Can science finally explain where we get the morals we believe in?

[Valjean]

We humans have known for centuries that we can manipulate the behavior of others using reward and punishment methods. But there is absolutely no evidence that we can use it to change their innate intuition. And that's what you are alleging without evidence.

Conscience is an intuitive moral guide only. People obviously ignore it for lots of reasons.
.

But our intuition is the same thing as our atavistic tribalism, isn't it?
Look how easily militias strip away our social conditioning and replicate the in-group altruism, and the competition and moral indifference to the other that we're already hard-wired with. We're comfortable in tribes and bands (companies and platoons).
It's easy to replicate the inner Neanderthal.

 

[Valjean]

A lot of theists tend to argue they come from god

Yes, they do. And this deontological, divine command 'morality' has been problematic throughout human history. It's a simplistic appeal to a set of rules followed more to please a dangerous God than to accomplish socially useful ends.
Most of us liberal types are more motivated by consequentialism, wherein rules have a practical, social purpose.

 

[Valjean]

I linked you to my argument, including evidence, that ought to convince a realistic mind to become optimistic. Did you look it over?

Your OP in Global harmony? Yes, I read it. I can comment, if you want.
I'm still pessimistic, though, for a variety of reasons.

 

[joe1776]

...For example, if you look at the ten commandments, these were not designed for relative morality and ego-centric choice. Thou shall not steal, for example, had an adverse impact on the relative morality of the scavenger/thief. ..

By using stealing as your example, you avoid being contradicted because there's no evidence kept that would disprove your claim.

But if you had used the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" (as it was translated until the middle of the 20th century) then it would be obvious that the commandment had no effect on the behavior of Christians who have killed each other, and people of other religions, in wars for many centuries.

If interpreted as a general rule, the commandment is useless when needed in a specific situation because the specific situation might be an exception.

If interpreted as an absolute rule, one should NEVER kill, and all the good people on the planet complied, humanity would be ruled by tyrants like Adolph Hitler and his Nazis because there would be no one to stop them.

Conscience (moral intuition) doesn't advise us not to kill. It gives us guidance case-by-case. Sometimes killing is justified, sometimes not.

 

[joe1776]

Your OP in Global harmony? Yes, I read it. I can comment, if you want.
I'm still pessimistic, though, for a variety of reasons.

No, that's okay. I just wondered whether you could be moved to change your mind or not.

 

[joe1776]

But our intuition is the same thing as our atavistic tribalism, isn't it?...

I doubt conscience can be so described because there's growing evidence that conscience is a universal (cross-cultural) moral faulty. Harvard's Moral Sense Test has been online since 2003. It was designed to test that idea.

An excerpt from an explanation of its basis:

"As in every modernly held view, there are significant historical antecedents. The origins of our own perspective date back at least 300 years to the philosopher David Hume and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls. But unlike these prescient thinkers, we can now validate the intuitions with significant scientific evidence. Over the past twenty years, there has been growing evidence for a universally shared moral faculty based on findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, and neurobiology.

Edge: THE MORAL SENSE TEST

 

[Bear Wild]

Well, research shows that 'high functioning autism is an extreme cognitive processing style that predisposes towards Atheism and Agnosticism.'

This is very relevant to our discussion because if you do happen to have ASD then, sadly, there is absolutely nothing anyone can do to establish the reality of God's necessary existence.

It is interesting that you site this particular article since it fits in with the believe that morals are evolutionary determined. In their "Prior findings in cognitive science of religion" used as a basis for their study one includes " The diversity of individuals’ religious beliefs reflects evolved psychological mechanisms, with at least some
differences representing diverse tools in humanity's adaptive tool kit" which is consistent with a natural selection explanation of moral behavior. They may not have been aware however of some of the studies looking at an oxytocin deficiency or mutation of the receptor as a cause of a decrease in empathy for those with high functioning autism. There are studies looking at treatment with oxytocin for some aspects of autism.
Oxytocin is an important hormone associated with empathy behavior in mammals from humans to voles in studies. It is also the hormone that explains why females have a slightly greater capacity for empathy from studies. Religion being created to increase or at times control social behavior is another aspect the evolved social behavior which is dependent on empathy for increased cohesiveness. Autistic humans that lower capability of empathy secondary or in part to decreased effect of oxytocin could be less likely to associate with they typically highly social religious activities. This would be an interesting study. Non autistic atheists or agnostics can be very social and still recognize an organized religion of a belief in a god is unnecessary. Appreciate the pro evolution study.

