Roots of Human Morality

Off Topic Politics & World Issues
21

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Morality is itself an evolving idea.

In so far as man is capable of reason he is capable of learning that his actions have consequence. Humans did not evolve into morality so much as reason it.

Morality is a statement of fact about how individuals should behave within an ethical framework.

What if Dr. de Waal has it backward?

What if rather than evolution producing morality it was the intellectual development of morality that improved man’s ability to evolve?[/quote]

The ability of feel empathy for another, as shown to exist in other animals, must’ve come first in the evolutionary process otherwise you’d argue that our current moral structure came first, and the physical abilities later.

That doesn’t make sense.

22

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Also, I don’t think we can really begin to understand “where morality comes from” until we know what it precisely is.[/quote]

Why do you think we don’t know what morality is?

23

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Oleena wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:
Interesting, but severely limited. As professor notes, it doesn’t adequately reconcile our “is/ought” problems, and unfortunately, the scientist confused morality with social cost-benefit. For example, if the chimpanzees suddenly reverse course on one of the behaviors that is currently noted as “moral”…well, which of these very different behaviors is right, and which of the behaviors is wrong? If you ask the scientist, he’ll have to say neither, because the biology has driven the so-called “morality” in a different direction based on biological events, so they are both “moral”, and the “morality” has adapted.

Well, that tells us nothing about the “morality” of the behavior, which is only concerned with whether an action is right or wrong.

This is old news. We see animals engage in all kinds of human behavior. The ability to discern “morality” from animal behavior is limited, at best.[/quote]

It’s not that animals can feel that’s interesting about this article, it’s that they have an inherent idea of right and wrong within their own groups:

Though human morality may end in notions of rights and justice and fine ethical distinctions, it begins, Dr. de Waal says, in concern for others and the understanding of social rules as to how they should be treated. At this lower level, primatologists have shown, there is what they consider to be a sizable overlap between the behavior of people and other social primates.[/quote]

To be clear:

“Many philosophers find it hard to think of animals as moral beings, and indeed Dr. de Waal does not contend that even chimpanzees possess morality.”
[/quote]

There are three responses to this. First, Dr. de Waal would be doing his career in at this point in the game to make a claim such as “chimpanzees possess morality”. Look what happened 20 years ago when he suggested that they have emotion?

Secondly, we’re discussing the roots of morality, not full-sprung morality. These roots can provide answers about the way we justify things.

Third, how much does how we act have to do with our ideal morals as opposed to our morals being a justification of action under social pressures, which we might have taken anyway, regardless of reason?

24

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
I’ve argued in favor of evolved morality ad nauseum on PWI only to be met with derision and ridicule from our resident conservatives.
[/quote]
It’s your failure to understand that morality is a metaphysical component. It’s not made of anything, you cannot taste, feel it, see it, hear it, or smell it. A biological component for understand it is nothing new. I can’t fathom how somebody could argue otherwise. Finding the actual component may be scientifically interesting but we already knew it exists, it had to.

Oh, what dogma is that? A monkey has empathy, therefore God does not exist, is that your new argument?
[/quote]

Questions that were previously answered with beliefs and conjecture are now being answered with research and evidence.

That is all.

25

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

It can, but it’s an answer you’re unwilling to accept. There’s no point in argueing about it, to be honest. [/quote]

Okay, I am game what is the scientific definition of “good”?[/quote]

Oleena argued in her other thread that “healthy and unhealthy behaviour” is “good and bad” behaviour.

I think that’s sufficient but Sloth dismissed it outright, and you will too, probably.

26

[quote]Oleena wrote:

Third, how much does how we act have to do with our ideal morals as opposed to our morals being a justification of action under social pressures, which we might have taken anyway, regardless of reason?[/quote]

According to him, there is no ‘reason’ behind ‘morality.’ Only emotion. Reason is used to justify the decision later as being ‘moral’ or ‘immoral.’

[i]The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass, probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal’s view. For example, he says: “People object to moral solutions that involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian deliberations have not.”[/i]

27

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:
Morality is itself an evolving idea.

In so far as man is capable of reason he is capable of learning that his actions have consequence. Humans did not evolve into morality so much as reason it.

Morality is a statement of fact about how individuals should behave within an ethical framework.

