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Moral thinking
by The Economist
Thanks to Ivan Bailey for the link.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10717915
Biology invades a field philosophers thought was safely theirs
WHENCE morality? That is a question which has troubled philosophers since their subject was invented. Two and a half millennia of debate have, however, failed to produce a satisfactory answer. So now it is time for someone else to have a go. And at a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, a group of biologists did just that.
Mark Hauser, of Harvard University, opened the batting by asking whether morality is more than just the refined application of the emotions. He thinks that it is. Human brains, he believes, have a separate morality module. Brain-scanning experiments show that when a volunteer is faced with a moral dilemma (such as a runaway railway trolley approaching a set of points, with dire consequences whichever way he throws those points) his emotional centres are not involved in the decision. Such "trolleyology", as it has waggishly been dubbed, also suggests that reason is not part of the process. Different ways of killing the same number of people with a runaway trolley produce systematically different answers.
That does not mean all moral decisions have to be the same in everyone (though in trolleyology they often are). Instead, Dr Hauser uses the analogy of language. All healthy humans have, in the words of his Harvard colleague Steven Pinker, a "language instinct" which incorporates the idea of nouns, verbs, adjectives and how these all fit together. Exactly which language you learn, though, depends on your upbringing.
David Sloan Wilson, of Binghamton University, in New York state, agrees with that point, but reckons the actual moral sense an individual acquires is not arbitrary, as a language is, but is functionally adapted to circumstances. He and his colleague Ingrid Storm looked at liberals and conservatives (in the American senses of the words). Each group has a package of values it sees as moral, while viewing many of the beliefs of the other side as immoral. Dr Wilson and Dr Storm restricted their study to white, Protestant teenagers, in order to eliminate confounding variables. However, their volunteers came from two different traditions—Pentecostal, which tends to the conservative, and Episcopalian, which tends to the liberal.
The researchers conducted the study by giving each volunteer a beeper that went off every two hours or so. When it beeped, the volunteer answered a questionnaire about what he was doing at that moment, and how he felt about it.
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm found several unexpected differences between the groups. Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives, but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves whom they spent time with. Such choice, or the lack of it, did not change conservative stress levels. Liberals were also loners, spending a quarter of their time on their own. Conservatives were alone for a sixth of the time. That may have been related to the fact that liberals were equally bored by their own company and that of others. Conservatives were far less bored when with other people. They also preferred the company of relatives to non-relatives. Liberals were indifferent. Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs. The opposite was true for conservatives.
Dr Wilson suspects that the liberal package of individualism and confrontation is the appropriate response to survival in a stable environment in which there is leisure for learning and reflection, and the consequences for a group's stability of such dissent are low. The conservative package of collectivism and conformity, by contrast, works in an unstable environment where joint action, and thus obedience to their group, are at a premium. It is an interesting suggestion, and it is one that plays into the question of how morality actually evolved.
That was addressed by Samuel Bowles, of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. An important feature of moral behaviour is altruism. Normally, biologists explain this as being either nepotism or you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours. But Dr Bowles believes people do perform acts which cost them more than they gain. To explain this, he invokes an idea that went out of fashion in the 1960s: group selection. This says that the winnowing of the gene pool, which drives evolution, can favour or destroy entire social groups as single entities, as well as working at the level of individual organisms.
No one ever claimed group selection is impossible, but it looks mathematically unlikely. Dr Bowles, however, thinks that the virtues of human collaboration are so great that groups composed of genuine, self-sacrificing altruists would outcompete others.
His best example of such self-sacrifice is warfare, an activity in which morality and immorality intersect in ways that have always been puzzling—and where liberals and conservatives often draw opposite conclusions about what is right and wrong. Paradoxically, that clash of views suggests that Dr Bowles and Dr Wilson really are on to something with the idea of functional morality. Perhaps they and their colleagues can eventually do what philosophers have never managed, and explain moral behaviour in an intellectually satisfying way.
http://www.economist.com/science/displaystory.cfm?story_id=10717915
Biology invades a field philosophers thought was safely theirs
WHENCE morality? That is a question which has troubled philosophers since their subject was invented. Two and a half millennia of debate have, however, failed to produce a satisfactory answer. So now it is time for someone else to have a go. And at a panel discussion at the American Association for the Advancement of Science meeting, a group of biologists did just that.
