Talk:Amoralism/Archive 1

Immoral vs Amoral
Recently people have been making distinctions between amoral and immoral as if they are mutually exclusive terms, when this in fact not the case. Usually this comes from a result of misunderstanding immoral and not from misunderstanding amoral. When it comes to the information about amorality, this article is perfectly fine. However, its distinctions between amoral and immoral are inadequate. Immorality cannot just simply be labeled amorality because the person claims to not believe in good or evil. Often, I find that one would take the term amoral which implies an innocence (which it should) over the term immoral when that is not the case. Let's start by looking at various definitions of immoral:

(I reformatted the definitions into a more logical useful manner for this page)

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1: Contrary to established moral principles;

2: violating principles of right and wrong;

3: not adhering to ethical or moral principles;

4: morally unprincipled;

5: characterized by wickedness or immorality;

6: marked by immorality; deviating from what is considered right or proper or good;

Source: The American Heritage® Dictionary of the English Language, Fourth Edition Copyright © 2000 by Houghton Mifflin Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Company. All rights reserved.

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If the American Heritage Dictionary is not acceptable, how about using the Oxford dictionary which (in my opinion) does the best of tracing the origin of words and thus more credible.

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The opposite of moral; not moral.

1. Not consistent with, or not conforming to, moral law or requirement; opposed to or violating morality; morally evil or impure; unprincipled, vicious, dissolute. (Of persons, things, actions, etc.)

{dag}2. Not having a moral nature or character; non-moral. Obs. rare.

B. n. (nonce-uses, in opposition to moral n.: see quots.)

Hence i{sm}mmoralness, immorality.

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Excuse me for not using proper citation but I wish only to discuss and point authors into the right direction when it comes to research. I am not capable enough to rewrite, replace, or edit this article. instead, i rather bring up a point which may be considered for this article (especially since there is no immorality article as it is just assumed within the morality article).

Anyway, back to the discussion. First and foremost that amoral does not belong into the same classification as moral and immoral. The terms immoral and amoral are negatives of different definitions/usages of the word moral. Immoral is the negative of the definition of moral which deals with things being good/moral. Amoral is the negative of the definition of moral which deals with whether or not something is good or bad. Moral is a word full of meaning and distinctions need to be made. Morality first refers to the distinction as things as either good or bad. Basically, determining something immoral falls under the discusiion of morality even though immoral is a negative of moral. Morality can have a broad definition that deals with the distinction between right and wrong while not actually giving a preference for either one. When it comes to this definition of morality, amorality is the negative. Amoral does not say something is good, bad or even niether. Amoral says that it is beyond this dinstinction or rather, morality cannot be applied to it. The color of an object can be termed amoral as there is no good or evil to it, though such a declaration is redundant due to how obvious it is. A person can in fact be amoral. This merely means that they have no conception of right or wrong, whcih the author does a good job describing. However, an amoral person can still act in moral and immoral ways. An amoral person can still be moral and immoral. The lact of understanding of morals does not prevent a person from acting for or against them.

The second definition of moral is where it takes a distinction from its broad definition. Where morality can be refering to the defining of good and evil, morality can also refer to just the good aspect. In this case, immoral is the negative of moral. An act can be described first as moral and amoral where it is brought into question whether or not right and wrong can be even applied to it. If deemed to fall under the juristiction of morality, the action can then be labeled moral or immoral. Similar to how moral has two definitions, amoral does as well. Actually, there is just the special case of people that should be taken into account. Amoral first makes the distinction as to whether or not morality can be applied to something. In the case of people it can further and state whether or not they themselves are moral or amoral by their understanding of morality. If the concept of morality eludes them, then they are amoral. However, they are still under the jurisdiction of morality as their actions and they themselves can still be called moral or immoral. Not realizing that an action is wrong does not make it any less immoral. A person who is amoral in nature can also be either moral or immoral and certainly their actions can be moral and immoral as well. Preceding comment by 147.226.199.3.

Biased Definition of Amorality
I just want to make a note here that I added a parenthetical section, with an alternate definition of amorality. I feel that the first definition, in saying that amorality means a "quality of having no concept of right or wrong," implies an absolutist bias that "right and wrong" exist, which some amoralists would contest by definition of their amoral belief system. Such a definition subtly and falsely pushes amoralists into the category of immorality, by implying the existence of morality and the amoralist's immoral failure to acknowledge such a moral system.

