Morality — Biological or Philosophical?

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."

Comments

Re:Not so obvious

[drinkypoo]

You can't prove something as fact ("He's bad and no amount of positive or negative reinforcement can temper that") with negative proof ("That's true because he's always been bad and always will be."). All it takes is one good choice by your 'bad' person and this is proven to be false. No matter how many bad choices he makes, it is still just a theory which hasn't been disproven yet.

All you need to know to tell you that physical structures in the brain are important to behavior is contained in the story of Phineas Gage.

We all know that people change throughout their lifetime in response to their experiences. So we don't need to prove the nuture part. That's obvious. But cases like that of Gage prove that the physical structure is at least as important, and is probably far more significant, than the experience that shape you. You are vastly more (and in some other ways, less) than the sum of your experiences.

Re:Interesting discussion, be careful

[werfele]

The Moors in Spain categorized Christians as "infidels" and were therefore justified in burning them by the thousands.

I'm wondering what you're referring to here. The Moors where generally known for their tolerance. The Almohades, who took over rather late in the game, were admittedly known for forcible conversions. I suppose there's no such thing as a little forcible conversion, but I haven't heard of burning Christians by the thousands. I'd like to know more.

On the other hand, what you describe sounds an awful lot like the auto de fe , in which the Christians burned Moors, and of course Jews, once the tables had turned, in the numbers you mention. It strikes me that this may be an unfortunate inversion, given the way it's likely to feed into modern prejudice.

Re:All well and good

[wealthychef]

By coincidence, a NYT article seems relevant: Brain injuries affect morality: