Reason is the Most Important Driver of Human Moral Progress?

[Audie]

Your throwaway one-liners don't exactly convey much thought or erudition, so you don't have much room to talk on this subject.

Nect time dont make claims you"ve
not thought thru and cannot explain.

You wont be called on it nor have to debase
yourself with diversions and calumny.

 

[Aupmanyav]

An ambitious man will look for ways to maximize the value gained by both himself AND those he is trading with so as to ensure everyone's well-being and to increase mutually beneficial trading relations for the future.

Agree with you. That is the idea of business in India. You would find 'Labha - Shubha' (Profit - Auspicious/honest/fair) in most Indian shops and on their account books.
Labha Shubha - Google Search

 

[LuisDantas]

UMM Human moral is declining, Not Progressing in today's society

Perhaps. But the way I see it, most of the effect comes from the impressive growth of the moral challenges that come with such heightened population levels as we currently have.

 

[Spirit of Light]

Perhaps. But the way I see it, most of the effect comes from the impressive growth of the moral challenges that come with such heightened population levels as we currently have.

Yes the more people we become there is larger risk of more people become immoral in their behavior

 

[Stevicus]

Nect time dont make claims you"ve
not thought thru and cannot explain.

You wont be called on it nor have to debase
yourself with diversions and calumny.

Oh, I've thought it through. I guess I was just taken aback that an educated young woman such as yourself seemed oblivious to the concept I was raising. If you really wanted a thorough explanation, all you had to do was just ask.

Let's get back to the initial question I posed to you in post #39:

Don't you think that greed and selfishness are the antitheses of reason?

Your answer was to play coy, as if to insinuate that you never heard of the concepts known as "greed" and "selfishness."

Rather than getting sucked in to playing that game, I chose to posit a second question which (if you truly were a thinking person) should've made you think more about the first question.

But instead of giving a thoughtful reply to either question, you instead chose to believe that I was unable to answer your question and erroneously concluded that I didn't put much thought into this.

 

[LuisDantas]

Yes the more people we become there is larger risk of more people become immoral in their behavior

Mainly because the challenges become geometrically bigger and more difficult to approach, IMO.

There are people who sometimes complain that this world has become too complicated. I somewhat agree. Much as I welcome many of the cultural changes that have been developing, it is only fair to acknowledge that they cause a considerable burden and tension for those who for whatever reason can't quite catch up.

I don't think that the difficulty of, say, our grandparents in accepting LGBT rights, or changes in ethnic composition, language distribution, or job market shifts, are nearly good enough reason to try and stop or even slow any of those changes. But that does not mean that their ill ease is any less real, does not make their coping noticeably easier, and does not spare any of us from existing in the same world and having a need and a duty to deal with those realities either.

Even positive and urgent change has a price and we must accept the need to carry the weight of that price.

 

[Vouthon]

Do you find the morality to be black
and white, no contrary case possible?

I find myself inherently, spontaneously, seeing myself in a person involuntarily left to die without care or purposefully being killed by a eugenical policy, and feeling my conscience pricked/emotions moved by the "injustice" of this being done to them.

This is a purely intuitive aversion to seeing another being deprived in a way I would fear for myself, empathy on my part, that comes before I've even subjected that feeling to 'arguments' or 'logic'.

But I could imagine a different Vouthon, reared in a very different material time and culture far removed from my Western, liberal milieu, and having been raised in a different moral universe.

That Vouthon has been raised in a highly aristocratic, stratified society in a pre-industrial age where the common wisdom is that: "pity is a soft, weak emotion that leads one away from the exercise of pure reason", as many of the ancient Stoics and other Greek philosophers believed. To base an action on such affective grounds was, in this culture, to act 'irrationally'. Aristotle argued that women were more emotional and given to an 'excess of pity and compassion' than men, who were the more rational and thus superior gender.

