Custom «Moral Judgments and Beliefs» Essay Paper

Introduction

Moral judgments and beliefs are social conventions that are largely dictated in terms of true or false. Moral judgments as social conventions in relation to a particular social group are based on either being true or false as ascribed by a particular society. There are two fundamental means of ways of comprehending moral conflicts between the cultures. The society has laid down the procedures that are used to determine if a social behavior is up to the standards of the society based on true and false principles. The principle aspect of morality is that individuals tend to moralize beliefs and judgments they hold to be true or false. In the society, social conventions are based on the aspect of true and false. In my view, not only the persons in the social world concern that they have the right judgments and beliefs, but they furthermore believe that other members of the society must subscribe to their beliefs. Individuals have visceral and emotional responses to social convictions that the “wrong” beliefs are true. According to my own judgment, social convictions are just the same as other kinds of morals, however, the act of believing is more delicate than the majority of other kinds of acts that are moralized (Boyd & Richerson, 2005). 

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Moral Judgments and Beliefs as Social Conventions

A dominant view in psychology, law, and philosophy argues that our moral judgments are the social conventions in the society that result from conscious decisions whereby we move directly from conscious thinking to moral verdict. Individual differences in consciously held principles and beliefs may affect the nature of social conventions, establishing pockets of uniformity in the patterns of reactions. For example, people exposed to coursework in social conventions might reason from a more extensive, or possibly different, set of social values as compared to those without any exposure. As forwarded by Piaget (1932/1965), young persons might concentrate on the consequences of their deeds because they are not yet sensitive about nonconsequential aspects like the agents’ intentions. The same arguments might be elicited in relation to ethnic or religious beliefs and judgments in their natural settings. Though such differences among individuals from different backgrounds is by no means an essential result of the conscious thinking view, proof of extensive shared moral patterns of beliefs and judgments will be less anticipated and more complex to expound.

Related to the principles of holding the ‘right’ beliefs, it is equally essential that the reasoning processes are employed to obtain that social conventions are valid and reliable in relation to morality. This is the thought that an individual is likely to be epistemically accountable and responsible, in using the right structures of thinking to create and expand beliefs. There are diverse avenues of using facts to draw conclusions regarding the social world, and some of those are taken to be superior to others. Instances of exceedingly regarded kinds of the thinking process are scientific methods, or the rationality (Koenig, 2008).

Arriving at a concrete and sound belief and judgment based on social conventions is truly fundamental, as moral judgments concerning individuals believe that other people hold might be eliminated or even attenuated in circumstances where individuals are uninformed of the “right” belief because of the situations out of their reproach. In my view, instances of this can be people in the past, children, or individuals of other cultures who are unexposed to the “right” beliefs. In this scenario, these persons can still be judged upon the validity and soundness of their thinking, however, these individuals might not be judged based on the information that they had an access to (Boyd & Richerson, 2005).

A more sound set of behavior-governing regulations that go out of morality of belief are activities that entails spreading social convictions. This comprises saying the truth, and evading telling lies about some activities. There are other methods of justifying saying or telling the truth, which include the use of appeals to other aspects of morality, which include harm and fairness, however, it looks like that this method has no universal intuition that telling lies is wrong, despite its outcome or effects in the long run. An individual with morality of belief avails truth-telling and lying into the sphere of morality, without the necessity to always make appeals to other types of morals (De Waal, 2006).

An exceptionally apparent case of this type of morality can be seen in the conflict between religions, or still rather, in the conflict between secular and the religious. Individual or each religious group view their personal principle of beliefs as the truth, and that other members of the wider society are immoral, wrong, or sometimes yet inhuman, merely for not believing in the true god(s). In most cases, they are capable to validate, just due to what the others persons accept as true, such things as proselytizing, genocide, war among others (Koenig, 2008). 

I take this as being an aspect in things rather than the issue of religion; however, it is the easiest for me to show the moral of the truth by utilizing religion and the science cases. I would presume that the 'right beliefs' do not arrive at the point of being taken as morals by the majority of American culture, nearly all the time. There are all kinds of beliefs and attitudes that individuals hold, ideologies, beliefs, stereotypes of all types that persons from different backgrounds might hold to be true, and suppose others must also believe to be true. Nevertheless, they might not be enthusiastic to persuade others into accepting their ‘truth.’ More frequently, reprimands that take place for the ‘wrong’ beliefs are probable to entail losses of the social status of one kind or another, whether it is a social position within a group, or still exclusion from a group in the society (Dennett, 2006).

