

I am not sure how our morals could be represented internally but I am certain that it is not an input/action mapping. We must derive the proper action/reaction as a separate process using the input + moral values, and this process is a decision making one.

Your idea also implies that it is impossible for a person to do anything that they consider immoral. People often do things that they consider to be the wrong thing because they cannot overcome their desire to do it.

Regardless of your moral standard and your appreciation of the complexity of these matters, which I agree with, I still say that the supreme moral act for any individual is the desicion of when to assign morals to a choice.

[bookmark]

Ah, well then, this is an opinion which does not refute the potential to make other moral acts, so I don't disagree this time

You're right, it doesn't refute the potential to make other moral acts. The moral act I am referring to would be followed by a series of moral choices and actions.

I want to make a slight change to my original position.

It is not the first decision, which is an internal and personal action, that may be a moral entity but it is the second decision, the external action, that may be a moral entity.

What do you mean by 'moral entity' coberst? Right now I'm thinking 'the manifestation of moral resolve'. But that would render the holocaust a 'moral entity'... Truth, I suspect I'm way off on this..

I mean moral entity as a happening that is not amoral but has some moral content.

What decides the moral content of a happening, if the happening can have any outcome regardless of moral intent? Hitler thought he was doing something good...

Huh? Does anybody understand that?

Can morals apply to actions? Can 'a happening' be moral or amoral?