To reference Seneca again in De Clementia Book II, who said that "all good men....":

"...will avoid pity, which is a vice incident to weak minds which cannot endure the sight of another's sufferings. It is, therefore, most commonly found in the worst people; there are old women and girls who are affected by the tears of the greatest criminals, and who, if they could, would let them out of prison. Pity considers a man's misfortunes and does not consider to what they are due...The wise man knows not how to feel pity or to grant pardon...You know that eyes must be weak, if they fill with rheum at the sight of another's blearedness...Pity is a defect in the mind of people who are extraordinarily affected by suffering"
​

Seneca was by no means 'immoral' by our standards: he very much commended that a wise sage should, as he writes, "restore children to their weeping mothers, loose the chains of the captive, release the gladiator from his bondage, and even bury the carcass of the criminal".

But it is quite incontrovertible that we are in a different moral universe from that which formed New Testament injunctions that one should, "Rejoice with those who rejoice; mourn with those who mourn" (Romans 12:15) and "Remember those who are in prison, as though you were in prison with them; those who are being tortured, as though you yourselves were being tortured" (Hebrews 13:13).

It doesn't strike me as an outlandish notion that societies shaped by Seneca's philosophy and presumptions will foster an environment and consequent set of moral norms quite distinct from one formed by the latter. One society viewed 'weeping with those who weep' a necessity of being a moral, good person; whereas the other decried it as a defect, a vice of 'old women' and 'girls' for the wise person to have 'weak eyes, filled with tears at the sight of another's blearedness'.

One culture put a premium on empathy, pity and suchlike intuitions - as well as weakness as a strength and superior to the 'strong' - as the greatest good, whereas the other extolled reason (identified with the divine logos, or alleged ordering principle of the universe) as the highest virtue and scorned affairs of the heart as the preserve of womanliness, of the passions of the 'weak' who could not control themselves.

The Vouthon raised in Seneca's cultural milieu, would have been inculturated from the day of his birth and then in interactions with my peers to understand what is moral in a different way, to view my own emotions and feelings in a different way, and so my view of eugenics may well have cohered with Seneca's - that it was: "a work of reason, to separate the sound from the worthless" even though the idea of this parallel universe "me" is profoundly disturbing to me!

 

[Revoltingest]

Is that justified, or, "justified"?

I'm not so wealthy that I can afford to use quotation marks as often as filthy rich asians do.
(But I wish I could.)

 

[Revoltingest]

It all comes down to "enlightened self interest." It's all to protect OUR way of life, right?

"Self interest" & "our way of life" are good concepts to keep largely separate.

Do you really believe that those wars were to "serve the greater good"?

I believe that was the motive of those waging them.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

Objectively reasoning has improved morality, by leaps and bounds. Many religions pride bounds in having unchanging ways and gods. They obviously can't change things if they themselves are unchangeable. Religion seals morality to the time the religion was created. Reason acknowledges that change.

 

[Koldo]

I'm not sure I would agree.

To my mind, our capacity for empathy and identification with others has been the key driver of human moral progress throughout history, and this was obviously derived both from our own sense of self (and recognising that other people were also 'selves' just like us with similar feelings, wants, needs and desires) and our sociability as tribal beings, reared in families and friendship groups for survival purposes.

There are many studies demonstrating that people often make moral judgements intuitively, with reason having an important but ancillary role.

Reason by itself, as abstract logic, can result in very diverse justifications for practices that many of us in the West would regard as grossly immoral but not necessarily irrational or devoid of logic. Reason with empathy has certainly been essential to arguments about morality and changing moral norms, but by itself - no, I don't think so.

I would take 'eugenics' as an example (both negative - i.e. 'left to die' - and positive, that is actively killing)

Amongst many ancient Greeks and Romans, it was deemed perfectly in keeping with reason for those of a weak, hereditary constitution or with a disability or mental illness to be left to die, without receiving care from the rest of society at society's expense and also to be prohibited from breeding. Thus, infanticide by exposure was endemic in these societies and the founding constitution of the Roman Republic - the Twelve Tablets - actually mandated, as stated in Cicero’s dialogue De Legibus (Cic. Leg.iii 8.19): "cito necatus tamquam ex tabulis insignis ad deformitatem puer ("A notably deformed child shall be killed immediately").

