PART I.

THE MORAL AGENT

A. Culture in Moral Behavior

1. Culture and Moral Behavior

Morality comes from community.

Every family has it's own morality. A community of siblings might have a different morality.
Community groups, religious groups, sports teams, Civic groups, creat and enforce their
morality. Cities, states and countries define their morality in law and enforce it with police
and law courts. Religious communities define morality at many different levels. The United
Nations defines the morality of nation's.

Morality is judged by community. Adam, alone in the Garden of Eden, could not break
any of the commandments nor commit any sins - until his community included God and
other people, no one could judge his actions.

Morality is a part of culture. Culture grows from community, increasing as strength of

community grows. Morality grows from community. As the community grows, morality
grows and changes. As communities become more inclusive, morality becomes more
comprehensive and inclusive. As a culture becomes more limiting, morality becomes
more limited.

Cultures vary substantially in both moral judgments and moral behaviors.

•Cultural variations in morality within societies can vary as much as cultural

variations in morality between societies.
•
Cultural factors contributing to this variation include religion, social ecology
(weather, crop conditions, population density, pathogen prevalence, residential
mobility), and regulatory social institutions such as kinship structures and
economic markets.

•This variability raises questions for normative theories of morality, but also holds
promise for future descriptive work on moral thought and behavior.
2. Cultural Relativism

Cultural Relativism: All Truth Is Local

Cultural Relativism is the view that moral or ethical systems, which vary from culture to
culture, are all equally valid and no one system is really “better” than any other. This is
based on the idea that there is no ultimate standard of good or evil, so every judgment
about right and wrong is a product of society. Therefore, any opinion on morality or ethics
is subject to the cultural perspective of each person. Ultimately, this means that no moral
or ethical system can be considered the “best,” or “worst,” and no particular moral or
ethical position can actually be considered “right” or “wrong.”

Cultural relativism is a widely held position in the modern world. Words like “pluralism,”
“tolerance,” and “acceptance” have taken on new meanings, as the boundaries of
“culture” have expanded. The loose way in which modern society defines these ideas has
made it possible for almost anything to be justified on the grounds of “relativism.” The
umbrella of “relativism” includes a fairly wide range of ideas, all of which introduce
instability and uncertainty into areas that were previously considered settled.

Obviously, perspective is important to our understanding of history, psychology, and

politics. Cultural perspective can help us understand why certain actions are considered
right or wrong by a particular culture. For example, an ancient society might have
considered dyeing one’s hair green to be a punishable offense. Most modern societies
would find that strange, if not oppressive. Yet, good cultural perspective might tell us
more. If we were to find out that green hair was a sign of a prostitute, we would understand
that it wasn’t the hair color itself, but the prostitution that was truly considered “wrong.”

However, the problem with moving from cultural perspective to cultural relativism is the
erosion of reason that it causes. Rather than simply saying, “we need to understand the
morals of other cultures,” it says, “we cannot judge the morals of other cultures,”
regardless of the reasons for their actions. There is no longer any perspective, and it
becomes literally impossible to argue that anything a culture does is right or wrong.
Holding to strict cultural relativism, it is not possible to say that human sacrifice is “wrong,”
or that respect for the elderly is “right.” After all, those are products of the culture.
3. Asian and Filipino Understanding of Moral Behavior

THE FILIPINO NORM OF MORALITY

Fr. Vitaliano Gorospe, SJ

Another way of looking at the problem of morality in the Philippines is to consider the
actual and prevailing norms of right and wrong among Filipinos. It is quite obvious
that there is a conflict between what they say as Christians and what they do as
Filipinos; between their actual Filipino behavior and their ideal Christian behavior; in
short, between what is and what ought to be.

One norm of morality in the Philippines is based on "group-centeredness" or "group-

thinking." One's in-group determines for the individual what is right or wrong. The
individual who has not yet attained moral independence and maturity will ask: " What
will my family, or my relatives and friends, or my barkada think or say?" "What will
others say" usually determines Filipino moral behavior; it is "conscience from the
outside."

For instance, parents tell their daughter who is being courted: "Iha, please entertain
your boyfriend at home. Do not go outside. What will the neighbors say? Nakakahiya
naman." Shame or hiya makes the parents and the girl conform to the social
expectations of the neighbors lest they become the object of chismis or gossip.

