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

[Maximilian]

I'm not convinced any of this is relevant anyway.

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.

 

[HonestJoe]

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.

I didn't ask you to establish God's existence, I asked you about your apparently flawed logic.

 

[joe1776]

The importance of intuition/emotional involvement has finally become recognized as an equally and more fundamental aspect of what we call moral behavior shaped by its evolutionary advantage and continuously interacts with our cognitive decision making of "moral" decisions. The studies of empathy in animals and the neurologic pathways of the anterior insular cortex, anterior cingulate cortex and ventromedial prefrontal cortex show how reactions of pain and the feeling of disgust play a significant role in empathy in mammalian brains.
One pattern that can be described is a perceived distress followed by affective resonance then coordinated with pro-social drive leading to a helping behavior which we interpret as a moral behavior. This explains moral behavior in ways we can evaluate rather than conceived moral entities that are a part of the universe as universal truths or those bestowed on a single organism by some supernatural power.

My opinions on the topic of morality are mostly based on my personal observations of human behavior. We agree that there is a likely connection to survival.

However, I also think it likely that conscience is a very simple, universal (cross cultural) moral guide; and, as such, is the very kind of moral guidance I would expect from a Creator who wants us to learn to overcome the immoral side of our nature. So, while it's not compelling evidence, it's enough to shift me into the agnostic category.

On the other hand, conscience renders the moral guidance offered in the sacred texts of religion useless at best and misleading bias at worst. For example, the commandment on killing does no harm if interpreted as a general rule. On the other hand, it's of no use when needed in a specific situation which could be an exception.

If the commandment is interpreted as an absolute rule, that killing is always immoral, the judgments of conscience which justify killing in self-defense and to protect others from aggressive attacks are ignored.

 

[Maximilian]

I didn't ask you to establish God's existence, I asked you about your apparently flawed logic.

Which I will address as soon as you answer my question here.

 

[HonestJoe]

Which I will address as soon as you answer my question here.

I did answer your question. You're going to have to stop evading eventually or choose to just slink away.

 

[blü 2]

The other scenario is when a non-human organism develops sufficient language skills to write theories as to how the human species could have gotten the incorrect assumption that they were more special than any other organism on the planet.

I suspect that the other organism will then go on to show that its kind is the most special on the planet.

 

[Valjean]

Example: A soldier, killing enemy combatants in a just cause is ordered to kill a group of civilians. The ordered act will immediately feel wrong to him. Should he obey the order, he will be nagged with guilt by his conscience for the rest of his life whenever he remembers his immoral act.

Interesting point. How does the soldier determine who can be killed with impunity and who will likely leave an emotional scar?[/quote]
An important part of military training involves stripping away the social and religious conditioning instilled during one's upbringing and replacing it with an authoritarian, tribal mindset.
A soldier abdicates moral responsibility, transferring it to those giving orders. I think few feel guilt at this point. They can fire bomb Dresden or Tokyo, killing tens of thousands of women and children, they can slaughter an entire village in My Lai and feel nothing but satisfaction. True, some soldiers do suffer sequelae like PTSD, but this does not seem to restrain their initial aggression.
Beneath a thin facade of civilization, we're tribal animals. We don't naturally extend moral consideration to those outside our own tribe.

Over the last 20 years or so, social scientists have finally figured that part out but they're still confused by the part that reason plays in judging moral situations.

"In contrast to older, conventional accounts that treat ethical decision making and behavior as the result of deliberative and intendedly rational processes, a rapidly growing body of social science research has framed ethical thought and behavior as driven by intuition."

I think a rudimentary sense of right and wrong is inborn in many organisms, as are certain altruistic behavior patterns, but humans are remarkable in their ability to overlay these with elaborate social systems, religions and moral codes.

 

[Valjean]

Morals are innate but that doesn't mean they can't be destroyed through various means. It's no different from breaking a bone.

Considering the wide range of "moral" behaviors in various cultures, what sorts of behaviors do you think are innate?

In such a context, racism would be objectively immoral. You start with a subjective goal (a society where minorities don't have to worry about discrimination). From there you can reason objectively if a certain act takes you closer to that end goal or further away. Closer would be moral. Further away would be immoral.

So that's where I think morals come from... From the "utopian" ideal we have in mind of how society should look, how it should work. And the moral reasoning that follows will be using that ideal as a guiding principle. We'll combine that with knowledge we have about the world and those together will conclude in moral evaluation and development.


So, imo it's a combination of:
- natural necessity (social species necessarily require SOME minimum of rules of conduct to make it work)
- relatively arbitrary end goals to shoot for. these goals change over time as we gain more experience in "society building"
- knowledge about the world around us (black people are homo sapiens just like the rest of us and not inferior, or better for that matter)

But are most peoples really so so consequentialist? Lots of laws and prescribed behaviors are downright dysfunctional, and clearly unfair.

