People willing to cooperate and behave morally with each other – willing to trust and work with one another as part of a group – have a powerful advantage over those who don't, in a very wide range of situations. This would imply a perfectly reasonable evolutionary reason for a "moral sense" to exist. A response to Phillip Ellis Jackson.
Introduction
In "What kind of car would Jesus drive to take his girlfriend to an abortion clinic?," Dr. Phillip Jackson argues for the existence of "a common set of moral values [that] is installed, recognized, and perpetuated within each individual and the human race as a whole . . . It must either involve a purely physical explanation (such as culture, society, genetics, etc.), or a metaphysical one; which is to say a morality based on the existence and purposeful actions of God." It is probably not surprising that Dr. Jackson argues for the latter case.
It's an interesting, if lengthy, read.1 I believe that much of it is wrong, but wrong in an interesting and instructive way. And what is right is interesting as well. A central theme is the example of a violent rape and murder of a five-year-old child. This, Dr. Jackson contends, is clearly wrong to all but a vanishingly small percentage of all humans throughout history,2 and I of course agree. He then explores where such a conviction could come from, but I believe his conclusions on that score are unjustified.
Eliminating Physical Explanations
Perhaps it's best to let Dr. Jackson speak for himself regarding the strategy his argument employs:
The only way a metaphysical explanation can stand is if all possible physical explanations do not fully account for an activity. Then, a metaphysical explanation at least becomes plausible.
It's worth considering, before we proceed, the difference between these two kinds of explanation, 'metaphysical' and 'physical.' What separates them? So far as I can glean the author's intent, he means 'the metaphysical' to be that which is 'supernatural' – "beyond the grasp of human understanding." A metaphysical mechanism to accomplish something (e.g. implanting a moral code in humans) would be not merely an unknown means of operation, but an unknowable one, something forever removed from human ken.
Epistemologically, this is a troublesome concept. How does one, in practice, distinguish between something 'currently unknown but comprehensible' and something 'forever unknowable?' (One might also add other categories like 'knowable in principle but impractical to discover' and 'knowable and practical but, just by bad luck, will never have the explanation stumbled upon.') From a practical perspective, the only way to tell which category something falls into is to try to understand it; if you succeed, then it was knowable. The problem is, if you fail, you can't conclude that it's unknowable. It might be, but it might also be the case that you just didn't happen to figure out something knowable, and you or someone else might have better luck on a subsequent attempt.3
Ruling out physical, 'mechanistic' – in other words, knowable – explanations has a long but less than auspicious history. Once it was widely believed that lightning was a direct expression of divine fury – so much so that Benjamin Franklin's proposal of lightning rods was considered hubristic, even heretical.4 Meteors were felt to be obviously supernatural – what besides magical forces could have held a rock suspended in the sky? – until orbital mechanics was understood. Consider this quote from a prominent physician, J. S. Haldane, close to a century ago, discussing the "mechanistic theory of heredity":
On the mechanistic theory this [cell] nucleus must carry within its substance a mechanism which by reaction with the environment not only produces the millions of complex and delicately balanced mechanisms which constitute the adult organism, but provides for their orderly arrangement into tissues and organs, and for their orderly development in a certain perfectly specific manner.
The mind recoils from such a stupendous conception; but let us follow the argument further . . . This nuclear structure or mechanism must, according to the mechanistic theory, have been formed within a very short period by the union of two others – a male and a female one. How two such mechanisms could combine to form one is entirely unintelligible, and the observed details of the process tend only to make it, if possible, more unintelligible. When we trace each nuclear mechanism backwards we find ourselves obliged to admit that it has been formed by division from a pre-existing nuclear mechanism, and this from pre-existing nuclear mechanisms through millions of cell-generations. We are thus forced to the admission that the germ-plasm is not only a structure or mechanism of inconceivable complexity, but that this structure is capable of dividing itself to an absolutely indefinite extent and yet retaining its original structure . . .
There is no need to push the analysis further. The mechanistic theory of heredity is not merely unproven, it is impossible. It involves such absurdities that no intelligent person who has thoroughly realised its meaning and implications can continue to hold it.5
Reading this passage, it's striking how clearly he recognized the functional requirements that a mechanism for inheritance would have to meet. But he could imagine no physical arrangement that could satisfy those conditions, and concluded that therefore such a mechanism was impossible. Indeed, he insisted that a spiritual explanation was the only remaining option. Laborious work by Watson and Crick (and Wilkins and Franklin6) has since discovered DNA, however, greatly illuminating that which was previously obscure.
As an aside, with this distinction between 'metaphysical' and 'mechanistic' – between 'unknowable' and 'knowable' – in mind, we can perhaps more clearly understand the divide Dr. Jackson notes:
I realize that to some scientists, allowing for God as an independent variable is like asking them to include space aliens or an undersea civilization in their hypotheses. This is no more bizarre than to those on the other side who can't understand why God must automatically be excluded because He can't be observed directly.
Science is philosophically biased towards the 'knowable' – the word itself comes from scientia, the Latin word for 'knowledge.' An explanation that makes use of an unknowable-by-definition element is, ipso facto, not a scientific explanation. "Then a miracle occurs" might be valid in theology; but in science, it's cheating.7 It's not that God is ruled out because It could not be observed, should It choose to act in an amenable manner. Rather, science cannot assume that such a being would be forever unknowable. Science certainly acknowledges unknowns – for example, exactly how the gravitational field could work at a distance was unknown in Newton's time, however well his laws worked – but it is structurally incapable of addressing the unknowable.8
Now, it may be true that there exist subjects that actually are unknowable, and therefore not amenable to scientific inquiry, but the above examples would seem to urge caution before making confident pronouncements on that score. Personally, I'm not convinced there's ever a time to declare something 'unknowable.' If one decides that something is 'unknowable,' one will stop trying to understand it. Perhaps if Dr. Haldane had decided to try a bit harder, the structure of DNA might have been elucidated earlier.
Before Benjamin Franklin's famous experiments, when someone asked, "What causes lightning?" the proper answer was not "Zeus," or "Thor," or "Seth," or "the Thunderbirds," or "God." The proper answer was, "We don't know. Perhaps one day we will." And now, of course, we know far more about lightning because of the inquries of people like Franklin.
In any case, after dismissing politics and culture as potential sources of "universal moral truth," Dr. Jackson goes on to attempt to dispel any remaining possible non-metaphysical explanation for morality by a reductio ad absurdam:
The best way is to assume that a physical mechanism to provide morality does exist (i.e. genetics), and then explore the logical implications of it.
He then goes on to show that genetics cannot "[give] morality its content." But I believe a key mistake was made at this point – by using the phrase "i.e." (id est, "that is," "in other words") instead of "e.g." (exempli gratia, "for example"). If there existed other possibilities besides genetics as sources for 'universal morality,' they remained unexamined. I argue that there exists at least one other possibility at least as plausible as the metaphysical explanation Dr. Jackson proposed.
Divinely-Imposed Morality
But before I elaborate, I'd like to examine the morality that Dr. Jackson proposes in more detail, one "explained on a metaphysical level." It's contended that "all possible physical explanations do not fully account for" universal morality. In other words, it's not possible to deduce its existence from within the universe. Only something 'outside,' on the metaphysical level – i.e. God – imposes such a morality. (It's not directly stated, but implied, that other notions that might count as 'metaphysical,' such as "logic," can't be used to discover these morals.) This is called, in philosophy, "divine command theory."
The key problem with a divinely-imposed morality, untied to any other principle, was recognized long ago in Plato's dialogue Euthyphro. To briefly summarize, Socrates is concerned with what is 'pious.' He and a noted expert on piety, Euthyphro, agree that the pious is that which is loved by the gods.9 However, Socrates presses on to the key question – is there something about the pious that causes the gods to love it, or does the love of the gods cause something to be pious? In other words, sacrificing animals to the gods is pious, and loved by the gods. But is there something about sacrificing animals that is intrinsically pious, or is it just something that, for no particular reason, the gods just happened to love? Does the piety cause the love, or does the love cause the piety?
The extension to morality should be obvious. It is, of course, generally held that God approves of moral behavior. But the question now becomes, is moral behavior approved by God because it's inherently good and deserving of approval? Or is it simply the case that whatever God just happens to approve of becomes, by that very fact, moral and good? Not to put too fine a point on things, we must ask this question: Could God have created a universe identical to this one in all respects . . . except that abortion was morally obligated?
Note carefully the structure of the question. I am not proposing a universe where, say, for some reason all children always grew up to be serial killers without exception. Or a universe where any child born would inevitably suffer unbearable agony. I am proposing a universe completely identical to ours on the physical level, and differing on the metaphysical level only in one respect.
The objection might be raised that actions like abortion or rape violate the innate moral principle of "not harming innocent life;" that God could not make a special exception for one specific case like abortion while maintaining the immorality of rape. A solid case could certainly be made for this. So, let's go to the limit, and rephrase the question. Could a God have created a universe identical to this one in all physical and metaphysical respects except that it was a moral imperative to harm innocent life?
Of course our moral intuitions rebel at the idea. But, allegedly, that's only because we weren't given an "innate moral code" that lined up with such a moral system. Had God chosen to implant in us the moral code that we should always harm innocent life, it would seem perfectly right, indeed noble, to do so. And, if nothing beyond divine whimsy makes something moral,10 attacking babies would actually be right and just.
If morality is simply a matter of what God commands, then saying that "God is good" becomes a vacuous, or at least tautological, claim. Essentially, we simply have the ultimate case of Might Makes Right. A logical corollary of this idea is that, for example, the people in France and Poland who collaborated with the Nazi occupiers did have the right principle in mind. Their mistake was picking the wrong bully to submit to. I find this proposition to be somewhat unsatisfying, certainly, though it doesn't seem to bother everyone. I'd now like to propose an alternative source of morality that doesn't rely on the direct command from a God.
Deriving "Ought" From "Is"
David Hume is generally credited with describing the so-called "is-ought problem." As in Dr. Jackson's essay, the claim is something like "it's impossible to determine 'how things ought to be' from 'how things are,'" or "morals cannot be derived from simple facts about the world."
This may at first seem plausible, but consider the game of chess. There are certain fundamental structures of chess that define it – the 'rules of the game.' We have an 8×8 board, 8 pawns per side that move in certain ways, two rooks per side that move in other ways, castling, the initial configuration of the pieces, etc. Now, when playing chess, there is no rule that you can't sacrifice your queen in the first few moves of the game. It's illegal to move your king to a threatened square, but it's perfectly acceptable by the rules to stick your queen in front of a pawn at the start of the game.
However, if you want to win the game, you shouldn't do that. There are almost no situations (at least, assuming evenly-matched opponents) where giving up your queen at the start will lead to your victory. Similarly, it's rarely a good idea to move your king out to the center of the board before the endgame. It's usually a bad move.
Note words like 'shouldn't' and 'bad.' They are value judgments. They prescribe 'oughts.' But they are not part of the 'rules' of chess. From where do they come? They arise from the combinations of two things – first, the rules and structure of chess, and second, from the player's desire to win the game. They are strategic rules. A player is free to disregard them, but they do so at their peril – it's unlikely to further their goal.
Hopefully the parallel to wider life is obvious. We have 'rules of the game' in life, too – the laws of physics, for example. We are not free to violate these strictures. (Well, technically, if we find a case where they are violated, we reformulate the laws and our theories to take into account the anomalous case. Should we find a rock that fell upward, our understanding of gravity would be wrong, not the rock!11) Many of them are so well established that it's difficult to see how they could be wrong to a significant degree. Unless you can produce a flying rock or a magic carpet, I think we can expect to have to obey the laws of gravity, for example.
As humans, we have desires and goals as well. Some are very basic and inborn and apparently universal (air, water, food, sleep, shelter, etc.) and some are so common that only extremely rare individuals seem not to need them (e.g. the company of other people), and some are deeply personal and not common at all (a desire to write a novel, say). But like chess, might there be strategic rules that arise in the real world from physical laws and conditions, combined with our desires?
Game Theory
Game theory attempts to analyze interactions among competing and cooperating agents in the context of systems of rules governing the options available to them. It's a rich and interesting field, and some of its results have bearing on the topic of morality.
The Prisoner's Dilemma
One useful model in game theory is the Prisoner's Dilemma. Basically, two players have the option of cooperating with, or betraying, each other. If both cooperate, there is a moderate payoff, e.g. 3 points. If one cooperates and one betrays, the betrayer gets a large payoff (say, 5 points) and the cooperator gets nothing. If both betray, there is a small payoff (e.g. 1 point each).
What's the optimal strategy in this case? On average, betraying pays 3 points (5 * 50% + 1 * 50%), while cooperating pays only 1.5 points (3 * 50% + 0 * 50%). Rationally, if you're playing the game it's in your best interest to betray.
The Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma
But what if we change the situation slightly, by repeating the game over and over with the same opponent? Only a few stable solutions exist, assuming remotely sensible players. If you both betray all the time, your payoff is 1 point per game. If you both cooperate all the time, your payoff is much better, 3 points per game. What about more complex situations and strategies, such as varying opponents?
It turns out that an extremely simple strategy is also among the best. It is called "Tit For Tat." It starts out cooperating, and simply repeats the move that its opponent played the last time. Note that if the other player cooperates, TfT will be friendly, but if it is betrayed, TfT will retaliate. In the rules given above, it is very difficult to beat TfT's usual score.