None exemplified this better than the great Stoic philosopher Seneca (c. 4 BC – AD 65):

"We put down mad dogs; we kill the wild, untamed ox; we use the knife on sick sheep to stop their infecting the flock; we destroy abnormal offspring at birth; children, too, if they are born weak or deformed, we drown. Yet this is not the work of anger, but of reason - to separate the sound from the worthless"

- (Seneca, Lucius Annaeus (1995). Seneca: Moral and Political Essays. Cambridge University Press. p. 32. ISBN 0-5213-4818-8. Retrieved November 2, 2013.)
​

Or as Plato put it in his Republic:

Socrates:[9] These two practices [legal and medical] will treat the bodies and minds of those of your citizens who are naturally well endowed in these respects; as for the rest, those with a poor physical constitution will be allowed to die, and those with irredeemably rotten minds will be put to death. Right?

Glaucon: Yes, we’ve shown that this is the best course for those at the receiving end of the treatment as well as for the community. (409e-410a)
​

Now, most people today in the West would regard such a view as "immoral" (unless one were trying to relieve someone of unimaginable suffering, as opposed to the Greek view of these persons being worthless or a drain on society) but is it really against reason? Classical Greece and Rome were eminently reasonable societies that set a high value upon philosophy and intellectual enquiry. We aren't talking Nazi Germany with its strident anti-intellectualism. Nor were such social norms limited to the Graeco-Roman world. While the ancient Jews did not practise infanticide or eugenics against the weak (and there was a strong Torah-based and prophetic tradition of advocating for the lowly and oppressed against the strong), some Sadducee and Essene Judeans rigidly interpreted the purity laws of the Pentateuch to reach somewhat similar conclusions, as we can see from the Community Rule at Qumran (dead sea scrolls):

Fools, madmen, simpletons and imbeciles, the blind, the maimed, the lame, the deaf and minors, none of these may enter the midst of the community (CD 15.15-17)​

The first century Roman Jewish historian, Josephus, also tells us that at least by his time: 'Anyone who touches or lives under the same roof [with a leper] is regarded unclean' (Contra Apionem 1.281) and that such people were kept away from normal society (Antiquitates Judaicae 9:74). 'As an attack on the skin [...] leprosy threatens or attacks [...] integrity, wholeness and completeness of the community and its members' (Carter 2000:199; cf. Pilch 1981:113).

And again, on strictly 'rational' grounds....why not? Leprosy was a terrible disease. If lepers are a threat to the community, why not just leave them in a colony somewhere to die with other lepers and keep healthy people safe? The community and its survival comes first, over the welfare of these sick individuals. Many would have seen that as eminently reasonable. Ancient Israel was a society capable of producing great works of wisdom like Ecclesiastes and Sirach, with their startlingly astute observations on life. This was not an 'irrational' society in the context of the ancient world - Jews had a reputation among Greeks as a nation of philosophers, an especially philosophical people.

The Greeks and Romans were rational but didn't have a particularly developed notion of innate human dignity, and can we really blame them? The natural order that Aristotle and other natural philosophers saw around them was 'dog eat dog' - predatory animals feasting upon weaker herbivores and characterised by a seeming 'hierarchy' e.g. certain species had 'alpha-males' and such that seemed to naturally privilege males, courtesy of their greater bodily strength, over females.

Likewise, the received customs passed down from the ancestors and believed to originate from the gods themselves, presupposed inherent, natural inequalities between people. There were slaves, and Aristotle took it for granted that some people - barbarians, those who didn't speak Greek - were 'naturally slaves', born to be subordinated to their betters ("that one should command and another obey is not just necessary but expedient”). An anecdote attributed to a number of ancient philosophers (including Thales and Socrates) epitomized a principle of the laws of nature many took for a self-evident truth: “He thanked Fortune for three things: ‘first, that I am a human and not a beast; second, that I am a man and not a woman; third, that I am a Greek and not a barbarian’”. Thucydides, in his history of the Peloponnesian War, would put it even more bluntly than any mere superiority complex: “The strong do what they have the power to do, and the weak must suck it up”.

