Ring of Gyges

can anyone find a reason to act moral?my dear sgt l,every person has their own set of morals,things they believe are right and wrong based on who they are and what they've learnt throughout life.therefore you do not need to find a reason to be moral,you are moral in your own way,the way you speak to people tells me about how you conduct yourself,so in esscence it's not about finding a reason,you live by your morals and therefore are being moral all the time.it's outside perception which tells you where you stand in the world,what other people think about you determines how the world will judge you when it comes to being moral.for instance,you and i may have different sets of morals and therefore percieve each other in different ways,if someone thinks an action of yours is immoral,then he has different morals to you,whether good or bad,so therefore you can't say that there needs to be a reason to be moral,because you yourself represent your morals,and you present those morals to the world.

but if i had an invisible ring i would have soooooooooo much fun.

This seems to be the salient question - if you, despite your personal values and worldview (Weltanschauung) came upon, or had bestowed upon you, something that made you infinitely more powerful than previously, how would you use this power?

Doesn't have to be magical, or fantastical, powers as newly minted commanders of local, "defensive" militias in various conflict areas around the world have found out.

T'is a very good question Sarge! So what do y'all think?

This is a question that a lot of people have thought about, and it really depends on your character:

Character is:
[list]
[*]doing what's right when nobody's looking. -- JC Watts, Jr.
[*]what you are in the dark. -- Dwight L Moody
[*]what you are willing to do when the spotlight has been turned off, the applause has died down and no one is around to give you credit. -- Author Unknown
[*](a) how he treats people who can't do him any good, and (b) how he treats people who can't fight back. -- Abigail van Buren
[*]what we do when we think no one is looking. -- H. Jackson Brown Jr.
[*]what you do when other people aren't looking. -- Clarence Thomas
[*]doing the right thing when nobody is looking. -- J. C. Watts
[*]what God and angels know of us. -- Thomas Paine
[*]what he would do if he knew he never would be found out.
-- Thomas Babington
[/list]

Thing is, that only relates to the ring if, in [i]your[/i] personal morality (for everyone has their own personal one), you feel that there would be situations in which it would not be Right to spy on people. In today's CCTV and reality-TV culture, this might not be the case.

But if not... what things would you NOT spy on, purely out of curiousity? Where does your morality draw the line?
Would you watch people as they slept? Together?
Would you watch them getting dressed?
Would you watch a mother grieving her dead child?
Would you watch people pray?
Would you watch a child die?

If you answered yes to any of the above, and yet you consider it "wrong" to watch them, what is the value you place on "wrongness", and what is the value you place on "curiousity"? Are there any sights you would not spy on?

If you answered no to any of them... why not? And, would the motive change which you answered yes to? Would you watch them for ten pounds? Or to save your life? To save the world?

What makes superman turn his x-ray vision off? [And offtopically, why, in the movies does Clark Kent *take off his glasses* to use this power? What are they made of, leaded glass?]

[Edit: if, as most of us tend to, you subscribe to the Golden Rule ("do unto others") - are there any situations in which you would not like to be watched without your knowledge? Would you watch people in those situations? Do you feel this is immoral?]

You say you hate to bring work to the forum, but I for one would like to thank you - it's a beautiful debate to spark.

My biggest problem, I guess, is getting out of my natural mindset - you've said "assuming there's no...god" and I don't normally make that assumption. I've tried to think of occasions when I've done what I believe to be morally right, just because I believe that, without changing anyone else's view of me. I think I've got some examples in mind, but I can't be sure whether part of my motivation was my faith...

The other problem with trying to work on the basis of my past actions is that a situation like that, where no-one sees your actions, and no-one has the potential to find out about them somehow later, are actually very rare. Probably largely because almost all moral decisions revolve around how you act and interact with other people.

Good question, apologies for my lack of an answer...
MS

ok,so we're still on the idea of morals reflecting belief???that's what i'm kinda getting out of this,that you morals dictate the way you live,the way you do things in relation to the world.now for me,morals are what my life revolves around,some people a extremely religious and therefore stick the guidelines and 'rules' of their religion.i say 'rules' because that's basically what they are,things like 'do not drink alcohol' and so on are rules based on religion/religious scripts.please,if at any point i am either not making sense or am offending anyone,please let me know,that's the last thing i want to do.

ok,let me explain myself,for me religion doesn't play a big role in my life.i was brought up catholic(mom) and my dad is what you call "Baha'i",a baha'i is someone who believes that all religions hold to the same sort of belief structures and in essence are teaching the same things,just at different times and places throughout history.now i am not a baha'i myself,as i said religion doesn't play a big role in my life.instead,i am what you would call 'agnostic',i believe in my own set of morals,how i dictate my life is up to me,although,unlike athiesm,i believe there is a higher power/force/being/entity,what have you,in the world we live in,in the universe if you wish.basically i believe that something somewhere caused all this stuff to happen,this stuff we call life,there must have been something to start it off,and then there's the idea that that something started somewhere,and so on and so on,the entirety of that speculation is too daunting for the human mind as we are now,that's why we've broken time up into fragments:minutes/hours/seconds etc.time is all one piece,it flows like the words from a poets mouth,like the waters of the nile,like the blood from a gangsters wounds (why am i writing this,i guess it's just because i enjoy to write,and i enjoy to conceptualise and create things in my mind that need to be freed once in a while).

anyway,the answer,i think sgt l,is in yourself,you have to decide for yourself what is right and what is wrong.

peace out

yes, everyone has their set of rules and everyione has the thigs that they won't do because it's customary, what I don't know is which set of marals the question refers to.
and then the q is if you had the ring do you fiond any reason to stand beside say your morals?

To me the Sarge is right and the above is the important question: not what are your morals but if the situation changed and you became fantastically powerful what would happen to your morals? Would they still be your morals? This kind of imaginative projection I find useful for critiquing my existing beliefs, which I'm sure is what Plato intended

I know the q is good, my philo proff worked with Karl Popper, but what are tghhe opinions or aren't there any?
can anyone find cause to stick by their morals if they became god-like

i think that many people have done that already.i'm sure everyone has done something in their life where they had to bend their perception or feeling about something to get what they wanted.i know i've done something i didn't thinkl was right before.

the main q is that when is something powerful enough to warrant your change in morals,when do you say,'ok,i'll do it'.and then do something you wouldn't do.

everyone has their breaking points,their barriers,their self-restrictions,if i may,where they've set their boundaries with regard to their morals and beliefs,when they find it's ok to alter them.

hey i found a link that may be of some interest regarding the morals thing, check this out

http://www.themilwaukeechannel.com/news/10880034/detail.html

in america a policeman accidentally 'runs a flashing schoolbus' (an offense i am not familiar with in england) and he could have easily got away with it but gives himself a £235 fine and 4 points on his license

but why?
in a dawkins sense he would have done it to better society but Plato would have said that either he was afraid of getting caught which would be a big scandal or he wanted to justify punishing others by making a statement. he is powerful but on deeper analysis it may be that he was not transending his power at all but enhancing it. nes pas?

in a way you are correct.he could be doing that to gain a reputation and therefore respect to further his image as a powerful guy,or he's doing it cos he doesn't want to abuse his power

but we will never know

not unless we do a survey,you get everything sorted on your side,and i promise i'll ask people what they would do...