If we vary the rules a bit, and allow for imperfect players – where there can be occasional 'accidents' when someone mistakenly betrays when they 'intended' to cooperate, or vice versa – things get even more interesting. It is possible for even a pair of TfTs to get caught in a loop of 'mutual recrimination,' with both betraying over and over. Their payoff per game plummets from 3 to 1. In such situations, a more 'forgiving' strategy actually does better.
The Conspiracy Of Doves
Another model is worth noting; the "Hawks and Doves" game. Hawks always fight for resources, until seriously injured. Doves run away instead of fighting, and split resources 50/50 if working with another Dove. Imagine that each 'resource' is worth 100 points. If a Hawk fights a Dove, it gets 100 points and the Dove gets nothing. If a Dove encounters another Dove, each gets 50 points. If a Hawk fights another Hawk, it either gets 100 points if it wins, or -300 points (from being injured while losing the fight).
Given these ratios, everyone should be a Dove – everyone will average a 50 point payoff. But a lone Hawk among Doves gets a hugely disproportionate payoff; the "Conspiracy of Doves" is not stable. In the above situation, the stable state of the population is 1/3 Hawk, 2/3 Dove, and the average payoff is only 33 points. (Note that this still applies if really there's only one kind of bird, but it has varying chances of acting like a Hawk or a Dove.)
But Chess Isn't The Real World
There is a key difference between games like chess and games like the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma. In games like chess, there is a winner and a loser; one player has a positive outcome, the other negative. Such games are called 'zero-sum;' the benefits one player receives are equal and opposite to the penalties the loser suffers. Games like the Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma, on the other hand, are 'non zero-sum;' it's possible for all players to lose, or all to profit, or a mix of both.
I think we can agree that, overall, our lives in the real world are 'non zero-sum.' We have the option of cooperating with others, fighting, betraying, helping, lending and borrowing, and so forth. We can see analogs of Hawk, Dove, and Tit for Tat strategies in daily life. For example, I would suggest that the Israelis and Palestinians are stuck in a loop of mutual recrimination that results in an overall worse situation for both groups. But neither side is willing to forgive the other, and they've been at it so long they can't even imagine forgiving each other.
Other results of experimental work and game-theoretic computer simulations illustrate additional general principles. In an extremely large group, the effect of any one defection is diluted, but the longer the players expect the interaction to go on, the less attractive anti-social behavior becomes. A player's willingness to cooperate is affected by their estimates of how many other players around them are cooperating, as well.
At this point we know that fixed 'rules of the game,' combined with desires of agents constrained to follow those rules, can give rise to 'meta-rules,' useful strategies that the players can choose to follow – rules just as real as the basic rules of the game, though existing on another level. Can moral precepts be examples of such strategies? It would need to be shown that following such morals led to advantages for those who followed them. And these would have to be intra-universal advantages – not ones based on metaphysical, outside-the-universe considerations.
Morality Can Be Selfish
Fortunately, Dr. Jackson acknowledges that moral behavior can and does pay off in the real world, and gives an example, though he relegates that admission to endnote 15. This is an important datum, which serves to undermine the contention that morality can't be derived from within the universe itself.
We don't have to rely on Dr. Jackson's admission, however. A bit of reasoning and research can make a fairly solid case for the benefits of morality. One very useful item of support comes from those who most vociferously exhort others to follow their moral precepts. While they frequently cite the alleged supernatural repercussions of vice, they also tend to devote plenty of time to its more worldly consequences. Violence, greed, gluttony, sloth, and so forth don't tend to bring about optimal outcomes on a regular basis. Indeed, who doesn't argue that life would overall be better for everyone, if everyone behaved morally as a matter of course? (A real-life "Conspiracy of Doves," if you like.)
The history of moral behavior also seems to make sense within a game-theoretic framework. As noted by Stephen Pinker,12 violence in real terms has been decreasing for centuries – decreasing by huge amounts. E.g. "24 homicides per 100,000 Englishmen in the fourteenth century to 0.6 per 100,000 by the early 1960s." It's difficult to argue that religion had much influence on this; indeed, not many people argue that we're more religious now than in the 1300s. Just the opposite, in fact. It seems that technology and economics and medicine have had a far greater civilizing effect than religion. Longer, safer lifespans encourage more extensive cooperation – the longer you can expect yourself and your neighbors to be around, the more important it becomes to treat your neighbors well.
But if moral behavior has real-world benefits – if people living in moral, cooperative, stable societies have advantages over those who don't – then it would seem we no longer require a metaphysical justification for morality. Morality apparently doesn't have to flow from divine command. Given what humans are, and what kind of universe they inhabit, some types of behavior and some courses of action are wiser choices than others.
Let's now return to our previous thought experiment, a universe identical to our own except that harming innocent life was metaphysically 'moral.' If 'divine command theory' were correct, perhaps such a universe would be just as 'moral' as our own. But would it work? How well would humanity get along if, say, the current situation in Darfour were commonly accepted to be noble and just? Remember, the inhabitants of this prospective universe are just like us physically and mentally – the only difference is 'spiritual.' Parents would probably find it difficult to fulfill their duties of torturing their children, since their animal instincts would argue against it. By that universe's rules, a society that protected and cared for its children would be 'evil.' Would it prosper?
The game-theoretic conception of morality seems to handle this thought-experiment much more handily. It would contend that no, God could not create a universe that closely resembled ours but possessed radically different morals. Either the physical laws or else humanity – or most likely both – would have to be quite different to make harming innocent life 'moral.' (This general idea, BTW, is analogous in many ways to the Catholic Church's notion of "Natural Law."13)
The In-Group
Another bit of evidence is contained within Dr. Jackson's paper. Consider this passage:
The truly interesting thing about God-given morality is that even individuals and dictatorial governments who act in the most outrageous, barbaric manner – and who may even reject the notion of a universal morality – still end up drawing their guidance from these same moral principles. Anarchists in the late 19th and early 20th centuries who rejected all social norms and set off bombs that killed hundreds of innocent people, nevertheless did not believe that they should settle disputes among themselves by just getting up and shooting the other guy. It's one thing to set off a bomb that kills Mary Jane and her little daughter Alice who happened to be walking by, and another to pull the trigger on Comrade Serge because his definition of "alienation and the means of production" differs slightly from yours. You may ridicule and belittle him, and in extreme cases kick him out of the collective, but he doesn't deserve to die. Mary Jane and her daughter on the other hand, by refusing to join the revolution, have in essence allied themselves with the evil bourgeois forces that make life miserable for the ancestors of future Wal-Mart employees. According to this convoluted logic, they are part of the problem.
If one is part of the 'in-group,' if one counts as a full person, then one becomes subject to the fundamental morality under discussion here. Indeed, it's very hard to see how any group could effectively operate without such rules governing interpersonal dynamics.
But that in-group's membership has fluctuated throughout history. In the earliest past, it may have been as limited as "the male members of my tribe." It certainly didn't include women as full persons in their own right – consider how recently women acquired the right to vote in the United States, and how many countries do not have full legal equality for women today. Slaves didn't count, and people from outside one's own tribe (and then city, and then country, and then 'race') didn't make the cut either. To a large extent, the increase in general moral behavior described by Pinker and others is a record of the gradual expansion of that 'in-group' to encompass more and more people.14 But the point remains that, however the in-group is defined, so long as it is composed of humans certain basic strategies will be necessary to manage it.
The "Moral Sense"
Both Dr. Jackson and I agree that there is a moral framework that humans inevitably work within, and we would even appear to agree on much of its content. (We certainly agree that slavery and terrorism, along with the rape and murder of five-year-old children, are in violation of that morality.) There's some disagreement regarding exactly how that morality is constituted (perhaps we could call my position 'universal morality,' while his might more accurately be called 'extra-universal morality' . . .) but another thing we agree on is that genetics does not, by itself, form a justification for morality.
However, genetics does have another role to play in addition to forming part of human nature. I've hopefully established that morality, properly understood, is advantageous in the world. We have been living as groups of humans (with no significant change in what it means to be 'human') for around 200,000 years, and our near ancestors were living in groups for millennia before that. Other people have formed a critical part of our environment for our entire existence. Would it be surprising to discover that evolution had helped adapt us to living and working with others?
Another interesting model from game theory provides some evidence for this. The Traveler's Dilemma is a variation on the Prisoner's Dilemma. The setup is a bit complicated,15 but in this game, people – all kinds of people, from countries around the world – routinely and apparently instinctively behave in a way that is not strictly rational but leads to a better outcome than if everyone was playing in a ruthlessly rational manner. There may be an explanation for this besides a divinely implanted impulse to be good.
Much work has been done investigating human moral intuitions and behavior. A few illustrative examples may serve to clarify some of the findings. Let's take a pair of quick cognitive tests, freely stolen from Daniel Dennett's Darwin's Dangerous Idea:
Test Number One
You have a set of cards before you. Each card has a letter on one side, and a number on the other.
—– —– —– —–
| D | | F | | 3 | | 7 |
—– —– —– —–
Now, let's say there's a condition that you're asked to check for. The condition is, "If there's a D on one side of the card, then there is a 3 on the other side." Which of the above cards do you need to flip over to see if that condition is met? Take your time, reason it out, and then move on to the second test.
Test Number Two
You have a set of cards before you. Each card has information about patrons in a bar. On one side is what they are drinking; on another side are their ages.
—————— —————— ————— —————
| Drinking wine | | Drinking soda | | 25 years old | | 16 years old |
—————— —————— ————— —————
Now, let's say you're the bouncer at that bar. Your job is to make sure that no one under the age of 21 is drinking alcohol. Which of the above cards do you need to flip over to see if that condition is met?
The Answers
The answer for both tests is the same. You need to flip over the first card and the last card. Most people have a hard time with the first test, and most people have very little trouble with the second test. But the structure of both tests is exactly the same – logically equivalent conditions are being checked for. Why would one be so much easier than the other? A great deal of research, with many variations of tests like this, seems to point to a definite answer: the second test asks people to detect if a social contract is being violated – in other words, it asks people to spot cheating. And it turns out almost everyone has a built-in knack for such things. We all have a positive, built-in talent for spotting cheaters.
I believe I've established that moral behavior has practical consequences and practical justification, or at least have shown that such a notion is plausible. People willing to cooperate and behave morally with each other – willing to trust and work with one another as part of a group – have a powerful advantage over those who don't, in a very wide range of situations. This would imply a perfectly reasonable evolutionary reason for a "moral sense" to exist.
We have other examples of such systems in the brain. Figuring out what babies are thinking is difficult, but experiments seem to indicate that babies have instincts for understanding basic physics – at least, the kinds of physics humans typically encounter. They seem to express surprise when seeing an object float apparently unsupported, for example. We also appear to have built-in systems for understanding the minds and emotions of others and ourselves. This may be more obvious by its absence – autism seems to be a case where development of this 'mental understanding system' goes awry to greater or lesser degree. If there were useful, general strategies for interacting with other people, then inbuilt support for recognizing and applying such strategies would be a reasonable thing for evolution to produce.
Such a moral sense would also include warnings when one contemplates doing something contrary to morality – since moral actions, by this model, are sensible and useful strategies. Additionally, it would be important to realize when one is doing something that others would frown upon.16 Sometimes people violate these warnings anyway – the lure of short-term gains tempting them more than a long-term payoff. That doesn't mean that it's a wise choice.
Recent research17 has indicated that damage to the brain can actually affect how people make moral judgments. If our sense of morality is implanted by a supernatural means, then the details of that experiment are difficult to explain. Dr. Jackson, in making an unrelated point, uses the example of an automobile – even if one doesn't fully understand all of its workings, one can "make predictions about its operation and functioning." If altering the function of the brain alters moral judgment . . .
It might be advanced that, given how complex the world is, 'discovering' such principles would be too complex for evolution to manage. However, we have plenty of documented examples of evolution developing complex novel features despite its inherent lack of foresight. (My personal favorite is the essentially complete fossil record of the development of our inner ear bones from the redundant extra jawbones of therapsid dinosaurs.) Over long periods of time evolution is able to adapt to, and optimize for, even slight advantages.18 And moral behavior has more than slight advantages.
So genetics does not explain morality in this model; it does not, to use Dr. Jackson's words, "[give] morality its specific content." But it can "influence the expression of morality in an individual human being." Of course, genetics couldn't be expected to do so perfectly. Our physical intuitions break down badly when attempting to deal with objects moving close to the speed of light, or with very small particles.19 Our moral intuitions seem to work serviceably enough when dealing with groups up to about the size of a large tribe; beyond that, there can be complications. Our intuitions are certainly highly polished and useful instruments that we should do well to make use of as far as possible. But how should we extend them to the complex societies of today?
Moral Engineering
The real world – and hence, real-world morality – is very complex. No simple moral code will work everywhere. Sane individuals realize this – it's the fanatics who follow the letter of every single rule they receive that, for example, blow themselves and other people up. Difficult moral quandaries that require effort and thought and care – quandaries that may not have any optimal solution – arise constantly. When they involve large numbers of people, we can't hope to have rules that give specific guidance in every situation. But there are techniques we've developed anyway. Some principles of morality are universal, but they need to be put into practice. So we've developed legal codes.
