[rab] Good idea re defining morality. We could take our pick from the 11 definitions, some claimed obsolete, offered by the OED. The ones it thinks are current are:

• Moral virtue; behaviour conforming to moral law or accepted moral standards, esp. in relation to sexual matters; personal qualities judged to be good.
• Moral discourse or instruction; a moral lesson or exhortation. Also: the action or an act of moralizing.
• Conformity of an idea, practice, etc., to moral law; moral goodness or rightness.
• The quality or fact of being morally right or wrong; the goodness or badness of an action.
• The branch of knowledge concerned with right and wrong conduct, duty, responsibility, etc.; moral philosophy, ethics.
• A particular moral system or outlook; moral thought or conduct in relation to a particular form of activity.

Rather a hazy selection, no?

[Projoy] Quite. I had a think about definitions, came up with one and devised a framework for thinking about this whilst queuing in the bank this morning. Then the teller muttered something about ISAs and it all vanished. Oh dear. I also have more pressing things to worry about, in that I have in two weeks an interview for a job I really, really want and for which I expect the competition to be fierce. So I really need to pull out the stops, so if you don't hear from me it's cos I'm doing my homework.

Not posting on MC sites! Is this moral? :)

[rab] Morality: that which does not involve ISAs.

[Projoy] "Emergent phenomenon" isn't an alternative to other explanations -- it exists alongside them. For example, I am of the opinion that the mind is literally a physical process of the brain, which assembles itself by knowable (though currently almost entirely unknown) physical processes, so all the stuff we do is an emergent phenomenon of the molecules. That doesn't mean that that stuff -- thoughts, sensations, consciousness, etc. -- doesn't exist, although discoveries about the physical stuff can call into question our naive ideas about our experiences of our minds.
       As a last remark, I don't want to give the impression of hinting at mysterious mystical revelations (and I cynically suspect that a lot of accounts of such are describing nothing more mysterious than a minor stroke). The experiences that I can find no adequate way of communicating are no more than a few personal development courses I've taken, following which some religious language became a lot more comprehensible, and reading in a couple of quasi-religious traditions of disputed provenance (the works of Gurdjieff and Idries Shah).