Morality — Biological or Philosophical? 550
loid_void writes to mention The New York Times is reporting that Biologists are making a bid on the subject of morality. "Last year Marc Hauser, an evolutionary biologist at Harvard, proposed in his book 'Moral Minds' that the brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language. In another recent book, 'Primates and Philosophers,' the primatologist Frans de Waal defends against philosopher critics his view that the roots of morality can be seen in the social behavior of monkeys and apes."
All well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
Both (Score:2, Insightful)
What remains to be seen is where the one starts and the other begins.
You might be able to prove to me that great apes & monkeys have this sense of "humanity" or--for lack of a better term--"monkey-anity." Like the basic tenants of it where you don't kill babies or you starve yourself if it saves someone like you.
But I'm going to find it hard to believe that monkeys have an advanced sense of specific morals like you should or shouldn't file share because it helps or hurts the artists.
I haven't read both these books and I've only briefly read the article but I would find it interesting to understand how our morality evolved or how localized concepts came about. I guess it also has implications connecting us to animals which I don't have a problem with because I don't eat or kill these animals. This news might anger some people but don't tell me that you've never seen a good dog adhere to morals that seemed to be ingrained in them.
I'd like to see this area explored but I think the biggest issue is that morals are often anecdotal or localized making them hard to quantify or generalize. It's the same way with the human race, so don't be so surprised. More power to these researchers even if all they are doing is documenting cases of basic morals in animals.
Re:All well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
In otherwords, the sin itself is the punishment. Murder harms the species' ability to propogate. Theft harms the species' ability to care for its children. Incest harms the species' viability.
An aversion to 'basic' sins is evolutionarily advantageous.
All other morality is an offshoot of this behavior combined with humans' abilities to recognize (and sometimes fatally mis-recognize) patterns.
People who eat uncooked pork die horribly of trichnella (sp?) parasite infection. Ergo, certain meats are 'unclean' and therefore not kosher.
People who eat lots of meat and fats suffer more heart attacks and strokes. Ergo, you don't consume meat and dairy (the milk of its mother) at the same time.
This is all the room we require for 'onerous' morality to spawn given humans ability to harmful overcategorize.
When a population begins engaging in lots of promiscuous sex with another population, such as during a rapacious, pillaging invasion, it tends to spread diseases between the two. Everyone on both sides gets herpes strains they're not immune to.
Ergo, sexual conduct as a whole must be bad, right?
We know today that's silly and more harmful than helpful. However, semites still don't eat pork, even if it's been properly cooked.
Re:All well and good (Score:3, Insightful)
Has to be partly biological (Score:5, Insightful)
1. There are obviously beings who are born sociopaths, which no amount of positive socialization or negative reinforcement can temper.
2. There are obviously beings who are born moral/ethical, which no amount of negative socialization can remove.
Re:All well and good (Score:3, Insightful)
Interesting discussion, be careful (Score:5, Insightful)
On the other hand (and as TFA points out), the key word is empathy. Without empathy, social structures cannot exist. If everyone and everyone is solely self-interested, groups of cooperating individuals could never thrive as they would be destroyed internally by conflicting self-interest.
However, to claim that there are *specific* moral rules that are hard-wired is a bit silly, since it can be evidenced that there are a great many cultures in human history that use generalizations to appease the natural sense of empathy, while doing acts that would otherwise trigger an empathic reaction.
For example, cultures which practiced human sacrifice justified it by either portraying those sacrificed as "not quite human" or as "chosen by god" (being an honor, not a sacrifice). The Moors in Spain categorized Christians as "infidels" and were therefore justified in burning them by the thousands. The Nazis convinced their people that Jews were "subhuman" and people therefore often felt vindicated at sending them to their death. Blacks in pre-civil war America (and some time afterwards) were also seen as "subhuman" (legally, actually 1/3 of a person) and therefore slave owners were justified in treating them as domesticated animals.
Even today, we see the phrase "not quite human" bandied about to refer to criminals, especially murderers and sex offenders, to appease people's sense of empathy when calling for them to be "skinned alive" or "sliced into little pieces" as two well known political bloggers recently and eloquently demanded of pedophiles caught in the act.
