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The Definition of Morality

Heyo

Veteran Member
"Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation."

Do you agree or disagree with this definition? If not, then please explain your reasoning and what you think the actual definition is or should be?
Not wrong, but not specific enough.
By this definition every social behaviour can be labelled as moral, even, when you think of psychology as not distinctly human, animal behaviour.
Morality, in my book, requires not only behaving socially but also having thought about why social behaviour is preferable.
 

ajarntham

Member
Hi there!

So I am hoping there are posters out there who are chomping at the bit to get into a good old-fashioned RF scrap!

I have just started reading a book called "Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason and the Gap Between Us and Them" authored by Joshua Greene.

It is a fascinating book with which I agree on much but also disagree with a bit too, especially with the idea of evolutionary morality since it is an idea that cannot really be examined, thus is unfalsifiable, and therefore the author is just throwing conjecture regarding how we evolved our morality.

But that is besides the point of this thread.

What I would really like to get everyone's thoughts on is his definition of morality below:

"Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation."

Do you agree or disagree with this definition? If not, then please explain your reasoning and what you think the actual definition is or should be?

Interesting. That's a reductionist perspective, by which I don't mean anything disparaging; a reductionist explanation is often the proper goal of inquiry. For example, take the question, “what is 'heat'?” Well, it turns out that we now have a seemingly unassailable explanation for all phenomena we associate with “heat”: namely, “average molecular motion.”

Now take the question, “what is 'life'?” Well, from the perspective of biologists, at least, there are living things and nonliving things, and the former are those which can perform certain tasks: reproduction, metabolism, you know the drill. And if they are asked, “that's all fine, but I wasn't asking what differentiated living things from non-living things, I was asking what is life, itself,” most biologists (and probably most laypeople, now) will regard this as basically a mistaken question. They don't believe there is any essence of “life, itself,” beyond “that which characterizes living things.”

This reduction becomes more of an area of controversy than the reduction of “heat” to “average molecular motion,” because there are people who are firmly convinced that there is such an essence, and that it transcends the material realm. And this is doubly true of attempted reductions of phenomena like “consciousness” or “morality.”

So, your author is practicing methodological naturalism, under which it is assumed that all natural phenomena can be reduced to other natural phenomena; that morality is a natural phenomenon; therefore, morality can be so reduced. I'm not a religious believer myself, but somehow this reductive definition doesn't strike me as being quite as successful or satisfactory as the others.

I have no problem at all with the conclusion, "A certain set of psychological adaptations (those that promote behavior we generally call 'moral') allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation." But that's not the same thing as saying “morality simply IS that set of adaptations.” For one thing, it seems to imply that utilitarianism is simply, objectively true; that if anybody claims that some actions are moral though they fail to provide these benefits, or immoral although they do, that they are ipso facto wrong. I don't see that.

For another thing, suppose you convince me that "Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation." OK, then why would I want to follow these adaptations, adopt that behavior? If the answer is, “so that you can reap those benefits,” then I find that highly unconvincing. Lots of people do of course resist “cooperative” behavior, and seem to get along quite well in society. There are plenty of successful sociopaths. But lots of people still do want to be (what we generally call) moral, even if it turns out not to help them socially. (In fact, many people consider morality to specifically require doing the right thing even if you don't benefit from it.) How does the author's definition account for such a fact?
 
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ajarntham

Member
I will attempt to explain.

This definition seems to be heavily influenced by evolutionary thought. The idea is that natural selection affects our evolutionary ancestors and natural selection is thought to promote ruthless self interest. So individuals who hoard resources and destroy the competition will survive better, reproduce often, and then populate the world with their ruthless selfish offspring. So according to evolutionary theory individual humans should naturally be ruthlessly selfish. But what perplexed them is that we are not. We are social creatures.

So, through further examination, by observing humans and other social creatures, it seems that humans are naturally selfish until the individual cost outweighs the cost of cooperation amongst individuals. Morality serves to create rules that maintains this cooperation through laws that promote cooperation because cooperation ensures our survival far greater than ruthless selfishness. . . .

