Talk:Amorality

Negative POV in this article towards the concept of amorality

There is a negative POV in this article towards the concept of amorality. The intro points out negative examples of amorality, such as people with anti-social personality disorder and points to business corporations as a whole as being amoral - very opinionated POV. Amorality is not merely a psychological concept but a philosophical concept. From a philosophical context, amorality claims that morality is socially-constructed. It is true that there is the negative example of people with anti-social personality disorder are amoral and do not have the emotional capacity to feel morality, but there are positive examples, i.e. savant autistic geniuses who have limited to no emotional response due to strong autism.--R-41 (talk) 19:09, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Amorality is definitely not the philosophical claim that morality is socially-constructed. That would be some form of ethical subjectivism or moral relativism. There are arguments that those positions collapse to moral nihilism, which is closely related to amorality. But amorality is not just the adherence to moral nihilism, though adherence to moral nihilism would make one amoral. As the article well describes, with sources, amorality is the "absence of, indifference towards, or disregard for" moral beliefs; moral nihilism only encompasses the last of those, but there are people or entities (newborns, corporations, etc, as the article says) which have not considered, or not settled any opinion on, any moral questions, and so lack moral beliefs and are thus amoral. I don't see the negative light you think is shining to harshly on this article. --Pfhorrest (talk) 23:02, 26 November 2011 (UTC)

Animal morality

"if this behavior is a voluntary response to ethical norms, then animals do have morality"

This is tautological as ethical norms presuppose morality. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 222.152.244.110 (talk) 08:10, 3 January 2013 (UTC)

Amorality in Popular Culture

the section about batman and the killing joke is bizarre and out of place. the length and detail of it seems incongruent with the rest of this article. Prefetch (talk)

When it was originally added, it was just a small description, similar to the Steinbeck example. A later editor disagreed with the example, and gave the large paragraph detailing it. Further editors made it flow better... but agreed it is largely out of place. I've left the base example, but removed all the details. TimOertel (talk) 18:06, 16 January 2015 (UTC)

Amorality

This article sucks — Preceding unsigned comment added by 50.202.89.58 (talk) 04:33, 11 November 2013 (UTC)

Merge moral nihilism and amorality

The following discussion is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section. A summary of the conclusions reached follows.

Reject merging of Moral nihilism and Amorality article(s), per wp:Consensus, on the grounds that the two topics are independent of one another, with Moral nihilism being a "meta-ethical view" on the existence of morality, while Amorality itself is the concept of existing without morality. Furthermore, this discussion took place on the page Talk:Moral skepticism, but did not concern the article Moral skepticism. This merger discussion archive has been moved to the appropriate page for reference.

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Moral nihilism Vote Merge Amorality Vote Merge All three of these positions should be handled by the same entry. All some form of rejection of morality, almost always closely tied together and asserted together. I think "Moral Skepticism" is the entry to unify all of these positions/concepts under because "skepticism" and "moral skepticism" is the label most often used by philosophers to discuss these issues in both ethics and epistemology. - Atfyfe (talk) 23:13, 29 March 2013 (UTC)

This should not be merged, there is a large difference, skepticism is being skeptical of any claims that there is a meaning/reason to life, nihilism is determining that there is not a reason for our life. Nihilism almost always eventually leads to suicide, but skeptics can lead long happy lives.Lee Tru. (talk) 23:44, 4 April 2013 (UTC)

I don't think Lee's closing comments here are really appropriate, but I agree that a merger is unwarranted because, as he suggests, skepticism is an epistemological position, while nihilism is an ontological position. The skeptic says we don't know or can't prove moral claims; the nihilist says they are definitely false. Certainly skepticism can lead to nihilism, but it doesn't have to, and the two are not the same. --Pfhorrest (talk) 00:29, 5 April 2013 (UTC)

Thirded. No merger. I agree that Lee's editorializing is utterly ridiculous and betrays a gross misunderstanding of meta-ethical positions and in particular the claims of moral error theorists. Nevertheless, Lee is correct that moral nihilists are committed to a stronger claim than moral skeptics. "Moral nihilism" is a subspecies of moral skepticism, though there are certainly moral skeptics, who are not moral nihilists. Merger is a preposterous idea. That would be like proposing a merger between the article on "frogs" and the article on "amphibians." 151.42.63.157(talk) 17:14, 25 September 2013 (UTC)

Moral nihilism is an amoral meta-ethical philosophy, but amorality is not necessarily a product of moral ratiocination: animals, corporations, robots, systems, and other entities can and often do exhibit amorality.   — C M B J   00:35, 6 May 2013 (UTC)

I strongly DISAGREE with merging "moral nihilism" with "amorality", since they are entirely different and unrelated things. The first commenter above states that in their opinion they are both "some form of rejection of morality", but this is wrong, since amorality is precisely *not* a rejection of anything. A rock is amoral. A tree is amoral. A person who has no moral agency is amoral. None of these beings reject morality. A being who rejects morality is *immoral*, not amoral. - KS 21 Oct 2013 — Preceding unsigned comment added byKsolway (talk • contribs) 10:08, 21 October 2013 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.

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