Friedrich Nietzsche in the late 19th century and the 20th century eugenicists like Galton, applying Darwinian evolutionary theory to human social relations, deemed this Platonic-Aristotelian-Spartan norm to be the most 'rational' mode of conduct. From the Kaufmann translation of The Antichrist ss.2 we find that he wrote:

"What is good? - All that heightens the feeling of power, power itself in man. What is bad - All that proceeds from weakness. The weak and ill-constituted shall perish: first principle of our philanthropy. And we shall help them do so. What is more harmful than any vice? - Active sympathy for the ill-constituted and weak - Christianity..."​

In 1910, Churchill wrote to the then-British Prime Minister, Asquith, expressing his support for legislation that proposed to introduce a compulsory sterilisation program in the UK, saying: “The unnatural and increasingly rapid growth of the feeble-minded and insane classes, coupled as it is with a steady restriction among the thrifty , energetic and superior stocks, constitutes a national and race danger which it is impossible to exaggerate … I feel that the source from which the stream of madness is fed should be cut off and sealed up before another year has passed.” Similarly, George Bernard Shaw wrote: "The only fundamental and possible socialism is the socialisation of the selective breeding of man." Bertrand Russell proposed that the state should promulgate colour-coded "procreation tickets" to prevent the gene pool of the elite being diluted by inferior human beings.

If we want a healthy, genetically improved human species - what's 'irrational' about it?

Well, its "immoral" because we empathsize with the poor, innocent souls who are the victims of such policies and believe that they offend deeply-felt humane and intuitive values.

 

[syo]

In what way?
I see it as improving.

The psychologists have a lot of work to do... No?

 

[joe1776]

I'm far more inclined to your view than Pinker's (given the rather obvious pitfalls of trying to derive moral behaviour from what is 'rational') as I think it has stronger merit and empirical backing, but I still think its rather teleological, almost mystical thinking - if taken to the same extreme as the "cult of reason" approach.

Environmental factors, and I guess 'epigenetics', are as important in moral development - arguably more so - than appeals to 'reason' or 'conscience', which seem to rest upon a sense of 'enlightenment' or 'moral purpose'.

This line of thought makes a judgment about human 'nature' - what it is to be human, that we are inherently moral beings on the basis of objective standards of good and evil that just 'emerge' in our minds by natural mechanism, like a spark of the divine. I'm not sure that squares with Darwinian science. I actually think its a secular attempt at retaining a theological understanding of human morality, if applied in an absolute sense.

Our moral norms are heavily shaped by environment (both material factors & other people) and socialisation, just as much as they are by empathy and intuition (which provides the basis for identifying our needs and wants and desires and sense of self-consciousness in other moral agents i.e. people, and thus being able - without thinking - to just spontaneously put ourselves in another mind's shoes, based purely on intuition, without consciously thinking it through). And reasoned judgments then play a part as well, albeit in an ancillary function.

Nature and nurture both condition our behaviour.

You wrote that my position, taken to the extreme, could result in mystical thinking. You're right.

I think conscience is the best evidence that a Creator might exist because it renders judgments immediately from the unconscious on specific cases even though human acts happen in an almost infinite variety. The wisdom required to do that is well beyond my comprehension.

If we think of the fittest to survive as being those willing to cooperate in a worthy cause (recent research at Cal Berkeley supports this), rather than the winners of dog-eat-dog competition, conscience is aligned with our survival.

The pleasure function of our brains will signal us when we treat others with kindness. We'll feel good about it. The pain function in our brain will signal us when we consider doing something immoral. We'll feel the wrongness or the unfairness. If we ignore the guidance of conscience and do it anyway, the pain function will signal us with guilt whenever we remember our immoral act.

Basically, using the tactics of reward and punishment, we are being trained by our brains to become better human beings --- which leads me to the conclusion that if life has a purpose it can only be that we are here to make moral progress. I think contentment is the reward for achievement of that goal.

I see two functions for reason in making moral judgments: 1) To get the facts of the moral situation straight (What happened exactly?); 2) To weigh the consequences to determine which of the two harmful options in a moral dilemma does the least harm.

 

[Augustus]

Religion seals morality to the time the religion was created.

That clearly isn't true.

