...Nobody's disputing that morals come from evolution. In the sense that everything comes from evolution. What's the term evolution? I could correctly state that a pencil eraser comes from evolution!...Right. Morals can be modified within an existing generation. Moral behavior can be modified at any given moment. Do we come ready equipped by biological evolution with capacities, limitations and propensities that effect our development of morals, and our moral behaviors? Of course. But morals are not only a product of our ancestors survival to reproduction. Not by a long shot.
Yes, Tim. Culture, politics, geography, all play a role here. But so does evolution (or rather natural selection, as many people here don’t seem able to tell the difference between evolution and natural selection), but once you take that into consideration, you better get the facts right. What does, for example, “cooperation improves survival” mean? And this thread is full of such nonsense.
George, Occam agreed “completely” with your post #70. I, however, consider this one statement from that post, to fall short: “…our morality evolved the way it did because it resulted in being advantageous, through survival and reproduction.” That is not the whole story. As you say in your last post. “Culture, politics, geography, all play a role here.”
I would pointedly add that our complex verbal behavior and the development of technologies that advance our communication and which promote the dissemination of ideas, also play a key role effecting our “morality”.
No, VYAZMA, evolution has everything to do with this. The problem is that you either don't really understand what or you deliberately try to ignore it in order to allow you to talk philosophy. It's just like talking theology and arguing if God meant X or Y while trying to ignore the fact that God doesn't exist.Where did I say evolution has nothing to do with this? Again you are making up things that people said in this thread. here's me saying this a few posts ago.... Nobody's disputing that morals come from evolution. What else you got George? You still didn't answer my question about who said people are following random laws of "dog eat dog".
Look at Lois's last post. It has everything to do with evolution although it's a complete nonsense at the same time. Were I to step in and explain to her why she doesn't know what she is taking about, I would be changing the subject, right?Who's arguing against that? Human behavior is a product of evolution that picked out cooperation and social skills to further the process of evolution(reproduction). I'm on here to debate some of the points Mark Sloan made. I don't know where you are coming from.
There is no morality other than what humans make up. If "dog eat dog" helps us survive, we will create a "dog eat dog" society, which is exactly what we've done. Somewhere along the line some humans found survival to be affected by cooperation, so they decided, "Oh, yeah! That's what morality must be. Let's go with that." Humans will do what they think they must do to survive. And they will talk endlessly about how their "morality" helped them survive, without a scrap of evidence.I disagree. There is lots of evidence about what morality 'is'. That evidence is the data base against which science of morality's hypotheses are tested. That data base includes all past and present enforced moral codes, our moral emotions such as empathy, loyalty, shame, guilt, and indignation, and data collected around the world on how people make moral judgments - for example, Google Jonathon Haidt moral foundations. But you are on the right track with cooperation. Cooperation produces synergistic benefits not possible with individual effort. But cooperation exposes actors to exploitation. Exploitation of other actor's cooperation attempts is always the winning short term strategy and sometimes the winning long term strategy. But exploitation destroys future benefits of cooperation. This is the cross cultural and even cross species universal cooperation/exploitation dilemma that our 'moral' biology and enforced moral codes attempt, with varying degrees of success, to solve. I see I previously described the evidence in my comment #47 to George which also might be of interest.
Cooperation itself improves survival, not that it is a moral stance."Cooperation itself improves survival" describes what 'is' and is therefore legitimately within the domain of science. When you say "not that it is a moral stance" I understand you to be making a claim about what morality 'ought' to be which is a philosophical, not a scientific question. What science says morality 'is' may be, as a matter of logic, irrelevant to what morality 'ought' to be (which is what I expect was what you were pointing out). However, I don't see the science of morality as being completely irrelevant. I see the science of morality as being culturally useful in informing us about the best 'means' for achieving group ultimate goals. But what those group ultimate goals 'ought' to be is a subject for moral philosophy, not science.
