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Moral Values & JudgementsMoral values underpin animal rights. Values are beliefs or outlooks that an individual, group or society accepts or thinks are desirable. You might value status, personal achievement, independence, music and money, but these are not necessarily moral values. Moral values are worthy and virtuous. We rely on them to help us make decisions about moral problems and do the right thing. The most basic moral values concern issues such as life, health, freedom, happiness, and opportunity for all. Since the 18th century people have sought to incorporate such basic moral values into formal statements of moral rights. If we had no sense of moral values then morality, and the whole concept of animal rights, would be impossible.Your own personal moral values are an important part of you. They mix with all your other characteristics to make you unique. Your moral values derive from biological evolution and from your cultural background picked up from parents, teachers, colleagues and peers. They develop from childhood and continue to form throughout your life. You may modify or abandon them. They combine in a hierarchy in which some values have priority over others. And everybody embraces mutually conflicting values without realising it. Inevitably your values will clash with other people's values. This is where you have to make moral judgements about what you think should be and what you think you should do. Learning that your neighbour has just poisoned your pet, you must go through a decision-making process: do nothing, prosecute legally or kill him in return. You have to make a moral judgement, an expression of the rights and wrongs, goods and bads of your position, and that depends on your moral values. |
