Submitted by Ma3Ke4Li3 t3_y5iu41 in philosophy
I appreciate this take a lot! I actually have an episode with Patricia Churchland exploring this exact topic! I think she focuses to much on caring and altruism at the expense of the kinds of issues that you mentioned. But still very relevant.
https://on-humans.podcastpage.io/episode/1-origins-of-our-warm-blooded-morality-patricia-churchland
Also, do you know of the work of Oliver Scott Curry? his work is very relevant to your take. For him, morality is all about cooperation (non-zero-sum games). I would press against this extreme, too, and say that care and altruistic concern for others plays a role, too. But anyway, both are interesting scholars.
The best scholar who roots the evolution of morality to both care and sympathy (altruism), as well as mutualism and interdependence (cooperation), is Michael Tomasello. The Natural History of Human Morality is a masterpiece!
I haven't heard of any of these folks! I'm looking into them right now, thank you for the recommendations!!
My pleasure! For Churchland I would obviously recommend my own interview ;) Oliver Scott Curry has some good youtube videos, just em out.
I'd love to get Tomasello on the show but haven't asked yet. Currently, I think the easiest entry is to check out Ricardo Lopes' interviews of him. You can watch the video on Youtube or just listen to the audio in podcast style (links below). But really, if you have the patience to read Natural History of Human Morality then do! It's relatively short, but super dense. So it's good to start with an interview, anyway. But a masterpiece.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt9eS0pCsgo&ab_channel=TheDissenter
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> Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions.
Jonathan Haidt’s social psych research goes into this topic extensively. He spent the first half of his career doing giant surveys across cultures all over the world to identify the kinds of situations humans universally attach moral significance to, though the specifics of each will be modulated by local cultural norms. His list is more or less the same as yours, and he calls it “Moral Foundations Theory.” The most fascinating part to me is that while humans generally all respond somewhat to each of the foundations, the degree to which we attach significance to each one is highly correlated with how strongly we align broadly towards the liberal-left-progressive vs conservative-hierarchical-traditional political parties, religions, and lifestyles of the cultural environments we each inhabit.
I used to readily recommend his book on it “The Righteous Mind,” but it was written in the pre-Trump era, so it’s observations of how these foundations map onto political identities and how that could help us “all just get along” can come off as pretty naive and utopian now. The theory itself still appears to be largely valid, and has given me some very helpful insights in understanding the beliefs of certain kinds of people I don’t often see eye to eye with. So I’d say the book is still worth reading if you are capable of contextualizing some of the political commentary with its time.
He’s not an evolutionary biologist and generally steers clear of specifically diving into statements about that side of it, other than to point to the standard materialist interpretation of all behavior ie: something this universally observed must be at least in part a product of natural selection, with the relevant genetic correlates. It’s also important to note that this would not require any sort of “group level selection” theory to explain, individual- or gene-level explanations have no problem with it either.
Yup, you can be even more confident because Genetic predisposition to morality definitely predates homo sapiens.
Homo habilis, homo erectus, all the way back to ardipiths were social creatures, surely with many moral tendencies we have today.Many other animals have these morals as well. Even bees will sacrifice themselves to protect the colony(something most see as the most moral act there can be). Monkeys have a complex understanding of fairness and even sharing and empathy. The list could go on forever.
A lot of people misunderstand things like 'how did we develop the morals like our willingness to harm ourselves for others, if evolution only passes on traits beneficial to that organism'. If evolution is inherently selfish, how do we have unselfish morals. Dawkins' book The Selfish Gene can help many get over many misunderstanding of how morals developed and evolution works.
We shouldn't see evolution from just organism to organism, but we also need to think from a gene centered view. Once you understand that, its easy to see why these moral traits develop since they better the population and gene pool as a whole.
To anyone with a decent understanding of evolution it is glaringly obvious how our morals have developed, and also in many aspects why they have not.