However, our sense of morality is not so solid as one might think. Using the same example, for almost a thousand years, pederasty was not only a tolerated condition, but actually an expected behavior amongst social elite. Not only was it accepted by it was celebrated. Death has been similarly consecrated into social norms in past societies with warrior cultures killing merely for the sake of killing and maintaining their warrior culture.
Our sense of empathy may be ingrained. In fact, it may be essential to our humanity, but empathy is not so firmly defined as a set of "thou shalt not" rules and can't be assumed to imply those either.
I still contend that the (often religious) argument "all humans have some hard-wired moral rules" is a sham, created to perpetrate the spread of ignorance on controversial topics. We should always question our judgments using our intellect... because that is really what separates us from other mammals.
Stew
Self Interest (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
According to which moral code? Altruism?
Have you noticed that Altruism is the code that everyone wants everyone else to practice? And have you ever considered the final implications of a sacrifice-the-good-to-strangers principle?
Re:Unsure of the "why" but pretty sure of why (Score:3, Insightful)
I think it is reasonable to assume that social animals have a sense of empathy. After all, a social structure without emapthy would quickly decay into chaos. It's an evolutionary trait to cause cohesion in communities.
Beyond that sense of empathy, it is hard to see any "hard wired" set of morality. That sense of empathy gives us a vague "do unto others" urge, but it can obviously be overridden by conditioning, etc.
Stew
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:No Kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
This is circular reasoning: you presuppose all social animals have "rules of conduct" to show that we have "rules of conduct". Plus, even if it were sound logic, it's more of a semantics game to avoid the word "morality" than anything else.
Re:All well and good (Score:2, Insightful)
Religion, on the other hand, has its roots in superstition - where things people are afraid of, like storms, the sun, floods, other natural features that can kill you, and non-deadly anomalies involving those features such as eclipses, become anthropomorphized. A connection between these fears and the pre-existing primitive moral code was inevitable once primate intelligence evolved to the point where such abstract connections as "he died in the flood because he stole food from Og's family" could be made.
Now, once religion became organized, things became different. Taking the Roman Catholic church in the Dark and Middle Ages, for example, the Pope and other church leadership were generally regarded as being even more powerful than various kings in Europe, because they wielded the power of judgment over the souls of those kings. There were many cases in those times - and many cases even today - where people take advantage of religion to convince people to do things differently than they otherwise would (blowing up children used as decoys in a car bomb, for instance), but the fundamental morality of religion is still based upon group-selective advantage from a time even before superstition.
Neither (Score:1, Insightful)
Re:Morality? Meaningless. (Score:5, Insightful)
It may sound persuasive to you to say that not believing in God means that there is suddenly no right or wrong and we can do anything, but real atheists, with very few exceptions, don't really believe that. And for every exception (Pol Pot and Stalin come to mind) I can give you more examples of people who thought God wanted them to commit atrocities. Hitler, Torquemada, Jim Jones, David Koresh, and so on. Yes, some power-mad wackos are atheists, but the fact that there are also plenty of power-mad wackos who believe in God should tell you that the atheism isn't the root of that particular problem. It happens that there are murderous psychos in the world, some who believe in God and a few who don't, and all of them bring their own beliefs, or lack thereof, to the table with them.
And we don't really think you're stupid, any more than you think people who believe in Shiva or Mithra are stupid. Yes, Dawkins is mouthy. He's one Oxford zoology professor who is rather vocal about his atheism. When the President of the USA says that religious people whouldn't even be considered citizens (like Bush Sr. said about atheists when he was President) then you may have a case. But even then, it falls a bit short of true intolerance or persecution. Dawkins is entitled to his beliefs. If Christians enjoy the right to think that Dawkins deserves to roast for all eternity in a lake of fire, I think he's entitled to think this is a crazy, illogical, and sadistic doctrine.
Re:moral judgement != behaviour (Score:3, Insightful)
The absolute construct that he has demonstrated is empathy. In other words, feeling for other people as you might feel yourself in the same situation. This is a biological imperative for animals to be able to live in a close-knit social group, as sociopathic selfishness would quickly cause the social groups to decay into anarchy and ultimately separate.