The rationale why social convictions of the truth have vanished is that the culture has mainly amoralized truth and belief. In this case, nevertheless, it necessitated that rules and regulations within a given culture are be approved to forbid the prosecution of truths and beliefs, which is clear in the first amendment, in American law. This plainly permits both freedom of religion and freedom of speech (and related freedom of thought) (Boyd & Richerson, 2005). However, still in current United Sates, there are numerous beliefs that the different individuals from different backgrounds hold to be immoral, taboo by others in spite of the specific activities, which they may take. It is likely that in current world, beliefs and judgments might be more amoralized in less-scientific or non-westernized cultures, which are identical to fundamentals of loyalty, authority, and purity.

One crucial aspect that makes individuals become uniquely successful in their capability to learn is through imitation of the social conventions ascribed by a particular society. This enables individuals to expand their knowledge, which could not have been possible in their own. The big question in this case is how an individual can maximize the opportunity of learning the “right” things. Nevertheless, another way to go concerning solving this problem is to include a morality that needs persons to spread and uphold the ‘right’ beliefs (Dennett, 2006). 

If each person in the community is needed via morality to hold the ‘right’ beliefs, then the probability that one will select the ‘wrong’ beliefs is significantly abridged. It is greatly in an individual’s curiosity to care what their con-specifics believe, as it is probable to have an outcome on that person’s belief in the prospect (De Waal, 2006). Imposing the ‘right’ beliefs on other people in the community then, will perform to a person as assurance for the future, so that neither they, nor their children or relatives, would be probable to espouse, or be tarnished by, maladaptive beliefs. Furthermore, moralizing one’s own beliefs would influence an individual less probable to embrace those ‘wrong’ beliefs even if an individual exposed to them, as they will have a conformity incentive to settle with the ‘right’ beliefs. The three moral foundations can be used to explain this aspect, which they include purity, loyalty, and authority (Boyd & Richerson, 2005).

In my argument, moral judgments as social conventions in relation to a particular social group are based on either being true or false as ascribed by a particular society. There are two fundamental means of ways of comprehending moral conflicts between the cultures. The cognitivists should argue that diverse cultures, with their dissimilar moral practices and values are all attempting to get at the truth regarding ethics. The relativists, on the other hard, claim that this is unbelievable, and moral practices are purely a part of a culture’s way of livelihood. The relativist will argue the latter. It argues that two different cultures that differ over an ethical practice or moral judgment are really making argument that each of them is ‘true for them’.

By difference, the thought that two cultures, which differ, are both demanding to unearth ‘the truth’ concerning moral does not sit well with a considerate of the history of how moral values and cultural practices develop. In addition, because of the difference that one of the cultures is wrong, we also require clarifying why that culture ‘gets it wrong’: why couldn’t individuals in that culture see what was autonomously right and do that? This is a very self-conscious question.

From this truthful claim, some individuals conclude that social conventions are relative in nature and is determined by different cultures in society. This is the viewpoint that there is no aim of ethical standard autonomous from what a culture ascribes. There is no objective ethical truth, which is true for all individuals at all times. In turn, we cannot declare that an ethical value or practice of a society is independently right or wrong. In its place, to speak of what is ‘ethically right’ only creates sense in relative to explicit culturally-relative morals. ‘Right’ in a culture is ‘right according to the specific culture’s morality’. To use any other typical of morals to judge what is right or wrong in a culture is imprudent. We cannot consequentially use principles of our society or demand to ‘objective’ principles or values to judge a diverse culture.

Conclusion

In conclusion, it is worth mentioning that judgments and beliefs in the community are based on claims of the “right” and “wrong” concepts. Related to the principles of holding the ‘right’ beliefs, it is equally essential that the reasoning processes employed to obtain those beliefs are valid and reliable in relation to morality. This is the thought that an individual is likely to be epistemically accountable and responsible, in using the right structures of thinking to create and expand beliefs. Therefore, in my opinion, judgments and beliefs in the community are dictated by a set of moralities in the society based on whether it is “wrong” or “right” to judge an individual or group of individuals in the larger society. Therefore, moral judgments as social conventions in relation to a particular social group are based on either being true or false as ascribed by a particular society. There are two fundamental means of ways of comprehending moral conflicts between the cultures (Koenig, 2008).