What makes you

“You”?
Factor Affecting Behavior
 Definition of Terms
• Nature – factors that are natural or biological
• Nurture – factors that are shaped by externals such as the
society
• Culture – the way of life of particular groups of people
• Religion – a system of beliefs concerning the divine
 Introduction

• Much of human behavior is brought about by his

experiences. It is necessary, therefore, take into
consideration the doer’s rootedness when it comes
analyzing and evaluating his moral actions. Below
are some of the factors in the development of moral
behavior.
 Nature
• Neuroscience is finding the brain structures and functioning that make for
the "ethical brain".
• In Aristotle’s Zoon Politikon, man is a social animal, and as such, he has
evolved in part due to his capacity to be to others, and have empathy and
sympathy that serve as the bases for basic rules of conduct needed to live
harmoniously with others.
• Morality is a result of empathy and sympathy.
 Nature
• Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist, holds that man is born with a moral grammar wired into his
neural circuits as a product of evolution.
• This system in the brain generates moral judgments. This was needed in part because often quick
decisions must be made in situations where life is threatened.
• In such predicaments, there is no time for accessing the conscious mind. Most people appear to be
unaware of this deep moral processing because the left hemisphere of the brain has been adept at
producing interpretations of events and information and doing so rapidly thus generating what may
be accepted as rationalizations for the decision or impulse and response.
• Morality may be rooted deep in the evolved workings of human brain.
 Nurture
• Besides nature, nurture us also plays a big part in forming
human behavior.
• Man acquires moral precepts from a number of external
factors.
• Man becomes moral from his involvement with family,
friends, and other social structures and institutions which he
belongs in, like culture, school, religion, and even the media.
Nature Versus Nurture
 Culture
• Morality promotes individual and collective goodness, and man’s sense of
wrong and right may stem up from his cultural beliefs.
• Culture may affect our moral decisions and dispositions. How we view
and treat people, for example, can be heavily dictated by culture.
• However, if we consider cultural beliefs and practices that militate against
ethical values, it becomes quite evident that culture alone could never be
the arbiter of what is ethical.
 Culture
• We now take a dim view of people who, in the past, appealed to their culture to justify
slavery, or treating women as inferiors.
• In some cultures, in parts of northern and west Africa, female genital mutilation (cutting)
is still prevalent.
• Customarily, an appeal is made to culture to justify this cruel and inhumane practice, thus
affirming male superiority over women.
• And there are some who justify tolerance of corruption because their culture requires
loyalty to their brothers.
 Religion
• The concepts of morality and religiosity have been associated with each other in a
manner that these two co-exist and they are of equal importance for a human person’s
eventual ideal character.
• Accordingly, moral philosophy teaches that a person’s moral foundation can be linked to
his spiritual foundation and vice versa as one of religions’ thrusts is construct the moral
fibers necessary for man’s ethical existence.
• A human person’s spirituality and morality are substantial parts of his nature that he has
to learn, nourish and value them so that he may develop into an ideal human person that
he is supposed to be.
Determinism and
Ethical Relativism
 Introduction
• Philosophers have long since debated whether morality is really
possible or not. There are those who view morality as a matter
of individual judgment and that there are no common or
universal moral obligation. There is also a need to confront
those who deny free-will or those who ask how there can be
any absolute basis of morality if all things, including human
choices, are completely pre-determined.
 Determinism
• Determinists view all things as causally determined; that is, for
anything that happens, it could not have happened otherwise.
• If it is true that all things are determined, this must also apply
to the human innate capacity of willing and choosing, thus,
denying free-will.
• It is not clear whether morality presupposes freewill.
 Determinism
• What sense would there be in talking about morality and moral
responsibility if one did not and cannot choose and act freely in the first
place?
• In establishing blame or guilt, even in legal contexts, it is important to
ascertain whether the doer was forced or not.
• Freewill, thus, is a condition for responsible, moral actions.
• The fact that man is in no control over his actions, whether good or evil,
has no bearing on such actions being good or evil.
 Ethical Relativism
• “Man is the measure of all things,” has become so common that, although
Protagoras did not intend to make this statement as a basis for morality,
throughout the development of ethics such statement is always applied.
• Ethical relativism denies that there are common or universal or objective
moral values.
• It insists, rather, that moral values are subjective.
• One of the arguments given is that of ethical views and opinions being
conditioned by circumstances.
 Ethical Relativism
• What one thinks as good may depend upon his upbringing, education,
religious instruction, and even ethnic background.
• The challenge of relativism is that, since how we make sense of our moral
quests and moral disputes is purely relative, morality possess no objective
or absolute status beyond the individual’s own notions.