What if Dr. de Waal has it backward?

What if rather than evolution producing morality it was the intellectual development of morality that improved man’s ability to evolve?[/quote]

The ability of feel empathy for another, as shown to exist in other animals, must’ve come first in the evolutionary process otherwise you’d argue that our current moral structure came first, and the physical abilities later.

That doesn’t make sense.
[/quote]

So that doesn’t change anything. Could have evolving emotions made the ability to reason morality easier?

Do I really need empathy to know that killing someone is wrong? What if I am just logical and understand that other people might try to retaliate?

28

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
I’ve argued in favor of evolved morality ad nauseum on PWI only to be met with derision and ridicule from our resident conservatives.
[/quote]
It’s your failure to understand that morality is a metaphysical component. It’s not made of anything, you cannot taste, feel it, see it, hear it, or smell it. A biological component for understand it is nothing new. I can’t fathom how somebody could argue otherwise. Finding the actual component may be scientifically interesting but we already knew it exists, it had to.

Oh, what dogma is that? A monkey has empathy, therefore God does not exist, is that your new argument?
[/quote]

Questions that were previously answered with beliefs and conjecture are now being answered with research and evidence.

That is all.[/quote]

They were never answered by beliefs and conjecture, they were answered by reason. All the potential moral philosophies available were gleaned out of deduction and reduction. You’re confusing that with religious philosophy, which is a different ball of wax.

29

[quote]LIFTICVSMAXIMVS wrote:

So that doesn’t change anything. Could have evolving emotions made the ability to reason morality easier?

Do I really need empathy to know that killing someone is wrong? What if I am just logical and understand that other people might try to retaliate?[/quote]

Yes ofcourse you need empathy to know that killing is wrong. What’s knowing without understanding?

Sociopaths lack empathy, they don’t feel guilty about using and abusing others and don’t understand the impact their actions have on others.

Without empathy the chance of retaliation loses its meaning.

30

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:
I’ve argued in favor of evolved morality ad nauseum on PWI only to be met with derision and ridicule from our resident conservatives.

It’s becoming increasingly difficult for religous dogma to maintain any resemblance of validity in light of scientific progress.

From the article:

Natural selection favors organisms that survive and reproduce, by whatever means. And it has provided people, he writes in “Primates and Philosophers,” with “a compass for life’s choices that takes the interests of the entire community into account, which is the essence of human morality.”

From a rational standpoint, how can this not be evident?

[/quote]

The author is wrong. Empathy, sympathy, or any other range of surface emotions are symptoms of morality, not morality itself.
Morality is rooted around two components, the problem of evil and freewill. Having a biological component built in with in us is a fore gone conclusion. I am surprised it has take several hundred years for science to catch up. This statement in the article above says it all “…brain has a genetically shaped mechanism for acquiring moral rules, a universal moral grammar similar to the neural machinery for learning language.”

The word acquiring necessarily posits that morality exists outside the component to understand it. Just because you have a glove, doesn’t mean you know baseball.

Philosophers have long understood, with in the scope of the mind-body problem, that for every high level metaphysical component that is understood, there is a biological component that allows us to interact with it.

Monkeys, cats, dogs, guinea pigs, buffalo, etc. have all demonstrated a capacity for empathy and sympathy, they do not demonstrate a freewill or the ability to choose otherwise. The ability to trump this pre-programing is what sets us apart.[/quote]

You have every right to disagree with the article, but de Waal is suggesting that human morality comes from these attributes we share with animals.

If you believe humans are something more than highly evolved animals you’d have trouble accepting this.
[/quote]

No, I disagree with what he is describing as morality in the first place. He simply did not do his homework, or did not research the advances in the field of ethical philosophy. He is describing morality as an emotional construct based off of empathy and sympathy. Emotions may be some guide in morality, but that’s not what morality is. Nobody really knows what “it” is exactly. We know for morality to exist, it has to deal with the problem of evil, and freewill. This is because your “yes” doesn’t mean anything if you could not say “no”. And THAT ^^ was not observed in anyway according to the article.

31

[quote]ephrem wrote:

Oleena argued in her other thread that “healthy and unhealthy behaviour” is “good and bad” behaviour.