OK, but then the quote does not seem so much a "definition of morality" (i.e., an analysis of what the word/concept "morality" means) as an explanation for how morality, a concept which we already pretty well understand and which needs no definition, came to be such a large part of human culture.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
I think that we are all thinking and percieving creatures, and via feeling emotions (happy, sad, fear), some that feel pleasant, and some that feel unpleasant, we follow this "compass", and either adjust our behavior to avoid the things that feel unpleasant, or those negative actions continue to harm us. It is a combination of ingrained drives to seek out what feels good, as well as a learned pattern of behaviour through either experience or the passing of knowledge (as in humans). It's a cost benefit analysis in it's simplest form.

That makes sense.

How would you account for morality such as "keeping the Sabbath" and "not blaspheming God"? Saying that it is immoral for people to offend the deity that produced you and sustains you makes sense, but how would you say these seemingly arbitrary morals developed?
 

The Hammer

[REDACTED]
Premium Member
That makes sense.

How would you account for morality such as "keeping the Sabbath" and "not blaspheming God"? Saying that it is immoral for people to offend the deity that produced you and sustains you makes sense, but how would you say these seemingly arbitrary morals developed?

That's not a form of Morality IMO. That is people controlling people, as we have always attempted to do. To keep the peace within a system of group dynamics.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
The reasoning function of the brain is involved with learning. So, I'll broaden your question to make it: How is reasoning involved with moral questions? In a criminal court these are typical questions of reason: What exactly happened? Who did it? Was the harm done intentionally?

Theses are questions of conscience: Was the act immoral or justified? What is a fair sentence (assuming guilt).
Do you mean that our reasoning sorts out the context of certain situations to figure out whether certain actions are moral or not? So in the justice system there are times when the court makes landmark judgement that has not occurred before in a country through reasoning and this becomes the standard for judging similar situations in the future.

Biases are capable of sending Truth and Justice off course. The kind of behavior you list are cultural biases that once existed. My position is that it is the nagging of conscience over the years that causes moral progress by eliminating these biases.
I don't think that the "nagging conscience" just happens naturally from within the group and the individuals within it though. I think the "nagging conscience" is only triggered by our growth in knowledge and understanding of how the world works. So if the Aztecs didn't evolve technologically and philosophically, their morality would remain the same. Today our morality has changed and is changing through our further understanding of the world. An example is that in the past under certain cultures and religions, being homosexual was accepted as immoral, but now that we have a better understanding of why people are homosexual, many cultures understand that homosexuality isn't immoral.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Haven't read the book myself, but found this quote from it. Which might put the statement into context so it's easier to understand.

“After Darwin, human morality became a scientific mystery. Natural selection could explain how intelligent, upright, linguistic, not so hairy, bipedal primates could evolve, but where did our morals come from? Darwin himself was absorbed by this question. Natural selection, it was thought, promotes ruthless self-interest. Individuals who grab up all the resources and destroy the competition will survive better, reproduce more often, and thus populate the world with their ruthlessly selfish offspring. How, then, could morality evolve in a world that Tennyson famously described as “red in tooth and claw”? We now have an answer. Morality evolved as a solution to the problem of cooperation, as a way of averting the Tragedy of the Commons: Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.
― Joshua Greene, Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them


I don't think he is right, mostly because I think he misunderstand the purpose of natural selection as being a selfish thing.

Natural selection
the process that results in the continued existence of only the types of animals and plants that are best able to produce young or new plants in the conditions in which they live.

If you look at humans or other primates for that matter, we are social animals that live close together in societies. We didn't use to be on the top of the food chain, which means that for a ancient human to set out on their own as a selfish individual, would most likely mean that they wouldn't survive very long. If males would simply leave pregnant women alone, hardly any of them would survive the pregnancy period and definitely not the years after birth, having to try to take care of a crying kid, while at the same time having to gather food, make shelters etc. And at the same time hope to not get eaten by a pack of predators. If humans were selfish, we would have gone extinct.

Therefore I see morality as more of a mechanism of measuring or evaluating, trust and collaboration within a group of individuals that are already socialized or bound together. And not something to combat the selfishness of a species.