To clarify: Atheists lack belief in any gods or deities. While you could say an atheist is someone with "the quality of having no concept of God or gods," such a definition would sound terribly biased, from the theist viewpoint. It would be like saying there is a God, but atheists simply have no concept of him. I feel the definition left here before my edition was similarly biased, from the moralist viewpoint.

Also note: I cannot verify my new definition with an online source. However, I do have a B.A. in English & Philosophy from the University of Hartford, and can bring professors and other experts into the discussion if requested.

Chris Dubey 02:36, 10 August 2006 (UTC)

Subjectiveness
Right and wrong are obviously subjective. One man might not think stealing to have a child get food is moral, but another might. It is portrayed in this Wikipedia entry as if it were an opinion only of amoral people that right and wrong are subjective, when it is simply the truth. Therefore, this article has a bias against amorality.

Atul Prasad

Or one person is simply doing the wrong thing and is under the illusion that he is doing what is right. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 69.132.83.75 (talk) 20:35, 20 May 2008 (UTC)

Examples of Amoralists
I believe that examples of philosophical amoralists would make this article better. In my mind, this list would need include Nietzsche, Machiavelli, Freud, Rousseau, et al. I know that the last two may seem to be odd for this list, but as they deny morality exists objectively, they would be considered amoral. To deny that morality has an objective, external source is to be amoral, by which definition they are included. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.239.116.147 (talk) 23:21, 26 March 2008 (UTC)

Neutrality
This article seems to automatically assume Sade was pathological. This seems a bit POV. Zazaban (talk) 22:54, 17 May 2008 (UTC)

Confusion
I found this article extremely confusing. It did a horrible job of explaining the difference between amorality and immorality. And the ideas presented in the article were very badly organized. I don't enough article-writing/-editing experience, nor knowledge about this subject, to fix this myself, so it would be great if someone who's done a lot of research and knows their stuff could edit this article.

NoriMorishima (talk) 22:23, 14 June 2008 (UTC)

Edited and Suggestions
I edited the text somewhat to make it clearer, but I changed none of the substance. However, I would dispute that Neitzsche and Hobbes (among others listed) are amoralists at all. Nietzsche may not have a systematized normative ethical code, but he certainly thinks that it's bad for the Ubermench to hold the slave's ethical code. Hobbes, on the other hand, has at least this explicit ethical maxim: It is wrong to remain in a state of nature, or to enter it. I suggest removing at least these and perhaps others. Also, it would be helpful to know how amoralism is distinct from moral subjectivism. It seems that moral subjectivists may still hold that there is a right and wrong--especially a right and wrong relative to a given society--but that there is not an objective and universal morality. —Preceding unsigned comment added by Rdanneskjold (talk • contribs) 02:11, 7 October 2008 (UTC)

Reference section, Nietzsche quote
The Nietzsche quote in the Reference section does not comment on amorality at all. There is a debate whether he is an amoralist (as opposed to an inverted Platonist ergo immoralist), but this quote does not answer it in any way. As far as I can figure out from the chopping, it is just about good/evil vs. good/bad, the former being morality, the latter being satiety of the will.

Really, for the purposes of this article, short of having an entire section on Nietzsche, it is much simpler to say that he is an amoralist. Even if it is not necessarily directly correct, it is undeniably in the spirit of his writing.

Alistaire47 (talk) 05:54, 23 December 2008 (UTC)

Four Bullets, removed one of them
"Amoralists also oppose the Golden Rule, the idea of virtues (Aristoteles), and don't want to be bound to human or animal rights as individuals."

This is extremely biased and subjective. Because it is subjective it obviously does not follow from any objective definition of Amoralism. Amoralism cannot be defined subjectively.

-Afisamule'al 23:46, 15 February 2009 (UTC)

86.162.234.100 (talk) 04:10, 26 February 2009 (UTC)

Poop?
What's with all the references to 'poop'? Vandalism?

This is the single worst article I have ever seen.
Really, this is awful. I removed some of the worst crap, mainly original research essays, but that's not leaving very much. This article needs work very badly. Zazaban (talk) 23:40, 9 March 2009 (UTC)

Preserved version of the article at its largest size.
Amoralism is the disbelief in any of the concepts of morality.

