Pharyngula

Posted by: Bryan | August 24, 2009 8:00 AM

I agree that the concept of morality does not exist outside of human minds. This is an uncontroversial position in my opinion. However, prepare to be quote-mined by the god bots as an example of an atheist with no morals at all:

"No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest..."

Posted by: SEF | August 24, 2009 8:11 AM

Listen. It's a tough universe. There's all sorts of people and things trying to do you, kill you, rip you off, everything. If you're going to survive out there, you've really got to know where your towel is.

Posted by: Museli | August 24, 2009 8:20 AM

I think that our morals most definitely stem from our cultural upbringing, in the western world our morals mostly stem from the christian-judaic ethos.

I have often imagined a world where religion was not such a dominant force if it existed at all, where human beings evolved a moral code without the doctrine of a supernatural deity, how different things may be...

Would we still have developed similar moral codes and a similar common ethic? Probably.

Posted by: Stephen Wells | August 24, 2009 8:27 AM

Morality doesn't prove gods for much the same reason that Christmas presents don't prove Santa.

Posted by: Duncan C | August 24, 2009 8:29 AM

His views on morality (or the moral law) are depressingly widespread in the work of recent 'Moral Realist' moral philosophy. So as crazy as you and I think it is, it's actually pretty mainstream.

He doesn't think scientists should pretend evolution is teleological, he thinks it REALLY IS teleological. Check out the interview he did with Dan Dennett on his website meaningoflife.tv if you want a good chuckle.

@Bryan - "I agree that the concept of morality does not exist outside of human minds." Well trivially you're correct in that concepts are (fair to say?) linguistic and that as we're the only language-having creatures we know about we're the only creatures that have a concept of X for all values of X, including morality. But morality exists outside of human minds. Obviously it's in a truncated form due to the differences in cognitive resources involved, but Francis Van De Waal has some really nice stuff about Chimpanzee Morality published; the core of which (with replies) can be found in Primates and Philosophers.

@Dale - "We can also see people who are psychopaths (to varying degrees) who have slightly different brain chemistry/genetics who don't follow the normal societal rules." A perfect example of wrong thinking currently prevalent in the philosophy of moral psychology. You accept that moral failure/psychopathy comes in degrees and then you contrast it with 'normal societal rules'. This creates a false dichotomy: up until this point on the sliding scale of moral sensibility you're a psychopath, after this point you're normal. What am I to make of a friend of mine who is less sensitive than I am to the suffering of others? What if he doesn't think about other people's interests /quite as much/ as I do. Does that make him a psychopath? Psychopaths make up the extreme bottom end of moral sensitivity, probably due to a detectable structural abnormality in the amygdalae or the connections between the amygdalae and the frontal lobes (Josh Greene can't be wrong all the time) but everyone else is still distributed on the scale of sensitivity in some Bell Curve or other meaning you can't point at one spot on the curve and say 'that's where real, normal morality is'. That a certain profile of moral behaviour is what 50% of the population adheres to doesn't mean that I should adhere to it. Individual morality is regulated by the emotions (self-satisfaction, guilt) and follows the dictates of one's moral sensitivity/conscience. Public 'morality' (or behaviour towards others) is or ought to be regulated by a concern for maximising our capacity for peaceful co-existence and is regulated by laws and punitive actions for violating them. It's the only way it's going to make sense.

*((I'm look as though I'm suggesting there is only one variable involved in moral behaviour. There isn't. I don't believe there is. Nor should you. However, it helps make what I'm trying to say clearer than if I tried to make e.g. a boxological diagram in ASCII!!))

Posted by: Schmeer | August 24, 2009 8:31 AM

Hyopthesis: Anyone citing C.S. Lewis hasn't read enough:
A. C.S. Lewis or
B. anything else.

Posted by: Anon | August 24, 2009 8:34 AM

Saw him on Colbert--looked even more like a deer in headlights than the typical guest does. So unwilling to offend even a strawman character that he folded like a card table. There's no there there.

Posted by: Duncan C | August 24, 2009 8:39 AM

"Suffice to say that the idea of some "purpose" in evolution is absurd, populations of organisms evolving to deal with facts of the world will never equal a moral law as such would be an explicit case of the naturalistic fallacy"

Perhaps I could make the idea as plausible as possible for you. Wright believes (IIRC) that the moral law is some quasi-contractarian system of rules to promote our living together. This would be an example of what Dennett (in Darwin's Dangerous Idea?) calls a Good Trick; something which evolution is going to hit on again and again; like the eye, for example. Eyes have evolved independently several times. You wouldn't be surprised is a planet with a similar-ish atmosphere to our own developed life forms (even if something like silicon based, or equally exotic forms of life) with eyes. Why not? Because detecting light to observe activity at a distance and so detect food, mates and predators is a Good Idea. Sexual recombination is a Good Idea, which is why it is used in a lot of genetic algorithms. Wright thinks that (a) morality has a broadly Kantian or social contractarian structure, (b) that Morality (capital M) is sort of binary in a way I was ranting against above; you either are moral or you're not and morality for everyone is experienced in very similar ways and (c) that Morality (capital M) is a Good Idea and that evolution will hit on it.*

Where he becomes slightly madder and more unclear is where he diverges from 'Morality and higher intelligence are Good Ideas' to 'Morality and higher intelligence seem to be what teleology is aiming at'. As though if I were to watch the universe speeded up it would seem as though it were /striving/ towards these things as an end product. He's a very whiggish sort of deist, I suppose you could say. He's shaken off religion but not the idea that the universe thinks we're really, really important and really, really awesome. Seriously; check out his interview with Dennett. He's a lot clearer there in some ways than he is in Non-Zero.

*Again none of this is Wright only. Shaun Nichols endorses some of this, for some of morality; Marc Hauser seems to endorse most of it in Moral Minds (especially the universalist element of it which I find to be the most absurd).

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 8:43 AM

First, there is no moral law: the universe is a nasty, heartless place where most things wouldn't mind killing you if you let them. - PZ

To say the universe is "a nasty, heartless place" is already anthropomorphising: it suggests that it has a disposition - and it doesn't. Dawkins makes the same error. you wouldn't say a rock that fell on someone was a "nasty, heartless rock" - except (assuming it did no serious damage) in jest.

No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest (it is very destructive to your personal bliss to knock down your social support system) and the self-interest of others, who would try to stop you. - PZ

Plain wrong: your empathy with others, and your moral convictions, are not reducible to (personal or genetic) self-interest. If you were right, genuine altruism (e.g. people who sacrifice their lives for others) would never happen; but it does. What you say is only true of psychopaths (most of whom never go on a murder spree, but would have no hesitation in doing so if they judged it advantageous).

There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you, other than local, temporary conditions, a lot of social enculturation, and probably a bit of genetic hardwiring that you've inherited from ancestors who lived under similar conditions. - PZ

Wright's speculations are nothing more than that, but the "local, temporary conditions" and "social enculturation" are "out there", no? More fundamentally, you are confounding proximate causes - in this case, the psychological restraints imposed by empathy and moral convictions - with the more remote causal factors responsible for bringing about those constraints - enculturation and innate propensities produced in turn by natural and sexual selection.

Posted by: Museli | August 24, 2009 8:45 AM

@ SEF # 11

I think you missed the point of my post. This is the set of morals that I think western culture is generally brought up on.

My point being that this set of morals doesn't necessarily need a doctrine of belief for them to have arose. Nor does it mean they are derived from god.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | August 24, 2009 8:50 AM

It makes a lot more sense to argue that morality is a cultural phenomenon that flows from our development as social animals then it does to claim that all ethical impulses flow from a conveniently undetectable sky fairy. Our strength as a species is our complex, problem solving brainstructure paired with our ability to engage in advanced collaborative action. Individualy we humans are slow, weak and fragile compared to many other species and the only thing that has allowed our race of puny, psychotic apes to become the dominant species on earth is our ability to manipulate our environment.

There is only so much that an individual human can do or learn, but as a society we can and have accomplished spectacular feats of science, art and engineering. If one accepts the societal structure as a (from the collective point of view, spectacularly sucessful) survival strategy then one sees the imperative toward what may amount to socially moral behaviour.

The social edifice can only function so long as the various contributing individuals can have a reasonable expectation that certain standards of behaviour will be observed by the majority of the other members of that culture, the majority of the time. In a true 'every man for himself' state of anarchy there would be no incentive to cooperate on anything since the liklihood of receiving consistent reward in accordance with one's own self interest for contributing to the society would be negligible. It could be argued that the social contract of modern democracies is an explicit manifestation of this factor.

Extreme departures from socially mandated ethical behaviour may indeed be a consequence of personal trauma or altered brain chemistry caused by genetic factors or injury. Equally, entire social structures can be engineered to compel what, under normal societal conditions, would be considered immoral behaviour in pursuit of the goals of the ruling authority or dominant social grouping of that society.

There is no need to refer to any supernatural agency to explain the existence of human morality or its absence in some individuals. It all comes back down to Occham. There is no need to add a 'god factor' to explain this phenomenon.