Look at Lois's last post. It has everything to do with evolution although it's a complete nonsense at the same time. Were I to step in and explain to her why she doesn't know what she is taking about, I would be changing the subject, right?Speak for youself, George, and how YOU don't know what you are talking about. You know more about that than anyone. And that wouldn't be changing the subject. Lois
Cooperation itself improves survival, not that it is a moral stance."Cooperation itself improves survival" describes what 'is' and is therefore legitimately within the domain of science. When you say "not that it is a moral stance" I understand you to be making a claim about what morality 'ought' to be which is a philosophical, not a scientific question. What science says morality 'is' may be, as a matter of logic, irrelevant to what morality 'ought' to be (which is what I expect was what you were pointing out). However, I don't see the science of morality as being completely irrelevant. I see the science of morality as being culturally useful in informing us about the best 'means' for achieving group ultimate goals. But what those group ultimate goals 'ought' to be is a subject for moral philosophy, not science. That was my point. I never said it should be a subject for science. It isn't science, IMO. Lois
Sorry Mark, I get a bit lost in where you position your 'costly cooperation strategies' principle. Is it meant as a scientific principle to understand moral behaviour only, or also as modern-day replacement of Kant's categorical imperative (or utilitarian 'the highest good for the most people'), i.e. as a guiding principle that leads us to unambiguous moral rules?It is a scientific principle. It is a philosophical question if it is or is not culturally useful for defining what norms a society is going to enforce (its moral code). However, I argue that using the principle as the template for moral norms will, in fact, define the norms that will be most likely to achieve common goals of enforcing moral codes such as increased well-being. I see the principle as more effective than Kant's in achieving increased well-being. But I doubt Kantians would agree that this justifies claiming the principle is 'better' than Kant's.
I am also not sure that it works in the 'one man for five people' example. Wouldn't it be very cooperative if we were all willing to sacrifice our selves for the greater good on the long term? Would that also not be evolutionary advantageous?Note that the principle tells us that our moral intuitions are about cooperation, not body count. The principle explains (it does not justify) common intuitions about this and other "Trolley problems" as consistent with avoiding reducing the benefits of cooperation and not being consistent with a simple utilitarian body count. What the goal of morality 'ought' to be is not part of science, but of moral philosophy.
You regular mention that science is silent about 'ultimate ends'. I agree. I would go even further: there are no such ultimate ends. No ethical discourse has the promise to converge to some absolute justification, because the outside criterion just does not exist. This in contrast with science, where the outside reality exists that, via observation and experiment, in the end decides if our theories are correct or not.I agree. However, it is simple fact that groups of people do form societies and have goals for those societies such as increased well-being, and, in order to achieve those goals enforce norms of behavior (enforce moral codes). With such a goal defined, science is fully capable of informing us about the best moral norms for achieving that society's goal.
So we only have our cultural values as a measure of our moral rules. These are not fixed, so the moral rules will not be either. But that does not mean taking these values blindly as our starting points. Rationally grounding a moral rule means that if somebody makes a moral claim about a behaviour, he must be prepared to defend his position. In that he can refer to values we share, nothing more. He can refer to values we have in common, there are no ultimate ends we can refer to. In the worst case, when we do not share values, we must bring the discussion to the higher level of discussing these values themselves, and try to find common ground. I don't know if your principle of 'costly cooperation strategies' leads to unambiguous results.No,we also have what science can tell us about the function of moral rules, why we have the values we do, and why our values can superficially appear to be so diverse, contradictory, and bizarre.
The idea of moral justification makes no sense if we do not presuppose such a moral discourse in the background.Right. Justification of what morality 'ought' to be (including its ultimate goals) is not part of the domain of science, but of moral philosophy.
Therefore the function of morality cannot be changed by “free discourse" or “open, fair and rational discourse".
