German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhaur once said, “Compassion is the basis of morality” (Morality). As Schopenhaur’s quote suggests, morality is based in the ideas of having compassion for the wrongdoings committed against those around you, and this presence of such compassion is require to have sound morality. Morality is the acceptance and obeying of the standards of what is deemed right due to the moral expectations placed on an individual or society. In Phillip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, the main character, Rick Deckard is a character who questions the structure of the society around him and the obligation to follow the morals established by the society or by his own once he starts to feel compassion for androids. Throughout
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The interesting aspect of morality is how universally unbiased it is supposed to be, but yet, is still met with a debate towards what is morally correct and morally wrong. While morality is supposed to be objective, there is a subjectivity to whom those morals apply to and to whom they benefit or harm. In Chelsea Schein and Kurt Gray’s "The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm,” they discussed the evolution of morality and how difficult it is to establish a clear answer on what morality is. Schein and Gray wrote, “[one] definition of moral judgment is ‘evaluations (good vs. bad) of the actions or character of a person that are made with respect to a set of virtues held to be obligatory by a culture or subculture’ (Haidt, 2001, p. 817)” (Schein and Gray 35). They deem that our moral compass is in part due to the moral standards held by the culture we are a part of and those ethical standings are a direct reflection of the character and values of each person. There is a basis for what is right and wrong, and those who are in the wrong are determined by the society they live in. The emphasis of how the structure of the values and ethical standards surrounding a society can deeply influence the individual members of that culture and the way they develop their own
The interesting aspect of morality is how universally unbiased it is supposed to be, but yet, is still met with a debate towards what is morally correct and morally wrong. While morality is supposed to be objective, there is a subjectivity to whom those morals apply to and to whom they benefit or harm. In Chelsea Schein and Kurt Gray’s "The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm,” they discussed the evolution of morality and how difficult it is to establish a clear answer on what morality is. Schein and Gray wrote, “[one] definition of moral judgment is ‘evaluations (good vs. bad) of the actions or character of a person that are made with respect to a set of virtues held to be obligatory by a culture or subculture’ (Haidt, 2001, p. 817)” (Schein and Gray 35). They deem that our moral compass is in part due to the moral standards held by the culture we are a part of and those ethical standings are a direct reflection of the character and values of each person. There is a basis for what is right and wrong, and those who are in the wrong are determined by the society they live in. The emphasis of how the structure of the values and ethical standards surrounding a society can deeply influence the individual members of that culture and the way they develop their own