Godbot quote miners will doubtless use this post to try to claim 'proof' that all atheists are monstrously inhuman, morality free, nihilist baby-eaters. This would just go to show that, once agian, they have either failed to understand the issue in question or have deliberately chosen to misconstrue the atheist position to score some cheap propaganda points.

Posted by: Duncan C | August 24, 2009 8:54 AM

"...but most of those people have been trained from birth to lie and pretend they get their morals via the bible."

That's (and I'm sorry, by the way, to be commenting so much but as a reader of your blog for several years and a grad student philosopher really interested in moral psychology this is sort of bread and butter for me) not entirely a lie. One of the worst things about religion is it (genuinely!) incorporates into people's moral codes things which are maladaptive or absurd. The poor chap undergoing catholic guilt for something entirely normal amongst human beings (masturbation, sex outside of marriage, having 'lustful thoughts') feels just the same sort of guilt as you or I feel when we do something actually wrong. Because of this, religion in many ways contorts and undermines morality. BUT (and here's the problem) ordinary moral development requires social input (feral children would not grow up to be normal moral agents, for example), and for many people their religious community is the social input they get when shaping their morality. It's very tricky to say what kind of conduct is and is not the kind of thing we think should be part of ordinary moral instruction. Should 'fornication' be regarded as a religious proscription or is that something a lot of people would agree should be discouraged. Absolutely everyone (to go for the real locus classicus of moral cultural relativism in Herodotus) agrees the dead should be honoured in some way, but every culture seems to disagree how. Is this really a religious thing, or is it the sort of thing we think it would be alright (or perhaps obligatory) for people to encourage in their children? What about nationalism? One man's tribalism is another man's patriotism. I recently judged a debate at the European Debating Championship in which a Turkish team argued that state moral instruction to children should include a: respect your elders (fair enough), b: admire the military (less obvious), c: don't support an independent Kurdistan. We can all agree that (c) is a bit mad, but what /should/ moral instruction consist in? Like language, morality doesn't develop without external input, though it is innate in some sense. But what input is and is not acceptable seems very tricky.

This might be a false problem. You might just say 'it doesn't matter, so long as we agree that you shouldn't teach them anything obviously pernicious like a lot of religions teach: A: to hate their body, B: racism, C: sexism, D: prejudice against people who have different but harmless lifestyle differences' and that would be how I would go, but it's important to note that the learning aspect of morality makes the question of where you should/do 'get your morals from' and what morals you should be taught very, very tricky.

Posted by: Hank Fox | August 24, 2009 8:57 AM

"No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest (it is very destructive to your personal bliss to knock down your social support system) and the self-interest of others, who would try to stop you. There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you ..."

I always say "There are no such things as gods. But that's a GOOD thing."

Especially in the field of morality. What makes being good a good thing is that it IS a choice. It has value because it's not automatic, or the result of some godly command backed up by threats or horrifying punishments.

On the other hand, the propensity for it comes naturally to us. Part of that "self interest," as PZ implies, is the good feeling we and others get from acting on our innate empathy and compassion with the people around us.

Posted by: Kel, OM | August 24, 2009 9:03 AM

I think that our morals most definitely stem from our cultural upbringing, in the western world our morals mostly stem from the christian-judaic ethos.

So while there's some remnants, I think the kindest we could say is that we are in a post-Christian society, our values now are more influenced by the enlightenment process and modernism than anything else. The notion of gender and racial equality, the abolition and abhorrence of slavery, freedom of religion, freedom of thought and freedom of speech, focus on protecting the biosphere, etc. It's hard to see such polar shifts in the moral zeitgeist as still stemming from the Judeo-Christian ethos when the polar opposites did stem.

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 9:08 AM

Why do people refer to C.S. Lewis so often as if he were some kind of fucking oracle? - Matt Heath

Because they're fucking stupid ;-)

Posted by: Duncan | August 24, 2009 9:11 AM

"The social edifice can only function so long as the various contributing individuals can have a reasonable expectation that certain standards of behaviour will be observed by the majority of the other members of that culture, the majority of the time."

Maybe. Don't you think I could in principle get reasonably far by just having a generally high standard of practical reasoning (in a means-to-ends sense, not anything weird and Kantian) and punish people for certain kinds of acts which impinge on the peace. In other words a political system built on laws without any presumption of morals.

"It could be argued that the social contract of modern democracies is an explicit manifestation of this factor."

Well... if you are, as you seem to be, equating the public morality of the law and the social contract with the private morality of what one feels one ought to do, or what behaviour one might expect from others, consider the classic example: I would reasonably expect my significant not to cheat on me. Right? It would be immoral for them to do so. But in most countries in the world it isn't illegal for her to do so. There might be legal consequences - I could sue for divorce with the balance in my favour - but the adultery itself isn't punished though I think most people would agree that it's immoral (other things being equal - I'm not talking about swingers or tit-for-tat cheating).

@Stranger Gods Before Me

"It would be a pretty amazing thing if humans had suddenly mutated to put up with one another in communities hundreds, then quickly thousands, and now millions of times larger than any other ape had achieved before."

Well yes it might but A: as I said earlier De Waal has some excellent (and to me anyway completely convincing) arguments to the effect that Chimpanzee behavioural practices evidence something it would be reasonable to call morality. B: A lot of people (Steven Pinker included, who I notice keeps cropping up in this discussion) have noted that it's possible that our morality, which we developed for living in small social groups, may be maladapted both for early agrarian society and for contemporary urban society. For one thing, it's a lot easier for psychopaths to get by in modern society than it was in the past if we were living in small bands relatively like chimpanzee colonies. If morality, regulated by emotions, was perfect for regulating modern society we wouldn't really need laws, would we? Yet curiously the development of civilization seems to coincide with the development of laws; the transition from the arbitrary judgment of the local chieftain, to the harsh (literally Draconian?) codes of early agrarian societies, to the almost modern looking Republican system of Ancient Rome to ultimately (I would argue) the heavily rehabilitationist system in Sweden which seems almost an attempt to recapture familial forms of justice which may well have been what was practiced before civilization* (If my brother steals my biscuits I don't chop his hands off).

*I'm not trying to be Rousseau here. Obviously proto-humans would have bashed each others heads in quite frequently, but there's an interesting decrease from Hammurabi to (er... not to sound Whiggish) Sweden in hostility shown towards the criminal, which may simply be based on the observation on what is more effective.

Posted by: a lurker | August 24, 2009 9:16 AM

Wright might be trying to cash in with the Templeton Prize, but then again he has had these sort of opinions for years. Take a look at his Nonzero which was actually a good book until its last chapter when started to deal with God. It was almost like different person wrote that chapter. The punch was pulled almost as if he lacked the nerve to do it.

Posted by: llewelly | August 24, 2009 9:21 AM

If evolution does tend to eventually “converge” on certain moral intuitions, does that mean there were moral rules “out there” from the beginning, before humans became aware of them — that natural selection didn’t “invent” human moral intuitions so much as “discover” them? That would be good news for any believers who want to preserve as much of the spirit of C. S. Lewis as Darwinism permits.

The majority of Earth's vertebrates are shaped more or less like fish, and this has been true for hundreds of millions of years. Does that mean that there were more rules "out there" from the beginning, before fish evolved? That natural selection didn't "invent" the fishy form so much as "discover" it? That would be good news for any believers who want to preserve as much of the spirit of the Devonian oceans as Darwinism permits.

Not all species are shaped like fish - but any species which is, is taking advantage of genuine physical laws, that were true billions of years before that species evolved.

All of this proves that the eventual direction of evolution was directed by the FISH GOD, and those who don't worship the FISH GOD are sadly deluded.

Posted by: Matt Heath | August 24, 2009 9:23 AM

Knockgoats@30 RevBDC@31: ah right, mystery solved. Thanks.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | August 24, 2009 9:25 AM

Duncan @ 32;

I see your arguments and I concede that I was sloppy in my use of terminology. What I perhaps should have said is that our concept of morality may be related to the need for predictable standards of behaviour in any complex society. It was wrong of me to directly equate the two. Of course you are also right that public policy and personal moralty are not comparable. I was using the example of the social contract to demonstate that in a free society people obey laws out of personal and collective interest. We pay tax, the government spends that tax in the generally agreed best interests of that society instead of on private jets and paid-by-the-hour companionship (at least, that is the theory if not always the practice). Most people do not pay taxes out of any sense of obligation to the government and certainly not due to the biblical injunction to "render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's". It seems possible that concepts of morality may in part also be a question of acting out of perceived interest rather than inpursuit of divine approval.

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 9:29 AM

Because C.S. Lewis was actually a pretty smart guy - Max

[evidence needed]

(His "liar, lunatic, lord" trilemma is one of the stupidest pieces of apologetics evah.)

Posted by: Duncan C | August 24, 2009 9:40 AM

"Take a look at his Nonzero which was actually a good book until its last chapter when started to deal with God."