This reminds me of https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_dominance_orientation
Preference for harm reduction? Harm is in practice defined in the eye of the beholder so it's not useful to talk about it as universal. On top of that once you add context and scrutinize it - it doesn't even hold water. Nobody will prefer living under a bell shielded as much as possible from any "harm" because then they would be the weakest. Suddenly there are obvious conditionals to this "preference for harm reduction." My point is the phrase is too vague and relative to be useful anchor of explanation unless contextualized with specific content and boundaries. Taleb's concept of antifragility comes to mind why this doesn't hold much weight without additional conditionals.
Why I seem pedantic or even petty about these distinctions? Because we could have seen in last decade term "harm" being used and abused for all sorts of ideologies to bully in changes into societies that otherwise people would never democratically agree upon under the pretense this is something universally good, almost like holy good - dogmatic and not to be questioned. And that's not good...
I'm arguing the perception of inflicting harm has moral weight. I'm borrowing the term from Jonathan Haidt and others. If the arbitor of the morality of the action perceives the action as causing harm, then the action is more likely to judged as immoral relative to an action that does not.
Here's an example - which man has acted more morally?
Man A walks down the sidewalk to his home and steps over a sleeping dog in his path.
Man B walks down the sidewalk to his home and kicks a sleeping dog in his path.
Most will not consider the actions of man B to be morally equivalent to those of man A because most consider man B to have caused harm.
This pattern can also demonstrated in the animal kingdom, many social animals will go out of their way to perform actions that do not harm third parties, all other things being equal. For example, lever A delivers a treat while lever B delivers a treat and a painful electric shock to the animal in the next cage.
This does not mean the perception of harm cannot be subjective or absolute harm reduction is the ultimate goal.
Edited for spelling and clarity
Abstract: What is the point of morality? Why should Homo sapiens care about moral rules? Philip Kitcher presents a theory that answers these questions. According to Kitcher, morality stems from something “very deep within us”, namely our psychological dispositions to altruism and other kinds of responsiveness to others. These are biological traits that we evolved as social mammals. However, these traits are fragile. They fail too often to form the basis of human social living. Morality is a social technology that was created to solve these “altruism failures”. Initially, moral rules were very rudimentary, such as the rule not to grab food from others. With time, these rules became more complex. Two virtues of the theory should be noted. First, the theory allows objective evaluation of morality without assuming a realm of moral truths. Second, the theory allows morality to make sense within a naturalist and Darwinian view of life, without succumbing to social Darwinism.
[Note: The referenced theory is discussed in the first 21 minutes of the episode. You can also access the episode via Spotify, Apple Pod, Stitcher, Amazon etc.]
> such as the rule not to grab food from others
Interesting takes on things like this and I'm all for it. One reason IMO that you don't take someone else's food (even if stealing it meant you are fed and continue to live on) is more self preservation. If I take his food he could harm me in retaliation, I don't know how morals play into that. But then again things aren't just black and white.
Yeah sure, and maybe it's also like a game theory situation: if you'd take others' food they'd probably start taking yours and it would maybe even become socially acceptable. Without the rule chaos would ensue as everyone would be taking someone else's food, so it's better to not do it.
I managed to read this as MORTALITY through the entire title.
Was skeptical
A very appropriate response lol :D
I wonder what a mortal truth is... =D
Lmao skull emoji
I love Kitcher’s Ethical Project! Easily one of the best accounts of evolutionary ethics out there along with Joyce’s The Evolution of Morality.
Yea it's a great book! My other favourite is Tomasello's Natural History of Human Morality, take a look ;)
If you cannot change anyone else's view of morality, why is yours important? We are all free to ponder the subject, but if morality is a million different things to a million different people, I can't see why it matters. Perhaps your view of morality really is superior. If that is the case how do you implement it? Does morality have a role to play in education?
Why do you think moral persuasion is impossible?
Not impossible but very difficult. Like the old saying goes no one has ever liberated themselves by appealing to the moral character of their oppressors
Isn’t that exactly how slavery ended in many places, with those in power banning it?
Uh no, most slavery ended because it was too costly to continue. Due to wars, slave revolts and widespread abolition movements
Who do you think led the abolition movements? You can try to split it up but ultimately many people in power who could have been oppressors rejected slavery and actively fought to end it. There were also numerous stories of slaveholders freeing their slaves although obviously this was an extreme minority.
