The Moral Agent and Contexts

Introduction
Individual choices, decisions, plans and needs even when initiated and originated from the
individual himself or herself may seem not to be products of purely individual nature. Many
variables of external origins may be at play.

Ramon Reyes as suggested by Bulaong Jr. et al. 2008 (pp. 102-104), strongly pointed out
that multifarious influences play important roles to arrive at a decision. Four significant cross-
points influence people’s ideas, motivations, reactions, thoughts and emotions, including and
especially moral judgments and decisions.

People live not in isolation but are well situated in a given environment and particular
context influencing their behaviors and mentality. Parental influences cannot be undermined as
confirmed by well-known psychologists among those of psychodynamic orientation. Behaviorists
would certainly agree that the environment play an important role to people’s reaction while
denying any cognitive materials to explain human behavior.

Furthermore, the socio-cultural and social contexts are undeniably important elements to
consider that explain the way people are molded and therefore are real sources of influence to
people’s worldview and behavior. The discussion below provides ample situations and events to
explain the critical assumptions that influence people’s daily life.

Learning Outcome
1. Explain human behavior in making moral judgment and decision;
2. Articulate the crucial influences in one’s personal life; and
3. Analyze situations and actions of moral agents.

Activating Prior Learning

Share it! 15 minutes. Share in the class who has influenced you most in making up your
mind to take the course of your life now. Was it a significant individual, a situation, a personal
ambition? Listen to what others have to say about their own experiences.
 Presentation of Contents
Bulaong Jr. et al. (2018) argues that the one who is tasked to make the moral decision is a
human individual. This person when making moral valuation is not doing it out from nowhere or
from a purely personal stance. The moral agent is, according to Ramon C. Reyes as cited by
Bulaong Jr. et al (2018) is a cross-point. This means that any moral agent is a product of many
forces and events outside of one’s choosing. Reyes mentions 4 cross-points namely: the physical,
the interpersonal, the social and the historical cross-points.

First, the physical cross-point include the genetic endowments, characteristics endemic to
the species Homo Sapiens with its limitations and strengths, the geographical realities in which
the individual is born and lives, the kind of natural environment with all resources and challenges
that impact growth and development. All these physical cross-points are influences not from the
individual own choosing.

An important aspect when making a decision which is clearly a physical cross-point based
is intelligence. Intelligent people may for instance make crucial decision to solve a situation or
concern definitively, while others might simply go for a tentative solution unsure about the veracity
of their chosen option. Or, it is possible that someone decides making a career in sports having
special talents that gives assurance of success in a certain field. Usually special talents are best
when it is a product not only of training but also and especially when it is inherent in the person.
These factors based on physical cross-point influence individual decisions, motivation and
judgment which are not one’s own choices but simply something given.

The second is the social cross point. No person is born outside human contact. Every
individual is a product of interpersonal cross-points. The first and the most influential of them are
those established with the parents. The first human contact of every individual is with parents who
nourish, protect, give care and attention and provide security at the very first stages of life. How
individuals are brought up in the family influence an individuals’ character, manners and his or
her thinking and mindset. One’s personality is shaped by the people around especially by those
who influence the person during the early years of existence. Again, these influences are not the
individual’s own choice. The person is born of parents who dispose their time making sure that
every need of the newborn is addressed and taken care of resulting to a compassionate
interpersonal cross-point. Other interpersonal cross-points come in as the individual’s relational
horizon expands with friends, colleagues, clients, schoolmates, etc.

Third, as individuals grow and discover their way in the outside world, they come into
contact with the broader social context. From now on, the shaping of individual personality
accommodates those brought about by the larger society. The culture and the values inherent in it
are inevitably forces that impact the way individuals perceive the world and judge it. Again, the
social and cultural influences as with the other cross-points are not according to the choices of any
individual but realities in which one is born in and is molded by it to become partly the person that
one is. People see things and make choices based on their training and are influenced by the kind
of association they have forged in life. Unconsciously, they serve as important influences coming
from outside when they make options or choose solutions from available alternatives.
 Finally, there is the historical and cultural cross-point. It means that events especially those
with crucial importance shape an entire nation and every individual living in that particular society.
Significant events like wars, devastating natural calamities, and important societal changes are
powerful forces that lead to new awareness leaving incredible impact on people’s attitude and
thinking. Thereby, people’s lives are shaped by the crucial events of their lives manifested in their
day to day attitude and manner of perceiving new experiences.

Similarly, Filipinos have been shaped by its own unique history. The centuries of Spanish’s
colonization have brought a new consciousness that was different before they landed in the
archipelago. Christianity made critical and permanent changes in the lives of Filipinos. Even if
they chased away the colonizers, they kept their Christian faith which they embraced profoundly.
Filipino traditions and lifestyle have been the result of the influences of its historical journey.
History has molded the Filipino people resulting to what we Filipinos are now. The historical and
cultural influences are external influences, but they may have crucial impact on individuals’ moral
valuations and decisions.

So far, history is yet another cross-point interacting with the other ones – the four of them
making impact on the Filipino consciousness, his or her perspective including but especially his
or her type of moral valuation.

However, Reyes believes that the Filipino is not only the product of the cross-points of his
life but is also a product of his or her free will and intention in life. The freedom that every Filipino
enjoys allows one to make choices of his or her own, giving the capacity to direct or invent one’s
own life toward the realization of an ideal self. Reyes describes this point in the following manner:
The Filipino, “who one is” is a cross-point, but in an existential level whose meaning of existence
is the interaction between the fact that one’s being is a product of may forces outside her/his
choosing and his/her ideal future for herself or himself.”

Summary
No individual born is free from all possible influences in this world. Everyone experiences
the natural life cycle of being born, gaining knowledge, going through life and growing up until
death. The moment one is born, one receives all-at-once the trademark of the physical cross-point.
No one escapes everything that is given about being born in a particular family, community,
country and all that is circumstantial about a certain context. Many things are given without our
permission but they all count and influence our being human and all that every human being does.
But one can choose what one can be. Despite the different possibilities that personal cross-points
indicate, one can and therefore have the ability to break away from the entrapment of all cross
points and invent what one desires in life.