Engineers have an even more complex job than physicists, putting together working mechanisms in the face of many uncertainties and unknowns. They frequently have to resort to 'rules of thumb,' approximations, and techniques that have historically worked, even if why they work isn't always fully understood.20 Engineers generally have to design conservatively, and build in redundancy, and add margins for error. Engineering moral (and legal) codes is similarly complicated . . . but that does not imply that it's impossible. Engineering continually improves and finds new ways of doing things, sometimes better than the old, sometimes merely applicable in certain special cases. There may never be an Ultimate Engineering that can accomplish all possible things . . . but that doesn't mean we should abandon engineering.
Still, we can take some lessons from game theory and psychology when crafting such codes. If there are conditions that help encourage cooperation (long horizons of interaction, clear and fairly-enforced punishments for violating rules, etc.) we should make sure to arrange for them as much as possible. Sometimes we may have to settle, like the Hawks and Doves, for a less-than-optimal situation in exchange for stability. But the fact that humans can plan and coordinate (and the fact that we do have built-in capacities for trust and cooperation as shown by the Traveler's Dilemma) gives us some hope that we can do better than armed truces and Mexican Standoffs.21
Legal codes and societal norms may similarly never be perfect, and certainly don't approach ideal today. But that doesn't imply progress can't be made. Though perhaps not for all the same reasons, I agree with Dr. Jackson's basically Libertarian style, where he advocates education and persuasion to work to end abortion instead of force and violence. I agree more with the practical justification he gives for this than the spiritual one, but our conclusions are essentially identical. Taking a cue from evolution (see below), diversity in the marketplace of ideas is a very good thing.
Genetic Moral Engineering
I've already pointed out the difference between genetics reflecting morality and genetics causing morality, but I'd like to take the chance to address a side issue: some apparent misconceptions on Dr. Jackson's part about using genetics to justify policy decisions. In particular, he argues that if morality were solely "the product of man's genetics as influenced by his environment," actions like exterminating those with genes predisposing people to alcoholism or pedophilia would be justified, or even required. But the conclusion does not follow from the premise.
One of the (many) reasons eugenics is wrong is that it assumes that it's possible to identify genes that are bad, and eliminate them. Genetics is more complicated than that, and traits that are 'bad' in one circumstance can be literally life-saving in others. For example, a person with two copies of the sickle-cell gene will suffer from sickle-cell anemia and die young. But a person with only one copy does not suffer such ill effects and has a significantly increased resistance to malaria. In a region where malaria is endemic, the risk of having babies die from sickle-cell anemia is offset by the improved chances of other babies surviving malaria. Cystic Fibrosis is another recessive trait where only one copy of a mutated gene apparently affords some protection from Typhoid and perhaps Tuberculosis. A further example is RH-negative blood; there is some evidence that, while RH-negative women are at increased risk of miscarriage, they have an easier time getting pregnant.
There aren't genes "for" alcoholism or pedophilia in the same way as there are genes "for" red hair. Mental development is more complex than that, and at most genes may put someone at increased risk for such things. And we don't know what positive traits such genes might help to enable – perhaps the stereotype of the artist susceptible to drug abuse has a basis in fact, and by working to eliminate alcoholism we would devastate the art world. There has been quite a bit of speculation as to Charles Dodgson's (Lewis Carroll's) possible pedophilia; if he was a pedophile, he apparently was able to direct his energies away from harming young girls, and toward entertaining them (and adults) with fantastic stories, as well as mathematics.22
The penalties for actual drunk driving or child molestation should be severe enough to act as a powerful deterrent, and someone who has acted on a propensity for this should be treated differently than one who hasn't. But there certainly isn't now, and very probably will never be, a test that can look at someone's genes and precisely predict their individual future behavior. Lacking that, pre-emptive and involuntary measures are unjustified. Punishment and/or treatment for actual behavior is the only reliable course. Objective examples of people who have been able to overcome such propensities supports this regardless of whether one believes their resistance came from a supernatural origin.
This leads into another evolutionary argument against such eugenic practices. Diversity in a population is a very good thing. It helps a population cope with all kinds of threats – disasters, disease, variations in environment, and more. If a trait really is "bad," it will be eliminated in due course without – even in spite of – our intervention.
Sacrificing The Queen, Part One
Chess masters may occasionally spot an advantage to sacrificing their queen in a game. The strategic rule that "one should not sacrifice one's queen" is a simplification. More precisely, it should be stated that "one should only sacrifice one's queen for substantial positional and/or material advantage." Such cases do arise, but they are fairly rare. Still, this does raise an important question about moral strategies — in what cases (if any) do they cease to apply?
One can imagine hypothetical cases where an action that would ordinarily be immoral might become moral. I alluded to a few debatable justifications for universal abortion above, in the "thought experiment." Indeed, even Dr. Jackson notes that abortion per se is not immoral in absolutely all circumstances (". . . having an abortion to save the life of a mother is a valid exception"). The real world is, as I have said, complex, and very strange circumstances can obtain at times. When there are two innocent lives at risk, there can be genuine debate about the correct course to follow. But I can't really imagine circumstances that would make the rape and murder of a child 'moral.'
The more fundamental the principle, the less common are the possible exceptions. "Not harming innocent life" is a fundamental principle indeed, and exceptions are correspondingly difficult to find. Tens of thousands of people, many of them women and children, died in the nuclear bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, but it is likely that the bombings ended up saving lives by averting a devastating conventional invasion of Japan. On the other hand, others (such as Generals Eisenhower, MacArthur, and Nimitz) judged the use of the bombs unnecessary. As noted before, some moral quandaries have no easy answer.
Sacrificing The Queen, Part Two
What about a chess grandmaster who can beat any and all comers? One who can't even play an interesting match without handicapping themselves dramatically, such as giving up their queen and both rooks? They can violate strategic rules that others need to follow and still win the match. Are there equivalents in the real world of moral strategies?
How about a Stalin, someone who can take over and dominate an entire country for decades? One who can 'get away with' riding roughshod over anyone, or any group, who dares oppose them? What, if anything, constrains them? Why should they care about the kind of morality that the vast majority are concerned with?
I'd like to relay a story I first read during the 2003 invasion of Iraq:23
When one of the most secure and luxurious of his palace-and-bunker complexes was completed in 1984, at a cost of $70 million, Saddam Hussein moved in right away. But even protected by enormous layers of concrete, sand and steel, behind zigzag corridors and blast doors made to withstand a Hiroshima-size explosion, and guarded by men who knew they'd have to be ready to die for him, or be killed by him, Saddam apparently could not sleep.
"All night long he heard a sound like the cocking of a pistol," remembers Wolfgang Wendler, the German engineer who supervised the project. Wendler was summoned by angry officials to find out what was wrong. He discovered a faulty thermostat.
Saddam, of course, deserves no pity. But this is the kind of life he led – literally jumping at shadows, because there was no one he could fully trust. Stalin became so suspicious of doctors that later in life he refused their treatment and consulted with veterinarians instead.24 These dictators had plenty of purely material comforts, but in the process of acquiring them they'd given up any chance of enjoying them untroubled by fears of assassination, let alone the pleasures of sharing them with loved ones. They could literally never afford to fully relax. Perhaps there are a few individuals for whom that would be worth the trade, but I wonder if they ever regretted the situations they'd locked themselves into.
This is an example of why morality is so fundamental: there are inevitable costs for violating it, particularly on a massive and regular basis. People are a diverse bunch, and there do exist sociopaths that might not mind (or even notice) those costs, but that doesn't mean the costs aren't there. As Dr. Jackson himself notes, the fact that exceptions exist doesn't mean the general principle is invalid.
The Foundation Has Changed – What About The Conclusions?
As I've noted, while I disagree with Dr. Jackson as to the source of morality, we broadly agree on the content of morality. Harming innocent life is wrong, for example. Unnecessary restrictions on liberty are wrong as well. What about his conclusions regarding terrorism and abortion, the major focus of his treatise?
Regarding abortion, we're actually in fairly close agreement. For reasons outside the scope of this paper, I'm unwilling to restrict abortions before the end of the first month of pregnancy,25 but after that our positions appear to be identical. Abortion is not justified for the sake of convenience, or even in the case of rape or incest; but when there is a threat to the life of the mother, it's her decision whether to proceed with the pregnancy.
As to terrorism, I agree that it is also immoral. But I think Dr. Jackson engages in a bit of sleight-of-hand when he conflates terrorism and abortion as arising from identical mindsets. Justifications for abortion tend to deny humanity to the developing fetus; but as he acknowledges, Islamic terrorists don't claim their victims are not human, they claim they are not innocent. Of course they dehumanize their enemies as much as possible to help psych themselves up for violence, but this is hardly unique to terrorists. Even our own troops have done this ('gooks', 'hajis'); it's a human coping mechanism, though a dangerous one.26
Dr. Jackson's paper covers a great deal of territory, and I don't intend, or pretend, to discuss it all here. My key thesis in this discussion is that the conclusions he reaches about the origins of morality are incorrect, or at least that he has not met the standard of evidence he set for himself. I welcome constructive discussion, corrections, and criticism.
Endnotes
1. Unfortunately the overall tone of the essay puts me in mind of George Orwell's apology for his "objectively pro-fascism" remark: "To admit that an opponent might be both honest and intelligent is felt to be intolerable. It is more immediately satisfying to shout that he is a fool or a scoundrel." I cannot claim to be free from this inclination myself, but fortunately Dr. Jackson himself in his paper acknowledges that one can "condemn a harmful or immoral action" even if one's past isn't "pure as the driven snow."
2. Of course, some of the exceptions have been historically significant. E.g. 1 Samuel 15:3, Joshua 10:40.
3. "Is knowledge knowable? If not, how do we know this?" – Woody Allen
4. http://www.tektonics.org/lp/norods.html
5. J. S. Haldane, Mechanism, Life, And Personality, 1913
6. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rosalind_Franklin
7. http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery.htm or http://www.sciencecartoonsplus.com/gallery/math/math07.gif
8. It's true that there are principles in science like the "Uncertainty Principle," which states that it's impossible to know with total precision both the position and velocity of a particle. However, this is because in Quantum Mechanics, a particle literally does not have a definite position and velocity.
9. Of course, their polytheistic framework was less efficient than a monotheistic one, so it took them some discussion to reach the conclusion that the pious was, in fact, that which was loved by all the gods.
10. Perhaps one might argue that a God that created the universe would have the right to do whatever It liked with that universe. But the question would immediately arise, "On what basis does the principle that 'the creator of something owns it' rest?" Is that an unchangeable, logically necessary moral principle — or is it imposed by divine whim?
11. When Dr. Jackson, commenting on the 'natural laws,' alludes to the "question . . . of who, exactly, created those natural laws," he betrays a confusion about the nature of natural laws and legal or moral 'laws.' Legal/moral laws are prescriptions for how one should behave; natural 'laws' are descriptions of how things do, in fact, behave. Legal laws of course have creators, but natural laws are not legal laws.
12. http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/pinker07/pinker07_index.html
13. It's worth noting that framing morality in this way allows a creator God to be 'good' in a significant sense again. It even allows It to be the ultimate author of morality, in the limited sense that the morality inherent in a universe would flow from the type of universe created and the kinds of beings placed within it. Of course, it does limit the kinds of morality that such a God could impose, but it seems generally accepted that an inability to create logical contradictions is not a significant limitation on omnipotence. There's even a role for revelation to play. Such a God might be aware of ramifications of the system — of moral precepts — too difficult for limited humans to deduce, and be able to relay them.
14. Consider how dumbfounding the notion of a Colin Powell or Condoleezza Rice as Secretary of State would have been at the dawn of the 19th century.
15. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Traveler%27s_dilemma and http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&articleID=7750A576-E7F2-99DF-3824E0B1C2540D47&pageNumber=1&catID=2.
16. "Conscience is the inner voice that warns us somebody may be looking." – H. L. Mencken
17. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/21/health/21cnd-brain.html?ex=1332129600&en=aa03e4a1c7a9ffd3&ei=5088& and http://www.mindhacks.com/blog/2005/10/the_moral_brain.html and http://www.reason.com/news/show/35014.html are popularized examples.
18. Orgel's Second Rule: "Evolution is cleverer than you are."
19. The famous physicist Richard Fenyman once remarked, "You don't understand Quantum Mechanics. You just get used to it."
20. "Engineering does not require science. Science helps a lot but people built perfectly good brick walls long before they knew why cement works." – Alan Cox
21. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nash_equilibrium
22. http://books.guardian.co.uk/departments/classics/story/0,6000,582828,00.html
23. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/3068650/site/newsweek/from/RL.3/
24. http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/sites/entrez?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=10053223&dopt=Abstract
25. Essentially, I agree with Dr. Jackson that, "If free will is a byproduct of nature, then it is a byproduct of intelligence, because it isn't the heart, or the legs, or the fingernails or the toes that formulates this expression of free will. It's the brain . . ." Before one month, the brain hasn't formed or differentiated.
26. I am not, of course, equating the moral standing of U.S. troops with Al Quaeda terrorists. But they are all human beings, and will inevitably have things in common.
