Is morality constant or does it change over time?

Nurture that which you wish to thrive, is a constant.

The variability of the nurturing methodology is cultural, and not constant.

In a world that is just the world, it changes with the whim of who can enforce their brand.

First, let’s point out that your question does not actually present mutually exclusive options. Just because people’s sense of what is right and wrong changes (which is demonstrably the case) doesn’t mean that there isn’t some set of eternal, timeless, constant principles that should be followed and respected, regardless of societal norms and time. Perhaps we are morally ignorant (or at least, less than fully informed in moral matters), and so our moral sense is changing as we gain knowledge and experience (hopefully in the direction of the truth).

But to answer your questions separately: yes, our moral sense changes all the time. Slavery used to be both legal and in common practice nearly everywhere in the world. Now it is illegal everywhere, practiced openly in only a few places, and existing in increasingly small pockets elsewhere (though it continues to exist even in the most modern of nations). And importantly, this change has largely come about as a result of people changing their beliefs about whether or not slavery was morally justified.

Your second question is considerably more complicated. Let’s start by distinguishing principles that are objective from those that hold universally. An objective principle is part of the “furniture of the universe,” so to speak. It is, like any true law of physics, something that holds at every time and place, and it holds true independent of what anyone or anything might believe or desire. A universal principle, on the other hand, need not be true at every time and place nor be independent of what anyone or anything might believe or desire. It may even be a product of facts about the beliefs and desires of individuals or groups (so long as it holds for all of them).

Most people have at least an intuitive grasp of what it would mean for a principle to be objective, even if they cannot put it into words. But the idea of a universal principle is sometimes a bit more elusive. Here’s one way to think about it: suppose there is such a thing as a “human nature” that all human beings share, and suppose that part of human nature is that we are at least somewhat or sometimes motivated by feelings of benevolence. It may hold for every human being, then, that they ought to at least sometimes act benevolently. Any human being who did not would be making themselves less well off and would not be fulfilling their nature. But human nature might not be the same at all times and places, and it most definitely depends on the desires of individuals.

I bring up this distinction because the words you use suggest that you are asking about objective principles, but most people are actually satisfied with universal principles. In fact, @RealEyesRealizeRealLies’ answer displays exactly this tendency: he mentions a universal principle explicitly grounded in desire and that could only be coextensive with beings that have such desires despite the fact that what you asked about were objective principles. Any yes or no answer to your question is likely to be met with irrelevant criticisms if this distinction is not kept in mind (which distracts from the many relevant criticisms that all such answers are open to, since this is nowhere close to a settled problem with an obvious or easily explainable answer).

In any case, my own view is that there are no objective principles (though there may well be universal ones). The theoretical demands are simply too great for such things to be possible. When we talk about a law of physics, it doesn’t matter whether or not anyone disagrees. Gravity is gravity whether we like it or not—and it works the way it works whether we understand it or not. A natural law does not have to explain itself. But an objective moral principle does have to be able to explain itself. Unlike a natural law, a moral law can be broken. So in order to be complete, an objective moral principle must contain within itself an explanation for why we ought to obey it. Yet no moral principle can explain why we ought to obey it without appealing to facts about our beliefs and desires. It can demand that we obey, but it cannot explain why we ought to obey. And this isn’t just because we need some explanation of what’s in it for us. It’s because a principle that merely demands with no power to require is idle. It says “do this—for no reason other than because this principle demands it.” As rational beings, we deserve more out of our moral principles than this.

The only constant involving morality is its elasticity. Ones morality changes, even if slightly, over time. The morality of certain situations can be bent by those who would attempt to control the perception of the situation. Actions can be excused by morality in some situations, and in other situations defended by morality.

For instance, killing someone is immoral. But it depends on the situation. Killing must be done sometimes, for protection, or in the theater of war.

Morality is a liquid that will take the shape of whatever container it is poured into for viewing by the public.

I’m not sure, but strongly suspect that morals and mores share the same root. In any case they both shift, and the shifts which are positive pretty much constitute my definition of social progress. When looking back, it seems unbelievable that the injustices heaped on women, gays, and anyone non white and male could be tolerated for so long.

There was a question like this several years ago on Fluther – is morality immutable or does it change by time.

It’s not an either / or question.

A couple of points:

1) there are no morals / values that are universally accepted. Even things like murder. Society generally disdains murder, but then you have terrorists that see murder as a means to salvation.

