Brief Observations on the Moral Knowledge of College Students

1)When average college students are asked about how to define morality, most have conflicting views within their beliefs. This is evident in inconsistencies in ways they go about to define it. Dialogue with an average college student goes something like this:

Whatever one does that does not harm others is moral. What would you qualify as a "harm"? Physical, psychological, and emotional. So would you say that me punishing a rapist is immoral since it harms the rapist's emotions? Well... if one has already harmed someone, he deserves it. So I am to be punished after punishing the rapist? That is to say, since I have harmed the rapist emotionally, am I morally culpable to receive punishment? Well...I meant to mention that only those who harmed an innocent should be punished. But by your definition of harm, no one is innocent. We all irritate someone emotionally/psychologically or, at rare cases, physically at one point or another. Well...

Nearly all of these dialogues end fruitlessly because the answering party keeps on adding a new category until their moral system becomes unintelligible.

2)When asked about how to define morality, most answer in terms of rights. However, they cannot define what rights are. One account, which also happens to be the most popular, points to Hobbesian notion of rights - an endless pursuit for one's own good. The second most popular view reflect Millian utilitarianism, focusing on the greatest quantity of good that is pleasure among the greatest possible number of people. Another account points to Kantian notion of morality based on duty without inclination. And there are the few of those that use the word "rights" as a form of metaphysical due that is human desert.

3)But one thing is peculiar... a mind of one individual college student most likely contains the first three accounts at the same time. There is a clear conflict of moral doctrines within one's mind. One may believe the Hobbsian notion of "pursuit of happiness", a right to relentless pursuit for one's own desire. Yet he may believe in a softer approach to mankind of Mill's utilitarianism, attempting to protect others' rights. At the same time, even when it is clear that a law may not allow for individual pursuit of happiness and provide the greatest good, one may exhibit enduring sense of duty to the law, a behavior exhibited by those who appear to be holding the constitution at an equivalent value of a religious holy book. The majority of college students that seem to be religious may have the fourth view along with the others: one might hold that the rights are God given, a metaphysical desert due to all human beings.

4)Most do not know that there are inconsistencies in their moral beliefs, but most know that they do not possess the knowledge of moral absolutes. Yet they commit to moral debates they do not fully understand with emotional outbursts of near-cultish zeal (well-fitting to the stereotype of bleedin' college liberal). They make judgments not with their reason but with their emotional impulse; rather than conforming emotional reaction to their reason, they conform reason to what they feel.

5)Granted, most students do not have time to contemplate upon morals and what not. So they submit to whatever or whoever is ready to lead them (unconsciously most of the times in case of the effects of the media). As one can observe easily, what is ready to lead them are starkly different. One is of the mainstream media, primarily consisting of modernist values. One is of the antiquity, the morals of the past championed by religions.

6)But who is better off? I observe the religious few to be better off. They have a consistent system of morals with valid arguments already made out (the Catholic Church grounded upon Thomistic virtue ethics being the better example), while the former based on contemporary modernist values do not; they reflect the doctrinal conflicts mentioned in the third section. Further, most of the former have yet to realize that they do not possess beliefs without inconsistencies. But the latter subscribe to religions knowing that they are like sheep, unable to find their paths on their own: they actively search for the shepherd to guide them out of humility.

7)One might oppose the sanity of religion saying that religions "brainwash" people. To be completely fair, cults do. But not religions. Further, in accusing religions of brainwashing in a modern Western society, one must answer this question: Is a religious person exposed more to his religion or the values of modernity these days? Which is more likely to brainwash? An hour spent at church and thirty minutes of daily prayers, or hours and hours of modern pop music and television shows riddled with socially liberal values?

8)There are some of the former who recognize inconsistencies in their beliefs. But most of them do not care. Out of indifference and hubris, they subscribe to whatever they feel is right. They set out to "create" their own morals. But all one will observe is human beings fallen from their true potential, enslaved by nothing but their own desires.