Mr. Ingles gave me an opportunity to read an earlier draft of his essay, and I believe that IC is going to publish my rejoinder tomorrow. Briefly, I contend that Mr. Ingles has not stated my original proposition correctly. He confused a discussion of religion with a discussion of God, speaks of a God-imposed morality rather that a God-instilled morality as I did, and in the end equates rational action to further an individual’s wants, needs and desires with the intrinsic moral content of human behavior.
You’ll see my full response in “The True Nature of Human Morality: A Response to the Critique ‘Universal Morality And The Morality Of The Universe’”
Speaking of rather long articles…
Anyway, the author fails to make his case. Moral behavior is not cooperative behavior, nor is it a manifestation of a “more evolved” animal. There is no evolutionary utility for moral behavior.
Consider one of Jesus’ moral precepts: ” if someone wants to sue you and take your tunic, let him have your cloak as well.” Or another: “Therefore I tell you, do not worry about your life, what you will eat or drink; or about your body, what you will wear. ” Do these sound superior behavioral characteristics that evolution will select over other, more selfish attributes?
There is no evolutionary explanation for altruism, self-denial, or mercy. In fact, most of Jesus’ teachings fly in the face of the author’s theories.
The author’s ignorance about matters of faith is clear. He apparently has not taken the time to understand that which he tries to debunk.
It is clearly false to claim that there is no evolutionary utility for moral behavior: evolution does not work solely on the level of the individua.
In any case, Jackson’s argument is characteristic of most theological attempts to declare all morality other than that in a theological framework impossible. It demands the use of metaphysical explanation, but then fails utterly to justify the extravagance by providing the claimed “explanations”: from morality to free will, these troublesome, difficult to explain concepts are “solved” by poofs of magic (i.e. by not explaining them at all), leaving us just as ignorant of them as we began.
Saying that moral justification is “provided” by God is simply a non-answer. Provided how? What are the actions undertaken: call them mystical magical metaphysical actions if you please, but do at least explain what they are, to make any position “moral.” If you cannot explain what those actions are, even in the vaguest theory, then what’s the point of the exercise? And how is any of the scoffing at merely material morality justified by any superior alternative?
The plain fact of the matter is that we as human beings do seem to have some core values like empathy for others, desire for social bonds with others around us, and so forth. Different societies have arranged these basic elements in different ways, but there are only so many configurations that are stable: those which are not quickly fall into disarray (as would any society in which murder was sanctioned and allowed). And the possession of these basic values have made moral argument and hence moral progress possible: there is enough variation to make conclusions non-obvious to everyone, but enough commonality for debates to be coherent.
What all this says about whether a moral value is ultimately “justified” I have no idea, because I’ve never heard anyone coherently explain what that even means (a murderous computer might be stopped, but if it had no concern for the lives of humans, I don’t see how anyone could ever argue or convince it that it was somehow “mistaken” or “unjustified” in its actions).
Er … vicstich. Before you conclude what I say is wrong, you might want to actually see what I said. I did not use the term “metaphysical” in the way Mr. Ingles described (as I’ll indicate in my response), and my original article addressed your other points in some detail. I also deal in my response with “evolutionary utility” as a foundation for morality. The fact that society has “evolved” to a point where embryonic stem cell research is possible does not make this research intrinsically moral (or immoral). Another calculation (which I also describe) is needed for that.
Phil Jackson
Well, I’ll reserve judgement until I see your full reply, Phillip, but I think there may be misunderstandings all around. I didn’t say that “evolutionary utility” was the “foundation for morality” – though I did argue that evolutionary utility was the reason for the existence of our intuitive sense of morality.
I was arguing that the actual foundation for morality – morality as commonly understood and displayed – is based on logical consequences of our nature as humans and the nature of the universe we inhabit. Evolution responds to these consequences but does not actually create them. (Well, except in the limited sense that much of our nature is a consequence of evolutionary development.)
And I don’t recall speaking at any point of society “evolving”. Certainly I regard what I termed the “expansion of the in-group” as positive progress, and I imagine most sane people do as well. But I never wrote (or, so far as I can see, implied) that because something becomes technically possible that it’s automatically moral. Actually, I argued the opposite in the case of abortion, didn’t I?
Mountain Man, I’m rather dubious that the types of self-abnegating ‘morals’ – that form portions of Jesus’ recorded teachings – are really part of the ‘universal morality’ that Dr. Jackson was arguing for. Indeed, they seem to go quite against the grain of what people consider moral.
Why else is, say, ‘self-defense’ considered a valid justification for violence? I do not recall a large number of people – any, really – who argued that we should ‘turn the other cheek’ to Saddam Hussein because that was the moral thing to do. (There were people who argued for keeping up the sanction scheme for practical reasons, but I don’t recall too many people arguing that Saddam’s rule was morally justified.)
Very few followers of Jesus throughout history have followed the specific precepts you mention about overpaying in lawsuits or taking no care of one’s own phsyical well-being. Let’s face it, even if we assume arguendo that they are valid moral guidelines, they are very tough sells. But Dr. Jackson was arguing for a universal morality, the kind that everyone intuitively understands and agrees is right. He was discussing things like the rape and/or murder of children, the kind of actions that even convicted felons get outraged about.
Oddly enough, most people – even people who claim to follow Jesus’ teachings – don’t get outraged about organizations or churches – mounting a vigorous defense against a lawsuit, or families stocking up their pantry for the coming week. (Indeed, we tend to take children away from households where the parents don’t provide for their kids…)
By the way, everyone — though I’ve never met Mr. Ingles before, I’ve found him to be a decent guy and I’ve greatly enjoyed this opportunity to debate the issue with him. Rather than keep hinting at what I’ve said in response, and mixing my reaction to other people’s comments with my reaction to Mr. Ingles’ observations, I’ll just wait now for my actual words to appear and then continue the debate (if necessary) after that.
I have to say thanks for the long article. It has allowed me to see a little deeper into the mind of a determinist.
It looks to me that when DNA was found you placed its existance within the framework of a naturalistic universe. So your foundation splits from mine at this point. Just as I believe scripture is inspired and not from man. I believe and know that DNA is part of the creation. Our world views are different so the same data can be used to support both sides of an argument. This is the fundamental basis for any disagreement. To argue the data is a waste of time. You have to go back to your world view. If you start with any naturalistic view it eventually boils down to nilism. Even the polythesis view eventually boils down to nilism as well. There are many good books on this subject. With my world view I see everything around me as God’s universe. A naturalist on the other hand see’s the universe as god. Since man is viewed by naturalist as the dominate being in the universe then by that logic man is god. This is the basis for the new age thinking.
How does one arrive at a world view and how does one defend it. In my case I defend myself by showing that science does not support a naturalistic universe. Of course that argument is volumes not pages.
Fbaginski, I think you’re going to have to define your terms a bit. “Determinism” in the classical sense hasn’t really obtained since the advent of Quantum Mechanics, and even without QM, things like Chaos Theory would make it so impractical as to be at best a philosophical curiosity.
And I’d be very curious to hear what definitions of “naturalistic” and ‘ni[hi]lism” you’re using. Indeed, I rather thought I was laying out a case that naturalism doesn’t automatically lead to nihilism…
Outside those true believers from the E. O. Wilson school of socio-biology or evolutionary psychology as it’s currently called, is there any reason to link evolution to genetics to human behavior, and more specifically to morality? For a professional scientist, the answer is no based on the empirics. For the philosophical school of science-based speculation the answer is definitely yes. Who’s right, or phrasing the question differently, can we derive knowledge that strays beyond mere empirical facts and the legitimate conclusions derived from such facts and make truth claims composed of 9 parts speculation and 1 part proven fact?
This author said: “There aren’t genes ‘for’ alcoholism or pedophilia in the same way as there are genes ‘for’ red hair.” Alcoholism and pedophilia describe certain types of human behavior, but there isn’t a shred of evidence that these behaviors have any relation to genes. So, the author’s statement is somewhat true on the surface, there “aren’t genes” for these behaviors, such genes can’t be located on the chromosome, they don’t have an assigned number as do scientifically verifiable genes, they have no identified role in embryological development – in short, they are mythical constructions that don’t exist based on science alone.
But, the author’s statement seems to imply something more, although it isn’t clear what. Are we to assume there really are such genes, but these alcohol or pedophilia genes manifest gene expression in a different manner than the gene for red hair? OK, but is there any evidence for that assumption? Well, no. Does the emphasis on the word “for” in this statement have any scientific validity, does it connote any meaningful scientific conclusions – again, no. So, what does this statement actually mean – what information does it transmit? Using logical deconstruction it means absolutely nothing – it transmits no information of value.
In fact, the recent trend to speculate on the origins of human behavior using evolution and genetics to confer some form of scientific validity mimics the same psychology that confers legitimacy on conclusions derived from astrology. Does the current angle between Mars and Jupiter mean you’re in danger of losing your job? Nonsense, you say. But, can you prove the movement of the planets and stars don’t influence your destiny – and how would you go about proving such an assertion? Does the fact that astrology advice is printed in many newspapers and magazines lend a certain legitimacy to belief? Many people read these astrology columns, so are you saying they are all crazy? And if widespread belief alone doesn’t confer legitimacy, does a widespread, but similarly unproven, belief in evolutionary psychology held by scientists and relativist philosophers confer legitimacy beyond similar but unproven beliefs in astrology held by the general public?
Phil Jackson’s recent essay on Thomas Kuhn (The Politics of Science and Religion) and Kuhn’s thoughts on how scientists embrace theoretical paradigms is a good starting reference to see the fallacy in employing evolution or genetics as an explanation for human behavior. For this author, I couldn’t get beyond the double standard encountered so often in essays of this type. On the one hand, the scientific method is deemed a superior path to knowledge compared to any form of metaphysical reasoning. On the other hand, such authors blissfully ignore the discipline of the scientific method relative to truth claims when they engage in reasoning based on scientifically unproven speculation.
Mr. Ingles,
Your distinction between hard morals and easy ones is perplexing to me. Are you suggesting that because many people find it difficult to follow Jesus’ teaching, that we can simply dispense with them a priori? On what basis?
The quintessential nature of morality is that it demands a standard of behavior and thinking that is different than the natural inclination of a person. Following morality is different than believing it. Accepting morality is different than acknowledging it. Morality often contravenes human nature.
That is why evolutionary explanations of moral development are so wanting. They attempt to explain morality as a desirable trait making those who possess it to be worthy of “making the cut.” But we must account for all aspects of morality, including the morality that selects against a person or class of people, like altruism, self-denial, or mercy. Evolution fails to explain this.
Most people who tend to dismiss Jesus will say, “Well, he was a great moral teacher.” So, sir, what do you say? Is he a great moral teacher, or just a lunatic? If he is a great moral teacher, would it be possible that some of those great teachings would run counter to previous understandings of morality? Might they be hard to accept, hard to practice, hard to understand?
Those who practice morality, however imperfectly, are a separate topic from the morality itself.
Oh, and vicstich says, “It is clearly false to claim that there is no evolutionary utility for moral behavior: evolution does not work solely on the level of the individual.” If it is so clearly false, why not argue your point? Lay out your rebuttal. A summary dismissal on your part does nothing to make your case.
Congratulations on a well-done essay and response to Dr Jacksons earlier work.
It was the Dr essay “WWJD…” that first brought me to this site and really got me to focus on the function of morality. The logical and argumentative errors in that essay have cried out for a response, and I am glad someone with the rhetorical prowess of Mr Ingles has risen to the challenge.
As he is no doubt learning fast, some of the denizens of this forum will (willfully, it will seem) misrepresent and mis-interpret his argument in way he will have not thought possible.
But there should be no doubt: Mr Ingles has fulfilled the requirements of Mr Jackson’s argument without resorting to a super-natural cause, and therefore has rendered the rest of Jackson’s essay moot!
I find it interesting that Mr Ingles chose to mention the possibility that long-term moral choices might have genetic resonances, but I fear he has opened himself up to an area where the mis-information and mis-application of both genetic and moral concepts on THIS blog will cause him no end of frustration, so I just thought I’d warn him.
I also loved his shoot-down of Mr fBaginski’s “divine pronouncement’s of Jesus” argument. The “there is no genetic basis for altruism” meme has been getting some play lately – and that may be true, or at least “unknown” for the time being – but there very well be social benefits for it, which would fit in with Mr Ingles thesis. e.g., the family of a warrior who dies for his country is honored by that society, and the fatherless children are cared for (well, in the US maybe, not so much).
Mr. Ingles —
One of the reasons I agreed to a debate with you is because your approach was so different than Chasm. Although we disagree on basic issues, you’ve kept the conversation professional. I contrast this with Chasm who has a tiny bit of trouble telling the truth, which was most notable when he commented on my original article by saying that he had spent “hours working on a point-by-point rebuttal of my position ‘a few days ago’”, when in fact the essay was released less than 24 hours earlier. [Comment 16].
Unlike your position, Chasm also believes there is no evidence to prove that raping and killing a 5 year-old girl is “inherently immoral” [Comment 14], that “infanticide” is not inherently immoral because spiders do it to their young (notwithstanding the fact that my essay was about human morality, not animal instinct), [Comment 14], as well as making a number of other bonehead observations.
The reason for his somewhat odd comments is that in actual fact, Chasm has read only the first 20 pages or so of my moral relativism essay, and reacted to what was said in that. When I called him on this and pointed out what he did he was embarrassed, and disappeared from that conversation. What’s distinguished your comments from Chasm’s is that you’ve actually read my original essay and commented professionally on its substance, rather than used it as a launching board for a political screed.