2) That said, there are many values/morals that have more widespread acceptance, and many that are of a lower priority or have lesser take-up around the world.

3) You can have morality without religion. In fact, religion may cloud morality because of religion’s innate prejudices.

4) Morality has to change with the times. Otherwise it would die from irrelevance to today’s society.

We parade animals, like cows at auction, for sale like the way we used to parade slaves for sale . I believe that animals and sentient computers , and disadvantaged humans will have rights in the future. So yes I believe morality changes over time and also it doesn’t.

The term “human rights ” only dates back a few hundred years. Think about that. Prior to around 1600, there was no such concept. Nobody, not the Church and not Aristotle, questioned slavery. In Medieval times there were a slew of capital offenses and tortures like being drawn and quartered and being burnt at the stake were carried out by governments. The Enlightenment set in motion a complete change of how we view humanity and it is still in motion. Only fairly recently has corporal punishment of children been looked down upon.

@LostInParadise There is no doubt that the Enlightenment was revolutionary in the way that the Western world thought about nearly everything, but plenty of people—including Aristotle—questioned slavery prior to the 1600s. While Aristotle did not object to the practice of slavery as such, he did have objections to the way it was practiced in ancient Greece on the grounds that it should be limited only to those who were “natural slaves” (defined in terms of individual mental capacity). This is a rather dubious category to those of us living in modern times, and rightly so. But it did have a powerful effect on the beliefs of medieval Europeans with regard to whom they thought it was acceptable to enslave.

As for other ancient Greeks, the Stoics and the Cynics were explicitly opposed to slavery. For the Stoics, this was more of a theoretical enterprise. They never took much direct political action with regard to the issue, even later on when they had adherents in positions of power. The Cynics were willing to be a bit more direct in their opposition, but most ancient Greeks did not take them seriously. The Epicureans were not explicitly opposed to slavery (largely due to their insistence on being apolitical), but they did not recognize any difference between free and enslaved Greeks. Members of both groups were welcomed into the school and were treated as equals (as were women). Many Epicureans—including Epicurus himself—also freed their slaves.

As far as the Church is concerned, you’re certainly correct that its official stance for centuries was pro-slavery. I do think it is worth mentioning at least one notable dissenter, however, and that is the 4th century theologian Gregory of Nyssa. He wrote forcefully on why Christians ought not to be slavers nor to tolerate slavery. And while he did not ground this on an explicit notion of human rights, he did invoke the inherent value and nobility of human beings and argued that it was part of human nature to be free. These are both important elements of later theories of natural human rights, and so Gregory’s arguments must be seen at least as important predecessors to such theories. And given how many points of agreement there are between Gregory of Nyssa and John Locke, even on minor matters, these similarities are likely to be a matter of historical influence and not mere coincidences.

I wonder if John Locke was familiar with the works of Gregory of Nyssa.

By Medieval times, slavery as practiced by Europeans was pretty much confined to Africans. I wonder to what extent they were influenced by Aristotle combined with a racist view of Africans.

I did a Web search for the Stoic view of slavery. I came across this paper On page 16, it gives a summary of the view of the Stoics. It distinguished between “external slavery” which is considered “beyond our control” and slavery of the soul, so it would appear that they did not oppose the institution of slavery.

I also did a search for the Epicurean view of slavery. All I could find was that they accepted slaves as followers, which is not the same as opposing slavery.

The Cynics rejected ownership of property. Their objection to slavery was more about the effect that it had on slave owners than on injustice.

What is right and what is wrong doesn’t change. People have been trying to refine those lists since the beginning of time. Truth is, it is that for which we search in our lives.

Are we talking society or personal?
Think of time when bras were supposed to be never shown under no circumstances.
Today everyone can see what color bra you are wearing! And everyone seemed got over that ‘Oh, shocker!’ reaction. This is the plainest I can think of. :)

Personal morals. We all know what are we doing wring or wrong. However sometimes you get hit with a brick over your head and it is forgetting all you were thought. And you pray and cry and want to be a good again but something isn’t let you to be back to your respectable normal self. So…that’s my answer. :)

@LostInParadise Well, your brief Google searches are surely much more reliable than my 15 years of research and study. ~

