The Definition of Morality

[ajarntham]

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.

I don't think that biology is at a point where it can talk about mechanisms, in the sense of particular mutations to particular genes, in trying to explain the development of mental abilities and tendencies. Maybe it never will be.

I'm not sure whether this is entirely on-topic here, but I've found it important in these kinds of discussions to distinguish between "evolution caused us to have these sets of standards, in which some acts are called 'right' and others are called 'wrong'," and " 'right' and 'wrong' are simply to be defined as what evolution has drawn us towards, or away from." Analogously, compare these two statements:

1) evolution has wired our brains in a way that makes us perceive some objects as close and others as farther away.
2) "close" and "far away" are simply to be defined as what evolution has led us to say about our perceptions.

Pretty much everybody except some creationists would agree with (1). So far as I know, nobody in human history has agreed with 2). Clearly (in this case, anyway) it could be correct to say "evolution gives us the ability to perceive things in this way," but entirely wrong to say "these things we apparently perceive (like 'close' and 'far') have no independent reality, outside of the evolutionary adaptation." The same might be true of right and wrong; evolutionary adaptations give our brain the ability to perceive them, but that doesn't mean they have no independent reality outside of those adaptations.

 

[oldbadger]

I agree with you here. And when I think of it I don't even think that the word morality is relevant anymore because i my mind it is a religious word and only has relevance through religion. Of course its sub components are more relevant to use but I don't think that we can link them all together under one term and work on them together. So for instance we have empathy, which operates within each person on a different level, and which I do not think has a universal standard. Then you have standards created through reasoning for social cohesion etc.

I totally agree.......

There are other words like this, which are bleated in every direction by people who don't actually believe in them.......... spoken for effect in rhetoric.

'Spiritual' is such a word imo. Some Christians use this word a lot whilst either denying or decrying spirits and spiritual beings as evil .......

I once went to a 'snack and chat' meeting at a Christian venue. Folks there asked why I had come so I explained that I sometimes visited churches and religious venues. When asked where I had visited previously (it was an interrogation) I mentioned the Christian Spiritualist 'Tea and scone' meetings each Tersday.

OMG! The place burst in to cries of 'They are all Satan's spawn' and 'Those people are not Christians!' and then the senior priest subjected us all to a rant about Halloween and Satanism.

Yeah...... spiritual...... another one.

 

[oldbadger]

I don't think that morality is a religious word. That may be because I have encountered it more often in philosophy than in religion but religions mostly have little to do with morality. They are less engaged in discussing or teaching morality and more in forcing their ethics upon the believers.
YMMV

Good point.
I think the words moral and morality are 'it' words spoken for effect in rhetoric.
I can't think of an occasion where a more fitting and trustworthy word could not replace those words.

I must google the word and review its origins....

 

[Heyo]

Good point.
I think the words moral and morality are 'it' words spoken for effect in rhetoric.
I can't think of an occasion where a more fitting and trustworthy word could not replace those words.

I must google the word and review its origins....

It comes from the Latin "mores" simply meaning manners.
But it has gained meaning over the centuries and become one of the main branches in philosophy. Moral philosophy is a notoriously hard topic so it doesn't lend itself easily to colloquial discussion.

 

[oldbadger]

It comes from the Latin "mores" simply meaning manners.

I just googled it..... And thank you as well.

But it has gained meaning over the centuries and become one of the main branches in philosophy. Moral philosophy is a notoriously hard topic so it doesn't lend itself easily to colloquial discussion.

A hard topic?
I wonder about Moral Philosophy now. I might Google that n all.

 

[Heyo]

I just googled it..... And thank you as well.

A hard topic?
I wonder about Moral Philosophy now. I might Google that n all.

I tried to read "Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft" und "Die Kritik der praktischen Vernunft" in which Kant derives his Categorical Imperative. Trust me, it is hard.

 

[oldbadger]

I tried to read "Die Kritik der reinen Vernunft" und "Die Kritik der praktischen Vernunft" in which Kant derives his Categorical Imperative. Trust me, it is hard.

Would you say that it made sense?

I ask because I truly believe that complexity is a wonderful bush to hide bulldust under.

 

[Heyo]

Would you say that it made sense?

