What does it mean to act morally Term Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

What does it mean to act morally - Term Paper Example The proposed model adopts theories of Psychological Egoism and Ethical Egoism but it is largely based on the Buddhist philosophy of enlightenment. Analysis on Existing Theories of Moral Philosophy Sense of â€Å"morality† occurs naturally in human mind. Pursuing private benefits and ignoring the wellbeing of other living beings are also natural human behaviors. Conflicting mortal forces of â€Å"morality† and â€Å"immorality† are responsible for a great amount of literature in the human history. Lord Buddha taught 2600 years ago that correctly comprehending these forces is the path way to the ultimate freedom of humans. Theology play a vital role in moral philosophy. However the divine command theory is inefficient in describing the religion lead morality. It acknowledges the significance of religion in moral philosophy. But it is based on a rather ambiguous presumption i.e. â€Å"there exists a God†. Accordingly God defines what is good and what is bad. Approximately 2500 years ago Plato questioned: â€Å"is something right (or wrong) because the gods command it, or do the gods commands it because it is right?† Religion lead morality had been much easier to widely implement during the pre-industrial revolution. In the history fear and faith towards religious abstracts kept humans from acting upon immoral desires. ... Thus the divine command theory is not an efficient approach for contemporary moral philosophy. Psychology is acknowledged as a vital component in moral philosophy. There are many theories advocated by the psychologists relating to the moral judgment example: Piaget’s â€Å"genetic Epistemology† and Haidt’s â€Å"social-intuitionist† theory (Bucciarelli et. al., 2008). Piaget, 1975, described the cognitive development process of children in terms of their biological makeup and psychological process involving adaptation and organization. When a new situation is presented to a child it becomes assimilated and accommodated in memory. These two processes jointly results in adaptation to the new situation. Creating structures of related and interconnected information is a natural process occurring in human minds (known as organization in Piaget’s theory). Thus when the same situation is presented repeatedly child reacts according to what is already been a ssimilated and accommodated. According to Piaget’s theory logical reasoning is the aftermath of adaptation and organization. Haidt, 1978, described â€Å"immediate intuition† as the judicable basis for identifying what is right and what is wrong. Haidt’s theory postulates that conscious reasoning of humans is not effective for identifying what is right or wrong. Alternatively it is vital for influencing the actions of others. Haidt’s theory defines immediate intuition as â€Å"the sudden appearance in consciousness of a moral judgment, including an affective valence (good-bad, like-dislike), without any conscious awareness of having gone through steps of searching, weighing evidence, or inferring a conclusion† (Haidt, 2001, p. 818). Limitation of Haidt’s above definition is discussed in the