Mark Hauser, of Harvard University, opened the batting by asking whether morality is more than just the refined application of the emotions. He thinks that it is. Human brains, he believes, have a separate morality module. Brain-scanning experiments show that when a volunteer is faced with a moral dilemma (such as a runaway railway trolley approaching a set of points, with dire consequences whichever way he throws those points) his emotional centres are not involved in the decision. Such "trolleyology", as it has waggishly been dubbed, also suggests that reason is not part of the process. Different ways of killing the same number of people with a runaway trolley produce systematically different answers.
That does not mean all moral decisions have to be the same in everyone (though in trolleyology they often are). Instead, Dr Hauser uses the analogy of language. All healthy humans have, in the words of his Harvard colleague Steven Pinker, a "language instinct" which incorporates the idea of nouns, verbs, adjectives and how these all fit together. Exactly which language you learn, though, depends on your upbringing.
David Sloan Wilson, of Binghamton University, in New York state, agrees with that point, but reckons the actual moral sense an individual acquires is not arbitrary, as a language is, but is functionally adapted to circumstances. He and his colleague Ingrid Storm looked at liberals and conservatives (in the American senses of the words). Each group has a package of values it sees as moral, while viewing many of the beliefs of the other side as immoral. Dr Wilson and Dr Storm restricted their study to white, Protestant teenagers, in order to eliminate confounding variables. However, their volunteers came from two different traditions—Pentecostal, which tends to the conservative, and Episcopalian, which tends to the liberal.
The researchers conducted the study by giving each volunteer a beeper that went off every two hours or so. When it beeped, the volunteer answered a questionnaire about what he was doing at that moment, and how he felt about it.
Dr Wilson and Dr Storm found several unexpected differences between the groups. Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives, but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves whom they spent time with. Such choice, or the lack of it, did not change conservative stress levels. Liberals were also loners, spending a quarter of their time on their own. Conservatives were alone for a sixth of the time. That may have been related to the fact that liberals were equally bored by their own company and that of others. Conservatives were far less bored when with other people. They also preferred the company of relatives to non-relatives. Liberals were indifferent. Perhaps most intriguingly, the more religious a liberal teenager claimed to be, the more he was willing to confront his parents with dissenting beliefs. The opposite was true for conservatives.
Dr Wilson suspects that the liberal package of individualism and confrontation is the appropriate response to survival in a stable environment in which there is leisure for learning and reflection, and the consequences for a group's stability of such dissent are low. The conservative package of collectivism and conformity, by contrast, works in an unstable environment where joint action, and thus obedience to their group, are at a premium. It is an interesting suggestion, and it is one that plays into the question of how morality actually evolved.
That was addressed by Samuel Bowles, of the Santa Fe Institute in New Mexico. An important feature of moral behaviour is altruism. Normally, biologists explain this as being either nepotism or you-scratch-my-back-and-I'll-scratch-yours. But Dr Bowles believes people do perform acts which cost them more than they gain. To explain this, he invokes an idea that went out of fashion in the 1960s: group selection. This says that the winnowing of the gene pool, which drives evolution, can favour or destroy entire social groups as single entities, as well as working at the level of individual organisms.
No one ever claimed group selection is impossible, but it looks mathematically unlikely. Dr Bowles, however, thinks that the virtues of human collaboration are so great that groups composed of genuine, self-sacrificing altruists would outcompete others.
His best example of such self-sacrifice is warfare, an activity in which morality and immorality intersect in ways that have always been puzzling—and where liberals and conservatives often draw opposite conclusions about what is right and wrong. Paradoxically, that clash of views suggests that Dr Bowles and Dr Wilson really are on to something with the idea of functional morality. Perhaps they and their colleagues can eventually do what philosophers have never managed, and explain moral behaviour in an intellectually satisfying way.