As Dennett says to Wright (I'm paraphrasing from memory here) "you know, the funny thing with you is that I'm reading what you write and thinking it's going along fine and I agree with it and then suddenly you veer off erratically to the side."

I'd have said the teleology stuff was pretty implicit in most of Non Zero and as such if he didn't have the last chapter the book would be, in a sense, incomplete. I mean, design doesn't need a designer but 'real design' striving towards a goal certainly does.

"Most people do not pay taxes out of any sense of obligation to the government and certainly not due to the biblical injunction to "render unto Ceasar what is Ceasar's"."

This may tie into the 'moral instruction' discussion above. There's a body of political thought (called republicanism but having about as much to do with the Republican party as Liberalism has to do with whom the American media term 'liberals') which says the state should inculcate 'civic virtue' in its citizens, which would include things like treating taxation as a moral obligation (as well as things like fighting for your country and creating art to glorify your country and so on and so forth). In fact it was a major difference between liberals and republicans as to whether this was an unacceptable tyranny on the part of the state (Mill, infamously, was opposed to state education for this reason). Coincidentally Scottish Enlightenment republican thought was a major influence on a lot of the founding fathers.

Posted by: Gregory Greenwood | August 24, 2009 9:45 AM

Ducan C @ 44;

Another interesting and erudite post. I will definetly look this up. Thanks.

Posted by: Duncan C | August 24, 2009 9:50 AM

@Jerry: "Actually, I didn't mean to imply that Wright is making all this up just to win the Templeton Prize. I think he really believes the stuff! But it would be strange if the thought of all that dosh hadn't crossed his mind...."

Never thought of it yourself? I mean, high profile writer on evolution and all. Could always do an Anthony Flew later in life; certainly cheaper than paying into a pension plan, in all but moral coinage. And religion, sadly, is recession proof.

I was always rather taken with the argument that Richard Dawkins is a shoo-in for the prize. After all the prize states it's for people who have written about the relationship between religion and science; and who's written more prominently on that head than Richard?

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 24, 2009 9:56 AM

"It would be a pretty amazing thing if humans had suddenly mutated to put up with one another in communities hundreds, then quickly thousands, and now millions of times larger than any other ape had achieved before."

Well yes it might but A: as I said earlier De Waal has some excellent (and to me anyway completely convincing) arguments to the effect that Chimpanzee behavioural practices evidence something it would be reasonable to call morality.

I don't disagree. I'm already convinced that chimps have morality. I can show you studies of what appear to be genuinely altruistic behaviors among rats, depriving themselves of food if their cage's food dispenser is linked to an electric floor that shocks a neighboring rat they've never met before and have no prior social interest for. Rats have some but very little culture, so there's a strong case to be made that mammals in general have a genetic basis for some morality.

What I take issue with is the suggestion that the bulk of human morality is genetic. Chimp morality doesn't allow them to hold together societies of larger than about a hundred individuals. Such a massive and sudden change in humans is very hard to explain by genetic mutation, much easier by culture.

I don't dispute that humans have some genetically coded morality. I do think that it's grossly exaggerated by atheists when we defend our basis for morality against philosophically greedy theists who want it all to themselves.

Especially when we are talking about those tendencies we are even conscious enough of to label morality, I think these things are almost entirely cultural.

And now I believe I'm in danger of merely reiterating your point B, so I'll take a break before I indulge my longwindedness.

Posted by: Matt Heath | August 24, 2009 10:05 AM

Definitely. I much prefer the "lunatic, liar, lord, legend" version ;)

Posted by: Luci | August 24, 2009 10:12 AM

Morality doesn't equal God; to the contrary.

Why is it acceptable to Christians to worship and immoral God? Why is God's immorality a virtue?

Is it a form of masochism? In what other area of human psychology do you see people craving pain, abuse, humiliation and even death? Why do they seek to debase themselves before a powerful, cruel, feared authority figure? Why do they view impatience, vanity, and cruelty as virtues when exercised by their God?

Posted by: Kel, OM | August 24, 2009 10:15 AM

It's hard not to at least give some credit to CS Lewis, and in terms of Christian apologists there's not any who are near his class

Posted by: Lynna | August 24, 2009 10:24 AM

It seems to me that "The Evolution of God" should be changed to "How to Discipline Your God" or "Getting God to Abide by Human Morality" -- the idea that religions respond to pressures from reason and modify their hardline dogmas (or more likely, selectively ignore bits of dogma), hardly corresponds to an "evolution" of the main character.

The main characters in Christian traditions are more like toddlers that need to be slowly civilized. One learns to ignore their tantrums for the most part, and to cherry-pick their better moments for reinforcement.

It would save time and trouble if we didn't start out with an omniscient toddler to begin with.

Posted by: Dude | August 24, 2009 10:29 AM

Flying spaghetti monster.
His noodle makes us all moral and tasty.

Posted by: Dark Jaguar | August 24, 2009 10:37 AM

Why is it whenever someone tries to list off reasons why people don't go on murder sprees they always forget sheer complete uninterest in doing that? Or laziness? Or both?

Even if someone doesn't value human life, that doesn't mean they'll automatically go and kill people. That takes work, and so the real question isn't why most do, it's why anyone DOES.

Posted by: Matt Heath | August 24, 2009 10:47 AM

If the Jesus story is at all true, I lean towards lunatic for the reason that he was willing to let himself be executed for it.

FWIW The Jesus Seminar (mostly Christian scholars but following a respectably secular, historical methodology) decided it was very unlikely Jesus was executed for claiming to be the messiah (much less for claiming to be the son of God or God himself). It was more likely for public nuisance (smashing up the money-lenders or similar).

Posted by: John | August 24, 2009 11:07 AM

First, there is no moral law: the universe is a nasty, heartless place where most things wouldn't mind killing you if you let them. No one is compelled to be nice; you or anyone could go on a murder spree, and all that is stopping you is your self-interest (it is very destructive to your personal bliss to knock down your social support system) and the self-interest of others, who would try to stop you. There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you, other than local, temporary conditions, a lot of social enculturation, and probably a bit of genetic hardwiring that you've inherited from ancestors who lived under similar conditions.

While I'm generally of like mind about most of the post, I think this quote is the reason more scientists need to talk to more people working in the area of metaethics. In the post you claim that you need evidence for a proposition in order to accept it, and this is surely a responsible epistemic principle. However, the evidence you cite does not justify your claim about there being no morality. The following is either true or false "you ought not murder." The fact that people would or do in fact murder, does not provide evidence that this proposition is false. If the proposition is true, it only shows that people don't do as they ought.

There are many analytic philosophers who think there are good arguments that there are objective, mind-independent, naturalistic moral facts. Of course, there are many metaethicists who disagree, but it is not a simple matter of citing the fact that people, often, are brutish. Questions of morality should be settled by appeals to arguments, reasons, justification, and evidence. Of course, the answers had better be compatible with our best empirical science, but the scientific facts alone don't settle whether there are moral facts, etc. Scientists too often take a stance on this question by appealing to bad evidence and without seeing whether anyone has had anything worthwhile to say about the subject. This is like a philosopher just deciding that natural selection is inert because "look at how complex things are." Surely, we should tell such a philosopher that there is a big body of work by smart people that he should take a look at (if we were being nice).

Posted by: Lynna | August 24, 2009 11:19 AM

One of the commenters on Jerry Coyne's site noted that "social cohesion" cannot be used as an automatically "good" reason to keep religion in the equation. Social cohesion can be the excuse for a lot of bad behavior. Everyone gets together, and together they justify doing some very nasty stuff.

It sounds to be like Robert Wright is very much into "social cohesion" as a greater good than truth.

As Coyne pointed out, Wright wants scientists to just "accept" the supposed truth that religion offers up the best manifestation of morality and social cohesion. This is way off base.

I think Wright is afraid that his Mommy Science and his Daddy Religion will fight.

Posted by: CJColucci | August 24, 2009 11:27 AM

Celtic_Evolution
Dark Jaguar's point wasn't just the laziness angle, but the lack of interest most people, most of the time, have in really bad behavior. While I could imagine myself getting worked up enough at someone to want to kill him, and needing to consider the odds of going to jail or being killed by my prospective victim's angry relatives or divine retribution to restrain myself, it hasn't happened to me in over half a century. Although I have often wanted very much to have sex with various women who lacked interest in the project, I have never strongly felt the urge to disregard a "NO" -- at least beyond some whining and cajolery in an attempt to change their minds -- and take what I wanted. And I'm not a particularly good person. We're all of us pretty bad -- I often say that when i was religious I had trouble with the doctrine of Original Sin but now that I'm not it's the one doctrine I don't have trouble with -- but most of us aren't that bad.