I ask because I truly believe that complexity is a wonderful bush to hide bulldust under.

About as much as calculus. It is all very reasonable - once you learned the meaning of all the technical terms.

 

[joe1776]

Except that a change in the environment may change the way we treat other humans. Harsh climatic changes and limiting resources can influence human social behavior and change the social order especially when compared to an environment with excessive resources. Our would and its history are full of examples.

Aren't you confusing the way people act under that kind of stress with the guidance of their conscience? Conscience is a moral guide only. We can follow it or not.

In stressful situations in our environment, looting is common. But looting doesn't become morally acceptable in stressful situations.

 

[oldbadger]

About as much as calculus. It is all very reasonable - once you learned the meaning of all the technical terms.

OK..
I think that calculus is exact, would you agree?

But subjects such as philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, etc... disciplines about and of mindset, these are amongst the most inexact sciences known. Or that's what I believe.

 

[joe1776]

That doesn't make sense though. We can prove today through observation that people raised in different environments treat each other differently because of their environment. For instance some people think that it is OK to litter while others do not based on their environment. That is why different cultures have different standards of morality. The same is true with animals. Depending on who raises them, animals like pitbulls will either be more violent or more peaceful.

Three points:

(1) When you offer the training of pitbulls as a point this discussion, you seem to be confusing the guidance of conscience with the way people behave which might or might not be aligned with the guidance of their conscience.

(2) Back in the year 1500, every culture in the world condoned legal slavery. By the year 1800, half the world had abolished it. If you had lived in 1800, would you have explained the then-existing cultural difference in attitudes on slavery as due to the different environments? My position is that the differences in cultural moral standards is because some cultures are more morally mature than others.

By the year 2000, every culture in the world had abolished legal slavery. When that happened, that particular cultural difference had vanished. I think when all cultures are fully mature morally, all cultural differences will have vanished. For example, I think that the movement to give women equal rights will someday sweep across all cultures.

(3) I also think that most people exaggerate the cultural differences in moral codes. Harvard's Moral Sense Test has been online for several years now. People from many cultures of the world have taken it. Here's a link to a PDF showing the preliminary results.

Intuitive moral judgments are robust across variation in gender, education, politics, and religion: A large-scale web-based study
https://faculty.georgetown.edu/lbh24/BanerjeeEtAl.pdf

 

[blü 2]

I [...] also disagree with [...] the idea of evolutionary morality since it is an idea that cannot really be examined.

The question has been studied for some time now, from two angles ─ anthropology and, more effectively, psychology. The conclusion is that we have evolved moral tendencies, namely child nurture and protection, dislike of the one who harms, like of fairness and reciprocity, respect for authority, loyalty to the group, and a sense of self-worth/virtue through self-denial. Evolution has also given us empathy and a conscience. The rest of our morality (how to behave towards and with others, family, neighbor, stranger, younger, older, social inferior, peer, superior, how to win or lose, eating together, rules of excreting, on and on) we get from our upbringing, culture, education and experience.

The evolved moral tendencies are indeed subject to and confirmed by experiments with children, even pre-verbal infants, which show how they judge particular simulated human interactions. They're not unfalsifiable, in other words.

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

Well, morality is indeed about how the individual interacts with others. But as I said, it's a mix of instinctive tendencies ─ appropriate to us as gregarious primates who get enormous benefits for surviving and breeding from cooperation ─ and of learnt behaviors, ditto, as I said above.

 

[Heyo]

OK..
I think that calculus is exact, would you agree?

But subjects such as philosophy, psychology, psychiatry, etc... disciplines about and of mindset, these are amongst the most inexact sciences known. Or that's what I believe.

Many philosophers were also mathematicians. They tried to be exact. The problem is that language is not the most precise tool (unlike numbers). That's why many treatises are for the first half the definitions they use. Boring stuff and you have to remember it to get to the good pieces.

 

[Bear Wild]

Aren't you confusing the way people act under that kind of stress with the guidance of their conscience? Conscience is a moral guide only. We can follow it or not.

In stressful situations in our environment, looting is common. But looting doesn't become morally acceptable in stressful situations.