 

[Bear Wild]

I doubt conscience can be so described because there's growing evidence that conscience is a universal (cross-cultural) moral faulty. Harvard's Moral Sense Test has been online since 2003. It was designed to test that idea.

An excerpt from an explanation of its basis:

"As in every modernly held view, there are significant historical antecedents. The origins of our own perspective date back at least 300 years to the philosopher David Hume and more recently, to the political philosopher John Rawls. But unlike these prescient thinkers, we can now validate the intuitions with significant scientific evidence. Over the past twenty years, there has been growing evidence for a universally shared moral faculty based on findings in evolutionary biology, cognitive psychology, anthropology, economics, linguistics, and neurobiology.

Edge: THE MORAL SENSE TEST

Interesting site. I like the perspective of an article written by a philosopher Peter Railton on how moral cognition and intuition/emotion work together. 2014, “The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale: Intuition and Attunement”, Ethics, 124: 813–59. He questions the concept that our cognitive reasoning creates a separate moral behavior from our intuitive/emotional aspect of the brain often considered primitive and argues that the research supports both equally important and in constant interaction.

 

[Maximilian]

It is interesting that you site this particular article since it fits in with the believe that morals are evolutionary determined.

Irrational beasts, however, don't possess objective morals. Just about everything they do is the denouement of behavioral instinct not shared knowledge handed down from one era to the next, their woefully limited cognition notwithstanding. So whenever a lion savagely kills some other, it doesn't believe it's committing homicide. Any time a peregrine falcon or a bald eagle snatches prey away from another, it doesn't think it's stealing. Each time primates violently force themselves onto females as well as their little ones they’re not tried and convicted of rape or pedophilia. Needless to say, we undoubtedly didn't “inherit” our objective moral sense from these.

 

[Bear Wild]

Irrational beasts, however, don't possess objective morals. Just about everything they do is the denouement of behavioral instinct not shared knowledge handed down from one era to the next, their woefully limited cognition notwithstanding. So whenever a lion savagely kills some other, it doesn't believe it's committing homicide. Any time a peregrine falcon or a bald eagle snatches prey away from another, it doesn't think it's stealing. Each time primates violently force themselves onto females as well as their little ones they’re not tried and convicted of rape or pedophilia. Needless to say, we undoubtedly didn't “inherit” our objective moral sense from these.

Your cognitive knowledge of advances in animal behavior and neuroscience is woefully outdated and shows a lack of understanding of the high level of cognitions many animals possess. Yes humans have language that allow them to transmit shared knowledge from one era of the next but this is an advancement in degree rather that kind. Your anthropocentric limitations reveal your ignorance about the degree of similarity compared to the degree of difference.

Chimpanzees in their social group actually actively suppress violence within the group and often break up fights between fighting males as well as show only rare aggression towards females in the social group. Language allows us to create very expressive descriptions but the basic neurobiology is the same. We have evolved surprisingly similar moral behaviors because of natural selection.

Your descriptors of savage and snatching are primitive.Do you eat meat? Do you see the killing of a cow or chicken as murder? Is the treatment of sentient organisms in factory farming moral?

 

[joe1776]

Interesting site. I like the perspective of an article written by a philosopher Peter Railton on how moral cognition and intuition/emotion work together. 2014, “The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale: Intuition and Attunement”, Ethics, 124: 813–59. He questions the concept that our cognitive reasoning creates a separate moral behavior from our intuitive/emotional aspect of the brain often considered primitive and argues that the research supports both equally important and in constant interaction.

I think we humans have a bias in favor of reason and against intuition that is having a negative effect on moral research.

For example, when subjects can't give reasonable explanations for intuitive judgments that they arrive at immediately, researchers seem to doubt the judgment as though reason is the standard they use for judging intuition.