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Posted: Friday, February 22, 2008 | PermalinkComments 1 - 40 of 40 |
Reload Comments | Back to Top | Page Numbers2. Comment #131265 by Tamago on February 22, 2008 at 6:38 am
In my point of view, moral is how human as social creature live along side each other. Moral is like social rules that guide our behaviors.I scratch your back, you scratch my back. Human care for each other as mutual support. Behaviors such as killing and stealing break this social bond. There need not be religions to be morally good. Through reason and compassion, we can decide what is the right thing to do. Other Comments by Tamago
3. Comment #131272 by Quetzalcoatl on February 22, 2008 at 6:46 am
Interesting stuff.
And no mention of God. Funny, that.
Other Comments by Quetzalcoatl
4. Comment #131275 by tieInterceptor on February 22, 2008 at 6:58 am
I liked this article, very interesting and somehow fits with what I already imagined, "Dr Wilson suspects that the liberal package of individualism and confrontation is the appropriate response to survival in a stable environment in which there is leisure for learning and reflection, and the consequences for a group's stability of such dissent are low. The conservative package of collectivism and conformity, by contrast, works in an unstable environment where joint action, and thus obedience to their group, are at a premium."
the smug feeling I got after reading the line, collectivism and conformity with no dissent was nice, I got this "I knew it!" moment.
the Economist is always a good read,
Other Comments by tieInterceptor
5. Comment #131284 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 7:19 am
"Group selection", eh? Oh dear. Don't let Richard hear about this :)And (I know, I have to say that) of course, that doesn't mean that ethics isn't still a major topic in philosophy. This study is about the why of behaviour, not about the existence, nonexistence of objective values, the justification or lack thereof for certain ethical systems... so I'm safe :)
Other Comments by MPhil
6. Comment #131286 by Shaden on February 22, 2008 at 7:24 am
actual moral sense an individual acquires is not arbitrary, as a language is, but is functionally adapted to circumstances
I never really thought about it, but that does make sense. I love research into the areas that shed light on how we become the way we are. I think they're on to something...
Other Comments by Shaden
7. Comment #131291 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 7:32 am
Why do I suddenly get the feeling that I have to watch the TNG episode "All Good Things.." again? :) Other Comments by MPhil
8. Comment #131295 by jimbob on February 22, 2008 at 7:48 am
His best example of such self-sacrifice is warfare, an activity in which morality and immorality intersect in ways that have always been puzzlingâ€"and where liberals and conservatives often draw opposite conclusions about what is right and wrong. Paradoxically, that clash of views suggests that Dr Bowles and Dr Wilson really are on to something with the idea of functional morality. Perhaps they and their colleagues can eventually do what philosophers have never managed, and explain moral behaviour in an intellectually satisfying way.
Sure they are "on to something," but that "something" seems to have been explained many times by folks like Richard?
Since warfare is used as an example, I'll use it too as metaphor: What we need to do is establish "firing ascendancy" in the battle over the basis of morality. We need to rehearse the arguments and then go on the offensive with the view that religion (and other ideological dogmas) are generally obstacles to humanistic morality.
It's not that there is any shortage of examples to support that case!
Other Comments by jimbob
9. Comment #131297 by al-rawandi on February 22, 2008 at 7:51 am
MPhil,
An aged Jonathan Frakes.... William T. Riker I mean. Is that the reason?
Other Comments by al-rawandi
10. Comment #131303 by Cartomancer on February 22, 2008 at 8:08 am
Pah! We historians have known about the tendency towards liberalism and freedom of dissent in stable societies for ages!
Though I am intrigued by this association of liberality and loneliness. The article doesn't quite say which way Wilson and Storm think the causation runs however - whether liberality causes loneliness or whether loneliness causes liberality. Or, indeed, whether there is another, independent, factor causing both concurrently.
I am also amazed at just how little time these student respondents actually spend alone (I assume they were students, as the guinea pigs for university psychology experiments almost always are). Even granting that this study only covers the respondents' waking hours (which seems very likely given that sleeping hours are always spent alone and it is very difficult indeed for teenagers to function on 6 or 4 hours of sleep per night respectively, and then they would need to spend every hour they are awake with other people) 75% of one's time in the company of others seems an awful lot to me, especially for students. My own figure is somewhat closer to 20% of my time spent with others, and when I was an undergraduate it was virtually 0% - don't these people have any books to read or essays to write or other work to do, or even any hobbies? Does that also make me so hyper-liberal it hurts? By American standards I guess it probably does...