For example, look at the history of religious thought in Europe from the 1st to 18th C. Almost all the foundations of Western Liberalism initially emerged in a specifically theological context long before secular thinkers picked up the torch.

Far from sealing morality in the past, the Western idea of moral progress was even largely a product of Christian theology.

 

[Shadow Wolf]

That clearly isn't true.

For example, look at the history of religious thought in Europe from the 1st to 18th C. Almost all the foundations of Western Liberalism initially emerged in a specifically theological context long before secular thinkers picked up the torch.

Far from sealing morality in the past, the Western idea of moral progress was even largely a product of Christian theology.

People have changed. The words that make up texts of Christianity have not. It's definitely one of those religions where we find adherents who pride themselves on unchanging ways, rules, and gods.

 

[Polymath257]

The problem with *pure* reason or *pure* logic is that it has no axioms to start with. That means it is impossible to even get off the ground after the basics (modus ponens, etc).

For morality, the basic required assumption is something to do with *goals*. What do we *want*? Our own survival? The survival of our society? Increased happiness? Fairness? Universality of laws?

The *goal* of having 'genetic purity' is one many have had in history. There is nothing self-contradictory in it. It was even seen as obviously *moral* in the past.

Now it is seen as immoral in the extreme. That is partly because of an increase of compassion and NOT of logic. We have become more compassionate about those who disagree with us. And *that* is what leads to better morality (IMHO).

Because of an increase in compassion, we have become more committed to fairness and universality. We have started to see many that were previously despised as simply being held down by those in power. This has shown itself in the fight for women's rights, fights against racism, fights for gay rights, etc.

But these are NOT because of an improvement of logic. They are improvement of our compassion.

 

[PureX]

I don't think that the difficulty of, say, our grandparents in accepting LGBT rights, or changes in ethnic composition, language distribution, or job market shifts, are nearly good enough reason to try and stop or even slow any of those changes. But that does not mean that their ill ease is any less real...

Even positive and urgent change has a price and we must accept the need to carry the weight of that price.

This is something that, all too often, neither conservatives nor liberals recognize. The conservatives need to acknowledge the need for such change, while the liberals need to recognize that these change are more difficult for some to accept, than for others.

 

[Augustus]

People have changed. The words that make up texts of Christianity have not. It's definitely one of those religions where we find adherents who pride themselves on unchanging ways, rules, and gods.

Religions are living traditions, not narrow literalistic readings of texts though. Christian ideas such as each person having inherent and equal worth, individual moral responsibility, moral universalism, the strong having a duty of care towards the weak, and history being progress (not endlessly repeating cycles) are all obviously present in modern liberalism (and largely absent from pre-Christian thought).

Of course, there are ultra-literalist fundy Christians who pride themselves on being stuck in the past, these people are not representative of the tradition in general (and likely didn't even exist at all until relatively recently).

 

[Sunstone]

To my mind, our capacity for empathy and identification with others has been the key driver of human moral progress throughout history, and this was obviously derived both from our own sense of self (and recognising that other people were also 'selves' just like us with similar feelings, wants, needs and desires) and our sociability as tribal beings, reared in families and friendship groups for survival purposes.

I agree with you to some large degree, but I think you are quite overlooking the profound role that reason plays in all of that. To me, Sean, when you exclude reason from the mix, you open a gallon-size can of worms.

I am currently taking a break from writing a letter to a dear friend of mine, or else I would have the time to offer you my fuller thoughts on your views. Sorry about that. All I can do with the time I have is point out that reason is what is used to generalize and extend empathy beyond identification.

For instance, I do not naturally have much sense of empathy or identity with a child molester on death row. So on what basis then am I willing to support his right to appeal, to humane treatment, to not be subjected to murder by the state, etc. etc? Is that basis not reason? Once you recognize the fact that reason is used to generalize and extend empathy, it does not take much imagination to grasp that reason is thus hugely important to moral progress. For that -- and for other reasons -- I think reason is a key player in moral progress.

I will try to get back with my fuller views within the next day or two. Thank you for s stimulating post, Sean.

 

[Sunstone]

So do you find eugenics to be immoral?

More often obscenely stupid as practiced than immoral in principle.