Topics Ethics

Question How should one go about defining their own morals? I have lost track of what I deem completely acceptable behaviour; I am an athiest and hold no reverence to any one religious guide and have recently become apathetic and non-caring. I am having a hard time grounding myself morally and would like to know how one goes about questioning the topic.

Accepted:
September 6, 2006

Comments

I suppose one place to start is to work out whether you feel that what you might consider taking on as moral principles are consistent with each other. Do you feel, that is, that one principle interferes with another in such a way that you don't know how to proceed? Suppose you think that lying is to be avoided at all costs, but then you think of a situation where lying seems the best strategy, since it might prevent harm, and then you would wonder whether the harm caused by lying is more or less than the harm caused by not lying. You might then wonder whether prevention of harm is something worth basing ethics on, or whether some other principle would make more sense. That is not a bad way to start, since instead of having to think up some very important general principles out of nowhere you can consider a variety of candidates and then see how they well they get on with each other. I suppose this is not much help in working out which moral principles to adopt, but it is useful in telling you which go with others, and that is helpful, since it might show you that what you initially wanted to take on cannot be right since somewhere down the line it offends something else that you also want to promote.