I would also be fascinated to see a similar study where the variables are religious affiliation or lack of it, though finding a satisfactory control group would be difficult I admit. Such studies might also be a good indicator for where exactly conservatism / liberality are pitched in a particular society. If these values really are human universals brought about by mathematically demonstrable optimal survival strategies then they would be an effective yardstick for comparing the way the political discourse runs in countries.
Other Comments by Cartomancer
11. Comment #131307 by willerror on February 22, 2008 at 8:10 am
Mark Hauser, of Harvard University, recently wrote Moral Minds, which I was excited to read. However, I was unimpressed--not with his ideas, necessarily, but the writing itself; found it difficult and even a little boring. I much preferred Matt Ridley's The Origins of Virtue and Michael Shermer's The Science of Good and Evil, as well as The Moral Animal by Robert Wright.I find this field of the biological basis for morality to be the most intriguing of scientific endeavors, and it certainly is the most damaging to theistic claims.
Other Comments by willerror
12. Comment #131308 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 8:13 am
Though I am intrigued by this association of liberality and loneliness. The article doesn't quite say which way Wilson and Storm think the causation runs however - whether liberality causes loneliness or whether loneliness causes liberality. Or, indeed, whether there is another, independent, factor causing both concurrently.
Or maybe they didn't speculate about causation and left it at having found a correlation?
al-rawandi,
yes, and in an admiral's uniform at that :)
Other Comments by MPhil
13. Comment #131309 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 8:13 am
Cartomancer - We historians have known about the tendency towards liberalism and freedom of dissent in stable societies for ages!
Is there any observed converse tendency, viz. unstable societies => illiberalism and suppression of sedition?
Other Comments by hungarianelephant
14. Comment #131318 by Cartomancer on February 22, 2008 at 8:42 am
hungarianelephant, comment #14
I think there very much is. A quick off-the-top-of-my-head series of examples brings up Classical Athens versus Classical Sparta, Post Conquest versus late twelfth / thirteenth century England and those schoolboy favourites, Nazi Germany, Stalinist Russia and Fascist Italy.
Athens' political stability in the fifth century BC was based on its own naval supremacy in the Aegean, its democratic constitution and the instruments of state stability acquired throughout the previous centuries under the Peisistratid tyranny and going back to Solon and beyond. As such it developed a culture of philosophical speculation, a strong tradition of satire in Old Comedy and societal self-examination in its Tragic theatre, and even some measure of equality extended to slaves and foreigners. Sparta's power was based on a precarious and often brutal suppression of its helot neighbours and a very strained series of social structures designed to keep people in conformity with state policy, particularly state military policy. As such it produced no philosophy, satire or liberal values of any description, save perhaps in the realm of women's property rights.
Likewise, immediately after the conquest English society is somewhat strained and illiberal, especially under the harrowing of the north and in the Danelaw. The literary and cultural output of the country trickles down to almost nothing for a while, and Anglo-Saxon literature is severely curtailed. But once political unity and stability returns, the Anglo-Norman polity becomes slightly more permissive, and among other things satirical goliardic poetry flourishes and satirists such as Walter of Chatillon have a realistic chance of acquring royal patronage whereas before it went to laudatory chroniclers and poets attempting to shore up the regime with panegyrics on the new rulers and attempts to play down the indigenous culture. Similarly there is a revival of the Anglo-Saxon chronicle tradition and a strong antiquarian interest in pre-norman society, indicating a fair degree of confidence on the part of the rulers and ruled in the stability of their society. English common law, magna carta, the origins of parliament and the theory of judicial equity at the court of chancellery emerge in this period, and English scholars develop a tendency to travel far and wide in search of new knowledge from the Greeks and Arabs because they are dissatisfied with the extent of their current Latin traditions, traditions which suited their monastic, pre-conquest forebears adequately enough.
I'm sure the inter-war dictatorships are too well known to need exposition.