You have also rejected the morally-relative rationalizations Chasm uses to justify abortion on demand in his recent comments to my July 2 article. I’m going to repost his comment verbatim below, because they stand out in such stark contrast to what you wrote. [Note --- the capitalizations in Chasm’s comments are his]:
“Is it more moral to be a society that mandates abortion or one which forces childbirth? Golly gee, I’d hate to be part of a society that has to make either horrid choice, yet you seem intent on forcing us to have a discussion regarding the latter, as tho it were more noble or preferable than China’s. NONONO! you scream. It’s ALL ABOUT THAT BABY and that LIFE which is so important. And I’m here to tell you that, actually, things are different than they were back in the day of Jonah and his whale. For one, we really did go thru the so-called sexual revolution, conservative nightmare of all nightmares, and women really did tell the men that after six thousand years of this shit, they aren’t going to take it any more. For another, there are many pressing problems which actually do threaten us – on every level from individual all the way up to country and planet. The answers to these questions really do amount to doing good or evil because the repercussions will determine the quality of life for generations to come. Sorry for you to hear, I know, but who has sex with who, and whether or not they conceive, birth and raise a child is not one of them. Abortion is not a civic moral issue because the survival of the state, or even the village, is not at stake. The only people inside that little moral bubble are the mother, the fetus, and her family. And in America, anyway, privacy means that’s where it stays.”
It’s important for everyone dropping in on this conversation to know that people like Chasm do NOT represent the point of view you’ve advanced. Where you and I disagree on abortion is over a small but significant point which I will address at some length in my rejoinder. It is not the kind of almost unintelligible claptrap that passes for thought from Chasm, who blends a discussion about morality, social policy, religious teachings, and Constitutional rights into one intermingled thought with no understanding or appreciation for the role played (or NOT played) by each of these constituent elements.
In fact, none of what Chasm said above about abortion has anything substantively to do with the moral issues of abortion that I outlined in my original essay [in fact, I specifically reject religious teachings in and of themselves as a basis for morality, spoke about the difference between man made and God-given rights, specifically rejected the notion that the state should impose moral decisions (such as prohibiting abortion) rather than have these decisions come from the people themselves through a democratic process]. Chasm doesn’t know this because he hasn’t read my original essay, even though he makes repeated claims that he has.
His “support” for your point of view, therefore, is politically motivated and not intellectually based, so anyone who reads his screed should not confuse Chasm’s opinions with yours. His motivation for commenting on my work is not to advance the issue through a reasoned give-and-take of ideas, but rather is summed up in a comment he made to my July 2, 2007 essay: “I have read your essays, and they are a main reason I pop by here occasionally. Since being a condescending prick IS your strong suit, I’ll just explain that I find them entertaining but grossly wrong, I imagine for many of the same reasons Mr Ingles does. For that reason I shall be spending some time reading that discussion as it unfolds too.”
We can only look forward to the carefully thought-out commentary from Chasm that is sure to come. In the meantime, though, to anyone pro-or con looking in on this discussion, please direct your meaningful comments to what Mr. Ingles says, and not what his new ‘best friend’ Chasm offers as enlightened observation, since Mr. Ingles’ reasons for this debate are NOT the same as Chasm’s.
MM makes the conflation I was talking about – what does altruism have to do with evolution?
At all?
Altruism is a concept, reinforced through honor (posthumously if necessary). All you have to do is watch a few war movies to learn about it. It doesn’t need DNA to live on: just good stories and speech writers. That is, after all, one of the the original purposes of drama and dance – to inspire courage and glorify sacrifice to the realm by honoring heroes.
Not that altruism in service of (our) country isn’t great ‘n all, but truly, once and for all, tell me what in the heck genetics has to do with it?
Jesus was indeed kind of a socialist pacifist, and a really nice guy. Have to say. But I was under the impression Mr Jackson’s thesis was that there were transcendent morals, not ones that were simply ‘written in the Bible.’
That’s why he had to go to baby killing rapists to find something we ALL agree on.
The author raises a number of interesting points, demonstrates mastery over subtle Latin terms and perpetuates an oh-so-common false description of theistic morality.
I know that is standard to present “divinely imposed morality” under the title of “divine command theory” but it is almost disingenuous to suggest that this is really what most rational theorists really believe. (With the possible exception of Dr. So-and-so who apparently does believe something akin to what is described)
The false “is-ought” dilemma is explained below:
“It is, of course, generally held that God approves of moral behavior. But the question now becomes, is moral behavior approved by God because it’s inherently good and deserving of approval? Or is it simply the case that whatever God just happens to approve of becomes, by that very fact, moral and good?”
Allow me to solve the great mystery of what theism holds to be true.
The answer is “yes”; “whatever God just happens to approve of becomes, by that very fact, moral and good.”
That’s right. Certain behavior “just happens to” be good for the same reason that the universe “just happens to” exist.
The author doesn’t believe that human ethics are subjective or intrinsic. He is more comfortable with the idea that they are a natural rational response to the world as it exists. The “good” has a benefit and a beneficiary as the arch-rationalist objectivists rightly proclaim
The author explains:
“Like chess, might there be strategic rules that arise in the real world from physical laws and conditions, combined with our desires?”
Of course there are! But if we honestly assume for a moment that a transcendent, omnipotent, Creator actually exists then we will view Divine Command Theory in a different way from those who coined the term deliberately to illustrate a supposed tautology. If God exists, then God first commands the “is.” The ought is a corollary.
The author says:
“If morality is simply a matter of what God commands, then saying that “God is good” becomes a vacuous, or at least tautological, claim. Essentially, we simply have the ultimate case of Might Makes Right.”
But if God exists then “Might Makes Real” and real makes right.
Morality therefore is a “whim” of God to the same degree as gravity and weak nuclear force.
When the quaking prophet commands behavior through religion, theists hold that God is COMMUNICATING behavior proper to rational beings that are a part of what already “is”.
It is not accurate to say that theism presents the individual commands of religion as a spontaneous arbitrary emergence of moral principle, somehow independent from the “state of nature.” Yet this is how “Divine command theory” is described by those who simply wish to discredit theism by falsely describing it.
It is another pseudo paradox like the old classic about a rock so heavy that God cannot lift it. “Could God ever create such a thing?” we are asked. At this point, the theist is supposed to descend into a tailspin of confusion. In reality, this parable defines omnipotence rather than disproving it.
In the same way, the divine command theory ruse can be a helpful illustration. It helps us to see that all that “value” depends upon the state of what exists and that existence depends upon the volition of the Auto-existent.
Mr. Skurka, I really didn’t think I needed a footnote about the relationship of genes to behaviors like alcoholism or pedophilia, since I summarized the point in the essay – “at most genes may put someone at increased risk for such things.” Even gross physical traits like red hair rarely involve single, specific genes. With red hair, for example, the expression is mixed up with, and affects, skin development as well. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Red_hair#Biochemistry_and_genetics).
And, as I said, mental development is more complicated still. The development of most any mental feature involves many genes interacting in a complex manner with the environment. But, yes, there is more than “a shred of evidence that these behaviors have… relation to genes”. (http://alcoholism.about.com/cs/alerts/l/blnaa18.htm and http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alcoholism#Genetic_predisposition_testing came up in a quick Google search. Twin studies are the gold standard here (and, by the way, one of the ways we can be sure astrology doesn’t work) and yes, genetics do have an influence, perhaps even – occasionally – a strong one. A search term you might use would be “DRD2 TaqI polymorphism”.) But, as I summarized, they don’t by themselves determine alcoholism. Indeed, both Dr. Jackson and I pointed out that people do overcome such tendencies on a regular basis, so how you went from there to imputing ‘genetic determinism’ on my part is a bit confusing.
Finally, I’ll note that when it came to alcoholism or pedophilia, I wasn’t insisting that they were prime examples of genetic determinism. I was taking those examples directly from Dr. Jackson’s paper and showing that even if they were strongly determined by genetics (which I didn’t argue), that would not justify eugenic practices.
abuNathan
Just as a point of fact, I do not subscribe to “Divine Command” theory. I expressly reject this point of view. I do not believe that my view on this was accurately portayed, as I point out in my rejoinder that I believe will appear Friday.
Phil
abuNathan, I don’t think you read my endnote 13. It’s a logically valid way out of the “false paradox” as you put it. I was making the case, a la Laplace, that “I had no need of that hypothesis”.
And note that if one frames morality that way, cases like those in my endnote 2 become somewhat harder to justify…
“… alcoholism or pedophilia, I wasn’t insisting that they were prime examples of genetic determinism. I was taking those examples directly from Dr. Jackson’s paper and showing that even if they were strongly determined by genetics (which I didn’t argue), that would not justify eugenic practices.”
To weigh in on this point — because I don’t specifically address it again in my rejoinder — my original position is this. If we are to believe that there is some sort of “morality gene” (i.e. that genetics gives morality its content), then this would imply the following: people without that gene would be incapable of acting morally. Society could not “rehabilitate” them because they are genetically incapable of acting morally. Therefore, by this same logic, society would have an obligation to act pre-emptively against people who possess no morality gene to protect the remainder of society.
I went through a long explanation of this issue to illustrate the full implications of believing that the content of morality is due to human genetics; a position I reject. I believe that Mr. Ingles also rejects this position.
Genetics, rather, can work to suppress the expression of morality, which I describe in some detail. (But suppressing something is not the same thing as giving that something its “content”.) Mr. Ingles, I believe, supports this position to a point, but draws different conclusions about it than I do. I go into that issue in some detail in my rejoinder, which I’ll leave for that forum.
By the way, on a personal note, with the exception that I noted in an earlier comment, this give-and-take is exactly the kind of thing Mr. Ingles and I envisioned when we wrote our essays. Knowledge is advanced by honest debate, which involves an effort to honestly defend one’s position (vs. simply slandering an opponent or making silly, off-subject comments). I appreciate all the honest dialogue, as I know Mr. Ingles does.
MountainMan, I’m not questioning those specific morals because they are “hard”. I’m questioning them because they don’t appear to be common, universal morals at all.
Consider – should our troops in Afghanistan and Iraq feel guilty about not “turning the other cheek” to insurgents? Do you think they have something to answer for? Should we bring them back to help them avoid a “near occasion of sin”?
Dr. Jackson was speaking of things that ‘we all know’ are right. I haven’t gotten into a fight since high school, but I don’t feel guilty about defending myself then. I don’t really see ‘turning the other cheek’ as a moral obligation, and if I were sued, I’d mount a vigorous defense, and I do plan out my finances and health care and so forth. I don’t feel guilt about any of that. Are you saying I should?
As to evolution not being able to produce tendencies to forgiveness and mercy, or foregoing short-term gains for long-term benefits – well, I actually tried to point out cases of those very things in my game theory examples. As I noted, when ‘mistakes’ are possible, forgiveness is a positive for the Iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma. Google for “tit for two tats”. And “Tit For Tat” itself accepts a payoff of 3 instead of ‘greedily’ going for 5, in the expectation of better gains over the long term.
Finally, as to Jesus, I think there’s enough myth accreted onto the actual historical figure that it’s hard to say what he actually said and thought. (I’m not saying there wasn’t a Yeshua, just that we can’t be terribly sure what the actual historical facts are. Another example of this is Socrates, whom we really only know through Plato’s Dialogues.) The “Lord, Liar, Lunatic” trichotomy ignores other possibilities, including “Mistaken, Misquoted, or Mythical”.
In terms of Jesus’ overall morality, I’m minded of the quote of Samuel Johnson – “[B]oth good and original, but the part that is good is not original and the part that is original is not good.” Jesus as depicted in the Bible spends a bit too much time in petty things like cursing fig trees, or major things like anticipating the torture of sinners with obvious relish, for me to really consider him “all that” as a moral teacher.
I’ve just started reading Dr. Jackson’s reply, and I haven’t had time to digest it yet, but I think I need to clear up a misunderstanding right at the the beginning. I used the phrase “vanishingly small” simply to mean “extremely small” or “negligibly small”; I did not mean that such moral recognition had ‘vanished’ over time. I was agreeing with Dr. Jackson that the rare exceptions, the people who didn’t feel instinctive revulsion at the notion of child rape and/or murder, were indeed aberrations.
Indeed, in my essay, I pointed out that over the course of history the circle within which people are considered fully human, and morally relevant, has greatly expanded. I apologize if my wording was unclear.
Raymond Ingles & Phil Jackson:
Genetic determinism, genetic predisposition, – these are words without precise or definable meanings. I could just as easily say my ignition key has a genetic predisposition to make my motorcycle engine come to life. You would certainly grasp the intent of (and probably laugh at) my choice of words, but because you already understand the physical relation between ignition keys and internal combustion engines, my intended meaning could be intuitively determined. Does putting a label on an observed correlation strengthen the truth claim as to the cause? Is a correlation the same as causation and how do you prove that – whether we are talking about how the stars influence our destiny or gene number 23 on your chromosome?
