Evolution and morality
Today's Science Times includes an interesting article about Jonathan Haidt, a psychologist who studies morality. He hypothesizes that our brains have evolved two levels of morality:
Dr. Haidt (pronounced height) began his research career by probing the emotion of disgust. Testing people’s reactions to situations like that of a hungry family that cooked and ate its pet dog after it had become roadkill, he explored the phenomenon of moral dumbfounding -- when people feel strongly that something is wrong but cannot explain why.
Dumbfounding led him to view morality as driven by two separate mental systems, one ancient and one modern, though the mind is scarcely aware of the difference. The ancient system, which he calls moral intuition, is based on the emotion-laden moral behaviors that evolved before the development of language. The modern system -- he calls it moral judgment -- came after language, when people became able to articulate why something was right or wrong.
The emotional responses of moral intuition occur instantaneously -- they are primitive gut reactions that evolved to generate split-second decisions and enhance survival in a dangerous world. Moral judgment, on the other hand, comes later, as the conscious mind develops a plausible rationalization for the decision already arrived at through moral intuition.
Moral dumbfounding, in Dr. Haidt’s view, occurs when moral judgment fails to come up with a convincing explanation for what moral intuition has decided.
Over at Edge, Haidt talks about his research at length in his own words (and there's a discussion of those words).
Tangential question: Depending on whom you ask, morality is either a social construct, the law of our deity, or an evolutionary adaptation -- but does it ultimately matter? If morality is the product of evolution, does that make it any more or less "right" than if comes from some other source?
-Greg Dahlmann
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Well, it might. There are well-known arguments from the claim that morality is an adaptation to the conclusion that it is an illusion of some kind. Michael Ruse presented something like this view; more recently Richard Joyce has defended it in two books, and Sharon Street in an influential article.
- by Neil on Sep 18, 2007 at 9:59 PM | link
I've been curious about the common media storyline for these issues:
Scientists (unlike those old-fashioned philosophers) are "breaking new ground" on morality. And to think, all these years we've been reading Kant! (For example, take the first paragraph of the NYT article: "Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.")
I'd like to see it framed more in terms of cooperation than competition.
Greg, you write, "Depending on whom you ask, morality is either a social construct, the law of our deity, or an evolutionary adaptation."
Maybe add: Cognitive reasoning?
- by Eli on Sep 19, 2007 at 9:19 AM | link
It seems to me that what makes morality 'right' is what it acheives.
- by emily on Sep 19, 2007 at 9:27 AM | link
I think that the question about which is 'right' (evolution, diety, or rationality) misses the point Haidt and others are making. Specifically they are telling us that most of our moral or ethics quandries are responded to through a conflict of competing discernments (instinct [evolution] vs rational justification). The implications for destroying any notion of ethical realism should humble us. That is their point (Haidt and Joshua Green and earlier Wilson).
- by Brian H. Childs on Sep 19, 2007 at 9:28 AM | link
Eli: I had somewhat sloppily used social construct to include reason and rationality, but you're good to be more precise.
Brian: I think you're correct about Haidt's point. I probably should have been more clear about it, but I wasn't really trying to take on his ideas (though there's a lot to discuss there).
I was interested in this research more generally. The idea of adding evolutionary adaptation to the list of potential sources of morality is interesting to me in that it adds a whole new dimension to the discussion. What makes something moral or immoral? Before, the answers would have been (roughly): it's what God says, or it's what we as humans rationally decide. Now, we can possibly add (roughly): it's our biological nature to know right from wrong. And I wonder, if that is the source, does it carry any more or less authority (however you want to define authority)?
Or, to put it another way, some people may look at research indicating that other primates demonstrate something akin to a sense of fairness or morality and say, "Hey, look at that, it's natural for us humans to share a common sense of morality! It's part of being human." To which others may respond, "Well, just because our genes code for that behavior doesn't doesn't necessarily make it right."
- by Greg on Sep 19, 2007 at 11:30 AM | link
The thing is, most evolutionary theory is a series of just-so stories made up by people who assume evolution is the ultimate cause of life the universe and everything. So for them anything that increases fitness is descriptively (c.f. prescriptively) 'right' by defintion. That is a completely different use of the word 'right' than consciously-ethitically-correct 'right' or pleases-God 'right' or does-the-least-harm-and-most-good 'right'. Despite using the same word I see it as apples and aardvarks. If you value only species-level fitness, evolutionary goals are moral goals but most of us have complex heirrachies of conflicting goals where the survival of the species is not of much immediate importance.
- by emily on Sep 19, 2007 at 12:16 PM | link
Emily- I think everyone writing here and those we are writing about have read Hume and Moore and have taken their notion of the 'naturalistic fallacy' seriously. Indeed Haidt and others stress that what interests them is not some ontological 'rightness' but that there is built into our moral processing a conflict between instinct and reason and realizing that should humble us and give us pause.
- by Brian H. Childs on Sep 20, 2007 at 9:25 AM | link
Brian, the naturalistic fallacy is a product of ordinary language philosophy, which is now entirely discredited. Since all philosophers now believe that identity statements need not be a priori - ie, that scientists are not making a mistake when they say that 'water' is h2o - they are committed to dropping the claim that there is no such fallacy. Increasingly, philosophers realize that there is no such fallacy; see, eg, Richard Joyce or Michael Smith.
- by Neil on Sep 20, 2007 at 11:02 PM | link