The moral core of an individual is the extent to which that person will apply his or her notions of morality. It is centered on the individual and can be extended to include other people or groups. The individual sees these others within the moral core as deserving to be treated in the same way the individual personally wants to be treated. ...

The moral core is a principle that can determine how an individual applies particular moral values and beliefs. It is described in some theories of ethics as the limits to the rationality of ethics itself. From this perspective, morals are considered primarily aesthetic notions and not seen as directly sharable. Ethics (from Greek ethikos) is the branch of axiology – one of the four major branches of philosophy, alongside metaphysics, epistemology, and logic – which attempts to understand the nature of morality; to define that which is right from that which is wrong. ... In philosophy, the word rationality has been used to describe numerous religious and philosophical theories, especially those concerned with truth, reason, and knowledge. ... Aesthetics (or esthetics) (from the Greek word αισθητική) is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty. ...

Persons who fall outside of an individual's moral core are not covered by that individual's notions of morality and do not enjoy its protections. Thus, the concept of a moral core can serve to explain apparent hypocrisy in people who claim to have particular ethical principles. For example, it might be used to explain why someone whose religion forbids murder can nevertheless support involvement in war or imposition of the death penalty for certain crimes. According to this theory, the people whose killing can be justified somehow fall outside the individual's moral core. Look up Hypocrisy in Wiktionary, the free dictionary Hypocrisy is the act of pretending to have morals or virtues that one does not truly possess or practice. ... An act of war - the atomic bombing of Nagasaki, Japan on August 9, 1945, effectively ending World War II. The bombs over Hiroshima (August 6) and Nagasaki immediately killed over 120,000 people. ... Capital punishment, also referred to as the death penalty, is the judicially ordered execution of a prisoner as a punishment for a serious crime, often called a capital offense or a capital crime. ...

A moral core is presumed to be formed by experience, including especially parental moral examples, and the slow growth via cognition of a set of conditionings, inhibitions, and concepts of beauty through his or her entire lifetime. Although it may be demonstrated to train or inspire others, it cannot be shared in any way, and is constantly changing. Moral example is trust in the moral core of another, a role model, without the obvious mediation of any theory or language. ... Conditioning is a psychological term for what Ivan Pavlov described as the learning of conditional behavior. ... An inhibitor is a type of effector that decreases or prevents a chemical reaction. ... Many see natural beauty in the folded petals of a rose. ...

Some theories of morality, notably moral relativism, but also branches of theology, hold that there is little value in attempting to share moral cores or even to align moral choices except to the bare minimum needed to prevent conflict. ... In philosophy moral relativism is the position that moral or ethical propositions do not reflect absolute and universal moral truths but instead are relative to social, cultural, historical or personal references, and that there is no single standard by which to assess an ethical propositions truth. ... Theology is reasoned discourse concerning God (Greek θεος, theos, God, + λογος, logos, word or reason). It can also refer to the study of other religious topics. ...

The opposite belief, imposing various degrees of standardization via a moral code and its enforcement, usually in a legal system, is that such cores either can be shared or are irrelevant to the process of social control and learning proper conduct. It has been suggested that this article or section be merged into Morality. ...

See also

• moral code
• ethics
• politics
• inner light
• Religion