Posted by: Stephen R Whelan | August 24, 2009 11:32 AM

You know, just because we're sentient life forms doesn't mean our sense of morals protects us unquestionably;in a scientific sense, our morals, ethics, and desire to not kill each other is derived from our altruism. Killing my neighbor will allow me to get his food,but if that behavior is common, it will not lead to the survival of the human genes.
Also, in a societal sense, a vast majority of people (even if you excluded religion and god from the whole equation) simply have no incentive or wish to kill one another.
It's a sort of morbid irony, I suppose, that religion can inspire millions to not want to kill but in other places and other people, motivate mass murder. It kind of makes me wish I knew how events in history might have played out if religion had faded away during the Enlightenment.
(I hope I phrased all of that correctly!)

Posted by: Todd I. Stark | August 24, 2009 11:43 AM

I'm thinking that negotiating a way of conducting research and education so that stakeholders real basic needs and public welfare are met is not "compromise." Of course there are things we must not compromise on. And things we will probably never agree on. The point of "accomodationism" or whatever is that the things we assume are non-negotiable are often not the things that really should be non-negotiable. That's because we all tend to get attached to ethereal ideas and different lofty "values" and forget the goals behind them and the fact that they can be represented as balanced virtues rather than non-negotiable "values."

Scientific inquiry has its place, so does humility. Even "faith" has a place psychologically. None of these things is all good with no possible negative aspect. None of them is entirely bad with no value. There is plenty we could agree on that we don't.

Even if it defensible to attack religion as such in some channels to raise doubt in people's minds and raise the level of scientific literacy (ok, very possible), that doesn't mean every forum and every interaction has to be filled with those attacks. Most people are willing to allow for more than one way of thinking about something complex. Like life itself.

It would be nice to have more public discourse that valued scholarship and reasoning more; and less that was obsessed with attacking religion as such or defeating scientific naturalism. I don't agree with Wright's solution, but I don't think it merits scathing sarcastic assault. We get all caught up in being clever and opinionated and purposeful and forget to acknowledge that people like Wright are closer to allies than enemies on the continuum of human welfare. At least it seems that way to me.

Posted by: Tulse | August 24, 2009 11:59 AM

Most people are willing to allow for more than one way of thinking about something complex.

And most atheists are happy to let people think in various ways. But when one of those ways demands that gays be stoned, that creationism be taught in schools, and that vital medical procedures and research be criminalized, some of us get testy.

Let's be absolutely clear: almost no one would care if people chose to believe in a Deist god. Heck, almost no one would care if people believed in fundamentalist Christianity in their own homes. But when people's religious beliefs impinge directly on the public sphere, then they are fair game.

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 24, 2009 12:33 PM

Killing my neighbor will allow me to get his food,but if that behavior is common, it will not lead to the survival of the human genes.

Sure it will. Other species regularly kill the neighbor and make him their food. Your genes will get along just fine as long as you don't eat all your children.

Also, in a societal sense, a vast majority of people (even if you excluded religion and god from the whole equation) simply have no incentive or wish to kill one another.

As long as resources are plentiful.

Posted by: Fred Mounts | August 24, 2009 12:41 PM

Tony at 74, perhaps you should, you know, actually read some of the comments on this thread. Duncan C is holding class, and Knockgoats is his usual fount of knowledge. When you you've read their comments, perhaps you'll have something relevant to add; if not, kindly piss off.

Posted by: Denise | August 24, 2009 12:57 PM

"Holding class" is right! I am really enjoying this discussion. I am actually getting some clarity on some of the issues weighing my much-tinier-than many-of-you brain. I am so sick of hearing from my xtian friends that I can’t possibly raise moral children without god. If I have Mere Christianity recommended to me one more time I am going to go ape shit…just warnin’ ya. My response has always been…look, you lost me at the premise. Jesus NEVER existed. I just wasn’t clever enough to call it Legend. (Thanks for that!)

I started to read Wright’s Non Zero, got frustrated and never made it to the last chapter.

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 1:11 PM

strange gods before me,
Actually, such behaviour is not common among bonobos, or gorillas, IIRC. Even if it were, language makes a fundamental difference, as I think you have said elsewhere - but our linguistic abilities are genetically based. Once you have language, trade, reciprocal assistance in times of local shortage, goal-directed coordination of larger groups, and the transfer between groups of large amounts of useful information, all become possible. This means the neighbouring group is not only a competitor and source of mates (as in other apes), but also a potential collaborator in largescale projects, trading partner, emergency resource, and source of technological innovations and information about conditions further afield. Sure, all these things are cultural, but our nature is to be cultured - to a far, far greater extent than any other animal. This is at least as radical a change as haplodiploidy.

Incidentally, termites are not haplodiploid. In their case, the stability of large groups may be related to their cellulose-digesting symbionts. There's more than one (and indeed more than two!) ways to make mass societies possible.

Posted by: Chiroptera | August 24, 2009 1:27 PM

John, #66: There are many analytic philosophers who think there are good arguments that there are objective, mind-independent, naturalistic moral facts.

The problem is that "objective moral facts" is an oxymoron. Morality is about right and wrong, and ultimately right and wrong comes down to what is abhorrent versus what is to be encouraged, and these are subjective feelings. The very different moral codes of different societies and of individuals in each society show just how subjective these considerations are.

I suppose that an "analytic philosopher" can define ethics and/or right and wrong any way she wants, but then she runs into the problem of discussing a topic that is different than what everyone else is discussing; in fact, by using the same words to describe a very different idea than what other people intuitively understand by the words "morality" and "ethics" she only ends up confusing the issue.

Posted by: Lynna | August 24, 2009 1:31 PM

Knockgoats @75: Thanks for the virtual high five.

But... I know (knew) fuck all about termites.

Chemical social cohesion.

Incidentally, termites are not haplodiploid. In their case, the stability of large groups may be related to their cellulose-digesting symbionts. [Knockgoats]

I did encounter an amazing colony of ants in Death Hollow in Utah. In a narrow canyon, the ants had colonized not just the surrounding soil, but also the waist-high shrubs (lots of wild roses, and other thorny shrubs). In the narrow canyon, we had to wade through water and shrubs to make any headway. In the ant colony, it was like wading through ants as well.

Posted by: Zen Druid | August 24, 2009 1:40 PM

A happy healthy three-year-old child has stronger positive moral principles than the bible god.

The 'religious' elders teach the child by example, how to lie, cheat and disrespect others. They reinforce the child's natural fear of the unknown, instead of making the unknown knowable. They introduce the child to gratuitous guilt, shame and doubt.

Their bible, IMO, is the most destructive human artifact ever produced.

For alternative moral teachings, well... I understand Aesop's Fables were good enough for Socrates.

Posted by: uncle frogy | August 24, 2009 2:03 PM

Sorry if this is from left field or off topic but I read too slow to read all of the comments thus far.
In all these kinds of discussions I get the feeling especially from the religious and some of the philosophers that the idea of morality and the intelligence are some separate things and not derived from "the big bang" as is everything else. there is as far as we can tell no outside anywhere no thing that is separate from everything. Just because we do not at this time know what "a Unified Field Theory" is does not for a minute mean that there is not one nor at some point in "the past" there was (we were) a Singularity.
The Mind with which we know things does not exist outside of this and can be said to be but one expression of it.
The distinctions we make between things are useful to our survival and like ourselves maybe only a matter of perspective, our point of view and in the end just as temporary.

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 24, 2009 2:08 PM

sgbf - sorry, missed your note about termites.

Oh well, I didn't see this until too late either. But! Your comment brought these symbionts to my attention. So I'll have to look these up.

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 24, 2009 2:18 PM

In all these kinds of discussions I get the feeling especially from the religious and some of the philosophers that the idea of morality and the intelligence are some separate things and not derived from "the big bang" as is everything else.

As for morality, I think one common claim is that morality may be objective in the way that counting and arithmetic are objective, and so would have truth even in cultures that have not mastered arithmetic or morality, and perhaps even in other possible universes.

I would dearly love to understand enough to participate provocatively in such discussions.

Posted by: Max | August 24, 2009 2:38 PM

http://www.amazon.com/Magicians-Book-Skeptics-Adventures-Narnia/dp/0316017639/ref=cm_cr_pr_pb_i

That looks like an interesting book.

Posted by: Tulse | August 24, 2009 3:06 PM

There's more than one (and indeed more than two!) ways to make mass societies possible.

As the delightfully quirky naked mole rat demonstrates.

Posted by: oriole | August 24, 2009 3:22 PM

Robert Wright writes brilliant books with inane final chapters. I've read a lot of his stuff, including The Moral Animal, and until the final chapter of his books he's a very careful and even interesting thinker who explains how natural selection can generate anything you can imagine in terms of biodiversity, moral feelings, etc. Then he closes off his books with a mysterious final chapter in which he warbles his will to believe in some sort of vague deist god, maybe not all-powerful or all-wise, but good enough to let him avoid calling himself an atheist, which seems to disturb him for some reason probably attached to his Southern Baptist upbringing.

But if you ignore the last chapters, his books are quite good.

Posted by: Chiroptera | August 24, 2009 3:31 PM

What, #91: In short he makes a good case for the hypothesis that moral behaviors as those with low potential for abuse.