In other words, animal breeders have been aware of genetic determinism or genetic predisposition for thousands of years – but without the multi-syllable descriptions however. 200 years ago in Michigan, an angry frontier woman was screaming at one of my ancestors that: “You’ll turn out to be a drunken bum just like your father was”. That pioneer woman certainly understood the intuitive concept of genetic predisposition to alcoholism, although she had no idea what a gene was. Correlation without understanding causation is hardly a new observation within human knowledge and genetic science hasn’t added much meat to that particular bone. Using the recent findings of science to construct philosophical arguments generally involves building a mountain of speculation on a tiny pebble of fact.
I realize the intent of your debate wasn’t directed at empirical proofs pointing to relationships between genes and human behavior, but consider for a moment the incredible obstacles to making the assumption there is such a relationship. Human behavior involves a temporal object (us) moving in complex patterns through time and space. Alcoholism and pedophilia are highly divergent forms of behavior (both from the norm and from each other) within that context. Genes are simple amino acid codes that through highly complex chemical interactions give rise to proteins. Linking biochemical reactions forming molecular proteins to behavior observed years or perhaps decades after the reaction actually occurs involves a considerable and intuitive leap of faith.
And, yes, it is common nowadays to make such intuitive leaps and then point to scientific findings as legitimizing the conclusions. However, my problem with Mr. Ingles arguments is that he does make such intuitive leaps the basis for his essay. No doubt he qualifies many of his assertions by saying the relations are complex, or not well understood, or merely increase the risk for a certain form of anti-social behavior. All well and good, but the beginning paragraph of this essay states: “This would imply a perfectly reasonable evolutionary reason for a moral sense to exist.”
As the basis for his thesis, “evolutionary reasons” are far more speculative and unproven than proposing genetic reasons for human behavior. If there isn’t a shred of evidence linking genes to temporal objects and their self-initiated movements through space and time, there is even less evidence that purely physical factors “created” these relationships over the course of “deep” time through some mysterious form of a trial and error process.
Raymond: Thanks for the clarification about “vanishingly small”. It seemed inconsistent with the conclusions you actually reached about the morality of that matter. The intriguing thing about this debate is how you and I end endorsing virtually the same positions concerning slavery, abortion, and deliberately harming an innocent human life, though we employ different methods to get there. Regards, Phil
Continuing on comment 8 and response to Ingles
Determinist are materialist that extend the past into the future by looking at the current state of forces and matter. Everything that will ever happen is set in motion by the current state. Quantum mechanics for some broke the chain of cause and effect. However using the argument in the article about knowledge one could say that we have not fully understood particle physics and if we did we could take chance away and be left with a destined universe.
If someone is a materialist at heart and breaks with determinism at the quantum level we must ask ourselves why? Is their faith in science to advance in knowledge limited? Are their world views at the whim of the lastest paper on particle physics? I would hope not. As for me scripture says that we cannot know all. This I accept. That does not stop me from being curious and helping mankind develope devices to make life easier.
I have examined various parts of the creation and used mathematics to model what is seen. Then observing what possible methods could be used to change the structure of organic life one may, using the same mathematics find the chances of random combinations to violate the entropy laws. Having done so I come to the conclusion that the entropy laws are not violated.
Seeing no chance for life to evolve from dust leads me to conclude that quantum mechanics or something close is the limit of the material world. In my mind the entire universe is held together by supernatural forces.
What we have here is a failure to communicate. Or rather, two descriptions of two different things.
Mr Ingles has proposed materialistic explanations and given us some game theory insights for understanding the motivations that drive how morality is interpreted and regulated in real life.
Dr Jackson has proposed a transcendent moral code, which he calls the Universal Moral Code:
Do no harm to innocents.
There have been claims of misunderstanding on both sides, and I, of all people, believe he can shed some light on the core issues here. For while Mr Ingles does fulfill the requirements set forth in Dr Jackson’s first essay – he shows how strategic tension among ever growing sets of people can explain how we use morality to solve the problems of living in a society and he gives us wonderful information and insights that can help us understand the motivations of people as they sift through right and wrong – he does not ultimately identify the source, if you will, of the most basic of ideals. And while Dr Jackson asks us to understand that the source of the ultimate command, “harm no innocents,” as a transcendent code must also be transcendent, this insight does not ultimately help us much to navigate the complex moral terrain that is human existence.
Both authors come to the admirable conclusion that if there is a lesson that has come from either approach, it is that humanity’s greatest goal (maybe even our ‘purpose’) should be to progressively expand the ‘circle of innocents’ to include as much life as possible.
Now, when I say “not much help” I do not mean to imply it is not important. If we are to conceptualize the UMC as transcendent, then we must acknowledge that it is the ‘benchmark’ for morality. Yet knowing this does not always help us to sort out the nitty gritty of how to apply it.
For instance, it doesn’t help our North Korean Prison guard. Dr Jackson and Mr Ingles both point out that this man may ‘rationalize’ his behavior as a coping mechanism. But in truth, his only MOTIVATION for cooperating in the torture of the innocent family members of political dissidents is really HIS OWN SURVIVAL. He knows that if he does not do his job, he and his family will be subjected to the same treatment. This is how his mind is cracked. The pressure of the State is such that he MUST agree to the moral construct that his prisoners are sub-human, or else risk being assigned to the same category. He cannot pray to anything for enlightenment, or rather, it is irrelevant to him whether he ‘knows’ he is doing ‘wrong’ at any stage of the game. The propaganda and indoctrination might help to misconstrue his ‘true’ realization of what is moral, but as a point of fact his only motivation is fear for his own survival and the survival of his family.
Not that any materialistic explanation of the function of morality such as the ones proffered by Mr Ingles can help Mr Under a Dictatorship Prison Guard either, but at least these formulations can help US understand the structure of the moral trap he is in, and judge him thusly.
If the Universal Moral Code is “Do no harm to the innocent,” and this code encompasses all that is and is not man, transcending boundaries, then I would propose there is also a Universal Imperative that is wholly of the realm of life – an imperative that is followed by all life, from the lowliest virus to the leaders of nations:
“Do what is necessary to survive”
Now, before you all go exploding “Moral relativist” on me, let me just re-iterate that this is not a statement about where morals come from, nor an endorsement of ‘anything goes’ morality, for ‘to survive‘ does not imply ‘anything one wants‘. Further, I must stress that the most important aspect of that sentence is WHO THE IMPLIED SUBJECT IS, be it a person, a family, a community or a state – at each level, it is the MOTIVATION FOR SURVIVAL that determines how the Universal Moral Code will be applied, and who, exactly, will be defined as innocent.
In other words, while the UMC is the ideal, in practical application within a society, this code is filtered through the imperative, “What is necessary (for us) to do to survive,” in order to define those parameters of ‘innocent’ and ‘not-innocent,’ ‘us’ and ‘them.’
“Do what is necessary to survive” most emphatically does not mean “anything goes” or “anything is moral depending on the situation.” It means that every person, family, tribe, city and state, in turn, must use this formulation to determine how to apply the UMC to resolve moral questions.
What must be understood is that morality is not a variable, it is a function. In most ‘dramatic’ scenarios we debate, its function is survival on some level, but in other scenarios its function could be trust, or honor or property.
The independent variables in the equation are always the stake-holders – the beings whose lives or property are at stake in the question. Morality as a function is part of the ’answer’ on the other side of the equation. In a life or death scenario, morality’s function is survival; criminal and civil laws resolve the morality of trust within society, and of property.
We can acknowledge the ultimate source of morality, of the spirit behind the answers, and even assign our own idea of this spirit in the form of a code, “Do no harm to innocent life,” but I believe that Dr Jackson is wrong to believe that this spirit, the source of this morality, should be included among the ‘independent variables.’ For one, God’s survival isn’t at stake, so trying to shoehorn His presence among those that actually are, distorts our ability to see what it is were trying to see in the first place. Secondly, as a purely mathematical exercise, since the Divine is already the ultimate source of the UMC, and thus a already a major part of one side of the equation, adding It to the other side, the variable side, just results in canceling out, leaving us mortals with the (no longer Divinely influenced) question at hand.
If we leave the Creator where He belongs, as the source of morality, then when an entire society’s very survival is threatened by another nation, then going to war is a moral cause. If a society brings the Creator over to the side of independent variables, then they are implying that God’s survival is at stake too, and now we have a crusade. Is this war still moral?
Lets take a minute to look at medical ethics. In most ‘survival’ moral scenarios, the most salient variable that must be solved for is: where is ‘the line.’ What point can we not cross and still satisfy the intent of the UMC?
In the area of medical ethics – and stem cell research is a current example – in order to find the ‘line’ we debate the variables of the potential survival of the tiny cells vs. the potential benefits to the survival of our society as a whole. Saying “God/the UMC” thinks we should go with protection of life doesn’t really shed much light on the decisions that must be made, for ‘life’ is part of the equation no matter which way we go. The stem cells and society are the independent variables, and Dr Jackson insists God be included also, but the fact is by doing so we would be trying to look at the problem with less resolution than before.
If we step back, and try and imagine the mind of God directing the scenario, applying the UMC to both the tiny cells and the whole of society, not only are we doing what everyone concedes is impossible – understand and apply the mind of God – but we can no longer determine exactly ‘who’ the subject of the Universal Imperative is either – whose survival is at stake? The stem cells or the people whose diseases might be cured? In order to click back into the resolution needed to actually discuss and sort out the problem, we have to decide whose survival is ultimately at stake and make a judgment call, but then we risk the wrath of moral absolutists who insist we are then not taking into account the UMC!
It’s a lose/lose scenario, which has us running in circles.
Which brings us to the heart of the issue with Dr Jackson’s insight: while he has formulated a detailed and passionate defense of the innocent pre-born, if that is the only moral question which it helps us decide, it’s just not a very useful tool. And the main reason his insight fails to help humanity much, his considerable debating skills notwithstanding, is precisely because the UMC IS transcendent: there are no real world, material examples where following or not following the UMC has resulted in divine glory or retribution, so while it may be an ideal baseline for morality, there is no way to apply it without resorting to a completely objective analysis which then obscures the actual issues to be resolved.
In the example of North Korea, the leader of that country has equated his own personal survival with that of the state. It is easy for us to judge him as having violated the UMC, but less so for us to judge those he has forced to do his dirty work. While they may have also technically violated the UMC, they have only done so in order to fulfill their own UI: to survive.
To take as another example as to how this works, let’s consider the tribe that sacrifices children on the alter of their Gods. As Dr Jackson points out, they are elevating the status of the child above the status of ’innocent’ in order to allow themselves to make the sacrifice – they have to do so in order to violate the UMC – but only by understanding that the tribe is utilizing the UI “Do what WE must to survive,” can we see their motivation for doing so. Because they feel that their Gods will be angry, and that they may thus suffer or be destroyed, they are not merely excused from the UMC, they are COMPELLED to violate the UMC and harm an innocent.
Moreover, convincing the tribal leader that they are unnecessarily violating the UMC will take a lot more than just pointing out, “Hey, you know those kids are innocent. You should stop that, or the God that created the UMC will be mad.” No, convincing the tribal leader to stop the sacrifices will require that we PROVE to him that he will not threaten the survival of the tribe by doing so. Appealing to his inner sense of goodness, or asking that he listen to his heart for what the UMC tells him will accomplish nothing. As soon as the missionaries leave, they will start sacrifices again. By ONLY trying to show the chief the perspective of God and the UMC, we have lost resolution on the problem. He can and will point out that his Gods demand sacrifice, and simply countering that the Creator of the UMC has priority will, again, result in circular arguments.
Reminding the chief of primacy of the UMC will only be the first step, therefore. After that he must be shown that by sparing the life of the sacrificial victim, he will NOT be jeopardizing the survival of his tribe. Only then, when convinced BEYOND DOUBT that there is no correlation between sacrifice and the prosperity of his tribe, will the chief relent.
So you see, while it is possible to assign transcendent sources to the most basic of morals, in order for this insight to be applied in the Real World of Life, it must always be combined with the question, “What must we do, to survive?” to find an answer.
I must confess at this point that I fear I may have given Dr Jackson another arrow in his quiver. For after pointing out that the Universal Moral Code is “Do no harm to innocents,” he can ask of a woman contemplating ending her pregnancy, “Must you do this, in order to survive?”
And he very well may be right.
This article and Dr Jackson’s both suffer from the same false premise: “The only way a metaphysical explanation can stand is if all possible physical explanations do not fully account for an activity. Then, a metaphysical explanation at least becomes plausible.” One could just as easily argue the reverse, that “the only way a physical explanation can stand is if all possible metaphysical explanations do not fully account for an activity. Then, a physical explanation at least becomes plausible.” When dealing with a part of our common experience of consciousness, I would argue that if either bias is more appropriate, it would be the bias towards the metaphysical. However, I would further argue that if one actually wanted to determine whether morality was physical or metaphysical, their ONLY hope at accomplishing that would be to meditate on it WITHOUT bias.
While a long time ago I speculated on physical bases of morality along the lines of the reasonings in this article, I have long since become intimately acquainted with its actual supernatural basis. Having held both positions, I believe that exercises such as those in Dr. Jacksons article, in which he attempts to “disprove” physical explanations are completely pointless. Until one has knowledge of metaphysical realities, one HAS NO ALTERNATIVE but to cling to physical explanations of all things, regardless of the validity or invalidity of their criticisms. The human mind is more than capable of making any such belief seem rational to itself when pressed. I believe that the kind of knowledge being discussed here can not be gained through debate or proofs, but only in isolated meditation.