Other Comments by Cartomancer
15. Comment #131319 by Shaden on February 22, 2008 at 8:45 am
MPhil, al-rawandi,
Admiral Riker (from the future) with a look like he's not going to take anymore $%#@. Much like how I feel :)
Other Comments by Shaden
16. Comment #131322 by al-rawandi on February 22, 2008 at 8:52 am
Shaden,
I called "Jonathan Frakes"... who is the one hit wonder actor who played commander William T. Riker. I failed to note that in that episode he was an "admiral".
Other Comments by al-rawandi
17. Comment #131323 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 8:52 am
Shaden, I know... huge fan, you should see my collection: All of TOS, all of TAS, about 90 % of TNG, half of DS9, 2/3 of VGR, all of ENT except for most of the miserable season 3 and all the movies :)
Acutally I once had everything, but my ex got half of the collection when we broke up, so I'm still working on completing my collection again... if only it wasn't so expensive.
al-rawandi,
One hit wonder indeed, X-Factor was crap. But he's quite a good director.
On topic again: I don't know if it's just me, but it seems somewhat of a stretch to say 'We've got an evolutionary explanation for this' and then invoking group selection of all things.
Other Comments by MPhil
18. Comment #131325 by al-rawandi on February 22, 2008 at 8:54 am
but my ex got half of the collection when we broke up, so I'm still working on completing my collection agai
Reason #6 not to get married:
"That bitch got my Star Trek DVD's".
"That bitch got my kids" is #7.
Other Comments by al-rawandi
19. Comment #131326 by notsobad on February 22, 2008 at 8:55 am
Liberal teenagers always felt more stress than conservatives, but were particularly stressed if they could not decide for themselves whom they spent time with.
Of course, the sheep are the less stressed ones.
Other Comments by notsobad
20. Comment #131327 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 8:56 am
Actually, it's reason #6 not to have a shared account and not to buy stuff together.And not only did I lose half of my Star Trek collection - sadly, she owned the complete Babylon 5 collection and the first two seasons of Sliders (after that it got crappy anyways)...
They're further down on my "to buy" list, but until I can afford it - the internet can be very helpful sometimes :)
Other Comments by MPhil
21. Comment #131329 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 9:01 am
notsobad, very true. They take Matthew 5, 3 to heart:
Blessed are the poor in spirit,
for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.
(In the German Luther-translation it actually says "blessed are the poor in mind"... fits much better)
Other Comments by MPhil
22. Comment #131330 by al-rawandi on February 22, 2008 at 9:02 am
Sliders?
Be glad that is gone.
Stargate SG-1... Atlantis, who bagged those?
Babylon 5 was pretty good.
MPhil,
You are a smart guy, what possessed you to get a "shared account"?
You should have divorced her in Iran or Saudi Arabia, you would only have been on the hook for 3 menstural cycles. Which is like, what, 22 days?
Other Comments by al-rawandi
23. Comment #131334 by Shaden on February 22, 2008 at 9:08 am
al-rawandi,
Yes, TNG was Johnathan Frakes' best acting gig, but as MPhil pointed out, he's a great director. Also, a great voice actor (e.g. Xanatos from Gargoyles).
MPhil,
That's horrible about your ex taking half of your collection, hopefully most of the episodes she got were Wesley heavy.
(sorry for hi-jacking this thread with geek-ery)
Other Comments by Shaden
24. Comment #131336 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 9:11 am
Well, she wasn't my wife (I'm 24 and that relationship lasted from 2002 to 2005), but my girlfriend - and we were so madly in love, and badly in need of Star Trek DVDs that we said we'd put our money together to buy them... what can I say? "I was young and I needed the DVDs"Still - That bitch got my Star Trek DVDs!!!
Well, another mistake I won't repeat.
Actually I thought the first two seasons of Sliders were pretty good, especially since they incorporated some real science and had a few sociologically very interesting plots.
We both didn't like Stargate though... just not our thing.
And while I love Babylon 5 and think it has the most coherent, fluent, nuanced story-arch over 5 seasons that I have ever seen - it can be a bit militaristic at times.
Hmm... Iran or Saudi Arabia? No thanks, think of what I as an outspoken infidel would have to go through... I'm having a hard time with moderate central-european Religion as it is.