The main message here is that morals are derived and developed. They are the result of a reasoning process.

They are NOT laid down by an authority. Needing to appeal to an authority who tells you what is right and wrong, is literally what psychopathy is.-

It seems to me that most civilized moral systems are more supportive of a status quo, usually hierarchical, than they are designed with any idealistic system of equality or fairness in mind.

 

[night912]

Notably, humanity does not deem sex slavery, pedophilia, the gunning down of helpless little children, brutality, democide, gang rape, racism or even serial homicide as merely socially improper conduct, like, say, picking your nostrils at the dinner table. Much rather, these jolt, outrage as well as horrify. They’re confronted as morally abominable facts -as undeniable acts of evil. (This is why, since time immemorial, even the most primitive cultures, regardless of their spiritual values, enforced laws and regulations against homicide and various other acts of evil.)


On the flip side, love, equality or self-sacrifice are more than just socially useful acts, like, say, bringing a lady roses on a first date. Rather, these are regarded as good moral facts; conduct which is actually good.


That said, irrational beasts don't possess such **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.


**Objective** morals are never derived from scientific research because science, by its very nature, is morally nihilistic. From where, then perhaps, did we obtain our **universal objective morals**?



Consider the following:


(1) If God does not exist, objective moral values and duties don't exist.

(2) If evil exists, objective moral values and duties exist.

(3) Evil exists.

(4) Therefore, objective moral values and duties do exist.

(5) Therefore, God exists.

(6) Therefore, God is the locus of all objective moral values and duties.



That's to say, as Dostoevsky once mused, "If there is no God, everything is permitted."

Where's your evidence for premise 1?

 

[Valjean]

My opinions on the topic of morality are mostly based on my personal observations of human behavior. We agree that there is a likely connection to survival.

However, I also think it likely that conscience is a very simple, universal (cross cultural) moral guide; and, as such, is the very kind of moral guidance I would expect from a Creator who wants us to learn to overcome the immoral side of our nature. So, while it's not compelling evidence, it's enough to shift me into the agnostic category.

What is "the immoral side of our nature," and why does it seem to vary so among cultures?
If cross cultural comparisons are any evidence, it doesn't look like the creator is very good at promoting any sort of universal behavior.

On the other hand, conscience renders the moral guidance offered in the sacred texts of religion useless at best and misleading bias at worst. For example, the commandment on killing does no harm if interpreted as a general rule. On the other hand, it's of no use when needed in a specific situation which could be an exception.

If the commandment is interpreted as an absolute rule, that killing is always immoral, the judgments of conscience which justify killing in self-defense and to protect others from aggressive attacks are ignored.

Good points. Social convention has always cherry-picked and 'interpreted' scripture to reflect current attitudes. Hasn't religion always been used to bolster the attitudes, laws and behaviors du jour?

 

[Bear Wild]

I'm going to go on a whim here and say empathy/mirror neurons. If history has shown us anything, we can be cruel and are still cruel to entities we don't consider like us. Humans, animals and all species alike. The less we empathise, the less or don't consider if something is wrong. Hence, morality seems to originate from our ability to empathise.

I agree with you on this point. The studies of empathy in animal models are giving us a better appreciation of this behavior and its pro-social effect. Interesting rats with the choice to free another rat from a trap vs the choice of selecting a favorite food chose to free the trapped rat. The favorite food which I think was chocolate would have seemed to be the immediate choice but natural selection favored empathizing with the trapped rat as more important or more rewarding.

 

[Valjean]

OK - then trees don't have it...

...or do they?

Still no wiser I'm afraid...or am I?

See - what the "defining myths of a social unit" are, are elements of human culture - clearly trees don't have human culture...but if these elements of human culture are, as suggested, parts of "learned survival strategy" then species other than humans can certainly have them can't they? Do chimpanzees have culture? Who knows? Do they have "myths"? Probably not. Do they have "learned survival strategies"? Certainly. So do chimpanzees have morals? I'm suggesting they probably do - but not human morals - they just have norms of social interaction which are part of a survival strategy...if you have dogs, you will know that they also have some kind of morals - it is, for example, OK for the top dog to take the food of the others - and they will turn away with their tails between their legs - but woe betide the dog that tries to steal the top dog's dinner - all hell will break loose. Not human morals - in fact we even try to intervene to make it 'fairer' from our point of view - but we only get away with that by becoming the 'top dog' ourselves. We can't impose human morality on other animals, we just usurp their socially dominant roles for a time.