Amoralists reject all moral systems of all religion, as well as all secular ethics like Immanuel Kant's categorical imperative or utilitarian concepts like bringing as much happiness as possible to as many people as possible.

Amoralists cannot be ethical egoists, because that would be an ethical position.

Amoralist arguments against different types of moral philosophy
Amoralism in philosophy is the rejection of several philosophical theses that are held by moral philosophers with different meta-ethical understandings of morality:

Amoralism is based upon moral nihilism.

Amoralists might agree with meta-ethical noncognitivists, that there's nothing to know about in ethics. Moral sentences cannot be true or false, because they don't report facts, but command or recommend a type of behavior. Moralities might exist as a sets of rules followed by people because they believe in these or those rules, but morality has no existence beyond human activity or society. Amoralists care about objective truth and reject subjective opinions of right and wrong as sufficient for adopting ethical believes.

That means, that amoralists just need to show that the arguments of non-cognitivists (that morality is reasonable) are invalid. Against emotivists, amoralists argue that amoralists and also many other people (including many emotivists) just don't have moral or altruistic emotions all the time. Against prescriptivists, they argue that there is no rational justification to follow moral commands or rules all the time.

Amoralists use all arguments of atheists against the idea of the consequence of spending eternity in hell for their sins. They also do not believe in bad karma or being reborn in a lower state. Amoralists think about morality just like atheists think about deities - human fairy tales and inventions which can be overcome by rational people.

They also argue, that morality cannot be based upon biology, like attempted by evolutionary ethics, because evolution theory is descriptive, morality is prescriptive.

Amoralists argue that people have little left to lose near the end of their lives, so they have little reasons to follow any moral rules.

Amoralist behavior
An amoralist can adopt rationality in the sense of rational choice, be a Homo economicus and do only what's best for them or their selected purposes in the long run. Rational amoralists care about morals insofar as non-moral actions will lead to undesirable consequences. However, if such consequences are unlikely, amoralists don't care about morals, they can be restricted only by fear, never by guilt or remorse.

As lack of morality disgusts many people, amoralists may choose to be secretive about their disregard for it.

A person stressing the importance of morality in public might be either a true moralist or just an amoralist trying to get a good reputation. A person accusing another person of an immoral lifestyle might as well be a secret amoralist using public morality as a weapon against an opponent.

There are also narcissistic amoralists, who simply do not care enough about others and attract dislike and disfavor by their criminal, aggressive and impulsive behavior (e.g. antisocial personality disorder). It should be noted, however, that not all individuals with antisocial personality disorder flaunt their amoralism — many hide it very effectively, relying on their skills as pathological liars to project the appearance of charming, normal people.

Amorality and Immorality
Amorality is distinct from immorality, although in common use the terms are often conflated. An amoral person denies the existence of morality, whereas an immoral person believes in the existence of morality but chooses not to comply with it. An immoral person who violates a certain moral code may still believe in the underlying truth of that moral code. For example, a thief may not deny that stealing is immoral, but may attempt to deflect the blame or offer excuses in order to justify their actions.

Amoralist philosophers
There is no philosophical school of thinkers, who tried to erect a systematic and consistent theory of amoralism.

The problem of amoralism was present already to Socrates, brought up by Thrasymachus and Callicles.

Mandeville and Machiavelli brought up amoralism in the realm of political theory.

Amoralist egoism was proposed by Marquis de Sade and Max Stirner. De Sade's philosophy is hedonistic and materialistic, while Stirner was an anarchist. De Sade was the first philosopher to claim that virtues lead to failure, vices to happiness and success. Modern amoralist see this as extreme literary fiction, and will usually claim, that neither doing good nor doing bad are a guarantee for success.

Friedrich Nietzsche critizised morality and moral philosophers and argued for a changing of all values, however not the destruction of all values.

Existentialist philosophers often also need to confront the possibility that their philosophies are amoralist, because of claims like Sartre's, that we invent meaning.

Animal Amorality?
That sentence is fundamentally incorrect and should be deleted. It is impossible to investigate the moral structure of animals, so it is ridiculous to claim the majority of life is amoral, thats like saying the majority of life outside of Earth is tigers, there is just no way of proving it. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 124.188.149.134 (talk) 06:23, 24 November 2009 (UTC)