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

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
How did we get our moral beliefs?

Here are some different ways to believe where morals could come from.

1. Supernatural derived morals – moral knowledge based on the will or commandments of the Creator/god/goddess. Morals are defined by the creator

2. Non-natural - neither the natural nor the supernatural but coming from comprehension requiring something comparable to mathematical intuition. (Henry Sidgwick in his book The Methods of Ethics, 1907). I am not so familiar with this view.

3. Natural morals – there are moral facts are among the natural facts of the world or moral truths. Here Kant argues that moral knowledge cannot be based on experience of the natural world. If we have moral knowledge at all, we must know a general moral truth from which we can deduce specific conclusions. From what I have read there are those who feel moral properties are identical with certain natural properties specified by combinations of non-moral terms found in the natural and social sciences. And others that believe moral facts are natural facts but denies that they are specifiable using the language of the natural and social sciences.

4. Naturalized morals including rational choice, and pragmatic naturalism. These describe moral facts without absolute moral truth or knowledge and have been described by Nelson Goodman, W Quine, William James, John Dewey and Philip Kitcher

And finally

5. Evolutionary Morals – proposed as early as Darwin who suggested that human morality originated and persisted among our ancestors primarily as an adaptation fashioned by natural selection. This explanation of the origins and persistence of morals among humans undermine the likelihood that moral beliefs are true and hence undermine the possibility of moral knowledge. It is in this last category that advances in neuroscience, evolution, anthropology and psychology are unveiling how human behavior and culture evolved. Here science may not be creating moral beliefs but rather explaining how they came about and the role they serve.

[Interesting in the category of evolutionary moral development there is a division between those that believe the cognitive aspect of the brain in humans has created more complex morals and dominated over a more primitive intuitive/emotional morals (thus humans have an ability not seen in the natural world) and those that believe the cognitive and intuitive/emotions aspects of the brain with respect to morals have evolved together and are co-dependent (those that agree with Darwin that humans are different in degree and not kind).]

So where do you believe human morals come from?
 

Cooky

Veteran Member
How did we get our moral beliefs?

Here are some different ways to believe where morals could come from.

1. Supernatural derived morals – moral knowledge based on the will or commandments of the Creator/god/goddess. Morals are defined by the creator

2. Non-natural - neither the natural nor the supernatural but coming from comprehension requiring something comparable to mathematical intuition. (Henry Sidgwick in his book The Methods of Ethics, 1907). I am not so familiar with this view.

3. Natural morals – there are moral facts are among the natural facts of the world or moral truths. Here Kant argues that moral knowledge cannot be based on experience of the natural world. If we have moral knowledge at all, we must know a general moral truth from which we can deduce specific conclusions. From what I have read there are those who feel moral properties are identical with certain natural properties specified by combinations of non-moral terms found in the natural and social sciences. And others that believe moral facts are natural facts but denies that they are specifiable using the language of the natural and social sciences.

4. Naturalized morals including rational choice, and pragmatic naturalism. These describe moral facts without absolute moral truth or knowledge and have been described by Nelson Goodman, W Quine, William James, John Dewey and Philip Kitcher

And finally

5. Evolutionary Morals – proposed as early as Darwin who suggested that human morality originated and persisted among our ancestors primarily as an adaptation fashioned by natural selection. This explanation of the origins and persistence of morals among humans undermine the likelihood that moral beliefs are true and hence undermine the possibility of moral knowledge. It is in this last category that advances in neuroscience, evolution, anthropology and psychology are unveiling how human behavior and culture evolved. Here science may not be creating moral beliefs but rather explaining how they came about and the role they serve.

[Interesting in the category of evolutionary moral development there is a division between those that believe the cognitive aspect of the brain in humans has created more complex morals and dominated over a more primitive intuitive/emotional morals (thus humans have an ability not seen in the natural world) and those that believe the cognitive and intuitive/emotions aspects of the brain with respect to morals have evolved together and are co-dependent (those that agree with Darwin that humans are different in degree and not kind).]

So where do you believe human morals come from?

I think morals come from consciousness. Because in animals, as consciousness decreases, the morals decrease equally so.

...For instance trees have ansolutely no morals. Neither do they posess any kind of consciousness.
 

Epic Beard Man

Bearded Philosopher
This isn't a scientific issue, rather, a sociological one. Sociology/Philosophy deals with this.


