Wanna help me brainstorm, all you smarties?

Ok, so for my philosophy class, we have to do a take-home writing, and he encouraged us to discuss it with people. So... anybody wanna discuss? He did warn us that the question is very simple, but the answer probably isn't. Pretty much anything goes, as long as you can discuss it and back up your ideas.

So, here's the question:

We have moral obligations to our family that we do not have to our friends. Why?

Thoughts??

with a family. First, we are raised with a family. So we are connected to them before we even remember being connected to them. Sharing blood with someone also creates a bond that isn't really similar to that of a friend. While we may like a friend better than a family member, a lot of times we will remain loyal to the family member. It may be something put in our heads growing up, or we may be born with it! But of course it differs from person to person. Some people don't even know their family.

Our society has assigned greater moral priority to family than to friends, a la blood is thicker than water.

Really, it's that simple.

He did say that we could disagree with the premise, but we had to explain why. I may go that direction with this assignment. Thanks for the input!

friends as I do those who I did not choose as my family, my blood relatives. If I promise something to a friend I am as obligated as if I had promised my sister, sharing DNA does not absolve me of responsibility in fulfillin that promise.

Many times the family one creates as an adult, be it friends or significant others, is tighter than one's family of origin. Iknow I feel this way about most of my friends. Many of them have been with me through some perilous times.

Family is forever. Sometimes to our disadvantage.

crazy.
for good or bad, they are not forever.

...I still refer to my father in conversation as "my father". Not "my dead father". Now my younger brother, in his forties, one year younger than me still gets away with being a worthless oxygen thief by my mom who still says: "You're the older one and you know better". She has to send him about 3/4 of her retirement every month because he refuses to support himself, his wife and her mother.

because i was the youngest. LOL.
i know what you mean some things are eternal, and some just seem so fucking endless.

Different people value their families more than friends for different reasons. Some are only concerned with blood, others because of emotional bonds, and still others for financial reasons. Some don't feel any obligation toward family at all.

Hmmm. Something to ponder, for sure.

Even those who later choose to have no moral obligation to their family have to actively choose not to. It's almost an innate ethic if you will to take care of your own and for most of us, our family is our own.

If each take care of their own, society as a whole doesn't face quite as large a burden?

(I can't back that up though, just a thought.)

it's a sociobiology thing-- preserve the gene line above any other consideration. Certainly that's what NSMA's answer suggests to me. (I think the way the question is stated somewhat prejudices the answer.)

Several sci-fi authors that DU regularly dumps on have addressed this issue with a sort of hierarchy of groupings-- family, clan/tribe/community, nation-state, species-- and the varying levels of fealty one owes them. The rationale is both biological (you would die for those who would best preserve the essence of you) and social (you support through your actions those with whom you have a commonality of interests, you contend with those whose interests are hostile to you and yours). If you're willing to read Orson Scott Card (who admittedly has been making some disturbingly Bushbot noises lately), his novel Speaker for the Dead hypothesizes four such levels and has some pretty good discussion of it, in pursuit of the question of how much of a common purpose we share with interplanetary aliens; short version is, if they don't want to eat me, we could be friends. But then, what happens when members of your family *do* want to eat you-- not necessarily literally, but there are other predatory behaviors that are distressingly not rare within families.

Uh, I don't know if I've said anything helpful. Sorry.

I do tend to agree that it's a combination of social and biological factors, to the extent that it's true. As I said above, we're free to disagree with the premise, so, we'll see.

I've read Speaker for the Dead (I enjoyed the whole series, actually), but it was years ago, and I certainly didn't read it in that context. I think I might get a lot more out of it if I were to read it again now. Hrm... summer is coming, time for reading will be more abundant! Thank you for sharing your thoughts on all of this! :hi:

friends, which they demonstrated when we were just little blobs who could not move or feed ourselves or prevent ourselves from being surrounded by our own shit.

These moral obligations grew out of a practical need, and are also the result of a physiological bonding process.

birth you is such a root part of this. i think many people would do anything to repay their mom for that.
it's about being grateful for existing and survival. if you're a happy camper, and not a socio path, you are going to feel a bit indebted to your family naturally. and of course some people feel the need to pass on their genes and ensure their survival.
i grew up learning everyone on earth is my brother and sister and it's always stuck with me, i don't feel a much different moral obligation to my family despite the intense nature of my feelings towards them.
but i know a lot of people who make a huge distinction between family and everybody else and they tend to be competetive, clannish or insular... and um, usually i don't feel comfortable with people like that. i tend to feel they are missing out because of being too self-interested and materialistic, and to rationalize that they kinda have to marginalize others, tune them out.
11 years of catholic school, and that's the part that stuck with me the most, the sister sledge part. we are family.
:hi:
that, heh heh, and coveting your neighbor's husband. :blush:

I think it's interesting that you think your fealty to everyone in the world is learned... I think that's a good point, about how people are taught/raised having a huge impact on how they view their loyalties. I mean, that's almost so obvious that you could miss it, you know? How cool that you were taught in a way that makes you think outside of your bubble :)

And hey, the coveting your neighbor's husband is only bad if the neighbor is bothered by that, right? :evilgrin:

... we have no "moral obligation" to anyone... however, being the caring animals that humans are, we tend to impose our self-created moral obligation on those closest to us.

It's not about blood, since you could feel obligated to a spouse.... yet a child whose father or mother abandoned them at a young age might never feel that obligation toward that person even though they share a bloodline.

As humans we create a need for other people to be around us, and therefore we create a need (or obligation) to care for those closest to us. The reason we care for and feel obliged to those closest to us is because we need them the same way they need us...

It's simple preservation. As with most animal, we have certain instincts... to reproduce, to find food & shelter, to care for those around us, etc.

We brought them into the world - we must take care of them, or give them to someone who will.

I would also say that we have a moral obligation to our elderly parents to see that they are taken care of as well. I think this can be forfeited though if they were bad parents.

We make vows to a spouse - that should count for something.

It is drummed into our minds from day one that family comes first. Any deviation from that creates guilt.

Scenario: I have a sick friend. My mother is sick. With whom do I spend time? The friend for whom I may care more or the mother from whom get guilt vibes?

I won't deny that there is a special bond between mother and child, however the obligation to family is promoted by societal pressure. Blood is not thicker than water. Guilt is thicker than friendship. (How's that for a mixed metaphor?)

came out of a more-or-less accidental cohesiveness in early "families" that allowed their genes to succeed (get into the next generation), i.e., that the care, feeding, and protection of one's family members and family group provided for survival of more of those families' members and offspring.

So the members of the species who bore that "moral" trait of caring for family members were more succesful at procreating (because they survived) as were their offspring; thus that trait was passed, in both genetic and eventually social forms, down through generations. And those who lacked that "moral" trait were less successful at getting their genes, via reproduction, into succeeding generations, because their family groups were weaker and more vulnerable to outside threats (starvation, predators, illnesses, etc.).

My speculation is imprecise and flawed, but maybe there's a little sense in there.

Recently there have been reports of scientists discovering the "altruism" gene and this type of thing. And it makes me giggle simply because that kind of talk must drive the Ayn Rand nutters absolutely bonkers.

but there are interesting evolutionary psychology papers to be found by Googling +"evolutionary psychology" +morality

I'll have to have a look around. Thanks for the thoughts, swag! :hi:

Sorry I came late to the party. It's a fun question.

family members. It's harder to do than it is with friends, and I'm not sure why, although I heard a great line on a TV show: "Your mother knows which buttons to push because she installed them!" So maybe we only FEEL that we have moral obligations to our family because they know which buttons to push.