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."
I think its Genetical actually.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The Beginning of Morality. (Score:4, Interesting)
The problem is that the word "morality" is loaded (Score:5, Interesting)
If you just think of it as a cooperation strategy, with "moral" being defined as "behaving in a way that benefits others", it's all quite simple, and it should be obvious that animals have a form of morals too.
No Kidding (Score:4, Interesting)
Try this... (Score:3, Interesting)
Therefore a moral would be that "constructive" ideas, thoughts, works are better than "destructive" ones. Work against the stream. Being lazy is the devils work. Etc, etc.
Constructive'ism:
* To conserve what can be conserved.
* To help those that need help.
* To maintain, that which can or needs to be maintained.
* To build, that which can be built.
* To seek out, that which can be found, and to determine the limits of all knowledge.
All these are "good" in terms of a positive impact on society and individualism.
The flip side is being destructive, the lazy path. Consider all the amount of "positive" work lost when the planes stuck the twin towers on 9/11. Making a bomb is easy compared to the work to build that which a bomb can destroy.
This is one way to measure moral'ness.
Re:The Beginning of Morality. (Score:5, Interesting)
If you aren't aware of the self object, you can't project it into imagined future states. If you can't project the self into imagined future states, and choose among them, then you are not volitional (aka free-willed aka proactive). If you aren't volitional, then morality doesn't apply to you.
A deer, for example, does not contemplate her welfare in the coming winter, and make decisions about how to lay up food or migrate; she relies on hard-coding. So even if we could speak to her, she wouldn't understand the idea of right or wrong or choice.
Universal morals (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Interesting)
Anyhow, there is an assumption in your question, that actions are, in fact, moral or not. This is debatable. Philosophers have argued both sides.
Minor aside about TFA: it says "There are clear precursors of morality in nonhuman primates, but no precursors of religion." Well, actually this is debatable. Researches have seen some monkey or ape - I can't remember which type, exactly (a variety of baboon, perhaps?) - displaying what *might* be interpreted as 'sun worship'. That is, when the sun came up, they 'greeted' it with a quite unique celebration (jumping around and making noise, mostly, but in a distinct manner). Obviously this is an interpretive leap, but to me at least it seems about as reasonable as saying there are precursors of morality in primates. That is, I think both are just fine, so long as we understand 'precursors' can be something quite different from the human version.
Re:Morality? Meaningless. (Score:1, Interesting)
Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:4, Interesting)
Doubtful, depending on your own definition of morality and ethics.
For example, it is possible to generate a coherent system of ethics and morality based on the axiom of "survival". However, to keep it from degenerating to the level of Daffy Duck (It's MINE I tell you! MINE! All Mine!!), you have to make it multidimensional, including such things as art, money, culture, sex, family, tribes, ecology, etc. as separate dimensions. Such sophistication is probably not hard wired into the biology.
Of course, you are free to delineate your own list of dimensions and definitions thereof. For example, I would definitely include Geek as a tribe, seen well in the rival clans of Torvalds vs Gates. Such an exercise is useful, and possibly educational.
Re:I think its Genetical actually.. (Score:2, Interesting)
Um, no it isn't. As someone qualified to talk about the effects of such drugs, I can assure you they do not alter a person's morality. These drugs act like a mask over a person. They alter behavior, sure -- addressing the symptoms of a mental/emotional issue and not the cause -- but do not alter who the person is. At least, that's my intimate experience with such drugs.
Also, it's interesting that you use the word "fix", presuming that the thing in question went from a state of 'worse' to 'better'. What's the moral basis for this judgment of how 'good' someone's change in morality is?
As to whether morality is biological or not, I doubt something like that can be answered by anyone who denies the possiblility of the existence of a being higher than man. I've known of complete and sudden changes in a person's morality that can't be explained through biological phenomena.
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Interesting)
Don't think true altruism doesn't exist. Some people really do care about other people and acts of charity are purely for the sake of others. Altruism can even be observed in an MRI. Basically, nice people use a part of their brain that self-centered people don't. Article here [sciencedaily.com], I think it even made it to the front page of Slashdot back in January.
What about Buddhists? (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:All well and good (Score:5, Interesting)
On average, if your actions help even three cousins breed, statistically speaking it is very likely that all the genes you carry have been passed on even if you never breed. Genetics works on much larger than individual scale. But it gets deeper, that is only one reason that evolution selects for altruism.
Another reason is strategic. The world is full of local scarcities and surpluses. Iterated prisoner's dilemma has shown the 'tit-for-tat' strategy to be quite effective, and other research has shown the general case that cooperation is the most effective strategy unless there are no local surpluses or no local scarcities. Altruism is the first step to cooperation and a proven superior strategy.
The final reason is known as the handicap principle. Since much of evolution is driven by sexual selection, things that help get a mate are selected for even if they hurt the chance of survival. Witness the peacock's tail. Not only does it make him easier to see and catch, if he has any parasites at all it will look ragged and tattered. His tail is a handicap, and therefore a brag to the peahens that is hard to fake. It is saying, "look at my genetic superiority, ladies! I'm so superior I can sport this gaudy monstrosity and get away with it!"
Altruism is the same. By sacrificing resources you prove your worth to the opposite sex. With all those evolutionary reasons for altruism, it is no wonder it is such an important motivating factor. In fact, recent economic research has shown that the basis of the free market, the "selfish actor" theory, is false. People are not primarily motivated by self interest. They are motivated by a sense of fairness, reciprocity, and altruism.