Shaden,
no, we split it equally - When it came to the DVD versions (TNG) "you get one season, I get another". With the VHS of DS9 and VGR it was "One video for you, one for me"
And while Wesley wasn't Star Trek's best invention, I don't dislike him as much as most people. There were a few good plots with him. Just my humble opinion.
(And let me apologize for the hi-jacking as well. Josh, you're free to move this to the alternate thread :)
Other Comments by MPhil
25. Comment #131338 by Geoff on February 22, 2008 at 9:21 am
Am I alone in finding nothing much new in that article? Other Comments by Geoff
26. Comment #131339 by hungarianelephant on February 22, 2008 at 9:22 am
Thanks, Cartomancer. I'd assumed that to be the case outside the context of the inter-war dictatorships, which seem to be all that get taught in schools these days.It seems to be your view - forgive me if I am missing the subtleties - that it's the stability or otherwise of the society that leads and the liberalism or otherwise that follows. If so, that has important implications for policy-making, as it suggests that (assuming that we can all agree that Freedom Is A Good Thing) the most important thing a government can do is to try to create stability, or at least not to upset it. And conversely, that if you want to start a dictatorship, first create instability within the society.
(I wondered if this was a little off topic, given that it has nothing at all to do with Star Trek. Oh well.)
Other Comments by hungarianelephant
27. Comment #131340 by bamafreethinker on February 22, 2008 at 9:22 am
The free time factor does seem to make logical sense with liberalism. If we have plenty of time and money, and can sit around and think about how the less-than-fortunate people are struggling, then we may tend to feel sorry for them and want to do something to help. If you are struggling just to feed your family and get by, then you tend to think less about how everyone else is doing and focus on improving your own situation.
I can imagine a time in the future when we're just about out of oil and the survival of our society depends on securing the last oil reserves. How many present-day liberals would be behind a war if it promised them a few more years of life as they know it â€" even at the expense of other people's freedom or lives? If the world deteriorates into a "Road Warrior" type of society, how many people will be worrying about the spotted owl or if some family may be circumcising their kids? I may be wrong here and I'm not suggesting that excess time/money is the cause for liberalism, but that it can help provide an environment for it.
I am personally torn many times trying to decide which way is the right way to think, so I'm definitely not a clearly defined liberal or conservative. Just a guy with an open mind I guess.
Other Comments by bamafreethinker
28. Comment #131360 by 82abhilash on February 22, 2008 at 10:32 am
I think David Sloan Wilson is bringing back in the group selection ideology through the back door. Besides terms like Liberal and Conservative can have different meanings depending on what part of the world you live in, so their meanings are not anchored in reality, but interpretation of subjective human experience. And that can compromise the integrity of the experiment.Let me try to make sense of it in terms of Evolutionarily Stable Strategy (ESS) proposed by John Maynard Smith. We find other animal species in groups because it is an ESS and helps them survive, more precisely but help their genes to survive. It is gene survival that it is all about.
Humans may have lived in groups precisely for the same reason. It is ESS. But humans have the capacity to understand why living in groups contribute to their fitness, how to enhance the benefits that comes from living in groups and so on. We are capable of representing a level of sophistication that other grouping animals cannot.
And in this environment of sophisticated brains, memes (whatever they are) start to spread and influence behavior. Of course one meme (or meme pool) that spreads is the virtue of living in groups (including the idea of group selection). This meme has the capacity to spread because we are sort of hard wired for living in groups anyway. and we are hardwired because to our ancestors it has a survival mechanism that was ESS. So those with such genes passed them on.
So there I have explained, genes, memes and the relationship between them and even why David Sloan Wilson finds the idea of Group selection appealing, in terms of genes and memes. Also note that the capacity of a meme to spread or even be appealing has no bearing on the how much the information in the meme is anchored in reality. That can explain religion too.
Makes the notion very useful and compelling. I wish there was some way to accumulate evidence for it though.
Other Comments by 82abhilash
29. Comment #131366 by Spinoza on February 22, 2008 at 10:49 am
There's such a fundamental confusion here... it's ridiculous.First of all, biology is not "invading" philosophy's territory.
I'm a philosopher, and I WELCOME all and every biological datum I can find.
In the field of ethics, the confusion is between what people CALL ethical and what IS ethical.
