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Differentiating people by class?
Topic Started: Jan 10 2008, 09:59 AM (350 Views)
Frank_W
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Resident Misanthrope
Upbringing is only partially responsible for it.

I know a couple of people who were brought up in alcoholic or drug-problem homes, by parents who were... ah... less than model citizens, who grew up to be very moral, very principled, and very self-controlled.

Everyone knows that the worst kids in town, are the pastor's kids.

Entirely too much is made of how much influence a parent has on a child. :shrug:
Anatomy Prof: "The human body has about 20 sq. meters of skin."
Me: "Man, that's a lot of lampshades!"
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Aqua Letifer
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ZOOOOOM!
Moonbat,

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But Aqua the claim that morals have very little to do with upbringing seems tpretty contrary to observation - how do you explain the correlation between upbringing and people's ideas of ethics?


I really don’t know what to say. Isn’t it obvious that you can either adopt the ethical ideas you were exposed to through upbringing or actively pursue others? Why is choice being thrown out here?

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If you consider the Spartans who thought stealing was ok or the Fundamentalist muslims who think that it is immoral for a woman to show her face to a man who is not in her immediate family or religious views that homosexuality is a sin or the idea that people of different class or caste or race should not marry and on and on and on. All these attitudes appear to be a product of cultural environment both during specific formative years i.e. upbringing, and indeed throughout later life.


Yes, those examples are a product of the norms of particular cultural environments. But again, as a person of independent thought, you can choose to adopt or reject such attitudes.
I cite irreconcilable differences.
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Moonbat
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Pisa-Carp
Quote:
 

Quote:
 
But Aqua the claim that morals have very little to do with upbringing seems tpretty contrary to observation - how do you explain the correlation between upbringing and people's ideas of ethics? 

I really don’t know what to say. Isn’t it obvious that you can either adopt the ethical ideas you were exposed to through upbringing or actively pursue others? Why is choice being thrown out here?


People can choose one way or another and there are many factors that weigh in on which choices are ultimately made.

Before i did not distinguish between cultural environment and upbringing but perhaps that's not quite right, and one should restrict "upbringing" to mean only the way parents interact with their children prior to say the age of 18.

Even with that restriction one would expect upbringing to have a significant effect, that is one would expect it to be a factor influencing various choices. If one was to compare a population of 18 year olds who had been in significantly abusive environments to a population of 18 year olds who had been in nurturing environments one would anticipate statistically significant differences in attitudes towards social interaction and many questions of ethics.

That does not mean that a given individual who has had X upbringing will necessarily have Y attitudes to ethics. As there are many factors involved it's quite plausible for someone to have completely different upbringings yet have practically identical attitudes towards ethics. (and indeed it seems like there are many examples of exactly that).

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Yes, those examples are a product of the norms of particular cultural environments. But again, as a person of independent thought, you can choose to adopt or reject such attitudes.


There is no such thing as truly independent thought (in the sense you seem to mean it). If choices were truly independent of factors like cultural environment then there would be no correlation between the two.
Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
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