The "moral judgment" seems to me to be just a consistency of reasoning that ultimately stems from this biological imperative toward empathy.
The concept that there are hard-wired moral "conclusions" is silly.
The concept that there is a hard-wired root to our desire to FIND conclusions is very salient.
Stew
Re:No Kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
Animals have adopted a sense of empathy. This is apparent that it exists in many species. This is fact.
The reason animals adapted such a sense of empathy is because of a need to live in groups (just as the poster said). The "why" is.... animals which are entirely lacking empathy (reptiles perhaps?) live solitary lives. They fight any other same-sex same-species animals, because they are automatically "competitors" for whatever it is around, food, mates, etc.
The ability to live in a social group (beyond an immediate mating need) hinges on the ability to have empathy and protect those individuals around you as if you were protecting yourself. This is the essence of empathy.
"morality" is simply a social and intellectual construct that humans have come up with to codify their sense of ingrained empathy.
Stew
Re:I think its Genetical actually.. (Score:3, Insightful)
-matthew
Re:All well and good (Score:3, Insightful)
Don't confuse all forms of morality with a rational thought process. The non-religious "morality" is far more instinctive. If you have to sit and think and ponder on the morality of something, or go to confession to see if something you did was immoral, that's not the type of "morality" being discussed as having a genetic/instinctive basis.
Re:No Kidding (Score:3, Insightful)
The implication is that morality isn't due so much to a inherent "moral code" (which is a real religious spin on the observed behaviour, if you ask me) but more simply a genetic trait which facilitates habitation within groups. This group habitation then provides the various evolutionary advantages listed above.
Re:Morality? Meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Oh yes, there are so many examples...
Radical Jews
Radical Islamists
Radical Christians
Certain catholic priests in New England
The German churches during the Third Reich
The crusaders
I'm sure I forgot a couple million.
As they say, God is great, it's just his ground staff that sucks.
How about: Environmental? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Morality? Meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Please don't speak for all atheists as if we are a unified homogenous group with the same beliefs. That's a bit silly. The most annoying thing about being an atheist is that some wack job (not that you are) starts speaking for you. Especially since a lot of these wack jobs are on some sort of antireglious soap box pissing people off. As a result when you mention that you are an atheist you are, in some peoples minds, equated with the last wacko they heard from.
Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:5, Insightful)
Why do some aquatic animals push injured companions to the surface so they can breathe? Bottle-nosed Dolphin are known to do this, and so are some aquarium fish. Do you think this is based on "philosophy", or do you think there is some basic hard-wiring in there that arose from a biological imperative similar to the idea that that keeping the group healthy has a generally positive effect on the individual (and hence its genes)?
Why will a cat or dog or pig or any number of other animals accept another species to nurse at its teats, even when, as in many of these cases, said species is considered natural prey or predator?
Why will cats in particular, highly independent creatures who are extremely good at providing for themselves, go into a burning building to attempt to wake and save their owners, sometimes at the cost of their own lives? I understand the argument for saving one's kittens is that of propagating the gene (though cats could always make more kittens, and that is certainly a more effective strategy both at the personal and genetic levels) but why save some human? Cats don't generally need humans for survival. It is just one of several strategies available to them - and they do it. Many convert from one to the other, sometimes more than once. Cognition? Or wiring?
Do ethics and/or morals have to be "systems" in order to be valid, useful, or characterized as such? If yes, why? Could it be that such an outlook is primarily an exercise in hubris? Isn't it sufficient to choose not to do something based on a vague feeling that it isn't the right thing to do, or a simple situational evaluation that detects dissatisfaction as a likely outcome if a particular course is followed, or not?
Do such behaviors have to be high level cognitive products at all? If so, why? Many humans get their ethics and morals "canned", that is, from books or mentors in what amounts to final form. Do this. Don't do that. Most adhere to those admonitions; we generally consider them moral people as long as they do so. But is the bad feeling about taking what is not yours incurred by having your hand smacked by dad for stealing sister's lollipop any different than having your instincts and endocrine system twist your stomach in a knot when contemplating the bloody suffering of another? Both encourage what look like what we commonly call moral behaviors; neither one can reasonably be called "philosophy" on the part of the primary actor by any stretch of the imagination. They both come into play very early in events that call for them.
