Evolution and morality 20 Jul 2009 Ever since Thomas Henry Huxley’s marvellous book Evolution and Ethics in 1893 (online here; it’s the Prolegomena you really want to read, though), the relationship between evolution and morality has been mooted. Spencer famously wanted to say that morality was just what was normal for a species, while Huxley argued that morality opposes biological evolution. Now a not terribly happy piece by Frankie Schaeffer in the Huffington Post argues that “atheism has stolen Christian morality”. This is as silly as the stupidity that is intelligent design and creationism claiming that evolution equates to a lack of morality, taken down nicely here. Fact is, religion borrows its moral values from the local culture just like every other non-morality viewpoint. Do you want to claim that religion is liberal in outlook? Explain the support by religion for slavery, subjugation of women, racism, imperialism, and devil-take-the-hindmost laissez faire economics. Do you want to claim that religion is conservative? Explain liberation theology, the Moravian Brethren and Anabaptists, etc. Fundamentally, religion has no moral compass at all beyond what happens to be occurring in the local society, which is why the Catholic Church can oppose abortion and birth control and at the same time have elements that defend both. Moral systems evolve in response to the “social ecology”. The “literary Darwinism” that was mentioned and so ably debunked by Bill Benzon in a recent link is overblown, but society does evolve, and institutions evolve by in part adapting to the socioeconomic conditions of the society itself. If trade needs lending at interest, usury can be redefined. If democratic traditions evolve in response to, among other things, legal egalitarianism, then religion can “discover” that all are equal, despite dark comments made in their holy writings and theological traditions. Of course atheism gets its morality from the same sources that religions do – that is where moral values come from; they evolve as society does, and intellectual traditions both mirror and contribute proportionally to social values. Ethics and Moral Philosophy Religion Social evolution
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Thirded. This is a biggy. It’s surprising (and a little infuriating) just how well entrenched the perception is that morality requires a truly objective Rule Book. It’s absurd given that much of our moral “reasoning” is barely reasoning at all but v. much instinctive and visceral. If that doesn’t give the evolutionary component away, I don’t know what does. I like the appeal to evolution here, too, because it also challenges the relativism accusation. Although we can concede that right and wrong are inevitably subjective, we can still see that there is sufficient consistency in the subjective morality among individuals of our species, even among disparate cultures, that it pretty much does the job of an objective moral code. I cannot say that an alien in a distant planet should consider the murder of human females for honour crimes to be “wrong”, but I think I can put forward a pretty solid case for why another human should see that it’s wrong, regardless of their culture (particularly given that the evolution of our morals are surely based on pragmatic issues of survival). That’s not to suggest that the evolved moral code is perfect, because it is clearly chock full of loopholes, contradictions, and downright faulty wiring. But all this better explains the dark side of human nature than original sin does. Indeed, I think the concept of Original Sin is probably a crudely inductive explanation for those clearly apparent flaws. But that’s natural selection for you. Detachable earlobes, the appendix, wisdom teeth, a reproductive process that is exceptionally dangerous for the females of our species… As others have shown time and time again, it’s hard to look at Homo sapiens and talk about intelligent design. If God had to get a job on Earth, the poor daft bugger would be lucky to get a gig at Jiffy Lube.
The human societies spend an inordinate amount of time and resources arguing about what’s the right thing to do. Over the centuries, most of these societies have developed institutions devoted to making such decisions; and some of these constructions, the Roman and Common Law legal traditions, for example, are enormously complex and detailed. People apparently think that it is possible to reason about right and wrong and that acting in accordance with such a process of judgment is different and better than simply going along with the will of the powerful or the momentary whim of a crowd. I venture the drastic suggestion that far from representing paleolithic survivals, our moral ideas are in large measure the product of thousands of years of rational discussion in public fora. Of course this intelligent design hasn’t resulted in a definitive system of morality; but that imperfection, if it is an imperfection, hardly tells against my point any more than the fact that evolution doesn’t produce perfect animals rules out the creativity of natural selection.
While I don’t hanve any disagreement with what John wrote about the evolution of morality, I think some commenters are stretching things to the breaking point. It’s well and good to know the evolutionary origins of emotions and behaviors that get shaped into moral sentiments and virtuous behavior. But there’s no morality until the products of evolution come under the gaze of critical reason. That’s why we don’t hold infants and other near relatives morally responsible for actions that, for a mature, symbolically sophisticated member of our species, carry moral freight. And if a role for reason must be acknowledged, it won’t be easy to banish objectivity and universality from the realm of morality — no easier than it is to banish such notions from epistemology.