The God Delusion is on my queue to be read eventually. Unfortunately my Big Pile of Stuff to Read has gotten quite large (and grows larger every time I exit a book store), so it may be a while before I get to it. I hope that you will forgive me if I comment without having read the book; however, I think (or hope) that I can offer a cogent response that is general enough to cover what Dawkins has said.

Without having yet read the book, I'm not sure what you are describing, whether Dawkins is explaining morality in terms of evo-psych or whether he is offering a foundation on which we can base our morality (like Singer offering utilitarianism and Kant offering the categorical imperative as bases).

If the former, evo-psych might offer an explanation why people tend to feel certain actions are moral or immoral; however, that doesn't answer the question of whether those actions are truly moral or immoral. When people are considering whether a proposed course of action is "right" or "wrong," they want to know whether they "should" take that course of action. Knowing that individuals of a social species will naturally tend to feel empathy for others and want to share, as one possible example, isn't going to answer the question of whether I "should" share my cupcake with the kid at the next table or whether I'm "justified" in eating the whole thing myself.

The other possibility, that Dawkins might be offering an possible basis for making moral decisions, begs the question. Peter Singer, for example, is an advocate for utilitarianism. Once you accept that as a basis, then most questions can be decided, at least in principle. However, it begs the question: why "should" I accept that maximizing happiness is the correct factor that determines a choice being moral?

As I stated before, it has always appeared to me that the whole question of morality is a question of which course of action will I and others find the least objectionable or the most commendable. I cannot think of a way of defining morality in a way that is consistent with an objective set of laws at the same time as it is relevant to the issues that people actually confront when they face moral decisions.

I hope that I haven't been avoiding the issues that you brought up.

Posted by: Lee Picton | August 24, 2009 3:47 PM

Had I read this op-ed only a couple years ago, I might have been persuaded that it was a reasonable intellectual exercise. After all, are not compromises (and the prices of cars), arrived at by the "I'll give a little, you give a little, and we will meet somewhere at a position we both find acceptable" position?

However, after being exposed the last few months by the incisive minds commenting here, I realized instantly upon reading it that it just another accommodationist exhortation. Hey, you atheists, don't be so adamant in insisting that there has to be a naturalistic explanation for everything, and maybe the theists will begin to abandon their ridiculous notion of an interventionist god in favor of a more deistic sort. A less nasty god, in short. We can have a lovely Venn diagram of belief and everybody will be happy. It is, of course, total crap, and I am delighted to have become more proficient in recognizing it as such.

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 4:15 PM

I said they [termites] were an exception to haplodiploidy among social insects. But do you think symbionts are the greater factor, moreso than the obvious issue of termites' cyclical inbreeding? - strange gods before me

Don't know! I wasn't aware of their inbreeding - but I know the symbionts are passed on as adults feed juveniles. Just possibly (this is pure speculation on my part, I don't know if it's been looked at) it's the symbionts that are in the driving seat. There's actually both protists (members of a phylum found only in termites' hind-guts) and spirochetes involved. There's a dissertation online:
Termite gut flagellates and their bacterial symbionts:
Phylogenetic analysis and localization in situ . There's a whole ecosystem inside each termite, it seems!

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 24, 2009 4:36 PM

We can go ahead and layer cultural evolution on top of genetic evolution, and talk about the two together. But I don't think that contradicts my statement that our genetic morality is "watch for the first chance to betray the other group, then attack and rob them." Instead, I think we agree that only culture allows for something more than this baseline. - strange gods before me

Thanks for the bonobo reference - I'll follow it up (I see its 1998), but provisionally, I stand corrected. Yes, we agree culture is crucial, but once some of the possible benefits from peaceful contact with nearby groups became available, this may in turn have selected for a greater tendency to learn peaceful patterns of behaviour (Baldwin effect). Of course, human cultures differ enormously, from those who kill strangers on sight to those that welcome them with open arms, but I'm wary of identifying either of these as "our genetic morality". Even non-human apes may differ culturally in this way within a species, as they do in others.

Posted by: Ichthyic | August 24, 2009 4:46 PM

But I don't think that contradicts my statement that our genetic morality is "watch for the first chance to betray the other group, then attack and rob them."

do you feel this "genetic morality" extends beyond humans, or not?

cause if you do, I have many examples of non-cultural cooperation to show you in non-humans.

cooperation between entirely different species, even.

Posted by: Chiroptera | August 24, 2009 4:59 PM

John, #106: You can't just assert that objective morality is an oxymoron.

I didn't just assert it. I explained, or tried to, that it is a basic definitional issue. I apologize that I wasn't clear. "Objective morality" is like "four-sided triangles" -- the very definition of triangle precludes the possibility of a triangle having four sides. The very definition of "morality" precludes it being objective.

Morality is about what people "should" do. Not "should" do in order to achieve a certain goal or reward or to avoid a punishment or unpleasant situation, or "should" do because some group or some entity commands it, but "should" do because it is "right", whatever those words mean. I cannot figure out an objective way to give these words meaning; the only way I can see out of the circularity is to recognize that what people mean by these words is unavoidably subjective.

But I may be wrong. What would be an example of an "objective moral truth"? What makes it an "objective law", the same for everyone? What makes it "moral" in the sense that people really "should" do it because it is "right"?

Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | August 24, 2009 5:52 PM

It's always pretty amusing here in my neck of the academic woods whenever somebody comes up with a New and Improved Aristotelian View. Please, I beg, can't people let this dead philosopher stay dead? After clawing our way out of and past his metaphysics, which has wrought more damage than I even want to get into, let us finally leave it behind.

What's even more amusing (and disheartening) to me is that one of the few pieces of the Aristotelian Systemthat remains worth considering as viable in the present, his Ethics, really won't help anyone like Wright, because for Aristotle sciences aimed at practical matters could only, at best, be contingent (without absolute laws). No absolute moral laws are possible, the "Golden Mean" being a relativized general observation, dependent upon social context. Contemporary moral philosophers do a great deal of work with this view (called "Virtue Ethics"). And it would be a mistake to think that C.S. Lewis represents the pinnacle of moral realist views. Even contemporary utilitarians have more to offer when attempting to naturalize values. The point is that nobody actually conversant in philosophical research would piece together anything like what Wright does.

So, we get someone like Wright cribbing some Aristotelian Teleology while looking to C.S. Lewis for a more "substantial" ethics. It's sad, and Wright's view is an amateurishly composed mis-mash of things he poorly understands--really bad "philosophy" (as John notes), if it can be called that at all. Being a senior fellow at the New America Foundation is hardly anything close to being an established academic philosopher. Please, don't consider this writer, with a degree in International Politics, a philosopher.

Posted by: tomh | August 24, 2009 6:34 PM

Wright is a journalist, not a philosopher.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | August 24, 2009 7:05 PM

John #114

I disagree with almost everything Plantinga says, his logical mistakes are hardly ever obvious and in fact I find it takes quite a bit of work to find out where he has made an error. I think people see his conclusions and write him off before coming to identify the mistakes he has made (which can be educational).

Back in May there was a thread on one of Plantinga's essays. It didn't take people long to discover his logical fallacies. I mentioned his special pleading a couple of times, others talked about strawmen and red herrings. If Plantinga is one of the leading modern philosophers then modern philosophy is not doing well.

dismissing philosophy because you can name three people you think are prone to poor philosophizing is like writing of science because you find the work of three philosophers poor.

I mentioned three philosophers because those three have been discussed on this site recently. I can come up with a whole bunch more philosophers whose main product can be described as bovine feces. However, instead of giving a list of bad philosophers, how about I give the names of good ones? Dennett is usually okay if there's a following wind and a calm sea, Sam Harris can argue his way out of a wet paper bag, Wittgenstein had some sorta reasonable ideas about logic, Popper doesn't strike me as too deranged...I'll get back to you if I can think of any other philosophers who peddled more than just bullshit.

There is no escaping the need to engage in philosophy.

I agree completely. My objection is that modern philosophers are, for the most part, poor thinkers whose main product, as I said previously, is bullshit. Sorry if I'm unimpressed by the VAST majority of philosophers. Maybe if they stopped peddling bullshit (and usually quite obvious bullshit, the Postmodernists are a prime example of obvious bullshitters) my opinion of philosophers would be better.

tomh #119

Wright is a journalist, not a philosopher.

Maybe that explains why his philosophy is worse than the usual run.

Posted by: Dave2 | August 24, 2009 7:20 PM

Duncan C wrote:

His views on morality (or the moral law) are depressingly widespread in the work of recent 'Moral Realist' moral philosophy.

Be fair to the moral realists. They don't deny that the universe is a nasty heartless place. They just think that there are objective moral facts about which actions are wrong and which things are valuable, etc. Indeed, most moral realists argue that these objective moral facts fit nicely within a naturalistic scientific worldview.

