Interesting article in the NY Times magazine by Steven Pinker regarding the evolutionary psychology of what he calls the moral instinct.
According to Pinker, our brains are hard-wired to evaluate moral decisions (e.g. is abortion/naming a teddy bear Mohammed/disrespecting authority immoral?) differently than other types of dilemmas (e.g. how much money to spend on dinner/what’s your favorite color?).
Moreover, while surveying the moral concerns of people of different cultures around the world, five common themes (or what he calls moral “spheres”) always came up - aversion to harm and a preference for purity, loyalty, fairness, and authority. Of course, each culture decides what problems fit into what spheres and how much weight to put on each moral sphere differently, but the commonality in these five themes are apparent. Furthermore, you can argue that each of these five moral spheres conveys an evolutionary advantage - people who avoid “dirtiness” are more likely to survive just like societies that value fairness and respect for authority are more likely to thrive.
So here’s the Philosophy 101 kicker. How can we avoid the so-called morass of cultural relativism? If an enraged mob in Sudan aghast at a British woman for naming a teddy bear Mohammed, a liberal Western vegetarian aghast at the idea of eating meat, a Japanese guy aghast at the idea of not conforming, and an Indian bureaucrat aghast at the idea of giving a plum job to a stranger rather than a relative, if all of these people are being motivated by the same brain lobe being triggered, how do you evaluate the validity of one claim over another?
Human intelligence has the capacity to over-ride both natural and learned “programming”. It may be advantageous for individuals or society for morality to be genetically or socially selected according to whatever theory this is, but individual thought and groups are able to consciously shape their individual direction and affect “course corrections” in upcoming generations.
While this is an interesting topic to research, I don’t think there is any implication that people should somehow do something about it.
What I was thinking when I read your post was how this would enable people to analyze the relative merits of different systems of morality and perhaps make search for common ground easier.
What do you mean the broader effect? OK, so a culture that is very sexually oppressive (requires women to wear burqas, stones women to death for having premarital sex) will have lower rates of AIDS and other STI transmission. Sounds pretty good to me.
The lesson that I took from that article was that philosophy as a whole was a BS endeavor. We can sit around like Plato and try to use reason to deduct what is virtue, but we’re deluding ourselves. Our moral reactions are gut-level reactions and any attempt to use reason is a post-hoc justification.
What do you mean the broader effect? OK, so a culture that is very sexually oppressive (requires women to wear burqas, stones women to death for having premarital sex) will have lower rates of AIDS and other STI transmission. Sounds pretty good to me.[/quote]Actually, not. People will still have sex, but they’ll be doing so in greater ignorance and secrecy. Ignorance and secrecy and a strong social taboo don’t promote sexual health.
Repressive attitudes towards sex in part of India and China haven’t put the breaks on HIV transmission. Ditto repressive Muslim regimes: we simply have less information on infection rates there. But a similar effect is seen in abstinence only sex ed programs. Teens in districts that have such programs are more likely to contract stds and become pregnant.
That said, social openness towards sex combined with ignorance is still more destructive.
But that’s a bit off topic. Try again?
Nope, still not good. The lesson you should be drawing is that these gut-level reactions–while ingrained-- can be trained and targeted. The biological coding for repulsion may be the same, but the triggers are very different. Philosophy, culture, religion, education… each attempts to identify and convey what’s good and proper, what’s bad and taboo: that is, to properly identify what we ought to find repulsive.
Well, presumably we could use the same areas of the brain to evaluate the moral values of other people.
Or should we just wait for evolution to show us which sets of values are beneficial versus maladaptive? (Of course this would depend largely on which values were already predominant.)
Even though we are all using the same part of the brain…we are all 99.9% identical. Even if you are born with no legs or 3feet vs. 6 feet, male or female, the DNA is virtually identical. That leaves us with only one deviation. Education. Each culture educates us differently. The norm of China is not the Norm of North America.
While India and China may have higher and higher levels of HIV infection after so called “education” we need to analyze the term education. In North America it is a lot easier to ‘teach’ people because you can brainwash them (positively) with television. The average American has more than 3 televisions per household. I doubt the same can be said about the aforementioned countries. Nor could you say that they have proper statistics about how many people were properly trained about HIV infection. Which means that they were not truly educated in the first place. In addition, both of these countries have over 1 billion people. The sheer numbers alone blow every other country’s statistics away. If half the population of India has births that means next year there will be 1,500,000,000 Indians. If half the population of Taiwan at 23,000,000 has kids, Taiwan only gets 34,500,000 next year. Even if you use percentiles the figures are grossly skewed.
If you took a Canadian baby and raised it with a Chinese family in Shanghai, that child would be speaking Mandarin, celebrating Chinese New Year and at the very core be a Chinese albeit caucasian. It’s morality standard would be based on Chinese beliefs not Euro-American concepts.
The DNA of humans and apes is mostly the same. Breeds of dogs are all but identical. The little differences matter. Education can develop potentials that are already there, but there are vast differences in these potentials. To attempt to educate those who are incapable of it, wastes money and only annoys the intended beneficiaries. Better not to be sentimental about them.
I know that science is awfully pesky in discussions like this, but the Y chromosome does have like 50 million base pairs, and men have it while women have an second X chromosome that has like 150 million base pairs and stuff. That 99.9% figure is off by more than a full order of magnitude.
Also, keep in mind that we really do share over 95% of our DNA with rats and over half our DNA with wheat. Small changes can make a big difference. Consider how much you could do by altering “just” 1% of the PHP code that runs Forumosa.
[quote=“alidarbac”] Moreover, while surveying the moral concerns of people of different cultures around the world, five common themes (or what he calls moral “spheres”) always came up - aversion to harm and a preference for purity, loyalty, fairness, and authority. Of course, each culture decides what problems fit into what spheres and how much weight to put on each moral sphere differently, but the commonality in these five themes are apparent. Furthermore, you can argue that each of these five moral spheres conveys an evolutionary advantage - people who avoid “dirtiness” are more likely to survive just like societies that value fairness and respect for authority are more likely to thrive.
So here’s the Philosophy 101 kicker. How can we avoid the so-called morass of cultural relativism? If an enraged mob in Sudan aghast at a British woman for naming a teddy bear Mohammed, a liberal Western vegetarian aghast at the idea of eating meat, a Japanese guy aghast at the idea of not conforming, and an Indian bureaucrat aghast at the idea of giving a plum job to a stranger rather than a relative, if all of these people are being motivated by the same brain lobe being triggered, how do you evaluate the validity of one claim over another?[/quote]
By looking at which one provides, in a given circumstance, the most opportunity for what he calls the “common themes” to find expression.
Only tangenitally related I suppose but in Pinkers book on the language instinct (It’s called the Language Instinct) he lists human universals. It goes like this…
Value placed on articulateness, Gossip. Lying. Misleading. Verbal Humor. Humorous insults. Poetic and rhetorical speeech forms. Narrative and story telling. Metaphor. Poetry with repitition of linguistic elements. Words for days… Use of smiles as a friendly greeting. Powerful sexual jealousy. Dance. Music…