There is a further component, the metaethics. The anti-realism/realism debate hasn't been hashed out yet...
Scientists are jumping the gun if they think their research is doing anything more than simply describing the process by which people make judgments we are wont to CALL moral (regardless of whether they are or not).
We better watch this carefully... we don't want morality reduced to biologically conditioned bullshit. That would make so many things "wrong" that modern secular liberals don't think are wrong (even if they think they're gross).
There is a big debate going on between say, Cornell Realism and Quasi-realism, and I urge biologists to look into that before treading on territory they're not even aware they're bastardizing.
Other Comments by Spinoza
30. Comment #131370 by al-rawandi on February 22, 2008 at 10:58 am
MPhil,
You weren't married and she got half your shit? Damn. You should have seen the joint account coming back to get you in the ass later.
and we were so madly in love
Are you sure you both just didn't really like sex a lot? That is what a lot of my "love" experiences turned out to be, on my end at least. Maybe I am just shallow.
Other Comments by al-rawandi
31. Comment #131385 by MPhil on February 22, 2008 at 11:47 am
I know I should have known better... blinded by love - not sex. Although that was great, it wasn't essential - we had been best friends for half a year before we got together - and had about everything in common: Same taste in music (went to some great concerts), in films, in series, in literature (mostly poetry and the classics from Goethe to Hesse and Mann), science-geeks, atheists, you name it.Didn't work out - she became somewhat of an asshole ;)
So yes, you're shallow ;P
And she didn't get half my shit - just half of what we bougt together... which was about 40 movies and a lot of Star Trek DVDs and VHS.
As I said - won't make that mistake again.
Spinoza,
I agree. Actually, I've made that point above - although you're wording is a little careless: "What people CALL ethics and what IS ethical" - sounds as if you're presupposing moral realism and a priviliged insight into first-order moral statements by philosophers. I'm a philosopher and I would doubt both :)
Other Comments by MPhil
32. Comment #131604 by scooternyc on February 22, 2008 at 4:57 pm
I find this article interesting in just two questions:
What is the definition of moral?
Who got to decide what moral is?
Other Comments by scooternyc
33. Comment #131620 by MelM on February 22, 2008 at 6:03 pm
Trolleyology isn't real.The fact that the experimental subject is involved in a non-real situation might just have something to do with a lack of emotional involvment. Again, given a situation where there are no facts on which to base a rational decision, I'm also not surprised that reason wasn't invoked in the process. Maybe someday, nanotechnology will provide a way to instrument the brain for long periods of time during real life thus giving some real numbers to work with.
What circumstances?
David Sloan Wilson...reckons the actual moral sense an individual acquires is not arbitrary, as a language is, but is functionally adapted to circumstances. He and his colleague Ingrid Storm looked at liberals and conservatives (in the American senses of the words). Each group has a package of values it sees as moral, while viewing many of the beliefs of the other side as immoral.There's nothing in the article about any attempt by the researchers to relate the moral views of the teenagers to their circumstances. WTF, "Dr Wilson suspects" isn't a scientific result. Speculation is fine; but it still needs to be based on at least a few facts and non were given.
"Causative ideas" premise is rejected.
Nor do we see anything about looking at the two religious sects to see what views were taught that had an impact on the teenagers morality. For example, for believers, faith is a virtue (moral) while I regard it as a vice (immoral). These researchers seem to have accepted the premise that moral views are caused by circumstances--or something--and therefore, that the moral teachings of philosphies or religions are not primary. On the face of it, for example, it looks like the Muslim view that cartooning Mo is immoral comes directly from religion as does the "virtue" of faith. Indeed, the metaphysics of religion (god and heaven) seems to have a huge impact on morality. Perhaps, if kids accept a positive (moral) view of independent thought, they will, in fact, be less conformist?
Descriptive only.
I don't see anything in the article about an attempt to discover which moral views are true and which are false and why; nor do I see a discussion of whether or not such a thing is possible. A philosopher might look for facts that provide a ground for the nature and need for morality and then provide a content (the particular values and virtues) thus providing a prescriptive science. (A philosopher might also decide that there are no rational grounds for morality and dump the whole thing--as some have done.) The biologists are looking for a descriptive science exclusively and thus will have little or no impact on the culture wars still rife in humanity except to allow them to continue--a conservative impact. Meanwhile, the moralities of the religious fanatics are gaining ground again.