Perhaps I’m missing the point here. Mr. Ingles has suggested that there could be an argument made for an evolutionary, purely physical basis for morality. However, this is not the same as proving that morality can only be explained in term of evolutionary theory. Nor is it the same as proving that a divine source of morality is logically contradictory or impossible.
To borrow from his game theory analogy, he has not turned over the first and last cards. He has merely turned over the “Drinking Soda” card and shown that other side of the card could be an adult. To which I reply, “so what?”
Mr. Ingles has done exactly what he accused Mr. Jackson of doing; namely, confusing i.e. with e.g.
The fundamental flaw in Mr. Ingles reasoning occurs very early in this essay. He assumes that a divine source for morality is synonymous with divinely imposed morality and then goes on to argue that there is an inherent arbitrariness in the nature of morality when it has origin in the divine. Succinctly, it is suggested that “divine whimsy” makes one thing moral and another thing immoral, while an evolutionary, physical basis for morality suffers from no such problems.
But Mr. Ingles is attempting to solve a problem where no such problem exists.
A divine source of morality does not mandate that morality be “anything the divine declares it to be.” This assumes that God’s omnipotence has no boundaries whatsoever and is instead free to be illogical and arbitrary. There are many things God cannot do. He cannot lie. He cannot contradict Himself. Nor can he – despite the childhood philosophical quandary – make a rock so big that he cannot pick it up.
Could God create a universe in which all existing mathematical and logical proofs hold true except that the natural logarithm of 1 = 1 instead of 0? No. The fabric of mathematics would unravel. Nor could He arbitrarily declare that everything in the universe work precisely the way it does now, except that the acceleration due to gravity has now been divinely decreed as 37 ft/sec^2 instead of 32. It is simply not possible to arbitrarily change one thing while divorcing it from its repercussions.
Mr. Ingles would seem to argue that because “might cannot make right,” might therefore will not make right. But consider this: what if divine might reflects what is right, because it has a perspective that we do not currently have? What if morality that we perceive to be arbitrary, is in fact as much an absolute as the need for pi to be the ratio of a circle’s circumference to its diameter?
We recognize physical laws as statements of the way things are – not as an arbitrary compilation of rules.
Why is it assumed that a moral code, therefore, is inherently any different? What if love is right and hate is wrong simply because this is a statement of reality, not an arbitrary determination that was made with the flip of a divine coin?
That fact that many elements of morality can be argued logically and pragmatically, and justified on the basis of physical constraints, doesn’t do anything to invalidate an argument that declares morality to be divinely inspired. It is not necessary to assume that morality can be “anything God decrees it to be” in order to embrace God as the source of morality.
Chasm:
You say that the NK Prison guard’s “only MOTIVATION for cooperating in the torture of the innocent family members of political dissidents is really HIS OWN SURVIVAL.”
What you have just described is what I’ve said happens when outside forces act upon an individual to suppress the expression of the UMC. In Korea, the state indoctrinates/pressures an individual from birth to suppress the UMC, and this “outside force” indeed usually works in such an extreme case. But not always, because even in NK the state must remain vigilant to stamp out any political or moral opposition to its reign that still surfaces in spite of its efforts. So while you are correct in a broad sense that NK makes it harder for one to come to access and know the UMC, the example of NK does not show that personal survival trumps the UMC. 2000 years ago Rome gave Christians the choice of renouncing Christianity or dying a horrible death in the Coliseum, and they chose to die. Clearly, these people chose not to “Do what is necessary to survive”.
And history is filled with examples of other people acting out personally and collectively to oppose brutal dictatorships at the risk of their own lives, or practice forbidden religions. Not all of these examples involve moral issues, but all involved the risk of death. So your universal notion of survival above all other things does not stand the test of history.
If the need to avoid death (personal survival) determines what “every person, family, tribe, city and state, in turn, must use … to determine how to apply the UMC to resolve moral questions,” then any issue can be a “moral one”. If a person can reasonably conclude that action X will save his life, that action is moral. Imagine that the person about to shoot you is shielded by a child or other innocent life, and the only way to save your life is to kill both the aggressor and hostage. [Assume absolutely no other option exists.] You would be legally justified, perhaps, in doing this. But morally you have no right to take an innocent life to save your own.
Death is not a punishment. We all face death at some point. Avoiding death is built into the human psyche, but not at any cost. You can survive a stint in a concentration camp (or, survive longer) by helping kill other prisoners. This doesn’t make your act moral or morally-neutral, any more than a soldier ‘just following orders’ during wartime to exterminate the Jews made his act moral or morally-neutral.
When you reduce the issue of stem cell research to a choice between “The stem cells or the people whose diseases might be cured?”, I believe that you are presenting a false choice. [As a point of clarification, my quarrel was only with embryonic stem cells --- human life.] First, you have compared the destruction of a developing human life to a possible cure (“might be cured”). If this is true, we should be able to do anything morally because it “might” be beneficial to society — like sterilize people against their will, reinstitute slavery, etc. Legally, certain societies at certain times have permitted this. But legal isn’t the same as “moral”.
Second, you are violating your own morality about survivability by killing one developing human to favor another human. The only way you can morally do what you propose is to do what I said in my essay: define the fertilized, developing human egg as not human.
Looking for “real world, material examples where following or not following the UMC has resulted in divine glory or retribution” is not the way to judge whether the UMC exists or not. Acting morally does not cause God to make you win the lottery, and acting immorally does not cause thunderbolts to strike you dead. It is the benchmark by which God judges your life after you die. That’s when the ultimate impact is felt for following or rejecting our God-given universal moral code.
You continue to speak of the UMC as if it’s a written test: “convincing the tribal leader that they are unnecessarily violating the UMC will take a lot more than just pointing out, ‘Hey, you know those kids are innocent. You should stop that, or the God that created the UMC will be mad.’ No, convincing the tribal leader to stop the sacrifices will require that we PROVE to him that he will not threaten the survival of the tribe by doing so. Appealing to his inner sense of goodness, or asking that he listen to his heart for what the UMC tells him will accomplish nothing. As soon as the missionaries leave, they will start sacrifices again.”
Nowhere in my essays have I said what it takes for an individual or society to be successfully “taught” how to access the UMC. Knowing the UMC does not require the help of religion (although religion can be helpful at times). Mr. Ingles embraces the UMC, but rejects religious teachings.
What it takes to help a person access the UMC might make for an interesting follow up essay from someone, but it doesn’t go to my point of whether the UMC exists, and can be expressed universally across time, and that to violate it requires one to rationalize away an individual’s innocence or humanity.
Note: I’m out of town for a couple of days with limited email access, so I may not be able to respond to any follow up issues until later this week.
Erikmartin:
I don’t think the reverse is true: “the only way a physical explanation can stand is if all possible metaphysical explanations do not fully account for an activity. Then, a physical explanation at least becomes plausible.”
We live in a physical world. The burden on me, or anyone else arguing about a God-given universal moral code, is to show why the physical world cannot account for that action. Then the metaphysical becomes a possible explanation, which again has to be shown (not simply assumed).
Meditation/prayer will help you look inside yourself and access the UMC. But if I’m going to speculate about why the UMC exists, I have to start with eliminating physical possibilities first. Otherwise, I’m just offering an opinion, not making an analysis.
Regards, Phil
I’m still working on a full reply to Dr. Jackson’s response, but I can make a few points about a few of the comments here. For example, Mr. Sabin, I didn’t need to lay out a proof that only evolutionary explanations could account for morality. Dr. Jackson himself said that metaphysical explanations became plausible only if a physical account didn’t work. All I needed, or intended, to do was show that an evolutionary explanation could work, and I would, by Dr. Jackson’s own criteria, have rendered a metaphysical explanation unnecessary.
Of course, this won’t satisfy erikmartin, who apparently requires a rigorous disproof of any possible metaphysical explanation before tentatively assuming a phenomenon is only physical. I don’t pretend to meet that level of proof, but neither do I agree that it’s necessary. (For a meditation on this, one might read “http://www.godlessgeeks.com/LINKS/Dragon.htm”.)
As to Sabin’s later comment, again people don’t seem to have read the endnotes, particularly number 13. I explicitly noted that it’s possible a God could know, and reveal, moral truths (by the definition I used) that we wouldn’t have the wherewithal to discover for ourselves. My point was simply that no such extra revelation was needed to account for the kinds of universals that Dr. Jackson pointed out (e.g. violence to children).
One could attempt a case for such revelation, but I don’t think Dr. Jackson did so, and certainly a different approach would be needed.
Phil:
Re: De-humanizing others
This is a comment on your response.
You have probably seen the film of the psychology experiment in which a panel of four administer electrical shocks to a subject for each wrong answer he gives to questions. The panel members were told the person answering the questions was the subject of the experiment when in fact the panel members were. They found that the panel was somewhat reluctant to administer the shocks and did so only quickly. When the panel members wore executioner style hoods, they administered the shocks on cue and in longer duration. The conclusion was the panel members related more to the supposed subject as a fellow human being and were consequently more humane without the hoods than with. (This explains why executioners wore hoods.) My question is, how would the anonymity of a person assigned to kill fit in with de-humanizing the condemned, necessary for the executioner to do his job? Or does it?
If there are differences between metaphysical and physical explanations as represented by Phil Jackson’s and Raymond Ingles’ arguments, I fail to see them. When a self-styled “physical explanation” fails to explain or carries the argument far beyond what present facts can support, the argument is no longer a “physical explanation”, it becomes a metaphysical argument. In short, I see no difference between “a genetic predisposition to alcoholism or pedophilia” and “he was possessed by a demon”.
Both of these statements attribute behavior to a process that can’t be seen and is not understood. The rejoinder that genes are known to exist in the physical world doesn’t excuse the lack of rigor a physical explanation should require before being seriously considered a satisfactory explanation. However, the kernel of this problem is what constitutes sufficient proof – to an individual or society as a whole? If genes are known to exist, does that mean we can explain behavior as genetically based, or mostly genetic, or partially genetic? Is it even necessary to give a precise explanation? Or, is it the same psychological and sociological phenomena at work which accepts something that can be observed or physically manipulated as being superior evidence to that which can only be deduced about potentially unseen and unknowable forces, such as God.
Is a physical explanation always superior to a metaphysical argument regardless of how poorly the physical explanation accounts for the subject under discussion? And, how much do psychological or sociological factors contribute to what constitutes “proof”? Or, as one humorist put it about supposedly undeniable scientific evidence: “If I hadn’t believed it, I never would have seen it”. We know that sociological pressure to conform can exert tremendous psychological pressure to force or induce belief, as in the case of religious and political beliefs. Can such purely human factors also exert pressure to accept inadequate physical proof as a satisfactory basis for belief? And, if these psychological or sociological factors are at work in religion or politics, can they also be at work at explanations based on “science”. When does the “proof” depend more on desire to conform than on what we actually know from science?
I believe that these evolutionary psychology based arguments are no more than metaphysical explanations that substitute science for God. As an example, let me offer a book called “The Language of Life” by Debra Niehoff. Niehoff holds a Ph.D. in neurobiology from Johns Hopkins and she wrote an excellent book on how cells communicate using chemicals rather than words. As an aside, Niehoff is a rarity for a professional scientist, a talented writer who demonstrates her considerable biological knowledge in a clear and understandable prose style.
The index at the rear of the book lists “evolution” as appearing no less than 5 times, all within the second chapter. Not coincidentally, her second chapter describes the biological history of various cell forms and the rise of the mitochondria. Other unique cell features she also attributes to evolution such as the development of the prokaryote flagella, a type of specialized tissue that moves the cell from place to place, plus the necessary feedback mechanism that allows the cell to steer a course through a body or other medium.
What’s interesting is that Niehoff provides no “proof” that evolution is responsible for these interesting features, it’s simply assumed. Her one endnote addressing this “proof” is from a book by Gerhart and Kirshner that addresses the evolution of the cell, but if you track this book down, it doesn’t provide a satisfactory explanation either, just more of the same generalized speculations and unproven assumptions (about 6 pages worth), and, of course, this book references more books and articles that do the same.
In the end, you have a very scholastic trail of endnotes, references, bibliographies, etc. that support the evolutionary explanation without detailing how it actually works. Apparently, a 1994 Nobel Prize winner, Dr. Alfred Gillman was comfortable enough with this non-explanation explanation to endorse her book as noted on the back of the book jacket.
To the uninformed layman or amateur scientist, there can be no hesitancy or doubt that evolution did these amazing things, it’s stated clearly in the book. But, what about the professional scientist and reader – supposedly they should know better? None of Niehoff’s or Dr. Gillman’s professional work was on evolution and neither scientist ever published research results confirming the evolutionary theory of cell development. So, why didn’t the professional scientists object to her casual reference to an explanatory physical reason that has not proven specific to actually explain the phenomena?
The reason is that Niehoff had three options common to any scientist writing on biology. She could heartily endorse evolution as the causative process, she could have remained silent on evolution entirely, her book wasn’t about evolution after all, or she could have claimed there is no proof evolution had anything to do with it.
At this point, we see the sociological pressure to conform. Had she claimed door number 3 and indicated there is no empirical evidence evolution had anything to do with cell development, her book wouldn’t have received an endorsement from the majority of scientists. Too professionally risky to endorse a book that speaks a basic heresy within the scientific community.
