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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.
for explaining why the brain seeks out morality, but says nothing of why any given action is moral or not.
Morality got started when we finally figured out that it isn't nice to throw poop at one another.
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.
I don't see how you can argue there isn't a biological component to the sometimes vague concept that is morality. Extremes tend to highlight fundamental truths which are muddled in the averages.
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.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
This is an interesting discussion and I've heard this argued many times as theory, especially by those pushing a religious interpretation of "absolute morality".
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
There are 10 kinds of people in the world. Those who understand binary and those who don't.
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
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.
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"
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.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
So the seriously depressed are evil, bad people?
Only those in tech support.
If my grammar and spelling are off, I am [distracted/tired/careless] (take your pick)
Is mathematics biological or metaphysical?
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.
Hardly! Derived morality from survival isn't Nietzschian, it's societal. Frankly, me and my family and friends working together will crush you regardless how strong you are. Help each other and spread our genes faster than any greedy fool with boots on the throat of others. The rules aren't hard to hash out.
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.
It is no longer uncommon to be uncommon.
The odd thing about Buddhists is that the center of their practice isn't about following a moral code - oh, they've got various enumerated lists but their claim isn't "follow these directives or go to hell." Instead they're after what in Zen's called "natural mind." The claim is clearing the mind and senses to really perceive the world and other beings directly leads in itself to great compassion, from which acts flow which are superior to anything that can be attained by following any code - even the various codifications of behavior the Buddhists themselves have written down.
Now, the odd thing about this in the context of the present discussion is that this would be consonant with our having something of an inborn sensibility which is superior in itself to anything that our cultures can come up with. Indeed the original Taoists also claimed precisely that, with the further claim that it's our cultures that obscure this natural order "between heaven and earth." So the Buddhists and Taoists are coming from precisely the other direction than the Christians who claim that we need to impose religious belief in order to have morality. Their contrary claim is that we need to get beyond our cultures - including their religious formulations - to be at our truly best behavior.
That's also why Buddhists are most gracious to visitors from other cultures - they don't read visitors in terms of how our behavior conforms to their own local cultural code, but rather try to see us more directly.
There is a parallel formulation in the philosophy of one of the founders of the "Scottish Enlightenment," Frances Hutchinson, who held that "the original of our ideas of beauty and virtue" was something natural in us, which he called our "moral sense" - and explicitly described as being the conjunction of our other senses, when not clouded by culture - which is to say very much what the Buddhists claim. Hutchinson was the favorite philosopher of Thomas Jefferson. In that way, America was founded on an appreciation of human nature very close to the Buddhist and Taoist (which enjoyed a re-emergence in New England Transcendentalism, which in turn informed the ethics of our current environmentalism - flowing nicely together with Zen concepts of nature in the work of, for instance, Gary Snyder).
"with their freedom lost all virtue lose" - Milton