Posted by: Dave2 | August 24, 2009 7:50 PM

Paul,

I don't know if anyone defends falsifiability as a demarcation criterion separating science from pseudoscience anymore. Anyway, these metaethical naturalists tend to take their lead from materialists in the philosophy of mind. They say moral properties can be (more or less) identified with whichever natural properties turn out to causally regulate our use of moral language, or turn out to fill the role laid out by our moral concepts. So just as pain might turn out to be C-fibers firing (if you're a materialist), goodness might turn out to be pleasure (if you're a metaethical naturalist). A lot of these people tend to be utilitarian-leaning.

I don't think the view works, but I don't think it should be confused with any mystical or teleological view of the universe.

Posted by: Crudely Wrott | August 24, 2009 10:16 PM

I haven't waded through the comments so I may be behind the curve but here is something related to the conversation on ethics and morality. My observation is simply that to act ethically a person must understand the state of another person in order to do so. The empathy factor, if you will. With that in mind I offer this link to Newsweek concerning the ability of non-human primates to understand human facial expressions. If the study is sound . . .

http://www.newsweek.com/id/212950

Posted by: Ancient Greek Lady | August 24, 2009 11:02 PM

@Tis Himself

Just some clarifications: "Modern Philosophy" and "modern philosophers" refer to the period of philosophy practiced between the 17th to the 19th century and philosophers such as Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Locke, Malabranche, etc.. A lot of 19th century specialists consider their period as separate from the "Modern" period. My philosophy department does not lump Hegel and Nietzsche in with the Moderns, for example.

Post-Modern "philosophy" is, today, primarily considered important and relevant in departments of Comparative Literature, English, Cultural Studies. All that stuff, whether its Foucault or Fish is old. At least to philosophers. The people bandying it around are typically people who are not at all up on current research in philosophy. Usually, they tend to publish op-eds in the NYT.

Plantinga is retiring in 2010. He is far from being a leading contemporary philosopher. Philosophers like David Lewis and Saul Kripke have had far more impact on the field of contemporary research than Plantinga. And philosophers such as Alvin Goldman have had, in my view, more of an impact on epistemology.

Posted by: Mr T | August 25, 2009 2:44 AM

strange gods, #130:

Forgive me if this sounds stupid, as I'm not a scientist. I don't think I really understand why betrayal would dominate depending on the size of the group, in the absence of cultural adaptations. I can understand how individuals would have a harder time interacting in larger groups without some kind of cultural construct; but is this so because it's harder to remember and communicate about those who've betrayed (and/or other cultural reasons), or could it be that the chances of interacting with a "betrayer" (or at least a competitor) is simply higher in larger groups? Is the reason genetic simply because it's not cultural? Is there specific evidence for the genetic claim, besides other animals exhibiting a vague type of behavior?

(Hmm... reading my comment, I'm not sure if this makes much sense, but perhaps that's why I'm looking for an explanation.)

Posted by: windy | August 25, 2009 7:20 AM

strange gods:

Human mutations away from the other apes are indeed impressive, but nothing so revolutionary as haplodiploidy. So I conclude that our moral differences from them are built on culture, not genetics.

Not so fast! Haplodiploidy may have facilitated the evolution of eusociality but it was not the main cause - most hymenopterans are not social. The step from a solitary wasp to one with daughters "helping" at the nest may not be genetically and behaviorally that huge, although the external effect can be dramatic.

Culture allows for almost anything. It isn't necessarily cohesive, as genetic effects like kin selection and reciprocal altruism necessarily are.

But that's because kin selection and RA are *defined* as the 'cohesive' side of the coin - non-cohesive genetic effects would be called selfishness and spite. And the cohesiveness of the former depends on where you draw the line - nepotism can be divisive!

We can go ahead and layer cultural evolution on top of genetic evolution, and talk about the two together. But I don't think that contradicts my statement that our genetic morality is "watch for the first chance to betray the other group, then attack and rob them." Instead, I think we agree that only culture allows for something more than this baseline.

There's something to the idea, but I think your summary of is unnecessarily narrow. First of all "betray the other group, then attack and rob them" is a very complex set of behaviors, and arguably it's not what apes generally do: wouldn't "betrayal" require a pretense of friendliness to begin with? (Apes are certainly capable of betrayal, but I don't think their between group hostilities are usually this sophisticated) And secondly, one could just as well say that our culture simply extends the biological impulses of in-group morality to a larger group. And those impulses are just as much part of the "baseline" as hostility to the outgroup, and are required for "something more" to develop, so I would say that our biology and culture together allow for "something more".

In groups of a single species, the benefit of cooperation is kept high primarily by kin selection and reciprocal altruism. But these benefits drop as groups become larger and more genetically diverse.
It would be interesting to know what strategies are employed between species.

Actually, reciprocal altruism was coined to describe interactions between unrelated individuals, so it does not need to disappear in a larger group. And what's more unrelated than members of different species? Although we usually use different words (like mutualism) for beneficial interactions between species, we could just as easily call RA a form of (delayed) mutualism.

Posted by: Knockgoats | August 25, 2009 9:14 AM

strange gods before me,

I wonder if there've been any decent guesses at quantifying how much of human cooperation can be attributed to the Baldwin effect.

Not that I know of, but there may have been, among the "gene-culture coevolution" people.

The particular strategies of betrayal may be culturally influenced, but in the absence of memes that apply familial and neighborhood metaphors to out-groups, some form of betrayal must dominate as groups grow larger.

I don't think you've shown this (I'm not saying you couldn't), and as windy says, "betrayal" is already a very complex thing, implying pretended amity.

I hope you don't think me too pessimistic. You know my politics. I do believe that human culture can end war and poverty.

I do think you're giving a bit too much ground to the pessimistic view of human nature, yes. For culture to work at all in ending war and poverty, there has to be the innate potential for behaving well toward those we do not know.

In a subsistence, hunter gatherer setting, where resources are scarce and human populations dispersed - Julian

Patchy in space and time, rather than scarce. I would expect the response to a stranger to vary systematically according to the nature of the patchiness, and what resources are like when the stranger turns up. For example, if they turn up at a time of abundance, why not treat then nice, learn what they have to teach, build a relationship you may be able to call on later? If resources are currently scarce, a less friendly reception might be expected. If your current situation is desperate, either beg them for help or eat them!

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 25, 2009 7:42 PM

Mr T, keep in mind that I am not a biologist, just an obsessive. This is my understanding of evolutionarily stable strategies, best known from the work of John Maynard Smith.

When you (you being any animal) have the opportunity of cooperation with another of your species, it's usually more to your benefit to cooperate than to work alone. Two of you working together can bring down larger prey, for example. But after you bring down the large prey, you can immediately attack and drive off your comrade, then keep the whole meal for yourself.

It turns out that between strangers, a policy of betrayal is the best strategy for you. But since the other animal is just as likely to adopt a policy of betrayal, then your best strategy is just to work alone, and avoid the chance of being robbed.

Neighborly relationships change this dynamic, though. If you live in a group with other animals you recognize day after day, then you can have a relationship of reciprocal altruism. Getting your neighbor to help you is still in your best interest, but if you betray your neighbor, then they won't help you again tomorrow. Here you both benefit most from a policy of cooperation.

Family relationships also change the dynamic. Your child shares 50% of your genes, so from a gene-centric standpoint, it's in your genes' best interest for you to help your child even when your child is too weak and inexperienced to help you in return. Your full siblings also share 50% of your genes, your half siblings share 25% of your genes, and your first cousins 12.5%, which is usually higher than the population in general. This is kin selection: it's a good strategy for you to form a group with your relatives, and then for your group to work together to betray other groups.

(We say 50% or 25% but that doesn't refer to the entire genome. In reality something like 99.9% of your genome is identical with a stranger on the opposite side of the planet. The 50% difference refers to the 0.1% of the genome that is not shared throughout the species, so it's a 50% of 0.1% difference between parent and child.)

Now imagine a group that has acquired a mutation that causes them to be more generous to strangers. If the strangers don't have the same mutation, then they're just opening themselves up to betrayal. They'll be taken advantage of more often than others, so they'll be outcompeted, and the mutation will disappear again. This is what's meant by an evolutionarily stable strategy; in most cases, extant species have already settled into behavior patterns that are as cooperative as they can afford to be, and no more.

Well, as windy says, I'm probably overstating the case for betrayal between groups. Since outgroups generally can't be trusted in the first place, there may be little opportunity for deception. If the other group is just as likely to adopt a policy of betrayal, then avoidance or outright aggression is less risky than a pretense of friendliness.

I can understand how individuals would have a harder time interacting in larger groups without some kind of cultural construct; but is this so because it's harder to remember and communicate about those who've betrayed (and/or other cultural reasons), or could it be that the chances of interacting with a "betrayer" (or at least a competitor) is simply higher in larger groups?

Both, and the reasons can be related. Because it's harder to remember who's trustworthy, there are more opportunities for individuals to take up the role of betrayers/freeloaders. In animals that don't have much memory, smaller groups ensure that the individual who receives help is likely to cross paths again with the one who helped.