Former slaves, current slaves and sympathetic communities like Quakers lead abolition movements. Slaves typically lead slave uprisings. Most rich people were content to sit idly by
My understanding of the history of the civil war is very different than “some quakers and slaves revolted”.
"It wasn't people convincing their oppressors to let them go on moral standing. It was abolitionist movements!". "And who lead abolitionist movements?". "Slaves and ex slaves, trying to convince oppressors to free people on moral standing".
Good lord this guys logic and reasoning is through the floor.
History is not spurred by power but by the demands of people. People in power do not move until they are moved
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
-Abe Lincoln
Free labor was too costly to continue?
Slave rebellions were too costly too let continue. And y’know… the war
Not owning slaves yourself and pushing for legislation making it where nobody can are two drastically different things... And you mean the war that came about largely as a dispute over half the country already wanting to get rid of slavery?
What you are saying just doesn't make any sense. That is an extremely obvious case of a moral shift.
How is it a moral shift? The war was only to maintain the union. I’ve used the quote three times already but here ya go
“If I could save the Union without freeing any slave, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing all the slaves, I would do it; and if I could save it by freeing some and leaving others alone, I would also do that.”
-Abe Lincoln
And further even if one half of the country wanted to end slavery, which is a generous estimate because most northern whites were ambivalent and freedom by no means meant equality, the entire other half of the country was fighting FOR slavery. By the time of the civil war England had already abolished slavery so America was LATE and STILL hesitant to give up the practice
What do you think was the catalyst for the union needing saving? A moral shift taking place in half the country but not the other half... And you think England doing the exact same thing even sooner is somehow evidence against there being a moral shift?...
I can't tell if you're just being purposefully dense to argue or not, but what you are saying is literally nonsensical.
I’m totally confused at what is your argument here, not even trying to be rude. My original point was that you cannot secure freedom by appealing to the moral sense of your oppressors. To which I used the example of American slavery. My evidence is slaves revolted, rebelled and committed suicide for centuries before there was ever and inkling of a changing “moral compass”. Slaves routinely escaped only to be branded with “drapetomania”. They cried screamed and pleaded for release for centuries to no avail
The ruling class only thought it was important to free them when the security of the union of the democracy was also on the line. Otherwise nothing would’ve happened. Slavery existed in America for 400 years before anyone in government thought “freeing slaves is too important to let it continue we should free them right now and not a moment later”
My point is that the abolitionist movement, which did a whole lot more to change the law than slave revolts did, was literally lead by and made up of slaves and ex slaves appealing to the moral sense of their oppressors...
And, again, the ruling class very obviously though that it was important to free them before the security of the union was on the line. Because them freeing them was literally the very reason that the security of the union was on the line... And I don't have the first clue what slavery existing for 400 years is supposed to have to do with anything, since the entire point is things changing...
It's genuinely kind of blowing my mind how backwards your logic is on all this.
I feel like you are saying exactly what I am saying and then telling me I’m saying it wrong. I’m a bit baffled as to how I’m somehow bastardizing history.
My original point was that the oppressed cannot alleviate the yoke of their bondage by appealing to the morals of their oppressors. Which is completely true, no slave or indigenous person ever “convinced” a slave owner of the wrong of slavery or indigenous land theft that I can guarantee. Slaves themselves had to fight for it themselves and when the truth of this fact threatened to upend the union, a war happened. Were there sympathetic northerners like abolitionists and sympathizers to the plight of black peoples? Absolutely. But freed and escaped slaves like Fredrick Douglas had to speak truth to power and ONLY when the security of the union was in danger did the president free the slaves. Period. At no point before that did any legislation pass to free slaves because…
The oppressed (slaves) cannot appeal to the moral virtues their oppressors (United States government in general and the confederacy in particular) to free themselves
They had to fight, plead and advocate for themselves
Even AFTER empancipation there was STILL sharecropping, vagrancy laws, sundown towns, lynchings, redlining, segregation, Jim Crow laws, anti-miscegenation etc etc.