This sentence somehow lets me shiver: function of morality? Morality standing outside an open, fair and rational discourse? Maybe I do not understand you.My claim is about what the function of morality descriptively 'is' as a matter of science. Of course, all truth in science is provisional, so in that sense the science can be changed by “free discourse" or “open, fair and rational discourse". Also, it is logically possible for “open, fair and rational discourse" to conclude that the function of morality 'ought' to be something else. However, that would mean that the function of morality 'ought' to be something different from the function of all past and present moral codes, which seems to me to be impossible. That impossibility of morality having a different function (assuming the science of the matter holds up) is the idea I was trying to express.
Cooperation itself improves survival, not that it is a moral stance."Cooperation itself improves survival" describes what 'is' and is therefore legitimately within the domain of science. When you say "not that it is a moral stance" I understand you to be making a claim about what morality 'ought' to be which is a philosophical, not a scientific question. What science says morality 'is' may be, as a matter of logic, irrelevant to what morality 'ought' to be (which is what I expect was what you were pointing out). However, I don't see the science of morality as being completely irrelevant. I see the science of morality as being culturally useful in informing us about the best 'means' for achieving group ultimate goals. But what those group ultimate goals 'ought' to be is a subject for moral philosophy, not science. That was my point. I never said it should be a subject for science. It isn't science, IMO. Lois So you agree at least with my above comment? If so, that is progress.
It is worth noting that scarcity of resources, as a fundamental facet of objective reality drives competition and therefore adaptive traits. In this light it is worth touching on in-group, out-group behaviors. While it is adaptive to co-operate within ones in-group, it has historically been adaptive to exploit out-groups. Unless, there is a superordinate goal that incentivizes out-group co-operation it has not often occured. Given that morality seems to be derived from survival necessities it appears that science does have the capacity to explain human codifications of morality so long as morality is defined as that which makes the group more adaptive and improves survival outcomes.
It is worth noting that scarcity of resources, as a fundamental facet of objective reality drives competition and therefore adaptive traits. In this light it is worth touching on in-group, out-group behaviors. While it is adaptive to co-operate within ones in-group, it has historically been adaptive to exploit out-groups. Unless, there is a superordinate goal that incentivizes out-group co-operation it has not often occured. Given that morality seems to be derived from survival necessities it appears that science does have the capacity to explain human codifications of morality so long as morality is defined as that which makes the group more adaptive and improves survival outcomes.Not when survival literally means adapting behavioral codes since the time we crawled out of the ocean. Humans didn't develop social skills on the third Tuesday of April in 35,000 BCE. So codify all of that. That's what survival is on a genetic level. So first define what the definition of survival is. It doesn't just mean sharing your maize crop with your neighbor in exchange for some furs.
It is worth noting that scarcity of resources, as a fundamental facet of objective reality drives competition and therefore adaptive traits. In this light it is worth touching on in-group, out-group behaviors. While it is adaptive to co-operate within ones in-group, it has historically been adaptive to exploit out-groups. Unless, there is a superordinate goal that incentivizes out-group co-operation it has not often occured. Given that morality seems to be derived from survival necessities it appears that science does have the capacity to explain human codifications of morality so long as morality is defined as that which makes the group more adaptive and improves survival outcomes.Yes, understanding the in-group vs out-group role in the origins of our moral biology and Haidt's six "moral foundations" is critical to understanding the evolution of morality (as described in the article). However, there have been past superordinate goals that have encouraged expansion of the "circle of moral concern" (as Peter Singer refers to it) from families, to friends, tribes, nations, aggregations of nations and so forth. One such goal is to increase the many benefits of cooperation. Increasing the number of cooperators (increasing the size of the in-group) generally increases opportunities for and efficiency in generating those benefits. Pinker focuses on the historical benefits of expanding in-groups for waging and winning wars (and a resulting reduction in violence due to that expansion of in-groups despite the wars getting bigger). But with the emergence of modern warfare, the major powers have a new superordinate goal, not having wars that would be suicidal for all. One way to avoid such wars is for the great powers to include each other in their circles of moral concern. (Of course, moral philosophers since the enlightenment have been justifying increasing the circle of moral concern to include everyone with no reference to war at all.) You might also keep in mind that the emergence of culture (and its moral norms) forever unhitched moral behavior from being only about survival. After the emergence of culture, moral norms could be selected based on whatever benefits of cooperation people found attractive, such as the psychological rewards of living in the reliably cooperative company of friends and family.