Another example is the moral dilemma, like the trolley problem. Intuition will immediately warn us that option A and option B are both harmful. But intuition isn't going to weigh the consequences to determine which causes the least harm. That's a job for the reasoning mind. Yet, it seems that social scientists love to test with moral dilemmas but don't realize that the erratic results they get can't be blamed on intuition even though two parts of the brain light up on fMRI when people are considering moral dilemmas.

I haven't read the Railton article, you mention. But its title is a twist on Jon Haidt's 2001 paper "The Emotional Dog and its Rational Tail" re: his research which concluded that moral judgments were immediate and intuitive and the reasoning for them followed after the fact.

 

[Maximilian]

Your cognitive knowledge of advances in animal behavior and neuroscience is woefully outdated and shows a lack of understanding of the high level of cognitions many animals possess. Yes humans have language that allow them to transmit shared knowledge from one era of the next but this is an advancement in degree rather that kind. Your anthropocentric limitations reveal your ignorance about the degree of similarity compared to the degree of difference.

Chimpanzees in their social group actually actively suppress violence within the group and often break up fights between fighting males as well as show only rare aggression towards females in the social group. Language allows us to create very expressive descriptions but the basic neurobiology is the same. We have evolved surprisingly similar moral behaviors because of natural selection.

Your descriptors of savage and snatching are primitive.Do you eat meat? Do you see the killing of a cow or chicken as murder? Is the treatment of sentient organisms in factory farming moral?

Hmmmm . . . if you're taking your cues on what normal behavior is from the realm of irrational beasts why don't you chop the heads off your partners after sex like the irrational Praying Mantis? Or how about committing dominance rape or having sex with young children as practiced by irrational primates? How about eating your own feces the way irrational pigs, dogs, cows and primates like to? Should it be legal for you to kill and eat babies because irrational beasts do?

 

[joe1776]

Interesting site. I like the perspective of an article written by a philosopher Peter Railton on how moral cognition and intuition/emotion work together. 2014, “The Affective Dog and Its Rational Tale: Intuition and Attunement”, Ethics, 124: 813–59. He questions the concept that our cognitive reasoning creates a separate moral behavior from our intuitive/emotional aspect of the brain often considered primitive and argues that the research supports both equally important and in constant interaction.

I found and read Railton's article. You and I disagree on its merit. I think he's attempting to find that reason plays a much larger role in moral judgments than it actually does

I'm going to be over-simplifying just to give you the idea but this is the way I have it:

Conscience, intuition emerging immediately from the unconscious, makes judgments case-by-case. Only the pain part of the brain's pain-pleasure function is needed to signal wrongness. When we don't feel that immediate unpleasant feeling, we assume the act is justified.

In most cases, reason's role is to get the relevant facts of the case right:

• What exactly happened?
• Was harm done to someone innocent (an innocent victim)?
• Was it the actor's intent to cause harm?

Moral dilemmas are exceptions: In a moral dilemma, we use reason to weigh the consequences of both bad options to determine which will cause the least harm

EDIT: Today's news reports that a man has been charged with manslaughter for helping his cancer-stricken wife commit suicide. Assuming these relevant facts are true, the question "Was it the actor's intent to cause harm?" would be answered NO. His intent was to prevent suffering so we have a state law making an act of love a criminal offense. We will find that the reasoning minds of the legislature have created their own rule on killing to create a bias that sent judgment off course.

 

[Bear Wild]

I found and read Railton's article. You and I disagree on its merit. I think he's attempting to find that reason plays a much larger role in moral judgments than it actually does

I'm going to be over-simplifying just to give you the idea but this is the way I have it:

Conscience, intuition emerging immediately from the unconscious, makes judgments case-by-case. Only the pain part of the brain's pain-pleasure function is needed to signal wrongness. When we don't feel that immediate unpleasant feeling, we assume the act is justified.

In most cases, reason's role is to get the relevant facts of the case right:

• What exactly happened?
• Was harm done to someone innocent (an innocent victim)?
• Was it the actor's intent to cause harm?

