Can somebody define morals?

stir crazy said:

Is it not also possible that someone could do what is right in a specific instance or even always, yet still have no morals ?

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I would imagine that if someone always does the right thing, something leads them to behave in such a way.

It wouldn' t necessarily count if they only behaved that way out of fear of the consequences of doing otherwise.

Depends - are you talking about human error? or fear of committing to what you really believe might be the right thing to do? or something else?

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Human error. If someone got angry, upset etc and deliberately hurt someone. Situations where they know the right thing to do but gave in to negative feelings and acted differently. If such actions were not the norm, would they be within us and would we act on them if we had morals?

PM1234 said:

Human error. If someone got angry, upset etc and deliberately hurt someone. Situations where they know the right thing to do but gave in to negative feelings and acted differently. If such actions were not the norm, would they be within us and would we act on them if we had morals?

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Might sound like a cop out answer, but to that I would say - we are all human and all capable of mistakes. I'm sure Gandhi and similar people lost their tempers.

Other posters to this thread have said: “The morals we all have are subjective”; “I think we can safely say there is 'bad behaviour' ie rape, violence, child sex industry and 'good behaviour' ie being there for someone in times of need etc” and “”Good" and "moral" are subjective terms in my opinion. As such there is no guaranteed commonality or agreed frame of reference when discussing them.”

[FONT=&quot]These views are largely nonsense. Rape, violence, child sex are not wrong because of our subjective view on these issue but because objectively the perpetrators of rape, violence, child sex crimes deny the primacy of the life of the victim. Immoral acts impose violence against the victim and are immoral for that reason, not because we think they are 'immoral’, Subjectivity has nothing to do with it – neither has religion or god. There is a distinct moral chasm between the criminal and the victim, because no one has the right to impose their will on another by violence or otherwise. True morality is based on rationality and respect for the life and free will of the individual - not on religion. [/FONT]