Moral universality cannot be achieved because of certain unique phenomena from firsthand, personal experience

Immanuel Kant’s moral philosophy attempts to establish a form of moral groundwork to avert humans from unnecessary distractions. A generality can be applied to most situations that lacks the detailing of specificity but rather expresses that pure motives are the underlying cause of action, where fear for the law is removed out of respect for moral ethics. Kant’s universal law reveals that our own personal moral judgements are full of relativism, but the universal aspect removes the problem of relativism. An act is moral/correct when it is done in regards to moral law, but the idea of one’s personal freewill is quite indescribable, as well as one’s personal qualia that they have experienced based on their life growing up in their predetermined conditions. Moral judgements release humans from pure instinct and promotes freedom. When choosing an action cloaked in freedom, one is acting based on reasoning, whether that reasoning is moral or not. This reasoning is also the base of morality; Kant claims that therefore freedom and morality go hand in hand.

Everyone’s environment is extremely different, especially when they are growing up and being shaped into an adult. Some kids are great at sports right off the bat, and some kids never find the ability to swing that bat. Some kids perform actions based on “what they know” based on freewill instead of a rational decision. Sure, these examples are of young, influential people that are still going through the stages of early human development and are quite susceptible to picking up habits from their local environment, but this set of morality that is established early on will continue with the individual for the rest of their life. Their qualia define who they are, and this varies vastly from person to person. I argue that this can be altered based on various experience that we have yet to be able to measure in a large degree, which is why the notion of morality cannot be universal. The morals of someone growing up in rural Mississippi differ greatly from the morals of someone who grow up in Seoul, Korea or even India. I will now offer a set of Basic Human Functions that are universal, such as the desire and need to find water, food, and survive. BHF are a set of basic nodes implemented within every human in order to reproduce the human race and survive worldly conditions. BHF are comparable to Basic Computer Functions; certain basic functions make a computer a computer. Certain basic functions make a human being qualify as a human being. This is a universal fact, since distinguishing a human from another being is relatively easy (with a disregard to new technologies such as deep fakes or robots- I will refrain from tackling this topic in this paper). Each individual takes their BHF and develops it based on their natural qualia and personal life experiences. Because of the notion of free will and determination, everyone’s set of BHF transforms into Individualistic Human Functions (IHF) that cannot be currently replicated or described via our natural language. Because IHF are solely based on qualia and differentiate differently from person to person, a universal morality cannot be established. The nodes are set via varying weights, making my ideas of good versus bad differ from an individual across the world. The morality found in committing a murder is absent for someone as they might feel no remorse from attempting such an act; their morals are not universal. It is clear that this assumption can begin the exploration of mental illness and morality, but I also will refrain from such a topic in this paper. My main point is that qualia is not universal, therefore morality is not universal. Personal experience is greatly influenced by environment as a young person, which cannot be replicated from person to person. Of course, there are vast similarities between certain individuals, such as folks that grew up in rural Mississippi. One could argue that all those people are likeminded and have the same goals and desires in life based on their ideas from growing up. However, because of free will and sets of nodes like BHF available, each human adapts and changes these nodes over time into being IHF, thus ultimately creating a unique individual with a unique set of nodes that lacks the ability to currently be replicated. These IHF can still change over time and are not set to have an ending point, except for ultimate death, but they set us apart from each other and create variability in the idea of what is moral and what is immoral.

Kant believes that the appeal of law showcases the universal ability of notion. The validity of a universal moral judgement is based on law. According to Kant, law offers the ability for universalism which allows for personal experience to not only be reserved for an individual but to apply the ability of moral standards from experience to bigger populations, thus creating a universal morality. Law is the bridge between rational human minds and offers a connection that develops into universal morality. Kant claims that law is determined for ourselves by reason, which illustrates our freedom. Morality is based on the idea of our freedom, but the concept of freedom and freewill cannot be showcased.

Prior conditions determine understanding and actions taken upon the world, which is another reason why a universal morality cannot be established. Moral universalism attempts to apply universal ethic to all, regardless of features such as race and sex, but cannot be accomplished due to phenomena such as qualia. Kant’s ethics of the categorical imperative cannot be applied equally to all rational beings when these rational beings grow up in differing environments with different basis in religion, world views, and even morals. Universal morality is unattainable because of the diversity of the human being. Diversity does not equal universal, therefore universal morality can not compute. A shift away from the idea of diversity could potentially give a universality to ethics such as morality but stripping diversity from the human that has taken years to achieve will only be a hindrance on human development as a whole. If morality is universal, then it is restricted and not able to adapt over time to new conditions and new diversity. Limiting the idea of morals to be one established notion does not promote reshaping of society but instead promotes close minded thinking that is based on prior experience.