Morality is only social?
Again we see the premise that morality deals exclusively with our relations with other people. No virtue would be needed if one were stuck alone on a deserted island? And surely, the person performing the thinking needed to throw off the delusions of faith is acting morally. Really, for those who view reason as a virtue, the entire social-only view of morality is overthrown.
Why is "sacrafice" moral?
From the left and the middle and the right, we hear a hundred times a day about the virtue of sacrafice. Seems like a cult as bad as religion--come to think of it, isn't religion where the virtue of "sacrafice" comes from? In the U.S. anyway, we are supposed to have the right to pursue our own happiness and that's what almost all people spend almost all of their time doing. The self-help gurus and books will applaud the values and virtues needed to achieve our goals and be happy but the politicians, moral experts, and 11pm news anchors will have none of it. It escapes me why giving away a dollar is of great moral significance but making a dollar isn't.
http://www.thebricktestament.com/the_teachings_of_jesus/on_giving/mt05_41.html
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34. Comment #131655 by Big City on February 22, 2008 at 11:52 pm
I turn my back for one minute and you atheist nerds start talking about Star Trek. Heathens.PS: TNG. End of story. TNG.
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35. Comment #131657 by Russell Blackford on February 23, 2008 at 12:21 am
I have no problem at all with biologists or psychologists producing theories and conducting experiments that may have philosophical implications. That's one way that philosophy advances, by getting data back from the particular sciences. I have a lot of time for Marc (not "Mark") Hauser, in particular.It's even a good idea for philosophers to collaborate with these folk, as some are doing.
But whatever data come out of the exercise will still need to be interpreted and argued about. Even if we have a whole lot of data and a well-corroborated theory as to how human beings came to believe that certain kinds of actions are required of them, or permitted to them, or forbidden, or whatever, that's a long way from answering any interesting normative or meta-ethical questions.
Edit: The discussion of Hauser's work in the article sounds simplified and distorted to the point where it doesn't make sense.
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36. Comment #131663 by Richard Morgan on February 23, 2008 at 12:53 am
JemyM : I'm actually looking for the studies required to work with research on this topic.
Have you tried this?
http://www.abc.net.au/science/descent/default.htm
Sure, it's not a study, but there are some pointers.
Enjoy
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37. Comment #131856 by Spinoza on February 23, 2008 at 1:08 pm
Spinoza,
I agree. Actually, I've made that point above - although you're wording is a little careless: "What people CALL ethics and what IS ethical" - sounds as if you're presupposing moral realism and a priviliged insight into first-order moral statements by philosophers. I'm a philosopher and I would doubt both :)
You're right, interestingly, I am an anti-realist (of the quasi-realist persuasion, actually, Blackburn is a genius!).
But, there is a purposeful equivocation there... not a fallacious one.
You took me to mean "morality" as philosophers talk of it, whereas I was using it in the ordinary language sense.
Even presupposing anti-realism, there is still something (else) wrong with saying that homosexuality is "wrong". It's not JUST that Mackie is right that people who say that are in error about what they think they're talking about, it's that even an anti-realist like myself can tell them they're idiots for thinking that.
Science will need to wait for philosophers to get clearer on a few things before they start making pronouncements of having taken over the field of Ethics...
Or else we'll end up with cultural relativist post-modernist gibberish.
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38. Comment #132188 by scooternyc on February 24, 2008 at 12:35 pm
"that's a long way from answering any interesting normative or meta-ethical questions.
This is one of the more interesting observations that I really agree.
So far nothing draws a conclusion other than observation itself. All value is subjective. All interests are self-interests.
Now what?
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39. Comment #133000 by aquilacane on February 25, 2008 at 1:56 pm
There are no such things as morals, purely a human justification for natural behaviour. Next, you'll be trying to tell me time is real. Other Comments by aquilacane
40. Comment #133653 by clodhopper on February 26, 2008 at 1:16 pm
Time is relatively real Other Comments by clodhopper
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1. Comment #131255 by JemyM on February 22, 2008 at 6:13 am
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