For instance if a group member steal food from the rest of the group, morality as mechanism kicks in as natural justice system, because such behaviour is not beneficial for the group as a whole. And therefore such individual would be punished. Ultimately I think this comes down to the relationships found within a group. Meaning such person, would not just steal food from random people, but from someone's child, parents, their aunts or close friends etc. Which not only hurt the group, but also spread mistrust within the group, and were such thing allowed to go on, most likely the group would perish quite fast. Obviously this is when we talking smaller groups back in the days, which is why in modern societies, we rely on a legal justice system to take care of it.

So at least to me, I would say that:

"Morality is a natural mechanisms by which individuals of a species can judge each other towards some common standards, that makes sure that trust and collaboration is maximized for the benefit of the groups survival."

And the reason for it having developed as it has, is because the majority of people, not capable of following these moral guidelines, did not survive. Our species and most primates species are not capable of surviving on their own as selfish individuals.

Thanks. I tried to slightly paraphrase his lead up to his definition in the book. Also that definition is at the start of the book so the rest of the book goes into greater depth.

Regarding your below statement:

"... I see morality as more of a mechanism of measuring or evaluating, trust and collaboration within a group of individuals that are already socialized or bound together. And not something to combat the selfishness of a species."

I would say yes and no. I agree with your first sentence, but we know that the set group morality is constantly being attacked on the individual level (and also the smaller tribal level) when individuals or groups try to get away with acts that are considered immoral by the moral standard. Hence why we have a justice system. So morality is constantly combatting the immoral rebellion of smaller sub sections of the greater group.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Have you read
"Conscience: the origins of Moral Intuition" by Churchland, Patricia. It gives support for the evolutionary basis for morals. The clear evidence supports that what we call morals are pro-social behaviors that evolved with time and are highly variable depending on the social context. Morals are highly variable depending on context of a situation. What is clear there is growing neurologic/hormonal evidence to show how our brains developed the mechanisms to support social behaviors which we then use words to describe as morals.

Thanks for the suggested addition to the library. The book I am reading touches on that, explaining that our emotions are a result of neurological and chemical evolution (they had to be since they are physical) and a core element of morality, our empathy, is triggered by our biology. Hopefully I will find your suggestion somwhere.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
There is skeletal proof that our Neanderthal cousins from which we share a common Ancestor and interbred with, also cared for their sick, elderly, and wounded: as shown by healed major fractures, and jaw bone dental resorption amongst the elderly (meaning someone fed and hunted for them). So technically it can be tested in our Evolutionary history.

That I understand. But I am referring to evidence of his explanations of how these behaviours developed, not the fact that there is evidence of these behaviours existence in our ancestors, since evolution is a process.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
I'm sorry, IK, I'm having another 'No' day. :)

No! That's Loyalty, or Integrity.
The whole tribe could be immoral by the neighbouring standards, might eat their grannies or whatever.

I do suggest that the word 'moral' is a meaningless impostor...........

*badger ducks down hole again*

We4ll morality does vary depending on tribe. Different people can and do have different sense of morality and often consider other people's morality immoral.
 

joe1776

Well-Known Member
Do you mean that our reasoning sorts out the context of certain situations to figure out whether certain actions are moral or not? So in the justice system there are times when the court makes landmark judgement that has not occurred before in a country through reasoning and this becomes the standard for judging similar situations in the future.
No, that doesn't sound like you understood me. Bear in mind that conscience can only signal that an act is wrong by sending an unpleasant signal. The act FEELS wrong or it feels unfair. Reason has to supply the facts of the unique situation, so that the question can be resolved to either: Is this specific act wrong? Or, is this specific act unfair?
I don't think that the "nagging conscience" just happens naturally from within the group and the individuals within it though. I think the "nagging conscience" is only triggered by our growth in knowledge and understanding of how the world works. So if the Aztecs didn't evolve technologically and philosophically, their morality would remain the same. Today our morality has changed and is changing through our further understanding of the world. An example is that in the past under certain cultures and religions, being homosexual was accepted as immoral, but now that we have a better understanding of why people are homosexual, many cultures understand that homosexuality isn't immoral.
Many people, perhaps even most, would agree with you. I don't. I think you have cause and effect reversed. It is conscience which changes cultures, not cultures that change conscience. For example, I think it was the nagging of conscience, spreading from mind to mind over three centuries, like all ideas spread, that caused the abolition of legal slavery in every culture of the world.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Interesting. That's a reductionist perspective, by which I don't mean anything disparaging; a reductionist explanation is often the proper goal of inquiry. For example, take the question, “what is 'heat'?” Well, it turns out that we now have a seemingly unassailable explanation for all phenomena we associate with “heat”: namely, “average molecular motion.”