Have you ever noticed that altruism is denigrated by people who are selfish and have no empathy? And have you considered the final implications of pure selfishness?
Re:The Beginning of Morality. (Score:3, Interesting)
How do you know? Humans and deer are both mammals, and share a lot of the same brain structures. I don't see any reason in principle that deer couldn't have a sense of self, although more primitive than ours. To simply assume otherwise is just chauvinism.
Re:Interesting discussion, be careful (Score:4, Interesting)
The religious argument is not that humans have "hard-wired" moral rules, but that the Universe has hard-wired moral rules in the same way it has hard-wired physical rules. If this premise is correct, it would be unsurprising for evolution to favor mental and social structures that reflect moral laws, just as evolution favors physical structures that reflect physical laws -- and all imperfectly.
This debate is usually cast in the following terms:
Side A: "Evolutionary psychology explains morality, therefore it's merely an artifact of evolution with no particular significance."
Side B: "Evolutionary psychology can't explain morality, therefore it's greater than an artifact of evolution and bears significance."
Neither of these arguments is valid. The real debate is what it always has been:
Side A: Morality is relative to society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Side B: Morality is universal across society
Corollary: Evolution will favor structures that work.
Therefore, it seems to me that the elucidation of a mechanism for ingraining moral laws has no logical connection to the intrinsic status and origin of those laws. Or, put another way: the evidence is not quite as important as the premises.
In the same way, to reduce morality to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori empathy does not seem any more valid than reducing empathy to a mere consequence of some presumed a priori morality. Therefore, this formulation does not advance the argument either.
We should always question our judgments using our intellect... because that is really what separates us from other mammals.
Could you clarify what you think is the role of intellect in this? It seems to me that intellect can tell us how well our judgments conform to an a priori standard of morality (including, technically, no standard at all -- but then what are you judging?).
So, assuming you believe a judgment can be made, what is the standard upon which the action is judged, and what is the justification for the standard itself?
--
Dum de dum.
Re:Don't forget the children! (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:All well and good (Score:5, Interesting)
Well, sort of.
People who eat uncooked pork die horribly of trichnella (sp?) parasite infection. Ergo, certain meats are 'unclean' and therefore not kosher.
People who eat uncooked meat of any kind tend to die of one disease or another with higher probability. There's a reason we cook meat. Constraining it to pork makes little sense. That would be a more plausible explanation for strict vegetarianism as is seen in Eastern religions [wikipedia.org].
As for pork, it has been speculated that one of the reasons pork is verboten in both Jewish and Muslim cultures is that those cultures developed in a relatively arid part of the world. Pigs require lots of water, and thus raising pigs was seen as wasteful. To discourage raising of pigs, the religious leaders declared them unclean to consume. At least that's a popular theory. There's really no way to know where much of this got started, but it makes a lot of sense.
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.
We know that in this century. I don't think the term "stroke" even existed when that law was passed down. I suspect that had to do with the difficulty of cooking meats and dairy products without curdling the dairy or undercooking the meat. Of course, when you interpret that more broadly (as it is often currently interpreted) to include adding dairy-based cheese to meat that is already cooked, the food safety point of view starts to make a lot less sense. That interpretation does fit well with a strict literal interpretation, however, of not cooking meat in the mother's milk (or any milk).
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?
When there is a viable alternative for the continuation of the species, you can bet that somewhere, someone will declare sex to be a mortal sin. Just wait. Give it time. It will happen. :-)
Re:I think its Genetical actually.. (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Towards a Multi-Dimensional Morality (Score:1, Interesting)
So, you're equating support for certain economic policies to a religion? The analogy seems to work much better to those who wish more government regulation inspite of its proven failures. And I suspect these guys have their share of religious folks as well.
How exactly does a biological basis for morality threatens religion? In any event, your example is not an attempt to marginalize science, but rather an attempt to use it for one's own ends.
Re:All well and good (Score:4, Interesting)
If people were truly rational, if they were selfish actors, if they were motivated by self interest, *any* amount proposed by person A would immediately be agreed to by person B, because *any* money that person B gets, is greater than the amount person B gets if person B disagrees with the division.
In fact, the cutoff seems to be around 55-80%, depending on the society, but for any society, there is always a division point where person B would prefer to have no money at all, than to have a small amount of money where person A gets a large amount of money.
So much for selfish actors and 'rational' behavior. Their behavior is, indeed, rational, but with different premises than those of the free market advocates.
There is honor among thieves (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.engineers.auckland.ac.nz/~snor007/docs
Morality manifests everywhere because it is an aspect of nature.
What I find a little strange is that TFA is not clear about a distinction between morality and ethics and so ends up in a reason vrs. emotion dillema in the Kant vrs. Hume discussion. Morality always starts from the gut as all teachers have said. Ethics tries to sort out the various promptings of morality through reason that mimics the gut instincts. So, empathy is modeled with the abstraction of disinterstedness for example. Altruism might emerge as elightened self-interest in some schemes. It seems good to me that the philosphers are taking an interest because much of what I've read based on the biological approach is very unsophisticated in its appreciation of how morality is reshaped by ethics and thus seems to run into basic definitional problems.
Re:Universal morals (Score:3, Interesting)
I think though some people deny that there does exist some sort of biological language mechanism. They believe that language is part of "mind" and not "brain". So they will also have to deny any common biological structure specialized for language. So the reason there is a common structure is because of a common environment that interacts with the "mind". But this is one of those problems you create yourself when you arbitrarily separate "mind" and "brain".