I think that’s sufficient but Sloth dismissed it outright, and you will too, probably.
[/quote]

Of course I did, chewing tobacco doesn’t make one immoral.

32

[quote]pat wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

Questions that were previously answered with beliefs and conjecture are now being answered with research and evidence.

That is all.[/quote]

They were never answered by beliefs and conjecture, they were answered by reason. All the potential moral philosophies available were gleaned out of deduction and reduction. You’re confusing that with religious philosophy, which is a different ball of wax.[/quote]

I’m speaking about those on PWI who claim that absolute morality is divine and the only real authority on morality. That is what I mean with “beliefs and conjecture”.

33

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

Oleena argued in her other thread that “healthy and unhealthy behaviour” is “good and bad” behaviour.

I think that’s sufficient but Sloth dismissed it outright, and you will too, probably.
[/quote]

Of course I did, chewing tobacco doesn’t make one immoral.
[/quote]

Can a thing you do to yourself, by your own volition, be moral or immoral?

34

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

I’ve argued in favor of evolved morality ad nauseum on PWI only to be met with derision and ridicule from our resident conservatives.[/quote]

That’s because your arguments were awful and incorrect.[/quote]

No, it’s because you can’t argue stuff like that and expect a response that isn’t about God. You can’t fight people like that because it will always be a case of they are right and you are wrong because they have God on their side and you don’t. And when you ask them to take God out of the equation, they insist they cannot because there is no life or morality without God.

35

[quote]Grneyes wrote:

[quote]thunderbolt23 wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

I’ve argued in favor of evolved morality ad nauseum on PWI only to be met with derision and ridicule from our resident conservatives.[/quote]

That’s because your arguments were awful and incorrect.[/quote]

No, it’s because you can’t argue stuff like that and expect a response that isn’t about God. You can’t fight people like that because it will always be a case of they are right and you are wrong because they have God on their side and you don’t. And when you ask them to take God out of the equation, they insist they cannot because there is no life or morality without God. [/quote]

We can also reverse the argument to reveal the same response from people who argue from a scientific framework. They insist they have “science” on their side but most aren’t even trained scientists advancing the arguments.

I find it highly dubious that anyone will ever observe a biological manifestation of morality.

Instead I think morality is rationally intuited rather than coming from the divine or being biologically evolved.

36

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

Oleena argued in her other thread that “healthy and unhealthy behaviour” is “good and bad” behaviour.

I think that’s sufficient but Sloth dismissed it outright, and you will too, probably.
[/quote]

Of course I did, chewing tobacco doesn’t make one immoral.
[/quote]

Can a thing you do to yourself, by your own volition, be moral or immoral?[/quote]

Is it unhealthy?

37

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]ephrem wrote:

Oleena argued in her other thread that “healthy and unhealthy behaviour” is “good and bad” behaviour.

I think that’s sufficient but Sloth dismissed it outright, and you will too, probably.
[/quote]

Of course I did, chewing tobacco doesn’t make one immoral.
[/quote]

Can a thing you do to yourself, by your own volition, be moral or immoral?[/quote]

Is it unhealthy?
[/quote]

A better question:

Is it sustainable behavior?

edited

40

[quote]Sloth wrote:

[quote]Oleena wrote:

Third, how much does how we act have to do with our ideal morals as opposed to our morals being a justification of action under social pressures, which we might have taken anyway, regardless of reason?[/quote]

According to him, there is no ‘reason’ behind ‘morality.’ Only emotion. Reason is used to justify the decision later as being ‘moral’ or ‘immoral.’

[i]The reasoning came afterward as a post hoc justification. “Human behavior derives above all from fast, automated, emotional judgments, and only secondarily from slower conscious processes,” Dr. de Waal writes.

However much we may celebrate rationality, emotions are our compass, probably because they have been shaped by evolution, in Dr. de Waal’s view. For example, he says: “People object to moral solutions that involve hands-on harm to one another. This may be because hands-on violence has been subject to natural selection whereas utilitarian deliberations have not.”[/i]
[/quote]

I get that your point is that he isn’t saying for sure. However, you do realize that he’s not allowed to make a for sure statement about this if he wants to have a future career, correct?

Also, on a scale of 0-100%, how much do you think his suggestions about natural selection playing a role in group behaviors effects current human behavior?