By “moral system,” I mean the totality of a social morality, the content, processes, intellectual framework or foundation—everything that brings about pro-social behavior and that attempts to deter or prevent anti-social activity. The moral system of a given society (which could be a social unit as small as a family or as large and complex as a multi-ethnic nation) consists of the moral instincts, which most of us carry, the values, virtues, norms, rules, means of enforcement, critical thinking, and struggles over what we accept as right and wrong. The section of this website on the Components of Morality spells out this notion of a moral system in greater detail.
How Moral Systems Work is about how all of this functions in practice. How we form a common understanding of right and wrong, how we inculcate that understanding, how subtle gestures and choice words tell children where they are right and wrong, how we deal with dissent, how we respond to deviance, how and whether we change the common understanding, how we debate values, how we decide what counts as virtuous, how we enforce norms, how we establish rules and laws, how we change them, how we interpret them—in short, the whole messy business of creating and living a morality.
The entirety of morality may be beyond comprehension. We are somewhat like blind people defining an elephant by reporting what we feel when we grasp different parts. But we can understand some aspects of how moral systems work. Without understanding, rational intervention and improvement are more difficult, perhaps impossible.
It may be that an understanding of how moral systems work is possible only in an open, pluralistic society. Morally absolutistic societies tend to see morality as fixed. Right and wrong are whatever the entrenched authority says they are (“. . . because I say so”). Referring to The Great Conversation in such societies may make little sense. No debate is allowed. No discussion. Those with power will tell you what is right and wrong; and that’s the end of it.
My point of reference is open societies, in which one of the fundamental values is freedom of thought and speech. In such a society, what counts as right and what as wrong and gradations between the two poles are subject to debate, dissent, critique, re-examination, and revision.
Our exploration of how moral systems work should, therefore, more accurately be titled “How Moral Systems Work in Open Societies.”
We start with the basic law of reciprocity. Next we examine moral emotions. Moral cognition—the knowing of right and wrong—follows. Then come beliefs, both beliefs about what is right and wrong and belief in something outside ourselves (principles, values, moral authorities, deities, leaders). Intellectual systems of moral content play a big role in mature moral systems. Such intellectual foundations or frames are what is commonly understood as ethics in philosophy and university courses. Cultural processes provide the means for growing and living morality. The formation of authority is another aspect of how moral systems work. Finally, we will look at the vehicles of moral content.
Some of these topics overlap with others. For example, much of the discussion could be subsumed under the heading of Cultural Processes. For now, we’ll keep the topics as they are and see where they take us. After all, this website is an experiment in trying to comprehend an elephantine subject. We may not get it altogether right on the first try–or ever.