No I am talking about how the environment influences behavior which can change behavior in areas we can consider influencing

In studies of rats with respect to environmental stress influencing changes in behavior of mother offspring care there is evidence for inheritable changes in behavior influenced by the environment. Rat mothers raising offspring in low stress environments - less predator stress and less time needed for obtaining food increased the time of grooming/care of offspring resulted in inheritable changes that was passed down through more than one generation through epigenetic changes to the genetic inheritance. This was not just about how people act under stress but translated to genetic changes in behavior. Thus how much care provided to offspring over time could diverge in two populations with time.

Faithfulness to ones partner is considered a moral behavior. Two similar voles - the mountain voles do not show pair bonding (no behavioral faithfulness of male and female) and prairie voles who demonstrate lifetime pair bonding (behavioral faithfulness of male and female). Environment influencing behavior and what would be considered moral.

 

[joe1776]

No I am talking about how the environment influences behavior which can change behavior in areas we can consider influencing

In studies of rats with respect to environmental stress influencing changes in behavior of mother offspring care there is evidence for inheritable changes in behavior influenced by the environment. Rat mothers raising offspring in low stress environments - less predator stress and less time needed for obtaining food increased the time of grooming/care of offspring resulted in inheritable changes that was passed down through more than one generation through epigenetic changes to the genetic inheritance. This was not just about how people act under stress but translated to genetic changes in behavior. Thus how much care provided to offspring over time could diverge in two populations with time.

Faithfulness to ones partner is considered a moral behavior. Two similar voles - the mountain voles do not show pair bonding (no behavioral faithfulness of male and female) and prairie voles who demonstrate lifetime pair bonding (behavioral faithfulness of male and female). Environment influencing behavior and what would be considered moral.

I asked: Aren't you confusing the way people act under that kind of stress with the guidance of their conscience?

And you answered: No I am talking about how the environment influences behavior which can change behavior in areas we can consider influencing.
Your no answer sounded more like a yes. You're talking about how the environment influences behavior. You are not talking about changes in the intuitive judgments of conscience.

I can understand the value of studying rats to learn more about genetic inheritance, but I think that comparing animal behavior to human morality involves jumping to unwarranted conclusions. For example, you associated faithfulness and pair bonding with human morality. That's not what I learn from conscience.

Intentionally causing harm to an innocent person, a victim, is one kind of moral failure that will cause the conscience to intuitively react with a feeling of wrongness. But if a pair of humans bonded by agreeing to an open marriage, there's no unfaithfulness. No one would get hurt. So, in this discussion about morality, the pair bonding of rats or voles is not like the pair bonding of humans because those animals presumably don't have a conscience that works like ours.

Rather than using animals and analogies, it it possible for you to give me an example from human experience of a moral code changed by environmental stress?

 

[Bear Wild]

intuitive judgments of conscience.

What is intuitive judgements of conscience? I do not understand what you are implying.

I think that comparing animal behavior to human morality involves jumping to unwarranted conclusions. For example, you associated faithfulness and pair bonding with human morality. That's not what I learn from conscience

Do you have the evidence against this? The genetics and epigenetics of animals including rats is more similar to humans than it is different. What study do you have that contradicts this?

Intentionally causing harm to an innocent person, a victim, is one kind of moral failure that will cause the conscience to intuitively react with a feeling of wrongness.

But history does not show that is true.

But if a pair of humans bonded by agreeing to an open marriage, there's no unfaithfulness

This example is just a good example of how moral behavior is affected but neurologic patterns. Thus hormonal and neurological patterns influence the acceptance of this pattern. Thus morals influenced by genetics and epigenetics.

the pair bonding of rats or voles is not like the pair bonding of humans because those animals presumably don't have a conscience that works like ours.

Except the evidence does not support this. Opinion might support this argument because someone wants to believe that humans are really not animals but evidence is against this view.

Rather than using animals and analogies, it it possible for you to give me an example from human experience of a moral code changed by environmental stress?

Lets think about this. If we could breed humans at a much much younger age and expose them to environmental detrimental to humans during their early developmental age maybe we could find the evidence for humans you are looking for. Somehow I do not think humans are ready to accept this type of experiments yet or ever.

 

[joe1776]

What is intuitive judgements of conscience? I do not understand what you are implying.

