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       How do we define morality?  This was one of the problems I found myself struggling with during our conversation on Monday.  Is morality simply a social construction or is it an innate series of actions?  I also struggle with the idea of whether something can be judged under the moral sphere if it does not affect others.  I think that whether or not morality is learned, it can only be applied to social situations or situations involving other lives (human or otherwise).  To me morality has to do with the abstract concept of kindness or “right and wrong” in terms of other living beings.  I do believe that our individual (or cultural set) of morals are mostly a social construction.  It seems however that having morals at all is well conserved cross cultures, which lends itself to a biological mechanism.

            Is morality also a developed mechanism for survival?  Our morality often benefits other indirectly (or at least doesn’t negatively affect them)-we don’t kill, steal, cheat etc. which benefits those around us. Could it be that our morality, justifying our actions that help perpetuate the survival of the species, is evolutionarily evolved to preserve the species?  Contrary to this however morality does not seem to be evolutionarily adaptive in terms of an individual’s genes.   

            Another concept of morality I found particularly interesting in our conversation is that of a universal morality.  It was interesting to me that we were ready to agree that there was no universal morality; however we still judge others by our own moral standards.  If we had agreed that there is no universal morality then how can we judge others actions as moral or immoral unless we are judging their sense or concept of morality rather than their actions?  Morality in some senses seems like a strange extension of ethnocentrism.  If we judge our morals as correct, is holding others to our morals inappropriate?  Is there a situation where morality can be set aside (ex. murder etc.) when we can really say that our morals, being generally the majority, are correct and we can judge others by them?  As a society it seems that we have done this with actions that cause physical injury to other people.  As we discussed in class this is not the case for every culture, though we are moving toward a more globalized set of morals it is interesting to think of morals as simply part of a culture.  In most senses we are concerned with preserving cultures as they are, however there are some morals (human rights for example) that I personally think it is okay to try to universalize.  This is, admittedly an ethnocentric position and I am projecting the moral part of my culture onto others as the most “correct” one.