Reason in the Aufklärung sense is not, I think, employed much in moral reasoning. The disconnect between evolution and morality lies in the lack of a justification of moral precepts by an evolutionary history. Justification is a different language game to description.
But there’s no morality until the products of evolution come under the gaze of critical reason. Phrased like that I don’t think you are right. I think I agree with the general tenor of what you appear to want to say but I think ‘critical reason’ is a much too elevated concept for the forces that form moral behaviour. It is, in my opinion much more a product of trial and error, the resulting lessons learnt thereby producing the forming force. I see this process as taking place on a much lower mental level than that which we normally associated with the concept ‘critical reasoning’.
Thony – I agree that ‘critical reason’ might have connotations that are “too strong” for much of the work-a-day moral thinking in which most of us engage. We’re not all sages from Konigsberg, after all. But still, there must be something that is critical about the thinking that goes on. In fact, if I was to play the “purist” game, I’d say that uncriticial submision to an external code is the antithesis of “real” morality. My main concern is to emphasize that an adequate moral psychology needs to do more than provide an account of the origins of “moral dispositions”.
“But there’s no morality until the products of evolution come under the gaze of critical reason.” I want to clarify that I’m not advocating a return to gut instincts on all matters of moral judgment! I was merely responding to the common theist charge that an atheist can have no moral code whatsoever (unless we borrow it from them). Clearly, and Thony put it better than me, there is a substantial fraction of our moral compass that is evolved and operates at a more basic level. That one cannot disrobe oneself of morality as if it were a shirt, regardless of the ideology one assumes. However, it’s apparent that humans (well, some of us) have long been operating at a level at which we are aware of the limits of our instinctual moral compass, and that there are many moral dilemmas which lie on the periphery and beyond that can only be approached with abstract critical reasoning, as Bob alluded to. A reasoning process reflected in the substantial body of societal law that Harrison appeals to.
“but society does evolve, and institutions evolve by in part adapting to the socioeconomic conditions of the society itself.” John “It is, in my opinion much more a product of trial and error, the resulting lessons learnt thereby producing the forming force” Thony No way you could understand Early Medieval history without grasping these concepts. I am rather a fan of the D.N.Dumville and his appraoch to textual development myself. Legal traditions are very complex but I would go with thony on this as it allows for development rather than an elusive quest for origin and his comments fit my understanding of medieval law tracts. As a non philosopher the argument starts simply, language is diffrent, concepts are not but then in some of the comments it launches into the realms of deep space (as philosophy so often does given my very limited understanding of the subject) I do get rather lost with it and prefer to deal directly with source material in it’s historical context.
Atheists merely steal parts of the inferences resulting from Christian morality, not the philosophical foundations of that morality. This is because most atheists prefer to use Science, which in part relies on competitively testing alternatives and adopting as its own the “best” results, whatever the source. The trick is in the definition of “Best”. The “Do atheists really believe that morality doesn’t exist just because it can’t be put under a microscope?” in Schaefer’s piece is an elegant strawman, mind you. But there’s no morality until the products of evolution come under the gaze of critical reason. That’s closer to what I would term “ethics”: an attempt to express the rules that govern the good-or-evil evaluation of “morality”. It is, in my opinion much more a product of trial and error, the resulting lessons learnt thereby producing the forming force. I see this process as taking place on a much lower mental level than that which we normally associated with the concept ‘critical reasoning’. I see this process taking place at a much lower level than cellular biology.
hmmm. Ive seen a number of debates on honour killing recently, general used to demonstrate the immoral basis of muslim culture. I don’t think it’s a good example of critical thinking but it’s certianly constructing a moral argument. If you ignore the development of these cultures I suppose you could reach such a conclusion. Some of the points made here would help to support such arguments.
The thing is, God talk is a might handy metaphor to get a moral view across, especially in illiterate societies — and, I suspect, among people of ordinary intelligence everywhere. Atheism, humanism, and such appeal to the intellectual elites, at least in my experience, which is considerable. What I would like to see is a new clerisy as we saw in 19th century New England (as documented in Harriet Beecher Stowe’s novels for example) instead of the god-awful “evangelists” we see on television today, who might as well be the devil in disguise.