In any case, we don’t know how familiar Locke was with Gregory of Nyssa. Locke never cites him directly, but direct citation was not as common back then (and was more often used when disagreeing with someone). Locke would have read Eriugena as part of his education, however, and Eriugena discusses Gregory at length. We also know that Locke was not a fan of the classical philosophy curriculum and specifically sought out non-standard philosophy to read, so he may have come across Gregory that way. The reason that many scholars think Locke must have been familiar with Gregory, though, is that their similarities are not limited to just this one overlap regarding slavery. Locke shares with Gregory what were then highly idiosyncratic views about certain matters of metaphysics. Gregory and Locke even use curiously similar language to describe some of these views. This stands out in Locke’s work largely because he was not terribly interested in metaphysics and usually adopts fairly quotidian metaphysical views (though he comes up with interesting arguments for them in certain important cases). But as I said previously, the most we can say is that the influence is likely. There is no smoking gun here.

As for African slavery, the answer is that Europeans were very much influenced by Aristotle (as I already mentioned). His theory of natural slavery was invoked on both sides of the Valladolid debate, for instance, which concerned the possible enslavement of the indigenous Americans. He was not the only authority invoked in such debates, of course. The Bible always weighed heavily in all such discussions, as did various political realities. But the theory of natural slavery was popular for a very long time.

Regarding the Stoics, you’ll notice that I already pointed out that their opposition to slavery was more of a theoretical exercise and that they didn’t take direct political action on the issue. Furthermore, the paper you found is about Epictetus, who was himself a slave and was concerned to explain how one could be a Stoic sage while enslaved. This is the point of the distinction between external slavery and slavery of the soul. Since the goal of Stoicism is to maintain equanimity (Gk: ἀπάθεια) no matter the external circumstances, it would be a devastating objection if one could not be both a slave and a Stoic sage (since slavery is an external circumstance). Thus for the Stoics, slavery of the soul is worse (and more important) than external slavery.

It does not follow from this, however, that the Stoics can have no opinion about (external) slavery as a practice. As you may have noticed, the paper you cited was written by an undergraduate. This is fine, but she does make the mistake that most undergraduates (and many new graduate students) make with regard to the Stoic doctrine of indifference. Specifically, she fails to understand that “indifference” is a technical term for the Stoics and does not mean for them exactly what it means for contemporary English speakers. For the Stoics, all things are either good, bad, or indifferent. But within the category of indifferent things, they also recognized a category of things called the “preferred indifferents.” Freedom is a preferred indifferent, which makes it something to pursue in all but the most unusual circumstances (e.g., it might be virtuous to accept slavery if by doing so you could somehow save the world).

This oversight leads the author to leave out quite a bit of important context for the Garnsey quote on page 16. Indeed, the main thesis of Garnsey’s book is what I have argued for (and the opposite of what you have argued for) here. He wants to show that the lack of direct political action in opposition to slavery “does not imply that slavery was accepted without question” in ancient societies, and he wishes to “challenge the common assumption of passive acquiescence in slavery, and the associated view that, Aristotle apart, there was no systematic thought on slavery” in ancient times. While the Stoics may not have been active abolitionists, they saw freedom as a preferred indifferent and slavery as a dispreferred indifferent.

As to the Epicureans, let us look again at what I actually said: “The Epicureans were not explicitly opposed to slavery (largely due to their insistence on being apolitical), but they did not recognize any difference between free and enslaved Greeks. Members of both groups were welcomed into the school and were treated as equals (as were women). Many Epicureans—including Epicurus himself—also freed their slaves.” So again, at no point did I claim they were abolitionists. Their opposition took the form of not participating in the practice of slavery (which is perhaps the most that is consistent with their apolitical stance). In fact, one could argue that by treating slaves as equals and welcoming them into their school, the Epicureans were actually violating their apolitical stance by doing something that in the ancient context would have been seen as politically shocking (I have, in fact, known people who argue precisely this). But even if we are not willing to go this far, it is clear that the Epicureans were willing to question slavery (which was the original goalpost you set). By not playing along with the social practices that accompanied it (such as the social and political exclusion of slaves), they were raising questions about the institution of ancient slavery through their actions.

It is also worth mentioning that just because you were personally unable to turn anything up in a search doesn’t mean it’s not out there. Competent research in the history of philosophy requires the analysis and comparison of various documents to find more than what is just lying on the surface.