Back in 2000, Jon Haidt's research demonstrated that our moral judgments are not the product of reason. Rather they emerge immediately as intuition from the unconscious and the reasoning done is after-the fact. His findings have been confirmed in several labs since.

Do you have the evidence against this? The genetics and epigenetics of animals including rats is more similar to humans than it is different. What study do you have that contradicts this?

Well, it's your claim to prove, not mine to disprove. However, scientists can't yet read human DNA to predict human behavior. So, I don't find it credible that they can read rat DNA and make the kind of comparisons you're making to human morality which we don't yet fully understand.

But history does not show that is true.

History is not needed. We have current evidence.

Legislators use their conscience in writing criminal laws. For example, that the wrongful act must be intentional, as ruled by conscience, is the premise supporting the laws that make the harm to innocent people done in traffic accidents negligent acts but not criminal acts.

This example is just a good example of how moral behavior is affected but neurologic patterns. Thus hormonal and neurological patterns influence the acceptance of this pattern. Thus morals influenced by genetics and epigenetics.

I didn't understand this paragraph.

Except the evidence does not support this. Opinion might support this argument because someone wants to believe that humans are really not animals but evidence is against this view.

You have evidence to support your claim that rat behavior is instructive on human morality? What is it?

The fact that I find the idea incredible is because we are different animals and because we don't yet fully understand our own moral nature. How do we compare rat behavior to something human we don't fully understand?

Lets think about this. If we could breed humans at a much much younger age and expose them to environmental detrimental to humans during their early developmental age maybe we could find the evidence for humans you are looking for. Somehow I do not think humans are ready to accept this type of experiments yet or ever.

In making my request, I was thinking that, if this idea of yours is possible, that it has happened sometime before in human history. But if it hasn't, then isn't that lack of evidence instructive?

 

[Samael_Khan]

I don't think that morality is a religious word. That may be because I have encountered it more often in philosophy than in religion but religions mostly have little to do with morality. They are less engaged in discussing or teaching morality and more in forcing their ethics upon the believers.
YMMV

Isn't morality and ethics the same thing? The ethics that religion forced upon their believers IS their idea of morality.

 

[Samael_Khan]

I don't think that biology is at a point where it can talk about mechanisms, in the sense of particular mutations to particular genes, in trying to explain the development of mental abilities and tendencies. Maybe it never will be.

I'm not sure whether this is entirely on-topic here, but I've found it important in these kinds of discussions to distinguish between "evolution caused us to have these sets of standards, in which some acts are called 'right' and others are called 'wrong'," and " 'right' and 'wrong' are simply to be defined as what evolution has drawn us towards, or away from." Analogously, compare these two statements:

1) evolution has wired our brains in a way that makes us perceive some objects as close and others as farther away.
2) "close" and "far away" are simply to be defined as what evolution has led us to say about our perceptions.

Pretty much everybody except some creationists would agree with (1). So far as I know, nobody in human history has agreed with 2). Clearly (in this case, anyway) it could be correct to say "evolution gives us the ability to perceive things in this way," but entirely wrong to say "these things we apparently perceive (like 'close' and 'far') have no independent reality, outside of the evolutionary adaptation." The same might be true of right and wrong; evolutionary adaptations give our brain the ability to perceive them, but that doesn't mean they have no independent reality outside of those adaptations.

I agree with your point. It adds to the my problem with saying that morality completely stems from evolution.

 

[Samael_Khan]

I totally agree.......

There are other words like this, which are bleated in every direction by people who don't actually believe in them.......... spoken for effect in rhetoric.

'Spiritual' is such a word imo. Some Christians use this word a lot whilst either denying or decrying spirits and spiritual beings as evil .......

I once went to a 'snack and chat' meeting at a Christian venue. Folks there asked why I had come so I explained that I sometimes visited churches and religious venues. When asked where I had visited previously (it was an interrogation) I mentioned the Christian Spiritualist 'Tea and scone' meetings each Tersday.

OMG! The place burst in to cries of 'They are all Satan's spawn' and 'Those people are not Christians!' and then the senior priest subjected us all to a rant about Halloween and Satanism.

Yeah...... spiritual...... another one.

I actually used to be one of those people funnily enough.