Here again there is a conflict between the individual and social morality, between
internal and external morality. The norm of morality should be internalized so that
the mature individual should form his own moral "conscience from the inside."

Another norm of morality in the Philippines is characterized by the "Don't be

caught" attitude based on shame or fear of the authority figure. The authority figure
may be a parent, teacher, priest or policeman. As one law student puts it:" What's
wrong with cheating in the bar examinations as long as you do not get caught?"

During the war, it is told that a prison official of Muntinglupa addressed his new
prisoners thus: "Here there are no Ten Commandments. You can obey or break the
rules as you please. But God help you if you get caught." This norm of moral behavior
also gives rise to a conflict in the individual between the "don'ts" of the authority
figure and "what every else does" in the latter's absence. As long as a policemen is on
duty, Filipino drivers will obey traffic rules but if there is no policeman, then everyone
else tries make puslit or get ahead of the others often causing a traffic jam.

We find in the Filipino whose norm of behavior is purely external, a split between
the ideal Christian norm of morality and the actual Filipino norm of morality. He
will put on the externals of Christian moral behavior in front of the authority figure while
at the same time follow in "real life" an inconsistent moral behavior when the latter is "at
a distance."
The problem for the Filipino individual is to be "aware" that the two inconsistent
norms of morality are allowed to coexist in his personality and life and that he
must overcome this split if he is to become a mature Christian Filipino.

What can be done about the problem of morality in the Philippines? In this respect,
the question of attitudes, whether on the part of the individual or on that of society as a
whole, is quite relevant. The solution to a problem depends to a great extent on one's
awareness of the problem and his attitude towards it.

Let us consider the various attitudes that the Filipino individual or Philippine society can
take towards the problem of morality and religion. The worst possible attitude is not to
be aware of the problem at all. The person who is not aware that he has a cancer or
heart trouble will not see the doctor.

Another wrong attitude is complacency when one is aware but is not concerned. The
individual who feels secure and comfortable with the status quo sees no need for
change. Some individuals see the problem but it is too frightening. Hence they are
afraid to make a decision and initiate change because it is painful and difficult. This is
the attitude of timidity. Others try to escape from their real problems. They skirt
confrontation with the real issue in their lives and hence raise up pseudo problems as
camouflage.

Finally a very common attitude is rationalization. People who know they are doing
wrong but do not want to change easily find excesses like "ako'y tao lamang" (I'm but
human), "ganyan lamang ang buhay" (life is like hat), "bahala na" (come what may),
or "eveybody is doing it." In this age of "passing the buck," another excuse
for shrinking personal responsibility is the Filipinism, "I am not the one".

All these attitudes of mind are wrong and without the proper attitude there can be no
solution to the problem. Filipinos will make no progress toward a Christian solution until
they realize that the problem is serious and urgent.

Source: extracted from Fr. Gorospe's article on Christian Renewal of Filipino Values, 1966
The 10 Values That Undergird East Asian Strength and Success
By Tommy Koh, International Herald Tribune
Dec. 11, 1993

The 10 values that East Asia represents:

1) East Asians do not believe in the extreme form of individualism practiced in the
West. We agree that every individual is important. However, he or she is not an isolated
being, but a member of a nuclear and extended family, clan, neighborhood, community,
nation and state. East Asians believe that whatever they do or say, they must keep in
mind the interests of others. Unlike Western society, where an individual puts his interests
above all others, in Asian society the individual tries to balance his interests with those of
family and society.

2) East Asians believe in strong families. Divorce rates are much lower than those in
the West, and Asians do not, as a rule, abandon their aged parents. They believe that the
family is the building block of society.

3) East Asians revere education. Unlike the West, this is a value held not only by the
elite but by all strata of society. Asian mothers would make any sacrifice to help their
children excel in school. In Singapore, many parents take leave to help their children
prepare for year-end examinations. As a result, Asian students consistently outperform
their Western counterparts in mathematics and science. This will give Asia a competitive
edge in the 21st century.

4) East Asians believe in the virtues of saving and frugality. It is no accident that
Singapore's saving rate of 46 percent of GNP is the highest in the world or that Taiwan
has larger foreign exchange reserves than any other country. East Asians believe, as
individuals, families and governments, that they should lead frugal lives and live within
their means. This is better than the Western addiction to consumption, paying "on time"
and living under a mountain of debt.

5) East Asians consider hard work a virtue - the chief reason this region is
outcompeting Europe.