As for the Cynics, it should be noted that you never set any goalposts regarding the reason for questioning or opposing the institution of slavery. What you said was that no one had ever questioned it, and I pointed out that this was false. That said, there was more to the Cynic rejection of slavery than the effect it had on slave owners (though that aspect is sufficient to prove my point). Yes, that was the argument that they used against slave owners. But there is also an implicit argument against slavery in the Cynic argument in favor of freedom. While the Cynics are similar to the Stoics in thinking that one should be able to be a sage in any circumstances, their particular notion of sagehood and freedom also suggests that an enlightened Cynic would reject the legal notion of slavery. Not only would he not own slaves, but he would not see himself as a slave. Perhaps his putative owner would have the physical strength necessary to keep him in place, but it does not follow from this that the Cynic must see himself as a slave or accept his condition. This is a different type of opposition to slavery, but it is opposition nonetheless. But again, this is something you would have to read through Cynic texts to understand. It’s not going to be just lying around online for you. Sometimes we have to actually work to obtain knowledge.

I appreciate the time you took to respond and the extent of your knowledge. I can see that the Greek philosophers were opposed to slavery but, as you point out, none were abolitionists, They were unwilling to take action against the institution of slavery or even suggest that others should. They felt it was sufficient to separate themselves from slavery. Post-Enlightenment one could argue that such a thing is not possible. When an economy is based in part on slave labor, we are all participants in the institution of slavery.

@LostInParadise Yes, that is right. It’s sort of ironic, really. The ancient Greeks had very associativist and collectivist view of the state and fairly robust notions of group culpability, but slavery was seen as more of a private economic affair than any sort of state business. The Enlightenment brought about very different ideas about the role of the state and the relationship between the state and its citizens. And though it has often been criticized for its individualist (or “atomistic”) tendencies, Enlightenment thinkers started to view slavery as a social institution rather than a private one. I think you are right to point to economics here, too. Like you said, the idea that one could separate oneself from the institution of slavery was much less plausible in the post-Enlightenment period.

It is both. Suicide is a constant moral behavior in human history, but not for everyone. Using the same example, morality can be shown to be dynamic. For example, if you’re being tortured and you commit suicide to escape the torture, your moral behavior changed from survival to suicide. Given the circumstance, where you once viewed survival as the right behavior, you now see suicide as the right behavior.

The is-ought problem negates the “should be followed” argument.

The type of moral change is dynamic. Insanity is another alternative moral behavior. One’s memories can be a worrying, anxious place. Instead of facing those unbearable thoughts, there’s always the choice of insanity as a safe heaven. Here you’re changing the moral behavior from sanity to insanity which is circumstantially based, like the torture situation.

@Walgt You are equivocating on “moral.” Suicide is a constant behavior in human history, and it is one that moral systems are frequently concerned to address. In that sense it is typically considered to be a “moral behavior” (i.e., a behavior that falls under the auspices of morality). But it isn’t constantly or even commonly viewed as morally acceptable to commit suicide. So in that sense, it is typically not considered to be a moral behavior (i.e., a behavior that is viewed as morally acceptable).

Furthermore, your “changing the moral behavior” cases don’t make sense unless they are viewed in the light of some further or higher goal. Why would you choose suicide over survival when being tortured. Why would you choose insanity over sanity in the face of unbearable thoughts. Or perhaps more to the point, why is it right to choose those things? What is the goal that these changes serve? And if that goal is constant, then morality may be as well.

After all, morality can be constant even if the list of acceptable actions that count as moral change based on the circumstances. For example, consider a world in which it was always immoral to cause physical pain to another person, but that was the only immoral thing one could do. That would mean it would be perfectly acceptable for me to swing my arms around so long as they did not come into contact with any person capable of experiencing physical pain.

But it would not be acceptable for me to swing my arms around if that action would cause someone physical pain. The action is the same, and there has been no change to the rules of morality. It is only the circumstances that have changed, but that is still enough for a change in the moral status of my action. Your examples, then, are not enough to show that morality changes over time. But of course, they also don’t show that it is constant. Even if we need a further goal to make sense of your cases, it does not follow that said goal must itself be constant (or objective).

The morals or value system is formed in the first 5 years of life. The blue print for our personalities is given to us by our parents. This must be part of our morals. What if environmental factors played a part in brain development? like the amygdala, that is found to be much smaller in psychopaths and sociopaths. Lead was not taken out of gas til the 70’s. what kind of environmental factors existed throughout time? Ergot on rye? Monsanto?