Now take the question, “what is 'life'?” Well, from the perspective of biologists, at least, there are living things and nonliving things, and the former are those which can perform certain tasks: reproduction, metabolism, you know the drill. And if they are asked, “that's all fine, but I wasn't asking what differentiated living things from non-living things, I was asking what is life, itself,” most biologists (and probably most laypeople, now) will regard this as basically a mistaken question. They don't believe there is any essence of “life, itself,” beyond “that which characterizes living things.”

This reduction becomes more of an area of controversy than the reduction of “heat” to “average molecular motion,” because there are people who are firmly convinced that there is such an essence, and that it transcends the material realm. And this is doubly true of attempted reductions of phenomena like “consciousness” or “morality.”

So, your author is practicing methodological naturalism, under which it is assumed that all natural phenomena can be reduced to other natural phenomena; that morality is a natural phenomenon; therefore, morality can be so reduced. I'm not a religious believer myself, but somehow this reductive definition doesn't strike me as being quite as successful or satisfactory as the others.

I have no problem at all with the conclusion, "A certain set of psychological adaptations (those that promote behavior we generally call 'moral') allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation." But that's not the same thing as saying “morality simply IS that set of adaptations.” For one thing, it seems to imply that utilitarianism is simply, objectively true; that if anybody claims that some actions are moral though they fail to provide these benefits, or immoral although they do, that they are ipso facto wrong. I don't see that.

For another thing, suppose you convince me that "Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation." OK, then why would I want to follow these adaptations, adopt that behavior? If the answer is, “so that you can reap those benefits,” then I find that highly unconvincing. Lots of people do of course resist “cooperative” behavior, and seem to get along quite well in society. There are plenty of successful sociopaths. But lots of people still do want to be (what we generally call) moral, even if it turns out not to help them socially. (In fact, many people consider morality to specifically require doing the right thing even if you don't benefit from it.) How does the author's definition account for such a fact?

He accounts for morality that doesn't help us socially by dismissing them as an accidental side effects of evolution. This is a copout. He only deals with that which suits his agenda and doesn't deal with that which doesn't suit his agenda, by saying that it is accidental, which to me seems similar to the No True Scotsman fallacy. If a set of morality doesn't neatly fit into his box then he doesn't examine other possibilities for their development.

This is why I am having a problem with his explanations of WHY our morality developed. I understand that our emotions are linked to our biology and our biology evolved. But WHY it evolved in a certain direction is just conjecture on his part. He isn't providing evidence for the actual mechanisms that caused these morals to develop the way they did.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
That's not a form of Morality IMO. That is people controlling people, as we have always attempted to do. To keep the peace within a system of group dynamics.

Morality exists to control people within a group, whether internally or externally, in order to keep the peace within a system of group dynamics. I do think that morality is governed by both internal feeling and by external social influence.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
No, that doesn't sound like you understood me. Bear in mind that conscience can only signal that an act is wrong by sending an unpleasant signal. The act FEELS wrong or it feels unfair. Reason has to supply the facts of the unique situation, so that the question can be resolved to either: Is this specific act wrong? Or, is this specific act unfair?
OK. I think I understand that explanation. I don't disagree with you. But I would add that our reasoning also determines whether our feelings of wrong or feelings of unfairness has any validity to them as we might be feeling something based off lack of understanding of a situation.