Is the reason genetic simply because it's not cultural? Is there specific evidence for the genetic claim, besides other animals exhibiting a vague type of behavior?

Since these patterns show up in species that don't have much or any memory, we have to assume that for them it must be instinctual, genetic. For species that do have memory, like apes, it's certainly more debatable. There's a technical book available from Oxford University Press, edited by Maynard Smith and Dunbar, called Evolution of Social Behavior Patterns in Primates and Man, but Richard Dawkins' accessible The Selfish Gene is even better, though more broad.

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | August 25, 2009 8:03 PM

Ancient Greek Lady #129

"Modern Philosophy" and "modern philosophers" refer to the period of philosophy practiced between the 17th to the 19th century and philosophers such as Descartes, Berkeley, Hume, Locke, Malabranche, etc.

I apologize to all and especially sundry for mischaracterizing modern (i.e. still living or reasonably recently dead) philosophicizers as "modern philosophers." Not being au courant with the jargon of philosophology puts me at a disadvantage when discussing philsophification. However, to paraphrase the late Billy Shakespeare, "bullshit by any other name would smell as sweet."

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 25, 2009 8:32 PM

knockgoats wrote:
> I do think you're giving a bit too much ground to the pessimistic view of human nature, yes. For culture to work at all in ending war and poverty, there has to be the innate potential for behaving well toward those we do not know.

Don’t you think a big part of the problem is simply to stop the lying?

It seems to me that a big part of the evil that humans do to each other is motivated by obvious and blatant lies in the areas of religion, politics, race, etc.

That cannot be the whole explanation, of course: there has to be some underlying motives that leads people to manufacture, and believe in, the lies in the first place.

But, I am inclined to think that ethical progress as a whole lies less in any advances in ethics per se than merely in exploding all the old lies about Hell and the chosen race and the superiority of Western civilization and all the rest.

Dave Miller in Sacramento

Posted by: Dave2 | August 25, 2009 9:05 PM

Tulse wrote:

Right, which is at best descriptive, and falls prey to the naturalistic fallacy -- that may be what we take morality is, but there is no meta-ethical argument that the particular ethics produced by such natural processes are those that ought to be. Indeed, such a naturalizing of ethics runs afoul of the possibility that, for example, we all could have had the brain organization of psychopaths -- would such a situation then be the "moral" norm? If we encounter humanoid aliens who eat their young, but do so because of their brain chemistry, does that mean that their morality is somehow objectively "right"?

The comparison with philosophy of mind shouldn't be overdrawn. The point is that they borrow accounts about how metaphysical identity claims can be semantically grounded. So it's not like the moral properties must end up being identified with neurological or even psychological properties. They might turn out to be complicated properties from higher-level sciences like economics or sociology.

As for the naturalistic fallacy, they have a straightforward response. Even though there's no analytic equivalence between water and H2O, there's still metaphysical identity. So even if naturalistic analyses of evaluative concepts are unsuccessful, value terms and naturalistic terms might still pick out the very same properties.

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 25, 2009 9:30 PM

Fukuyama himself presents a false identity, in the suggestion that working-class Americans have more common interests with rich Americans than with working-class Arabs. He is telling us the same lie that bin Laden tells them.

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 25, 2009 9:35 PM

JohnH,

I read over your essay that you link to, and would like to take issue with two points that I think are relevant to this discussion.

First, you wrote:
>We all start out as children, and we first learn morality by instruction from our parents. We know what is right and wrong "because our parents say so." For a small child, morality is nothing other than obedience to parents.

That honestly was not my experience. At a rather early age (prior to kindergarten), I disputed my parents’ moral views. Specifically, they claimed that “little white lies”, lies intended to make other people feel good, were morally right. I claimed they were morally wrong (I still think this).

Without the need to decide whether my parents or I were in the right on this, this does suggest that moral ideas are not simply something acquired through socialization, parental instruction, etc.

I think it is this point that gives some credence to Lewis’ (and many philosophers’) view of morality as an innate moral faculty that defies naturalistic explanation.

Of course, there are in fact various possible naturalistic explanations, most of which involve at least some aspects of moral intuition being “spandrels,” to use Gould’s term.

For example, surely part of my dispute with my parents hinged on a broader drive on my part for logical consistency. Such a drive does have survival value in many situations, and I was merely applying it outside its “valid” (in terms of survival value) range.

You also wrote:
> Ethics, generally, are rules, principles, policies for behavior, with the goal of ______ (fill in the blank).

As stated, this seems to presuppose a “teleological” approach to morality, a form of “utilitarianism” taken in the broadest sense (narrow utilitarianism deals solely with pleasure as a goal, in the broader sense, the goal can be more open).

This seems to me to ignore the huge and inevitable disparity among humans’ goals, as well as the fact that few human goals of any sort are likely to be obtained unless there is an underlying framework that makes the pursuit and attaining of goals possible.

To use my favorite analogy here, PZ’s goals in blogging include to defeat religion, to spread knowledge of science, to have some fun personally, etc. There are other people on the Web who have diametrically opposed goals. But, to make it possible for either PZ or his opponents to pursue their goals in the context of the Web requires some underlying protocols (TCP/IP, HTML, etc.) that provide a basic framework for their goal seeking.

It seems to me that morality is more like TCP/IP than like the goal of beating the religionists: morality is a framework for goal seeking, not a set of goals.

Do you know Donagan’s The Theory of Morality?

He argues that the underlying principle of morality is “Act always so that you respect every human being, yourself or another, as being a rational creature.”

That seems to me to fit in nicely with my TCP/IP analogy.

There are a number of possible motives that a person might have that could cause him to adhere to that moral maxim: enlightened self-interest, an innate or learned tendency to empathize with the other guy’s feelings, a desire to think well of yourself when viewed from an external perspective, a drive towards self-consistency, etc.

Of course, it’s not possible to “prove” to a sufficiently recalcitrant person (e.g., a true psychopath) that he “should” follow that maxim: you cannot derive an “ought” from an “is.”

But, most people most of the time actually do follow that maxim, which suggests that, for most people, there usually are sufficient motives to cause one to behave morally.

As I said in an earlier post, I actually think the hard problem in morality lies not in getting most people to believe morally in their normal lives but rather in refuting the factual lies in politics, religion, etc. that induce generally decent people to behave as monsters in the name of the grand collective – the nation, the church, the race, etc.

Dave

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 25, 2009 10:17 PM

strange gods before me wrote to me:
> This overlooks the fact that when the public turned against the war, our rulers did not listen. The war goes on, public sentiment be damned.
> The problem is that the US government is, even more than most nations, undemocratic and unresponsive to the citizens. Bush was going to attack Iraq no matter what, not only with disregard to what the rest of the world thought, but with disregard for what Americans thought.

Well, yeah. But is the US government really “undemocratic and unresponsive” “even more than most nations”?

I doubt that that could be, or has been, confirmed by empirical study!

“The iron law of oligarchy”: in any organization, whether nominally democratic or not, the minority actually rules.

Michels formulated the Iron Law based on his study of the German socialist party. It has been confirmed by a great deal of empirical research since. I know of no research that refutes it.

And, indeed, there are some rather convincing theoretical explanations of the Iron Law: Arrow’s Theorem on the theoretical impossibility of true democracy, the “free rider” problem in getting most people to participate actively in a democratic system, etc.

“Democracy” is a very clever propaganda ploy that encourages the masses to identify with the political system even though the system continues to be run by the ruling elite.

Democracy is one of those factual lies I have been referring to that causes ordinarily decent human beings to acquiesce or even participate in huge atrocities.

Note, for example, that, now that Obama is continuing the atrocities in Afghanistan and Iraq, very few of the anti-war folk are calling for him to be prosecuted as a war criminal in the way they wanted Bush/Cheney prosecuted.

“Democracy” has worked its magic: “war crimes” have been transmuted into “foreign policy” by a simple election, with no change of reality on the ground.

A wonderful thing, democracy.

Dave

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 25, 2009 10:37 PM

Dave2 wrote:
>As for the naturalistic fallacy, they have a straightforward response. Even though there's no analytic equivalence between water and H2O, there's still metaphysical identity. So even if naturalistic analyses of evaluative concepts are unsuccessful, value terms and naturalistic terms might still pick out the very same properties.

That paragraph illustrates nicely why so many of us have so little respect for contemporary philosophy.

Yes, I’ve read enough philosophy books, and taken enough philosophy classes, that I too could play the game and reply in kind.

But why bother?

What does the paragraph I have quoted actually say about the real world?

Nothing, I think. If parsed carefully, it at most makes some fairly obvious points about language (e.g., that it is possible to use the word “water” correctly, without knowing that water is made of hydrogen and oxygen).

I’m not trying to pick on you personally, but making a general point about contemporary and recent philosophers.

I know they think they are accomplishing somethings by such talk. But all evidence suggests that they are simply engaged in pointless navel gazing.

Dave

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 25, 2009 11:04 PM

strange gods before me wrote:
>That the idea of democracy is “abused” for propaganda is not an argument against democracy per se.