Which spawned the civil rights movement to improve the living conditions of African Americans in the centuries after emancipation, and who lead the civil rights movement? African Americans
Emancipation was not a “gift”, slaves fought and died for it for themselves.
Freedom is not a gift of patience, but the reward of determination and sacrifice, it must be taken.
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Free labor’s cost is massive. Without a paid workforce you have very few consumers for your economy to serve so almost everyone stays poor along with slaves.
I'm not really sure that that would have been true in that time period. It's not like people were buying iPhones and gadgets, and it's not like laborers were buying gold jewelry, and carriages, and books, etc... They would have pretty much just been buying food and shelter, which were still necessary for slaves.
Living in a way that is anywhere near to that of slaves is a state of poverty. From clothes to cutlery to tools or drugs there were plenty of things to have in the 19th century. In the South with no one to buy the stuff, there was no need for people there to make or sell the stuff either. That is a big part of why that region was a lot poorer than the North.
“Free” other than feeding, housing, and imprisoning them, sure
As opposed to the paid workers for your fields that evidently don't need food or shelter?
You only have to pay for them to afford food and living quarters— and as many people complain on the internet you barely have to do that and can just get a replacement without an increase in expenditure.
And you somehow think thats cheaper?
The biggest slavery policy was communism. Look how it ended.
Huh? Slavery was communism?… care to show how you reached that wild conclusion?
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I find it really difficult to accept that hierarchy could ever ensure any kind of positive morality. It seems, on the contrary, that hierarchy is the mechanism most used by those who have selfishly gained power to achieve amoral, antisocial outcomes. Also, since when is the sacred "good"? There are some pretty massive assumptions here.
So pragmatism?
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IMO, Morality is 95% subjective, what counts as a positive moral construct to some or one person is different from others. There’s no factuality behind any of it. Genetics play a role, but we base most of our morals off of our environment and those around us, especially in heavily populated areas or rural areas. Moral “truths” aren’t “truth” to others, and cannot be proven as a legitimate fact. I do understand what you’re saying, and agree on a few levels but I don’t understand how fact and opinion became so distorted. It just seems like it’s becoming ridiculous with how so much of our “facts” are just based off of opinions and feelings. Facts are irrefutable.
He may be right but if human nature is to be totally self absorbed all the time then we would never have civil societies. Without civil standards life would be competitive and exclusionary to the point of failure, just like what happened to Spartans. By the time they realized it they were too late to course correct and were essentially defeated by the Thebians.
Wouldn’t saying “man hunts food to eat and survive” be about the same thing? We’ve learned how to live with each other without the need to result to violence to resolve problems thus resulting in a longer life span and more offspring, ensuring the continuous of our species. There is no argument here, we compromise to survive. “Morality” is the word we can use to encompass an entire philosophy of life we’ve agreed upon in order to further our life spans. “These are the rules, are you cool with that?” “Yeah, I’m cool with that.” “Cool”
Or
“No, I’m not cool with that and I’ll fight you over it”
Winner dictates new rules, aka, “morality”
This isn’t a breakthrough, merely stating the obvious.
Our fragile ego’s decide what rules we are okay with living by. Our view of what “living” is changes as our standard of living changes. Our entire idea of “moral truths” mean nothing without survival. Survival often means compromising by today’s standards, but a few hundred years ago philosophy meant shit against brute force. Still does. It’s only our collective philosophy as a human species today that says “hey wait, we should talk this over first” and allows for such things as Reddit downvotes instead of absolute death. The title of this article and Philips work could have been summed up as “2+2=4”. All life is a Darwinian view of life, end of story.
Philosophy is like a flour sifter. One sifts and sifts and sifts...no matter how one sifts, the congealed nonsense must be discarded.
Serious question here as an outsider who has failed to get into philosophy: why is this a fun or necessary topic to talk about? It seems to be a wordy circumlocution around what it means to do the right thing. And it all seems kind of petty and unimportant especially when compared to the very simple idea of do the right thing.
I can only speak for myself, but for me it's interesting because it suggests that to make the world a better place, it's not enough to be altruistic, because altruism is fragile and can be destroyed by three selfishness of others. We need to not only be altruistic, but also we need to fiercely defend altruism, because it is a thing that can be lost for most people.