A thought, relevant here, occurred to me from participation in another thread topic.
Richard Dawkins expresses an idea of a “shifting moral zeitgeist”. I think that it would be interesting to know what the particular contingencies are that lead to such shifts in morality.
Well, the evolutionary definition survival fitness is that which allows an organism to reproduce. So, survival as a group dynamic is relationships that are beneficial the organisms involved. So, it is just maize for furs, even in a global economy, sharing risk and reward are the fundamentals and that hasn’t changed… ever, as far as history is concerned.
It think one stark truth is that we as a species are not in control of how big the in-group is. It seems that scarcity and the magnitude and immediacy of the super ordinate goal controls how many we will allow in our circle. Another issue is the reduction of the moral circle, after or during superordinate goals are achieved humanity inevitably reverts to infighting as scarcity and survival always demands. In addition, it is unlikely that culture has or ever will be “unhitched” from survival. Scarcity and the corresponding survival behaviors are the underpinnings of human behavior and as long as that paradigm exists it will rule our behavior.
I think scarcity, as always, will drive groups to desperate and harsh behavior but I think technology is the fulcrum on which “nice” behavior teeters. Slavery didn’t become reprehensible until machinery was widely available. Women’s rights didn’t really gain momentum until birth-control allowed women a measure of control. A shifting Zeitgeist seems to hinge upon the breathing-room a given group perceives themselves to have regarding their survival.
Well, the evolutionary definition survival fitness is that which allows an organism to reproduce. So, survival as a group dynamic is relationships that are beneficial the organisms involved. So, it is just maize for furs, even in a global economy, sharing risk and reward are the fundamentals and that hasn't changed... ever, as far as history is concerned. It think one stark truth is that we as a species are not in control of how big the in-group is. It seems that scarcity and the magnitude and immediacy of the super ordinate goal controls how many we will allow in our circle. Another issue is the reduction of the moral circle, after or during superordinate goals are achieved humanity inevitably reverts to infighting as scarcity and survival always demands. In addition, it is unlikely that culture has or ever will be "unhitched" from survival. Scarcity and the corresponding survival behaviors are the underpinnings of human behavior and as long as that paradigm exists it will rule our behavior. I think scarcity, as always, will drive groups to desperate and harsh behavior but I think technology is the fulcrum on which "nice" behavior teeters. Slavery didn't become reprehensible until machinery was widely available. Women's rights didn't really gain momentum until birth-control allowed women a measure of control. A shifting Zeitgeist seems to hinge upon the breathing-room a given group perceives themselves to have regarding their survival.What about before technology? Take a group of social mammals millions of years ago. They have social behavior that has evolved thus far. They cooperate. Obviously they survived until present.(for them) What was the fulcrum that "nice" behavior teetered on then? I have said it already, I'll say it again. "Mother Nature" want's us exerting "just enough" good, cooperative behavior as is necessary. And not a bit more. That's how we operate. As a species. The fulcrum between good and bad behavior(quotes) may well be supply as you stated. Not technology. Folks putting "technology" in their theories about human behavior need to put things in scale as far as timelines are concerned. So an in-group, or given culture, collectively "exerts" enough morality to make the system(cooperative, social, unity, family, Nation, neighbors) function. And not a bit more. Gotta go to work. See ya later.