Moral dilemmas are exceptions: In a moral dilemma, we use reason to weigh the consequences of both bad options to determine which will cause the least harm

EDIT: Today's news reports that a man has been charged with manslaughter for helping his cancer-stricken wife commit suicide. Assuming these relevant facts are true, the question "Was it the actor's intent to cause harm?" would be answered NO. His intent was to prevent suffering so we have a state law making an act of love a criminal offense. We will find that the reasoning minds of the legislature have created their own rule on killing to create a bias that sent judgment off course.

Railton's article is in responce to the psychology premis that humans are different from animals because animals only have intuitive morals and lack reasoned morals. Humans may have intuitive morals but the have become unimportant and are to primitive for our modern societies. Railton argues this is not the case and that inuitive and reasoned behavior interact and are equally important. We have evidence that animals use reasoning to modify their behavior and he identifes that neuroscience and understanding of animal behavior argues against this division. This is in agreement with what studies show from the functional mri's involving the same parts to the brain as seen in animals. Thus humans are using the same evolutionary behavior but at a more complex degree rather than completely different. At least that is how I interprated his argument.

Your example of the man helping his wife commit suicide is a good example of how empathy influences behavior. His action was in responce to identifying with his wife's suffering. Legeslation is a language driven regulation of behavior for social control and is limited by its reasoned agreement. I remember the case when a husband in Florida allowed his wife to die which was not considered suicide yet there was an outcry of republican legislators and religious fanatics protesting the decision without intuitive understanding of the situation.

 

[Bear Wild]

Hmmmm . . . if you're taking your cues on what normal behavior is from the realm of irrational beasts why don't you chop the heads off your partners after sex like the irrational Praying Mantis? Or how about committing dominance rape or having sex with young children as practiced by irrational primates? How about eating your own feces the way irrational pigs, dogs, cows and primates like to? Should it be legal for you to kill and eat babies because irrational beasts do?

I am certainty not taking what normal behavior is from irrational people who are not familiar with what we now know about animal behavior including the human animal. Since you are a primate you are a part of that irrational group. Humans commit more cruel behavioral acts than any other organism on the planet. So are humans more irrational?

 

[joe1776]

Railton's article is in responce to the psychology premis that humans are different from animals because animals only have intuitive morals and lack reasoned morals. Humans may have intuitive morals but the have become unimportant and are to primitive for our modern societies. Railton argues this is not the case and that inuitive and reasoned behavior interact and are equally important. We have evidence that animals use reasoning to modify their behavior and he identifes that neuroscience and understanding of animal behavior argues against this division. This is in agreement with what studies show from the functional mri's involving the same parts to the brain as seen in animals. Thus humans are using the same evolutionary behavior but at a more complex degree rather than completely different. At least that is how I interprated his argument.

Your example of the man helping his wife commit suicide is a good example of how empathy influences behavior. His action was in responce to identifying with his wife's suffering. Legeslation is a language driven regulation of behavior for social control and is limited by its reasoned agreement. I remember the case when a husband in Florida allowed his wife to die which was not considered suicide yet there was an outcry of republican legislators and religious fanatics protesting the decision without intuitive understanding of the situation.

Years ago, I realized that we humans can't see, hear, taste, or smell the difference between an act that is morally right and one that's wrong; so it must be that we FEEL it. That realization led me eventually to conclude that everything we think we know about our morality we learned from the intuitive feelings that we call conscience.

I think that, having learned from conscience, we humans, over-estimating our ability to reason, imagined that we could improve upon the judgments of conscience by creating laws and rules to govern our morality. I think that was a false premise that has resulted in massive injustice.

When the criminal laws we write agree with the judgment of conscience on a particular case, they are coincidentally right, like a stopped clock can be right twice a day. When they don't agree, they are potential biases capable of throwing justice off course as they did in the case of the man charged with manslaughter who helped his cancer-stricken wife commit suicide.

The majority vote of a panel of unbiased jurors, unhindered by laws, hearing the facts of the case based on conscience alone would make the right call. We can hope that a jury will find the man in this case not guilty but they will have to ignore the law to do it.