Oh, I don’t think it’s abused in the slightest!

I think this is its original and proper use.

The idea of “democracy,” in the modern sense, was invented back around the time of the French Revolution when some people, who were really good at manipulating words, wanted to take power in place of some folks whose ancestors were really good at jousting and such. (Yeah, I know that is oversimplifying, but it is more or less true.)

You know about Pareto's circulation of the elites, the "lions" and the "foxes," etc.? The ploy of democracy is a means by which foxes displace lions.

As I said before, we understand theoretically why what you consider "democracy per se" is impossible: the Iron Law of Oligarchy, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, the free rider problem, etc.

No, we will never get “real” democracy.

Thankfully.

Let’s keep in mind that dear old goofy Ken Ham is, by all indications, in much closer touch with the real opinions of the American people than PZ, you, or I.

“Real” democracy would mean rule by Ken and the like.

No, if there were a god in heaven, I would thank him every day that we do not have “real” democracy!

But, still, I would like to expose the propaganda ploy of democracy for what it is, so that the whole idea of democracy could be given a well-deserved burial.

Dave

Posted by: strange gods before me | August 26, 2009 12:10 AM

As I said before, we understand theoretically why what you consider "democracy per se" is impossible: the Iron Law of Oligarchy, Arrow’s impossibility theorem, the free rider problem, etc.

No, "we" don't "understand" your unsubstantiated assertions and name-dropping.

Let’s keep in mind that dear old goofy Ken Ham is, by all indications, in much closer touch with the real opinions of the American people than PZ, you, or I.

False, since over half the nation believes in evolution.

Still, why is creationism so popular in the US, as compared Western Europe? There's two questions there, really. Where does the funding for the creationist political movement come from? And why are Americans apparently more vulnerable to the claims?

The funding comes from rich conservative families, who build organizations like The Family, using Christianity the way it's almost always been used, to defend the interests of the rich. Most of it's not so simple to trace, though; they just pay local pastors to deliver the flock, the way it's been done for centuries.

The vulnerability comes from the USA's financial inequality (thanks to Knockgoats for the link). We know that when people feel powerless they turn to superstition to make sense of the world. And because of the tremendous inequality here, American citizens are powerless compared to our neighbors across the pond.

So you can't simply say people are too religious for democracy, when other nations don't have the same kind of problem with religion anymore, and when there are well-funded organizations here taking advantage of people's poverty.

There are thousands of inner city schools that want the funding to teach cutting-edge science. This is a problem with an obvious solution.

But, still, I would like to expose the propaganda ploy of democracy for what it is, so that the whole idea of democracy could be given a well-deserved burial.

And you would replace it with what?

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 26, 2009 12:56 AM

John wrote:
>Again this is a case of someone giving a bad argument for something they take to be obvious and putting analytic philosophers in quotation marks in order to write them off. The fact of the matter is, many analytic philosophers have spent large amounts of time considering your argument, and others like it, for relativism about morality and most find it lacking.

We all know that, John.

The question is whether non-philosophers should have any respect for the arduous work of philosophers.

Respect is not a given; it has to be earned.

Philosophers have not earned it.

Too many philosophers seem to think that because there is a community of fellow philosophers who value their work, because some of them manage to attain tenure and get cushy positions (not much pay, but no real work!), and because they are in a position to flunk poor lowly undergrads, the rest of us are obligated to respect them.

We are not.

I remember as an undergrad being filled with mirth when I found out what philosophers meant by a “knock-down” argument.

It is not simply that we deny that some particular reasons given by philosophers are correct, it is rather that we reject the whole framework by which philosophers determine what count as “good reasons.”

For example, you yourself also wrote:
>And, like it or not, when you start talking about morality you aren't engaged in an empirical endeavor.

Well, some of us are engaged in an empirical endeavour when we talk about morality.

But, no, most of you philosophers are not, and that is an indication of part of why you have trouble gaining our respect.

Dave

Posted by: PhysicistDave | August 26, 2009 6:15 AM

Strange wrote to me:
> The free-rider "problem" in democracy is also not a problem. It suffers from the same false premise as above. It is not necessary that everyone vote. This is not an objection.

No, no, you misunderstand the problem. The problem is that quite a few people iwill vote.

And, unfortuantely, because each of their votes therefore has a very, very small chance of determining the outcome, each person has no real incentive to vote intelligently, to seek out detailed information about the candidates and proposals, etc.

This is, incidentally, a very well established topci in the “economics of politics” since the middle of the last century.

For example, have you read Obama’s health-care proposal page by page, word for word?

If so, you are a very, very nerdy person compared to most of your fellow citizens!

Voters in a demcoracy, even highly educated ones, are stunningly, unbelievably ignorant, and, alas, rationally so.

Here is a concrete experiment to test this. I imagine everyone here has an opinion on global warming. How many people here know about the article published in Scientific American last November proposing a cheap, technological fix to the global warming problem that wouldlet us continue burning fossil fuels to our heart’s content?

My point is not whether or not that proposal will in fact work. My point is that I have yet to meet a person in the real world who has even heard of the proposal, which is surely relevant to the climate-change debate, nor have I heard it mentioned in any mainstream news media (except SciAm itself). And yet it was published in a popular magazine available in almost any lbirary in the USA!

You also wrote:
> No, no, no. You can talk about it. You're just being lazy. You want to assert these things, but you don't want to defend your ideas. You're just name-dropping.

Well… I do indeed not intend to “defend” my ideas on much of anything in this venue!

To defend any serious idea to anyone who is not knowledgeable in the relevant field would take humdreds or thousands of pages of writing, which I simply lack either time or energy to carry out.

And, I don’t think PZ would appreciate me filling up his blog with a detailed treatise on the economics of politics either!

I similarly refuse to “defend” evolution or modern physics or whatever to people who are ignorant of those subjects. I will, when the mood strikes me, offer to someone references or searchable keywords through which they can learn more about some subject on which I am fairly knowledgeable.

But I am not sufficiently altruistic to spend hours of my time trying to bring someone ignorant of a subject up to speed by spoon-feeding the information to him.

Sorry, but no sensible person behaves otherwise. (Yes, I do know that there are a lot of insensible people on the ‘Net who seriously think they can educate others about evolution, creationism, etc. Almost never works.)

As to your links about rich folks funding the creationist crazies et al., well, I remember when a couple rich guys funded the launch of McGovern’s campaing back in ’72. Rich people fund most things – left-wing, right-wing, etc. when those things are small and not widely known, simply because the rich folks are the guys who have the money. What I do doubt is that the Family, etc. is backed by the upper class in general. Indeed, I doubt that the upper class as a whole does much of anything in common. That is the issue I am raising.

Incidentally, I’ve read Mills, Domhoff, etc. (along with some of the right-wing equivalents, who are often more entertaining if less scholarly – ever read “None Dare Call it Conspriacy!”, for example?). I know that some rich and powerful folks often work with each other. Human beings are like that. They work together for common goals. I simply question whether any of the groups you so hate are backed by most of the upper class.

Is my question any clearer?

Strange also wrote:
> Mmmmhmm. Feudalist. I suspected that at #142, and was sure of it by #149.
> So you would in fact replace representational government with the direct rule of the rich and their private tyrannies.
> Thankfully you are just a medieval extremist whose views will never again be implemented by an educated populace. But thanks for playing.

Nah. I fear I have never felt that romantic attraction that so many people feel towards the Middle Ages.

I don’t think I would have been good at jousting.

Feudalism, democracy, monarchy, dictatorship, aristocracy – I view them all with similar disdain.

No, I don’t have any planned social system I am aiming at. As I’ve said many times before, I am a Thoreauiist; I agree with the opening lines of the “Essay on Civil Disobedience”:

> I heartily accept the motto, "That government is best which governs least"; and I should like to see it acted up to more rapidly and systematically. Carried out, it finally amounts to this, which also I believe--"That government is best which governs not at all"; and when men are prepared for it, that will be the kind of government which they will have.

I have no Grand Plan for the future of the human race. I content myself with doing what I can to throw sand in the gears of all the Grand Plans that folks like you do have – for democracy, meritocracy, technocracy, aristocracy, etc.

To tell you the truth, things are looking pretty good for my side. You Grand Planners seem to be in a bit of the doldrums in recent decades.

I’ll enjoy watching your and your friends' futile attempts to try to establish “real” democracy, and I’ll enjoy even more doing my small bit to wreck your plans.

Dave

Posted by: James Hughes | September 3, 2009 10:08 PM

"There is nothing 'out there' that imposes morality on you,"

Except the nature of existence, and the nature of the human being. As a creature with free will, a volition consciousness, we all have to make choices. Morality is a code that guides our decisions. Unlike nature, human beings must be teleological, because we have certain conditions that our survival requires. And with a certain goal, with a certain creature, with a certain method of survival, there are right and wrong choices: choices which will further his/her life, or those that will hinder/ destroy it.