Many people, perhaps even most, would agree with you. I don't. I think you have cause and effect reversed. It is conscience which changes cultures, not cultures that change conscience. For example, I think it was the nagging of conscience, spreading from mind to mind over three centuries, like all ideas spread, that caused the abolition of legal slavery in every culture of the world.
I would be interested in how you would track the development of the nagging conscience that eventually caused the abolition of slavery. How do you think that specific nagging conscience developed? If it is through the spreading of ideas, then that would fall under philosophy, which is one of the points I made, because it has to develop and spread as a result of many people observing the world and having thoughts and discussions about what they have observed or experienced.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Not wrong, but not specific enough.
By this definition every social behaviour can be labelled as moral, even, when you think of psychology as not distinctly human, animal behaviour.
Morality, in my book, requires not only behaving socially but also having thought about why social behaviour is preferable.

I agree. Thought plays a major role in use determining which social behaviour is preferable and which is not.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Why do you think morality is a single constant that you can just sum up with one sentence?

Morality is likely a combination of many different variables some environmentally condition and some inherent structure, some more fluid aspects, and some more rigid aspects, and I not convinced that humans have a good idea of what that structure is. I have never heard a definition of morality that seemed complete, and such definitions mostly just guess at one facet of a multifaceted aspect of human nature.

I actually don't think that Morality can be summed up in one sentence. I think even the concept of morality is vague. I am thinking whether the term Morality should even be used. Does it even have any relevance considering that what people consider "moral" varies so much? To me it seems to be a loaded religious term linked to the rules of a some higher power which would be based on the said power's ideas, which has been carried over to the secular world too. I think that we should rather not use such a blanket term and rather discuss each component of it separately, such as what is best for social order, what do certain people empathize with and what do they not empathize with etc.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
There's an assumption of inherent selfishness. Another assumption is that this operates on the psychological level.

The Evolutionary Benefits of Cooperation argues that cooperation is or can be an evolutionary advantage thus tying ordinary morality to evolution. This means that selfishness is not innate, for one thing. And it means that cooperation is adaptive. There are a gazillion papers and reports on such things on the internet.

Then there's the power of love which crosses animal boundaries. There are a number of cases where predator mothers nurtured prey young. I would apply the word morality to cases like this Leopard 'Adopts' Baby Baboon After Killing Its Mom because to me loving, nurturing, is fundamental. From a purely selfish perspective, the leopard should have just eaten the baby.
I also think that there are a lot of assumptions with the definition and that it dismisses everything that does not fit into that neat definition.

Love that crosses animal boundaries is one example.

But... isn't love something that comes from within, therefore to do something out of love is inherently selfish? Whereas doing something for someone despite your hatred for them and of no benefit to you support selflessness?
 

Bear Wild

Well-Known Member
OK, but then the quote does not seem so much a "definition of morality" (i.e., an analysis of what the word/concept "morality" means) as an explanation for how morality, a concept which we already pretty well understand and which needs no definition, came to be such a large part of human culture.
I found this definition to be the most helpful from Patricia Churchland
"Morality is the set of shared attitudes and practices that regulate individual behavior to facilitate cohesion and well-being among individuals in the group."

Morality becomes the behavioral patterns that allows for individuals to coexist in social groups. The word itself can give rise to different feelings in individuals but in essence there is no better explanation for moral behaviors than to provide the necessary patterns for living in a social group. Morals then will very between social groups depending on the needs of that group which is what is seen. There are no morals that can be defined by pure reason for all groups.
 

Samael_Khan

Goosebender
Does 'individuals' include other animals besides humans? Research suggests that many animals (mostly but not exclusively social animals) have an understanding of mortality.

Which indicates that morality is at least in part an evolutionary adaptation.

That said, to evolve a social lifestyle can be considered selfish in that each individual is relying in others for protection and sustenance. However the individual must also help in maintaining the group which kind of pushes selfishness out of the way.

A question because of my lack of understanding of evolution:

Would doing something considered moral as a result of thinking it through rather than innate instinct and feeling mean that that morality is a result of evolutionary adaptation? Or would the capacity to think be the result of evolutionary adaptation and not the morals themselves? (I hope I am making sense)
 
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