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Moral arguments: influences and contrasting perspectives

Question

Discussions

Do they think these ethical dilemmas accurately assess ethical reasoning? Why or why not? Think about your own code of ethics.

Where did you learn this? What influences determine your moral reasoning? Think about and consider the factors that drive development as discussed in this course (income/classes, culture, religion, family structure, city/town/county/state factors, access to education, etc.).

Answer

People’s moral reasoning through judgment about hypothetical dilemmas reinforces emotions that cause them to make future moral judgments (Sevinc & Spreng, 2014). This article aims to investigate two Kohlberg dilemmas of family relatedness to reflect conflicting moral codes between me and my friend (“Kohlberg’s Dilemmas”, 2020).

According to my friend in Dilemma I, since Joey earned money through his hard work and efforts in the paper industry to save money for his camping trip, keeping the money for himself rather than giving it to his father would be the most responsible action to take (“Kohlberg’s Dilemmas”, 2020). Instead of keeping his promise, the father asked his son to provide him with the money he earned at work to use on a fishing trip with friends that ended up being unwarranted. This is on Scale 2, the second stage of moral development known as instrumental orientation, in which ethical behavior is oriented to serve one’s own interests at the expense of the needs of others (Malti & Ongley, 2014). Judging by the external consequences, meeting individual needs is valued. My friend suggested that it is not necessary to always meet and obey our parents by sacrificing our passions, even that it forces us to be selfish in some situations (Margoni, 2017).

In my opinion in Dilemma II, since Judy earns a decent amount of money and keeps it a secret from her mother to attend the concert, the most responsible action for Louise would be to tell her mother that her sister lied about the money (“Kohlberg’s Dilemmas”, 2020). In the mother-child relationship, even though the mother is an elder who makes promises but doesn’t keep them in the future, I don’t appreciate lying to her to fulfill a wish (Rizzo, Burkholder, & Killen, 2019). This is on scale 4, the third stage of moral development known as law and order orientation, where morality lies in the observance of rules that are considered norms. In my opinion, moral decision should not be biased, whether it is one’s loved one or another. The punishment or reward should be the same for everyone. Louise being a sister should never tolerate this intolerable behavior from her brother. (Mercier et al., 2017).

Conclusion

The two dilemmas are different, although there are similarities in how the parent-child relationship is represented, the subject’s decision here is different. The first dilemma shows how the boy makes decisions and the second dilemma describes the family brother’s reasoning.

My moral reasoning is influenced by my age, where I have reached a certain stage of maturity in adulthood to distinguish right from wrong from an objective point of view. Standards and laws are followed in adulthood for the purpose of serving justice. She is also influenced by my family’s culture through the values ​​of love, trust, loyalty and cooperation towards one another. The protective nature of parenting along with guidance at all key stages has developed my ability to make decisions in all situations. The school environment where I learned the principle of sincerity and honesty in all my actions has taught me to make ethical decisions in the right direction without compromising on ethics. The friends and social groups I lived with influenced my rationality by controlling negative emotions such as anger, jealousy, and greed and encouraging more positive emotions such as concern, dependence, and gratitude towards others.

Moral development is strongly shaped by the size of the family in which an individual lives. Mixed families with grandparents make children adopt spiritual and traditional values ​​earlier than nuclear families and single parents. Parenting style and home environment also shape moral development. People with abusive childhoods develop skills of negative reasoning and making decisions that can have disastrous consequences in the future. Children who grow up with discipline and rules will follow strict family behavior and make more informed decisions in the future. In terms of geographical location, a child from a poor, rural background will have different moral inferences than a well-behaved urban child. In addition, a person with a low income will commit more crimes to satisfy their desires than a person with a high income who has satisfied current desires. The desire for gratification is seen more in low-income people, with money being the dominant factor here. Education level also plays an important role in properly reasoning about the situations before us. An individual with minimal education compared to a highly knowledgeable individual will argue based on values ​​and limited information.

Sex is the most dominant factor in moral development suggesting that women are more mature in making moral decisions than men. Ethical values ​​differ between the two genders – men seek to be right for themselves while women put the interests of others first in order to make ethical decisions. Conclusion

In short, my code of ethics is more inclined to orient my interest to create a harmonious relationship whether it smooths out family differences or not while my friend’s code of ethics is more concerned with the fulfillment of personal desires than with concern for the family. Finally, the paper presents the fact that education level, family size and culture as well as parenting style, income level, geographical location and gender play an important role in shaping an individual’s moral development from childhood.

References

Kohlberg’s dilemma. (2020). Accessed January 15, 2020, from the Haverford.edu website: http://ww3.haverford.edu/psychology/ddavis/p109g/kohlberg.dilemmas.html

Malti, T., & Ongley, SF (2014). The development of moral sentiment and moral reasoning. Handbook of Ethical Development, 2, 163-183.

Margoni, F. (2017). Expectations of obedience and the development of moral reasoning (doctoral thesis, University of Trento). Mercier, H., Castelain, T., Hamid, N., & Marin-Picado, B. (2017). The power of moral reasoning. In Moral Inferences (pages 115-130). Psychological Journalism.

Rizzo, M.T., Li, L., Burkholder, A.R. & Killen, M. (2019). Lying, careless or ignorant? Ethical reasoning is based on children’s intentions regarding resource requests. Developmental Psychology, 55(2), 274.

Sevinc, G., & Spreng, R.N. (2014). Contextual and cognitive brain processes underlying moral cognition: A quantitative meta-analysis of moral reasoning and moral feelings. Plos a, 9(2), e87427.