Personally, I don't think we're nearly as sophisticated as we'd like to imagine. Those of us who exhibit the most "sophistication" usually fall into a category of those who have a lot of time to think available to them, time often provided by channeling wealth from others, one way or another. The rest just muddle along. There are a number of structures in society that have existed for quite a long time that encourage and reinforce this precise pattern.
In the end, these questions all go to how the mind operates, and as we know very little about that, it seems to me that answers which assert certainty are probably untrustworthy at best. No matter the reputation of the "philosopher" who might put those ideas forth.
This is silly (Score:5, Insightful)
Is logic biological or reasonable?
Is reason biological or sensible?
Is fruit an apple or an orange?
My opinion is that these so-called "scientists" are pushing a moral agenda that is merely wearing biology as its latex glove. It looks to me like a media-endorsed reincarnation of the various licentious systems, this time based in the recently popular thinking that morality is subject to and arises from DNA. It is a backwards view that claims reality is subject to awareness or to a physical adaptation meant to sense it, rather than vice versa.
Humans have a reliable way of experiencing some kinds of things: Heat, light, taste, sound, viscosity, gravity, density, hardness, etc., etc. These sensations form the basis of science as well as the natural law philosophies of the empiricists.
The fact that individuals may experience the "sensations" of morality differently from one another can not logically invalidate any absolute attributes that morality might encompass. If external senses arose from primitive ancestors, this does not mean that the nature of heat has changed. Likewise, if moral senses arose from primitive ancestors, this does not mean that the nature of morality has changed or suddenly come into existence. If two individuals possess different notions of quantity, this doesn't mean that two plus two no longer equal four. There are definite laws that govern the physical and the abstract, regardless of how well our minds are designed to comprehend them.
The discipline of philosophy has always held that the metaphysical realm of logic is likewise governed by definite laws, and that from these laws are derived the realities of propriety, merit, and so forth.
I have hope that good scientists avoid the sort of dogmatic proselytizing represented in this NYTimes article. I will venture to say that morality will never be subject to the empirical sort of testing that science demands, and that scientists therefore have nothing to say about it (as scientists). At best, the scientist might claim that animals seem to have a sort of moral sense which is nicely facilitated by the wonders of genetics, and leave it at that. Science can't give us the value of such a statement. That belongs to philosophy.
Re:Try this... (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:I think its Genetical actually.. (Score:5, Insightful)
Jesus, if we wanted pills to make people happy, we'd be handing out heroin or vicodin. People get addicted to drugs that make them happy, and then that destroys their lives.
Re:All well and good (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:All well and good (Score:5, Insightful)
Evolution doesn't favor altruism. It favors kin-selection, in which people closely related to you are important to you. A mother will sacrifice for her children, and a brother will sacrifice for a large enough group of other brothers, but when it comes to "your fellow man", evolution favors no such thing.
That's not altruism--that's cooperation, which is selfish because it pursues mutual self-interest instead of pure others-interest.
That's like saying by sacrificing $1500, I prove my worth to possess a black MacBook. If you still wanted the sex more than the resources, you're still being a selfish bastard and you're still getting a good deal. Evolution favors enlightened self-interest in every situation other than kin selection.
Hardly. It's fairly easy to derive them all. (Score:5, Insightful)
Help others.
Help yourself.
Help a group that helps you.
Help another who helps you.
Have sex. (lust)
Have sex with pretty people.
Protect your children. (love)
Protect those in your group. (love)
Protect children.
Hurt those who hurt you. (revenge)
Don't do things which would make you feel bad if they were done to you.
Don't do things which make you feel bad. (empathy)
Work with the group, do as they do.
Believe what you are told.
Protect others.
Share with the group.
Ask for help.
Dislike outsiders.
Really, these moral instructions are fairly easy to evolve. The group which possesses them is more fit than the series of individuals which doesn't. Some of them tend to misfire and don't work as well as they might have in the past. Doing what the group does is a great way to learn, it's also a great way to do horrific and sinister wrong to non-group individuals. And, in fact, when engaging in immoral acts, it is best to exclude the non-group completely to get around the brain's build in moral compass. That way they have no moral group worth to you.
