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

The problem is that the word "morality" is loaded

[catbutt]

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.

Re:The Beginning of Morality.

[inviolet]

I think you refer to the concept of "empathy", and I'm not sure how being able to recognize yourself in the mirror plays into it.

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

[Stalyn]

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.

Re:All well and good

[spun]

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?

Re:All well and good

[dgatwood]

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. :-)