6) East Asians practice national teamwork. Unions and employers view each other as
partners, not class enemies. Together, government, business and employees work
cooperatively for the good of the nation. This philosophy, combined with the ability to
forge national consensus, is one of the secrets of the so-called East Asian development
miracle.
7) There is an Asian version of a social contract between the people and the state.
The government will maintain law and order, provide citizens with their basic needs for
jobs, housing, education and health care. Governments also have an obligation to treat
their people with fairness and humanity. In return, citizens are expected to be law-abiding,
respect those in authority, work hard, save, and motivate their children to learn and be
self-reliant. Most Asian governments do not pay unemployment benefits, partly because
there is little unemployment and partly to avoid the Western disease of welfarism. Asian
governments do not make welfare payments to unmarried women with dependent
children because teenage pregnancy and illegitimate birth are, fortunately, rare in Asia.

8) In some Asian countries, governments have sought to make every citizen a

stakeholder in the country. More than 90 percent of Singaporeans own their own
homes. Singapore also has the world's highest percentage of citizens who own shares
(50.5 percent, compared to 16.2 percent in Britain, and 11.7 percent in the United States).
Each year, employees in the private and public sectors receive a performance-based
bonus. This year, for example, every public-sector employee in Singapore will receive
three and a half months' salary as bonus. Some employees in the private sector will
receive even more. In these ways, we try to build communitarian societies.

9) East Asians want their governments to maintain a morally wholesome

environment in which to bring up their children. A recent survey found that most
Singaporeans do not want magazines such as Playboy to circulate in the country.
Recently, the democratically elected government in Seoul refused to allow Michael
Jackson to perform in South Korea. There is no reason Asians must adopt the Western
view that pornography, obscenity, lewd language and behavior, and attacks on religion
are protected by the right of free speech.

10) Good governments in East Asia want a free press but, unlike the West, they do
not believe that such freedom is an absolute right. We do not want our press to be
mere mouthpieces of government. Yet we believe that the press must act responsibly.
For example, it has no right to instigate trouble between racial, religious or linguistic
groups, or between countries. We also insist that the press should give those whom it has
attacked the right to reply. Taken together, these 10 values form a framework that has
enabled societies in East Asia to achieve economic prosperity, progress, harmonious
relations between citizens, and law and order (Singapore and Tokyo are the two safest
cities in the world).

For generations, Asians have learned from the West, and we continue to do so. I hope
the time has come when the West should also be willing to learn from the East.
B. The Moral Agent: Developing Virtue as habit

Moral development: forming a sense of rights and responsibilities

Morality is a system of beliefs about what is right and good compared to what is wrong
or bad. Moral development refers to changes in moral beliefs as a person grows older
and gains maturity. Moral beliefs are related to, but not identical with, moral behavior: it
is possible to know the right thing to do, but not actually do it. It is also not the same as
knowledge of social conventions, which are arbitrary customs needed for the smooth
operation of society. Social conventions may have a moral element, but they have a
primarily practical purpose.

When it comes to schooling and teaching, moral choices are not restricted to occasional
dramatic incidents, but are woven into almost every aspect of classroom life. Imagine this
simple example. Suppose that you are teaching, reading to a small group of second-
graders, and the students are taking turns reading a story out loud. Should you give every
student the same amount of time to read, even though some might benefit from having
additional time? Or should you give more time to the students who need extra help, even
if doing so bores classmates and deprives others of equal shares of “floor time”? Which
option is more fair, and which is more considerate? Simple dilemmas like this happen
every day at all grade levels simply because students are diverse, and because class
time and a teacher’s energy are finite.

Embedded in this rather ordinary example are moral themes about fairness or justice, on
the one hand, and about consideration or care on the other. It is important to keep both
themes in mind when thinking about how students develop beliefs about right or wrong.
A morality of justice is about human rights—or more specifically, about respect for
fairness, impartiality, equality, and individuals’ independence. A morality of care, on the
other hand, is about human responsibilities—more specifically, about caring for others,
showing consideration for individuals’ needs, and interdependence among individuals.
Students and teachers need both forms of morality. In the next sections therefore we
explain a major example of each type of developmental theory, beginning with the
morality of justice.
 Kohlberg’s morality of justice

One of the best-known explanations of how morality of justice develops was developed
by Lawrence Kohlberg and his associates (Kohlberg, Levine, & Hewer, 1983; Power,
Higgins, & Kohlberg, 1991). Using a stage model similar to Piaget’s, Kohlberg proposed
six stages of moral development, grouped into three levels. Individuals experience the
stages universally and in sequence as they form beliefs about justice. He named the
levels simply preconventional, conventional, and (you guessed it) postconventional. The
levels and stages are summarized in Table 1.

Table 1: Moral stages according to Kohlberg

Moral stage Definition of what is “good”

Preconventional Level

Stage 1: Obedience and punishment Action that is rewarded and not punished

Stage 2: Market exchange Action that is agreeable to the child and child’s partner

Conventional Level

Stage 3: Peer opinion Action that wins approval from friends or peers

Stage 4: Law and order Action that conforms to the community customs or laws

Postconventional Level

Stage 5: Social contract Action that follows socially accepted ways of making decisions

Stage 6: Universal principles Action that is consistent with self-chosen, general principles

Pre-conventional justice: obedience and mutual advantage

The pre-conventional level of moral development coincides approximately with the

preschool period of life and with Piaget’s preoperational period of thinking. At this age the
child is still relatively self-centered and insensitive to the moral effects of actions on
others. The result is a somewhat short-sighted orientation to morality. Initially (Kohlberg’s
Stage 1), the child adopts an ethics of obedience and punishment—a sort of “morality
of keeping out of trouble.” The rightness and wrongness of actions is determined by
whether actions are rewarded or punished by authorities such as parents or teachers. If
helping yourself to a cookie brings affectionate smiles from adults, then taking the cookie
is considered morally “good.” If it brings scolding instead, then it is

morally “bad.” The child does not think about why an action might be praised or scolded;
in fact, says Kohlberg, he would be incapable at Stage 1 of considering the reasons even
if adults offered them.

Eventually the child learns not only to respond to positive consequences, but also learns
how to produce them by exchanging favors with others. The new ability creates Stage 2,
an ethics of market exchange. At this stage the morally “good” action is one that favors
not only the child, but another person directly involved. A “bad” action is one that lacks
this reciprocity. If trading the sandwich from your lunch for the cookies in your friend’s
lunch is mutually agreeable, then the trade is morally good; otherwise it is not. This
perspective introduces a type of fairness into the child’s thinking for the first time. But it
still ignores the larger context of actions—the effects on people not present or directly
involved. In Stage 2, for example, it would also be considered morally “good” to pay a
classmate to do another student’s homework—or even to avoid bullying or to provide
sexual favors—provided that both parties regard the arrangement as being fair.

Conventional justice: conformity to peers and society

As children move into the school years, their lives expand to include a larger number and
range of peers and (eventually) of the community as a whole. The change leads
to conventional morality, which are beliefs based on what this larger array of people agree
on—hence Kohlberg’s use of the term “conventional.” At first, in Stage 3, the child’s
reference group are immediate peers, so Stage 3 is sometimes called the ethics of peer
opinion. If peers believe, for example, that it is morally good to behave politely with as
many people as possible, then the child is likely to agree with the group and to regard
politeness as not merely an arbitrary social convention, but a moral “good.” This approach
to moral belief is a bit more stable than the approach in Stage 2, because the child is
taking into account the reactions not just of one other person, but of many. But it can still
lead astray if the group settles on beliefs that adults consider morally wrong, like “Shop
lifting for candy bars is fun and desirable.”

Eventually, as the child becomes a youth and the social world expands even more, he or
she acquires even larger numbers of peers and friends. He or she is therefore more likely
to encounter disagreements about ethical issues and beliefs. Resolving the complexities
lead to Stage 4, the ethics of law and order, in which the young person increasingly
frames moral beliefs in terms of what the majority of society believes. Now,
an action is morally good if it is legal or at least customarily approved by most people,
including people whom the youth does not know personally. This attitude leads to an even
more stable set of principles than in the previous stage, though it is still not immune from
ethical mistakes. A community or society may agree, for example, that people of a certain
race should be treated with deliberate disrespect, or that a factory owner is entitled to
dump waste water into a commonly shared lake or river. To develop ethical principles that
reliably avoid mistakes like these require further stages of moral development.