“How could we ever say, as a matter of scientific fact, that one way of life is better, or more moral, than another? Whose definition of “better” or “moral” would we use? While many scientists now study the evolution of morality, as well as its underlying neurobiology, the purpose of their research is merely to describe how human beings think and behave. No one expects science to tell us how we ought to think and behave.”

Can Science Determine Our Morals?
 
How did we get our moral beliefs?


So where do you believe human morals come from?

Morals are as innate as the molars in your mouth.

You see that? Moral and molar are anagrams. Anagramming goes back to the days of Moses. It's a means to reveal a deeper meaning of a word.

There are two parts of the human form that represent truth: the squares; teeth and nails.

If i have missing molars, my morals are corrupted.

If i paint my nails black, I'm deadly and hateful. If i paint them clear, I understand something (I'm clear on an issue).

Semiotics. Sign language.

Morals are innate but are developed and fortified through parental guidance. However, we are all born into sin and the wages of sin is death. That means nearly all of us have some degree of corrupt morals.
 

Left Coast

This Is Water
Staff member
Premium Member
This isn't a scientific issue, rather, a sociological one. Sociology/Philosophy deals with this.


“How could we ever say, as a matter of scientific fact, that one way of life is better, or more moral, than another? Whose definition of “better” or “moral” would we use? While many scientists now study the evolution of morality, as well as its underlying neurobiology, the purpose of their research is merely to describe how human beings think and behave. No one expects science to tell us how we ought to think and behave.”

Can Science Determine Our Morals?

Sociology is a branch of science...

Morals evolved over time as rules which humans learned in order to cooperate and thrive together, since we are a social species. Science is perfectly capable of telling us how well a particular act conforms to our goal of surviving and thriving in interdependence on one another.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
Over the last 20 years or so, social scientists have been confirming that our morals emerge immediately from the unconscious as intuition (conscience).

We feel a specific act, say an unjustifiable killing, is wrong. We feel moral outrage and feel the urge to punish the offender. However, if it's a killing in a clear case of self-defense, it doesn't feel wrong, so we assume it's justified and we don't feel the urge to punish the killer.

For the last three centuries, theologians (Aquinas in particular) and moral philosophers have been assuming that the judgments of conscience are judgments of reason. They've been wrong and this false premise has resulted in making the topic of morality a confused mess.

Those doing moral research still don't have an elegant theory to explain our moral judgments but they at least have gotten past the false premise that they are judgments of reason.

College Psych courses are still teaching Kohlberg's flawed theory which is based on the idea that the judgments of conscience are the product of reason.
 
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Cooky

Veteran Member
Sociology is a branch of science...

Morals evolved over time as rules which humans learned in order to cooperate and thrive together, since we are a social species. Science is perfectly capable of telling us how well a particular act conforms to our goal of surviving and thriving in interdependence on one another.

Science can't tell us anything. Only people can.
 

siti

Well-Known Member
Google is at your fingertips
I typed in "what does Bob mean by 'culture'" - I didn't get any useful answers...

...but anyway, pressing on with the idea that 'culture' means the ideas, customs and behaviours of a society...or something like that...would that then make 'morals' the 'norms of behaviour' for that society? And if that is what it is, then wouldn't other social species - like dogs, sheep, bees, ants - maybe even trees - have 'morals'? If they just emerge as the 'cultural norms of behaviour' then there isn't really anything essentially 'human' about them - is there?
 
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siti

Well-Known Member
Well can you imagine that? I guess that proves that Google doesn't know everything. Have you asked Alexa?
Jeepers Bob! How many opinions do you want in this conversation? Anyway, I carried on with my line of thought without a clearer idea of yours - so just a normal RF 'discussion' I suppose.
 

The Reverend Bob

Fart Machine and Beastmaster
I typed in "what does Bob mean by 'culture'" - I didn't get any useful answers...

...but anyway, pressing on with the idea that 'culture' means the ideas, customs and behaviours of a society...or something like that...would that then make 'morals' the 'norms of behaviour' for that society? And if that is what it is, then wouldn't other social species - like dogs, sheep, bees, ants - maybe even trees - have 'morals'? If they just emerge as the 'cultural norms of behaviour' then there isn't really anything essentially 'human' about them - is there?
Trees have culture?
 
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