I also think it's interesting that it suggests that altruists might just be people who are naturally predisposed to being more resilient in the face of behavior that makes a person question selflessness. It's interesting to think that some people might just naturally be better at letting shit roll off of them than others, and that difference might be partly biological rather than strictly a matter of mental discipline and stubbornness.
A reasonable question.
Short answer: many people think that morals are either relativistic (different cultures, different moralities) or absolutist (everyone should have the same morals). Both positions lead people to be very confused.
The relativistic position seems to say that there is nothing that people from outside a culture can say to disagree about a cultural practice. Slavery is right if the culture thinks its right. Imperialism is right if the culture thinks its right. And so on.
On the other hand, absolutism seems to be problematic, too. Where are these moral truths written? Who has the moral truth?
This confusion bothers many. If it does not bother you, that's fine. But it has bothered me. Some are so puzzled that they conclude that morality and ethics must be groundless fictions, and so, they end up nihilistic. Nothing matters, and all that.
Kitcher tris to offer a middle ground. His position tries to make sense of ethics in a way that does not presume some realm of absolute moral truths. It is not as mysterious as absolutism. It also assumes that what a good life looks life will differ based on the cultural situation you find yourself in. But nevertheless, morals are not just fashions of the culture. They are tools. And like any tool, they can be evaluated based on how well they do their job.
Not saying that you should find this interesting. But hopefully, this can illuminate why some of us do find it so.
Gf home, shes being pissy that i am not giving her attention ttyl.
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“Morality is just a fiction used by the herd of inferior human beings to hold back the few superior men.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche.
That's it, nothing more special to it.
Well that's one way of looking at it. But good luck having a happy life with that attitude... Even in terms of game theory, you can derive a lot of moral norms from long-term successful strategies. Ken Binmore, Martin Nowak, and Oliver Scott Curry have done a lot of research in this area.
Morality may get in the way of some short term gains, which Nietzsche might be referring to with the idea of "superior men", but long term, you are right in that there are so many more morally sound strategies than there are morally devoid ones.
Profit motivated companies are a prime example of rejecting morality in favor of better short term gains, which often results in long term problems.
Politicians rejecting morality for short term gains with a relatively short voting cycle is another example. So many examples of politicians doing unsavory things in the short term to earn votes that will have an overall negative effect later.
This is all motivated by the idea that we have to be "getting ahead" of everyone else instead of just "getting along".
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lol to bad 'superior' men are a fantasy Nietzsche invented to cope with reality.
that quote is moronic at best, dangerous at worst. in all of human history the only people who have ever claimed superiority over the rest have been the most inferior of us all.
Nietzsche was the father of a particular ideology too. That statement is directly tied to the philosophy that birthed that ideology and was a catalyst for events that show the absolute worst side of human nature. The capacity for evil is expanded when denying that good and evil exists and that is the framework that Nietzsche laid down in his writing.
Civilization is civilized. If you speak in simply dominance and submission and try to apply the laws of nature to an industrialized society, you really really make a mess with some faulty logic and in the end personify evil by being possessed by "the shadow".
EDIT: Downvote all you want goobers. I have the books and have read them. You probably haven't.
Bookswinters t1_isjxtba wrote
I think I generally agree. I would emphasize the genetic predisposition to morality likely predates homo sapiens as a species.
Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions. I would argue this is largely genetic and forms a basis of an "intrinsic" morality. Humans are born "primed" to accept hierarchy and sacredness as concepts, but it's up to the society to define the specifics. These moral concepts are fairly universal, and it's easy to imagine why such traits would be selected for in a social species.
As we have become more sophisticated we can describe an "aspirational" morality somewhat more seperated from genetics and intrinsic human nature. Usually these place lesser emphasis on sacredness and hierarchy and more emphasis on fairness and harm reduction. Most secular humanist morality models such as Sam Harris' moral landscape fit this "aspirational" morality category, but the ideal person described by various religious teachers could be placed here as well.
Edit: spelling