Slashdot Mirror
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."
they have done many studies recently that links anger to genetics among other human behaviors. So yes i think it would be biological. Look what the drug companies are doing with these depression fixing drugs. Is it not actually fixing your morality? Yes it is.
They say that a defining characteristic of self awareness is being able to recognize that the figure in the mirror is you - it requires the concept of self. I wonder how much more awareness is required to recognize that doing things to other people that would make you feel bad is itself bad.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
with all kinds of religious ideas and such.
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.
Humans are social animals. All social animals, whether wolves, lions, chimps or humans have rules of conduct. Human codes of conduct tend to be much more complex, but that's because humans live in far more complex social structures than virtually any other social animals. What seems, in my view, to be ingrained into our neural wiring isn't a specific moral code, but the need to fit within a hieararchy, and this requires rules.
The world's burning. Moped Jesus spotted on I50. Details at 11.
From physics: It is easier to destroy a thing than to create or maintain a thing (in the face of entropy, the one-way stream).
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.
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.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
This is basically Chomsky (Universal Grammar) but applied to morality. So human morality has some universal set of rules which are isomorphic to some biological mechanism/structure in the brain. The reason that there is a common "universal morality" is not because these moral statements are True but rather we all share a common mechanism for creating these statements. A mechanism that was shaped by evolution.
The best education consists in immunizing people against systematic attempts at education. - Paul Feyerabend
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.
No "we" didn't...and I would not want to live in your country. The United States was founded on laws that encourage and sometimes mandate morality. Those would be based on biblical principals. It is too bad this country is heading so far away from those that the founding fathers would have a hard time recognizing this country. Both sides of the isle suck at it. Both sides having serious moral problems. Yet neither side is looking at why that is, they are too busy pointing fingers.
Look what the drug companies are doing with these depression fixing drugs. Is it not actually fixing your morality? Yes it is.
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.
"It is a greater offense to steal men's labor, than their clothes"
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, I think it even made it to the front page of Slashdot back in January.
Read some travel guides, and they will consistently point out that predominantly Buddhist countries are consistently the safest countries to travel through, especially for women traveling alone. So unless they have inherently better genes than their neighboring non-Buddhist countries (where genes have undoubtedly mingled), the statistics would seem to point to upbringing, laws, and community having a more significant impact than genes.
I don't think you understand how evolution selects for altruism. You see, your genes don't need you to breed in order for them to be passed down to the next generation. All you have to do is ensure that enough of your fellow humans, especially those with genes similar to yours. pass on their genes, and you have passed on yours through them. Genes are selfish bastards.
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?
- None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license. -- John Milton
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.
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.
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
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.
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.
Freedom is not the license to do what we like, it is the power to do what we ought.
I'm sure most of our sexual taboos come from the fact human children, unlike any other species, need to be taken care of for at least 5 years since birth. Marriage, family values, monogamy, etc. may arise from this.
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.
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. :-)
Check out my sci-fi/humor trilogy at PatriotsBooks.
People have also researched what I call reverse altruism, although unfortunately I can't find any good web cites. The experiment runs like this: you go somewhere and find two strangers, and sit them down, and say "I have (one year's wages) to give to you. Person A: you choose what percentage of it you want. Person B: you decide if you want to accept person A's division, in which case you both get your part of the money, or if you don't want to accept it, in which case neither of you gets any money."
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.
Nostalgia's not what it used to be.
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.