Really we see this group activity rather regularly in the wild as well as in other primates. Chimps will go without food when getting food will give another chimp an electric shock. Even plants will release chemical signposts when attacked so that other plants will be more apt to protect themselves. Philosophy has been rather good at hashing out certain elements of this moral code, though they tend to miss some of the finer details. For example, utilitarianism works remarkably well... though you would be hard pressed to find any mother who would choose to let her child die over the children of five strangers.
Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:3, Insightful)
But what interests me more are the edges of morality. Pushing an injured dolphin to the surface or grabbing a little kid who's about to be hit by a truck may well be hard-wired into those of us who aren't sociopaths. But there's a huge realm of morality that isn't quite so obvious, say, the guy who takes advantage of people who are in trouble to make money, like these "sub-prime" lenders we hear about who prey on folks who are already in bad financial shape. The "free market" types have absolutely no problem with that, but many of them will talk about sending homosexuals to special treatment where they can "Pray the Gay Away". Love your neighbor? Well, "only if they agree with me".
We're going to see a huge backlash against doing any serious study of biological basis for morality because it threatens religion. We're already seeing an organized effort to marginalize science by zealots who see the writing on the wall. Then again, there are the extreme whackos like Albert Moller who want to do genetic testing on embryos to see if they're going to be gay so they can be "treated" in the womb.
In our lifetimes, we'll see greater and greater challenges to religious orthodoxy from science, but not the way Galileo challenged the pope's view of an earth-centric universe. Rather, there will be a peek into what makes us want so badly to believe that there's a big Daddy who's going to take care of us after our time is over and, more importantly, who will beat the hell out of those who disagreed with us or otherwise pissed us off.
But it won't be the end of morality. If anything, I see a maturing humanity that will come to terms with a need to be moral "just because" it helps us deal with life and is good for us all. But the people among us who've put all their eggs into one huge religious basket are going to get increasingly desperate to hold on to the glue that's been holding their weak psyches together. This is going to make them dangerous. The nihilistic fundamentalism that we've seen coming from Islam is only the beginning. It's going to come here, too, but in a form that's much more familiar to us.
Re:Some one MOD this man up! (Score:3, Insightful)
You still see this as an argument against evolution, because getting yourself killed will probably *prevent* you from reproducing and passing on your genes directly.
But Dawkins' point was that it's the GENE that's "selfish", not the individual. So an urge for an individual to sacrifice itself to save the rest of its group CAN serve its genes, because its group (probably family with the same genes) will survive because of this even if the individual doesn't.
This applies to people as well, because we have some of the same urges ("pre-thought urge" loosely equals "residual instinct") to risk ourselves to help our group. People argue that these shared urges among different culture prove the existence of God or some kind higher moral guide, because they don't understand how we could have evolved this kind of idea. But if you understand the operation of evolution a bit better (see above) and remember that we're generally social, group-centered animals, it's not so hard to explain.
Re:All well and good (Score:3, Insightful)
Motivation by a sense of fairness, reciprocity, and altruism, that is a nice view to have however, I don't think you can mix in altruism in with fairness and reciprocity. With being 'fair', you are expecting the same behavior out of others. If you are the only one being fair and others are not, then you will lose...
If your expecting reciprocity, then how is that altruistic? By definition, altruism is being unselfish, not expecting anything in return. As I have stated, the cooperative behavior found in nature is not of altruism but out of an indirect benefit they receive. Is this selfishness? I don't think so but there is a definite benefit to the helper.
Being altruistic, I don't believe people act this way unless there is some benefit to them. It might not be a direct benefit to ones genetic fitness but might be one of psychological reasons. Why did Mother Teresa do the good deeds for the poor? It is obvious her actions did not raise her genetic fitness. Would she have acted the same if there wasn't the benefit for her soul in the after life promised in her religion?
Can you have altruism and reciprocity at the same time? If an altruistic action is motivated by reciprocity, is that altruism?
Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:5, Insightful)
Not at all. The fact is, these things are still 100% accepted by our society, and in some cases, enshrined into law. It is simply that the class which bears the brunt of these actions has changed slightly. For example, the 13th amendment enshrines slavery as perfectly acceptable for the very broad class of people "convicted of a crime", giving it the force of law at the very base of our system. Public executions are still performed, more so and more publicly in countries informed by Sharia law, but we still gather up family, friends and witnesses here in the USA. Rape is common in prisons, and we, as a society, don't even lift a finger to do anything about it - so while it may not have the force of law, it is certainly a normal part of our social functioning. Classing in general has actually devolved in some ways; the Romans wouldn't think twice about knowingly entrusting a homosexual with public office or their children for instruction; our society rarely does this. The Romans also understood that sexually mature teenagers were valid and reasonable sexual partners, while today, classing separates teenagers from (for instance) those in their twenties who might make very good mates indeed for them, as well as sexual mentors. I wouldn't get too excited about any supposed "moral sophistication" of today's society. A lot of that is illusion, more of it is socially enforced style without great moral substance.
What you are talking about here are collisions of culture, which you are conflating with the idea that morals are absolute - which they certainly are not. In the past, when a severe collision occurred, the survivor's answer was to fight until only one culture survives. The Islamists still understand this, but the (quite different) morals of the west reject the idea of putting down an entire culture, even though that culture is polarizing against them in the most obvious manner possible, and has no such scruples. The answer that beckons with survival as the prize - from history - is clear and obvious (and it is the same answer the Islamists have come to.)
When someone has a different set of morals than you do, this does not mean that you are biologically different. Many outlooks are inset at an early age. Some are preset. Depends on the animal how many and which way, but that still leaves more than enough room for the dog that will rescue your broken body, and the dog that will eat you and tear off chunks for its puppies; the person who will help you homestead and the one that will take your land; the priest who will stand between you and your enemy, and the priest who will put you on the rack.
It also doesn't mean that you can "fix" or "educate" those with attitudes that clash with yours. That is why it was traditional - and acceptable - to kill all members who could fight (now, or later, as in male children) of any particular conquered group.
Some morals cost too much; no society can afford to pay with everything they have if they want to survive.
Re:Morality? Meaningless. (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:2, Insightful)
Religion - and I hate to admit this - is the only construct which meaningfully defines morality in mathematically logical terms(given that religion is 'correct'), by defining activity done with the intention of satisfying the demands of the religion as "good". You are wrong if you think they shy away from biological explanations. They can't. But the idea of recognizing an action as "good" or "bad" has to necessarily incorporate the intention of the actor to comply with the definition, otherwise it becomes worthless in their books, and that is indeed logical (given again that religion is somehow true/correct).
Without a concrete, divine, unquestionable, untouchable law, 'morality' reduces to little more than instinctive drive. Utilitarianism may attempt to make sense of it, humanism may champion it, but it is really in essence nothing more than a set of randomly evolved functions that *happen* to insure survival. And survival is not capable of being ascribed correctness or fallacy: survival is simply a phenomenon. So why should I not help myself to an odd million dollars in federally insured money by, say, robbing a bank? Because some molecules happened to collide 10,000 years ago in the developing brain of an animal leading to (DNA encoding of)endorphins being released when members of the same species were hurt? Because that is what it is. Add in the bit of cognitive magic in the human brain and you get explanations for everything. The truth is I can't do it because the logical drive is not as powerful as the instinctive one, even though I understand both fully. But there may be others who are wired a little differently - are they 'wrong'? Are they wrong if they shoot you in the street, or steal your credit card info, or conquer your nation's resources by wiping out it's population with an instantanteous WMD that causes no "pain"? Our emotions scream yes, but we know why they scream, and the knowledge can motivate some to silence those nuisance feelings.
So before you fear the 'nihilist Islamists' (the terms are contradictory by the way), start fearing the rationalist age of crime that may come before. The real masses subscribing to monotheism will never be a major problem in the future, even though everybody will suffer from their fanatical offshoots in this global society of today. This is because as others have noted, religion coincides with collective uitility in many cases. Individuals however, are another story.