Trees? Do they have survival strategies? - obviously they do. Are they 'learned' - certainly not in the way humans learn. But do they respond to their environmental circumstances - e.g. trees at the edge of a mature forest that are exposed to the wind etc. will be shorter and have thicker trunks than those inside the forest that have the protection of the outer trees...how do the trees on the outside "know" that they should grow differently than those in more sheltered locations? When a tree is "attacked" by having its leaves cut or bitten it may release volatile organic compounds into the air - in response to which all the trees of that species in the vicinity will begin to produce higher levels of toxins in their leaves to make them distasteful to herbivores.

Is that culture? Is that trees communicating with their closest neighbours to alert them to danger or changing their natural behaviour in response to circumstances so that the group has a better chance of survival?

So how - apart from the level of complexity - is that different from humans 'devising' strategies intended to protect the best interests of the group over the freedom of the the individual?

By "learned survival strategies", anthropologists mean taught survival strategies, as opposed to inborn.
These include language, toolkit, dress, mythology, food acquisition, economy, politics, &c.
All organisms have what could be termed 'survival strategies', though these may be only simple algorithms.

Trees? They communicate, co-operate, care for their young and assist other trees in need. In a true forest they're all connected through the mycorrhizal internet.

Chimps communicate, they co-operate, they have emotions like ours. They have complex social interactions. They have tribally learned survival strategies. They've been taught a rudimentary sign language. The do have some mirror neurons and learn by imitation, but they don't seem to actively teach.

 

[joe1776]

What is "the immoral side of our nature," and why does it seem to vary so among cultures?...If cross cultural comparisons are any evidence, it doesn't look like the creator is very good at promoting any sort of universal behavior.

By the "immoral side of our nature," I meant the human inclination to harm others whether the harm is emotional or physical.

There appear to be cultural differences in moral codes but I think the appearance is deceptive. For example, a couple of centuries back, many of the cultures still condoned legal slavery while morally advanced cultures did not. Now that all cultures have rejected slavery, the appearance of a difference on this issue has vanished. There now appears to be a cultural difference on the way women are treated but, in time, I suspect that too will disappear.

Cultural customs are deceptive also. For example, the ways people might insult each other varies from culture to culture. However, insults cause emotional harm and it's immoral to insult innocent others in all cultures.

Harvard's Moral Sense Test has been online since 2003. A few years ago, they posted preliminary results on their research. I can't link them for you now because they have been taken down because their appearance might have influenced the ongoing test. So, I can only give you my word that they were showing uniformity across cultures, education, religion, ages, and gender.

Here's a link to the original basis for conducting the test which includes this:

"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

Good points. Social convention has always cherry-picked and 'interpreted' scripture to reflect current attitudes. Hasn't religion always been used to bolster the attitudes, laws and behaviors du jour?

With more than 100 Bible quotes on slavery and none condemning the legal practice, the Catholic pope was right when in 1866 he told his large group of faithful that he found nothing in Divine Law opposed to the buying, selling or trading of slaves.

Despite this, most Catholics favored abolition of the practice. What could have moved them to do so if not for the human conscience shared by people of all cultures?

 

[charlie sc]

I agree with you on this point. The studies of empathy in animal models are giving us a better appreciation of this behavior and its pro-social effect. Interesting rats with the choice to free another rat from a trap vs the choice of selecting a favorite food chose to free the trapped rat. The favorite food which I think was chocolate would have seemed to be the immediate choice but natural selection favored empathizing with the trapped rat as more important or more rewarding.

Can you cite those studies for me? For my curiosity.

 

[charlie sc]

With more than 100 Bible quotes on slavery and none condemning the legal practice

There's also a few quotes condoning it as well, lol.

For example, Pope Gregory I endorsed slavery using scripture.

 

[sooda]

There's also a few quotes condoning it as well, lol.

For example, Pope Gregory I endorsed slavery using scripture.

I had quite forgotten there were so many references to slavery.

What Does the Bible Say About Anti-slavery?

 

[charlie sc]

I had quite forgotten there were so many references to slavery.

What Does the Bible Say About Anti-slavery?

Some of those quotes advocate slavery.

 

[Maximilian]

I did answer your question. You're going to have to stop evading eventually or choose to just slink away.

Where? Link?

 

[Maximilian]

Where's your evidence for premise 1?

Well, since no human being is superior to another no absolute human moral authority can exist and so neither can objective moral values and duties.

 

[charlie sc]

Which I will address as soon as you answer my question here.

You're POE'ing methods aren't funny. Your attempt to draw fallacious inferences to autism is used in a derogatory manner. Therefore, you are using autism in a derogatory way. It's intolerant and stigmatising to a group that has enough problems as it is.