Well, the evolutionary definition survival fitness is that which allows an organism to reproduce. So, survival as a group dynamic is relationships that are beneficial the organisms involved. So, it is just maize for furs, even in a global economy, sharing risk and reward are the fundamentals and that hasn't changed... ever, as far as history is concerned. It think one stark truth is that we as a species are not in control of how big the in-group is. It seems that scarcity and the magnitude and immediacy of the super ordinate goal controls how many we will allow in our circle. Another issue is the reduction of the moral circle, after or during superordinate goals are achieved humanity inevitably reverts to infighting as scarcity and survival always demands. In addition, it is unlikely that culture has or ever will be "unhitched" from survival. Scarcity and the corresponding survival behaviors are the underpinnings of human behavior and as long as that paradigm exists it will rule our behavior.The subject is morality and moral codes, not everything that rules human behavior. Moral codes were unhitched from being ONLY about reproductive fitness with the emergence of culture because cooperation strategies could be encoded into cultural norms rather than just in our biology. For example, fidelity in marriage can reduce reproductive fitness, particularly for men. Moral norms are commonly abandoned, and in particular the size of in-groups shrink, when survival of an individual or sub-group is at stake. So what? That does not mean doing so is moral.
I think scarcity, as always, will drive groups to desperate and harsh behavior but I think technology is the fulcrum on which "nice" behavior teeters. Slavery didn't become reprehensible until machinery was widely available. Women's rights didn't really gain momentum until birth-control allowed women a measure of control. A shifting Zeitgeist seems to hinge upon the breathing-room a given group perceives themselves to have regarding their survival.A shifting moral Zeitgeist can also be the product of finally understanding what morality ‘is’, thereby allowing more productive discussions about what moral norms 'ought' to be.
Agreed Vyazma, supply is the better arbiter of cooperation and technology is a bit short sighted given the scope of a posit regarding morality as adaptation.
Mark- Fidelity is rare among humans (or any other species) as evidenced by our divorce rates but there is an adversarial dynamic that benefits the offspring between females trying to get and keep the fittest males and males trying to mate with everything that moves. The species benefits evolutionarily from many varied offspring and the continued presence of both parents.
The shrinking of sub-groups and infidelity may indeed be moral, if morality is an adaptive trait and these behaviors improve outcomes. Linking morality & adaptivity would be the search for an objective morality, even if different decisions can both improve outcomes just having the framework for morality could still be adaptive, it wouldn’t require any specific morality as the the adaptive decision, morally, would be just as situational with an objective morality as with a subjective morality.
A shifting moral zeitgeist could be a product of enlightenment, but it strikes me as wishful thinking. Its the hope that we are progressing in a linear fashion, star trek-style. I think, rather, it is wishful thinking to believe that we as a species are less cruel or selfish and more moral. It seems more likely that if kindness is the measure of moral progress as Dawkins illustrated the shift, then the lack of those widespread behaviors can more likely be attributed to our improved adaptation providing a greater supply of what we need and making slavery and slaughter less necessary as instruments of adaptation.
There is a difference, between morals and moral behavior. (Are morals themselves also behavior? I think so. I think that they are a specific kind of verbal behavior, that can function as antecedents for moral behavior. But this is a distinct form of behavior from our actions that are either moral or not.)
Whether we behave morally or not is a factor not only of the morals we hold, but, as Vyazma and K suggest, other contingencies as well, such as availability of resources. Do we believe “cannibalism is wrong”? This is a commonly held moral among most humans. But given we are trapped with the Donner Party, we might not behave according to this moral. If we ultimately survived, and returned to civilization, we would probably still retain the moral, and probably feel guilty about having broken it. But the moral would likely still be in place. For the moral to change, on a societal level, there would have to be prolonged or repeated bouts of scarcity. In which case the moral might shift to “cannibalism is wrong except for these (fill in the blank) circumstances”.
Thus, it seems to me that, prolonged or repeated bouts of scarcity are one set of contingencies that could impact a shift in morals. But I don’t think that is the whole story.
The morals that a given subgroup hold are passed on in some way. Pre-dating the technology of writing, this was likely done thru recitation of some sort. Writing allowed the passing on of morals at a distance. Other advancements in communicative technologies have enhanced this. I daresay that the proliferation of the World Wide Web has contributed to a significant degree, in our shifting moral zeitgeist.