Moral Mess

What is the root of morals?

At 1st glance, it seems like there should be obvious morals, and preset principles. There are actions which seem inherently good or bad. But what is the reasoning behind those actions being perceived as good or bad? Anything we assume to consider inherently bad, comes from the common and relatable experience and knowledge of an action causing someone else harm or pain, while what we consider good, comes from relatable experiences of something being helpful, or making us happier. So basically, assumed morals root from instinctual positive or negative feedback, caused by circumstances.

I further described instinct in another post; Instinctivity, as basically; default feedback triggers, received from genetics. These neurochemical triggers will cause the individual to experience negative reinforcement, in order to avoid circumstances which have been proven over generations, to typically be harmful for that species. Or, experience positive reinforcement, to pursue helpful circumstances. These triggers, are what cause most humans to agree that an action is good or bad. An action which causes positive reinforcement, is considered good, and vice versa.

For eg, physical harm QUITE often causes negative feedback, so an action which causes pain for someone else is considered bad. Hurling a pumpkin at someones face, will QUITE likely cause pain, so doing this, is usually frowned upon.

But at 2nd glance, someone could be an abnormality, and experience the opposing feedback trigger, to what is common. This causes the actions which are blanketed as positive or negative, to be be not so distinct. As every person has minor variances in their instinctual feedback, particular situations of an action, become very difficult to outright distinguish as good or bad.

Beyond the variances in instincts, subconscious influence can cause an additional significant amount of varying feedback, which is experienced by any particular individual. I explained more details of subconscious influence, in a recent post; Subconscious Subjection. Basically, any experiences throughout an individual's life, adjust those feedback triggers. An experience which receives instinctual positive reinforcement, will make a connection in the subconscious memory, with other factors involved in those circumstances. It's the same concept with negative reinforcement, where those additional factors, connected to the experience through sensory perception, will now also cause negative feedback, in the future (whereas otherwise, would not).

For eg, someone is traumatized by severe food poisoning, from eating undercooked chicken from KFC. They would then associate negative reinforcement with the smell of the deep-fried chicken. From that point on, they would consider that smell to be bad. Instinctually, someone would associate the smell of chicken as good, since naturally, chicken is a helpful source of food (in the right quantity). The subconscious influence of the negative situation, altered the instinctual feedback triggers.

All these variances in individual reinforcement triggers, can make a guesstimate of positivity for certain situations, not so distinguishable (as it initially seems). With ever-changing instinctual and subconscious feedback triggers, this causes differing relative perception of what is good or bad. That which can be presumed to be black and white, can actually consist of a lot of color mismatching, creating distinguishability to be a Moral Mess.