Post conventional justice: social contract and universal principles

As a person becomes able to think abstractly (or “formally,” in Piaget’s sense), ethical
beliefs shift from acceptance of what the community does believe to the process by which
community beliefs are formed. The new focus constitutes Stage 5, the ethics of social
contract. Now an action, belief, or practice is morally good if it has been created through
fair, democratic processes that respect the rights of the people affected. Consider, for
example, the laws in some areas that require motorcyclists to wear helmets. In what
sense are the laws about this behavior ethical? Was it created by consulting with and
gaining the consent of the relevant people? Were cyclists consulted and did they give
consent? Or how about doctors or the cyclists’ families? Reasonable, thoughtful
individuals disagree about how thoroughly and fairly these consultation processes should
be. In focusing on the processes by which the law was created, however, individuals are
thinking according to Stage 5, the ethics of social contract, regardless of the position they
take about wearing helmets. In this sense, beliefs on both sides of a debate about an
issue can sometimes be morally sound even if they contradict each other.

Paying attention to due process certainly seems like it should help to avoid mindless
conformity to conventional moral beliefs. As an ethical strategy, though, it too can
sometimes fail. The problem is that an ethics of social contract places more faith in
democratic process than the process sometimes deserves, and does not pay enough
attention to the content of what gets decided. In principle (and occasionally in practice),
a society could decide democratically to kill off every member of a racial minority, for
example, but would deciding this by due process make it ethical? The realization that
ethical means can sometimes serve unethical ends leads some individuals toward Stage
6, the ethics of self-chosen, universal principles. At this final stage, the morally good
action is based on personally held principles that apply both to the
person’s immediate life as well as to the larger community and society. The universal
principles may include a belief in democratic due process (Stage 5 ethics), but also other
principles, such as a belief in the dignity of all human life or the sacredness of the natural
environment. At Stage 6, the universal principles will guide a person’s beliefs even if the
principles mean disagreeing occasionally with what is customary (Stage 4) or even with
what is legal (Stage 5).

How to get conscience- based moral decisions?

Conscience is a motivation to act morally.

Conscience can also be conceived as our sense of duty. According to this understanding,
conscience motivates us to act according to moral principles or beliefs we already
possess (e.g., D’Arcy 1963; Childress 1979; McGuire 1963; Fuss 1964). Conscience so
understood “establishes a general sense of moral obligation in the individual’s
consciousness” (Fuss 1964: 116). The subjective character of conscience implies that the
motivational force must come entirely from within the individual, as opposed to sanctions
from an external authority.
A powerful motivational source is represented by the feelings that conscience generates
in its self-assessment function. As we said at the beginning, the different understandings
of conscience presented here are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Conscience as self-
assessment and conscience as motivation to act morally constitute a good example of
perspectives on conscience which are not only consistent with one another, but which
actually complete one another.

In Kant, for example, the theory of conscience can be seen as “a motivation theory set
in the context of a reflection theory” (Wood 2008: 183): As Wood interprets the Kantian
notion of conscience, “conscience is a feeling of pleasure or displeasure associated with
myself” that arises when I comply or don’t comply with moral principles and that motivates
me to act in one sense rather than the other when the feeling accompanies the
contemplation of a certain course of action (Wood 2008: 183–184). Conscience for Kant
is therefore not only an inner court, but also the source of our sense of duty in that it takes
the judgments of the inner court as motivation to act morally (Kant 1797 [1991]: 161).
Consistent with this philosophical view are studies in developmental psychology
suggesting that the emotion of guilt, which is typically seen as one of the products of
conscience as self-assessment, is “the motivational engine that infuses misdeeds with
negative personal valence” (Kochanska and Aksan 2006: 1589). Transgression
generates anxious feelings in most children, and these negative feelings help children
suppress future wrongdoing and internalize the relative moral norms (Damásio 1994, as
reported in Kochanska and Aksan 2006: 1595).
Negative feelings and sense of duty are not always successful in prompting agents to do
what their moral principles require. But the “bites of conscience”, or just the prospect of
bites of conscience, act as motivational force towards aligning our future behavior to those
norms. Of course, positive feelings associated with conscience might also have a
motivational force. For example, Kant associated conscience also with positive feelings
about oneself when the agent recognizes he has acted according to his sense of duty.
Rousseau, alongside the epistemic account of conscience, also provides in Emile a
motivational account of conscience based on positive feelings: while reason gives us
knowledge of the good, it is conscience, through a sentiment of love for the good, which
motivates us to behave morally (Rousseau 1762).