Supporting evolution as the explanation however presents no risk, there is widespread agreement among scientists that evolution is a fact and the only possible explanation, even if there is no satisfactory evidence demonstrating how it was done. The general public has been encouraged to accept evolution as explaining everything about the history of biological development. So, where’s the problem other than the lack of specific evidence to support evolution within this context?
The answer is there is no problem. “Proof” is often based as much on conformity of thought as on physical evidence; in fact, in this case it’s based more on conformity than satisfactory physical explanations. Widespread acceptance of a theory, no matter how imprecise or ill defined, is also the jumping off point for further speculation employing that theory as your foundational proof. If a belief is widely held in society, such as evolution, there is no need to re-address “proof” of the foundational theory before engaging in further speculation. Who will object to basing logical speculation on widely accepted belief and what are the consequences if you did object?
In just such a fashion, a scientific argument often “evolves” into a metaphysical argument – standards of proof are relaxed when everybody already believes and there is practically no limit to what can be “scientifically” deduced thereafter. Recall the humorist quoted above regarding scientific explanations: “If I hadn’t believed it, I never would have seen it.”
Dr Jackson,
You are not wrong on any point, but neither have you convinced me that I am.
I have a longer essay in the works, but let me just quickly point out that my formulation does NOT DEFINE WHAT IS OR IS NOT MORAL (I knew this would be a sticking point, so I’ll just keep saying it). That’s why it’s just a survival imperative, not a moral one. Your insight into the UMC accomplishes that just fine – the UMC IS the moral absolute, the baseline, I am admitting that. I am NOT denying that the UMC exists, at least conceptually for our purposes, in fact quite the opposite – I have integrated it deeply into my moral calculus.
You are correct that survival does not trump ultimate morality, so therefore the prison guard who participates in atrocities IS IN FACT acting immorally under the UMC, and if there is to be ultimate judgment, the Author will surely sort it out. To say that he had to “rationalize” his behavior, and convince himself his victims were not innocent, is again, correct. As you say, one must ‘rationalize’ in order to demote another human to ‘sub-human,’ but even knowing that, is that the whole story? If you are the God whose resonance we feel in the UMC, maybe so (if, in fact, violation of any part of the UMC is ‘sin‘), but still, here on earth, as men, we mush probe his motivations. To do that we must ask, “why would he choose to make this rationalization?” If it turns out he’s a sociopath who likes torturing, well then , we have an easy verdict. But if it’s more complicated – if he truly felt he had no choice but to submit to doing his job or risk death for him and his entire family, then WE (but maybe not God) may (or may not) have mercy on him.
We, as humans, cannot judge him solely on the basis of whether he has violated the UMC, because we are not God, and so we cannot have the correct perspective.
Your hostage example provides another excellent instance to show how our two ideas differ (and yet are both important). As you point out, killing the innocent shield in order to save your own life DOES violate the UMC. But, as you also point out, there is a good chance a jury would acquit him. Why? Because in human judgment we would take into account the survival imperative he was operating under. It may not excuse him in God’s eyes, but the mitigating motivation may help him here on earth. Would a jury that acquitted him be guilty of moral relativism? Of course, there is no other way for humans to judge. Does that make them ‘evil?’ You tell me. I know it makes them human.
Finally, let me just quickly show you how my ‘survival’ idea fits into society and use everybody’s favorite example, altruism. First, let’s just postulate that there are at least two types of altruism – ‘instinctual’ or ‘snap’ altruism (please note that ‘instinctual’ is in quotes. I’m not making a genetic argument). This is the kind of altruism that compels people to jump in front of subway trains to save a life.
I have no novel explanation for this. Jumping in front of a train violates the survival imperative, sure enough. If Dr J want to argue that some connection to the UMC compels action and overrides the survival imperative, that’s good enough, at least conceptually, for me.
But what of the other kind of altruism? The kind that motivates one to join the army, to fight and die for one’s country? THAT takes some ‘rationalizing.’ But the focus on the individual soldier is misplaced – soldiers may have a myriad ‘reasons’ for joining up, from money, to education, to a Rambo complex – the soldiers’ survival is not what’s at stake when the decision is made to form and army and fight a war. The STATE’s survival is. So, for instance here in America, where the army is not conscripted, she must continually emphasize civic responsibility to meet her goals. We make glorious war movies, teach our children about civil society and civil responsibility in the hopes that in such a large and diverse country, enough will accept the call of duty. In America, we DEPEND on the idea that to be mature means to accept responsibilities to society, and we actively promote the idea that to die for Country, is to die heroically and honorably. A solder will willingly lay down her life, but only for (the survival of) America.
Finally, lets just sort out the stem cell thing and sketch out a ridiculously simplified scenario to illustrate the point. Say you work at a fertility clinic. This clinic has been in business many years. Couples come in, the clinic takes half a dozen to a dozen eggs from each woman, fertilizes them all with sperm from the man, the couples select one from whatever percentage of the eggs that is successfully fertilized, that egg is implanted in the women, and they and their happy husbands go off and give birth and raise a fine children. This happens every day, several times a day, for years. All the fertilized, but un-implanted, eggs are stored in a freezer until some unspecified date.
It’s your job to throw those fertilized eggs away when they reach this ‘expiration’ date.
So let’s freeze frame this scene right here, with you carrying a plastic trash-bag full of thousands of fertilized human embryo’s whose ‘time’ has come, out to the garbage. To analyze this moment in terms of the UMC, thousands of innocent lives are about to be ended. But are YOU the UMC violator? Not fundamentally. The UMC was violated when each couple chose one egg over the others, and chose not to have the other eggs implanted. In reality, SOCIETY chose to allow this violation when it decided this was an appropriate way for couples with fertility problems to have children. How will God judge this violation? I certainly don’t know. Will He punish the couples? The doctor? Everyone who has ever drawn a paycheck from that clinic? Every inhabitant of a country that allowed this type of procedure to occur? I don’t know. Do you?
So, we unfreeze the action and you are just about to drop that bag-o-embryo’s into the incinerator (cus that’s your job) when you hear, “Psst. Hey you with the bag.” It’s those guys from the stem cell lab down the street. They want your bag. They explain that they are oh so very close to being able to use those (about to be discarded) embryos to cure a myriad of progressive genetic disorders, perhaps eventually saving hundreds of thousands, if not millions of lives while alleviating suffering for countless millions more.
Freeze. This is where we are in the debate right now as a nation. Many argue that we cannot morally allow, under the UMC, these eggs to be used for research. Maybe not, but that’s shutting the moral barn door after the horse has escaped! To truly alleviate our society’s moral responsibility under the UMC, it needs to be argued that FERTILIZING MORE EGGS THAN NEEDED is the UMC violation, and that THAT is the practice that must be stopped. Allowing couples and clinics to fertilize, but not use, eggs, but then forbidding the use of the eggs for medical research leaves us… with a bag of trash and a janitor with a conundrum.
Finally, to quote your last passage, “Nowhere in my essays have I said what it takes for an individual or society to be successfully “taught” how to access the UMC. “
You are correct, and this is my point. I was showing how, in order to teach the UMC, one must calculate and understand human motivations, not simply act as a stand in for the final judgment.
A couple of last nits: you say, “The only way you can morally do what you propose is to do what I said in my essay: define the fertilized, developing human egg as not human.”
Now you’re being the moral relativist, not me. I think I must be making you crazy. Under (my understanding of) your definition of the UMC, THERE IS NO WAY TO DEFINE KILLING EMBRYOS AS MORAL. They are, by definition, ‘innocent,’ and therefore, any attempt to rationalize is just that: rationalization in the human mode. WE may, as a collective society, decide that the already fertilized eggs might as well be put to good use (whatever that means), or we might throw them away, or we might insist they remain in suspended animation for all of eternity. But as a measure against your idea of the UMC, the damage was done when we let couples choose only one of several fertilized eggs and ‘discard’ the others.
You would have been more correct to say, “The only way you can RATIONALIZE THE MORALITY of what you propose to do…etc, etc.”
Similarly to your note that allowing comparison between frozen embryos and potential future benefits, is not the logical conclusion of “Harm no Innocents” applied universally that we are morally compelled to implant the frozen, but unused, embryos that we already have into some womb somewhere and bring these babies to life?
Dr Jackson, I think what might be throwing you for a bit of a loop is the fact that I’m NOT DISAGREEING WITH YOUR THEORY OF THE UMC (at least I don’t think so). I am embracing it wholeheartedly, if conceptually. If you or I, as mere mortals, think we can compile God’s moral checklist, we can go ahead and knock ourselves out till the Sun burns away. If we want to consult this checklist and declare any violation of ‘innocent’ life a moral sin, God may chuckle at our presumptuousness, but He might also follow along approvingly noting where we are correct in our analysis. But were we asked to sit on a jury to decide the fate of a man’s life, we would be remiss in our responsibilities to both the defendant AND our society if we were ONLY to refer to this checklist and not listen to his testimony, weigh the circumstances of his alleged transgression and judge him as fellow man. This is why we, in the laws of man, have jury nullification – so that even if innocent life is harmed and technically a code is broken, if extenuating circumstances exist, an exception under law can be made (wouldn’t it be funny if that was how ‘St. Peter’ manages the task? “Hmmm, I see here you worked at a fertility clinic disposing embryo’s. I’ll give you a ‘nullification’ on that one, because I know you were just doing your job.”)
Also, you say “Looking for “real world, material examples where following or not following the UMC has resulted in divine glory or retribution” is not the way to judge whether the UMC exists or not”
To which I reply: Yes. I know. That is exactly what I was saying. There IS NO WAY for humans to judge from material evidence either whether the UMC exists, or what it’s content or intent is. Sorry if that was unclear.
In fact, my issue is that identifying the UMC is great ‘n all, but doing so does not complete OUR – humankind’s – analysis of the situation. It may very well give us insight into what to aspire to as moral beings, but it does not, by itself, completely explain the complexities of motivation that go into actual, human, decision making. I identified one such probable motivation, “to survive,” as a starting point for discussion and understanding.
To revisit our NK scenario one last time: if you are asserting that WE, Americans, humans – should attempt to adopt the UMC as our default baseline morality, no exceptions and no secondary HUMAN created ‘relativist’ excuses allowed, than does that not imply that we are not ‘justified’ in nuking North Korea off the globe or at least bombing all political prison camps? I don’t think you are, because I know you understand the UMC bind that would put US in… so?
Oh, and the Christians who died in the Coliseum? They were not dying for themselves, they were sacrificing themselves for the ‘life’ of Christ. Becoming a Christian means accepting a role in the society of Christendom, and it’s just possible we could describe these martyrs as “Altruists for Christ.” I have no problem with that and see no contradiction.
My last objection is really the only one we have to argue about. Were we to finally hash it all out, I think you’ll find that my construct completely integrates your UMC, and honors it’s purity. Our nitpicky points have more to do with your personal preference for trying to understand things from the God/UMC point-of-view, while I prefer to dig in the dirt with the humans. That’s all well and good.
No, my only real debating point with you is your assertion that God deserves to be included among the “independent variables” in a moral calculus. For this we need a longer discussion, and I hope to post my side of it soon. Suffice to say for now, I believe attempting to count God as a variable is one of mankind’s biggest mistakes. Attempting to count God as a variable along with us leads to fundamentalism, crusades, and all sorts of human misery (Hint: it would be what we would be attempting to do were we to bomb NK as above). I hope to show this to you soon. Stay tuned.
From Mr. Ingles: “All I needed, or intended, to do was show that an evolutionary explanation could work, and I would, by Dr. Jackson’s own criteria, have rendered a metaphysical explanation unnecessary.”
*** Yes, if “could” is grounded in a real world explanation, not just a theoretical option. Extra-terrestrial life is theoretically possible. Therefore, ET “could” have killed JFK in Dallas in 1963. This, however, is not the proof I was speaking about.
To show how evolution could account for the content of morality (i.e. evolutionary pressures could determine “right” from “wrong”, you have to show how it could be so (via genetics, etc.). Just listing an abstract hypothetical proves nothing unless you ground it in reality.
I still find nothing in Mr. Ingles’ paper that shows me how evolution determines the content of morality (i.e. tells us “right” from “wrong”).
so… you’re saying that, because a genetic explanation has been mutually excluded, there will be no theoretical explanation admitted either – simply because by definition, a theory on morality cannot be “grounded in reality?”
That’s why I think we have to separate and specify the difference between Morality, and what’s lawful, or acceptable in society. It’s fairly easy to be immoral, yet lawful. You have to really try to be moral, yet unlawful.
Chasm:
I’m still traveling with limited time to respond. Here’s my top line reaction to your comments/observations.
“my formulation does NOT DEFINE WHAT IS OR IS NOT MORAL (I knew this would be a sticking point, so I’ll just keep saying it). That’s why it’s just a survival imperative, not a moral one.”
***The debate is about whether the content of morality can be defined. If your survival imperative cannot define moral content, then by your own words what you say about it is not the subject of this discussion.
“We, as humans, cannot judge him solely on the basis of whether he has violated the UMC, because we are not God, and so we cannot have the correct perspective.”
***Which is why, as I said in my original paper, God will be the ultimate judge of our actions. But we can assess whether an action is or is not in compliance with the UMC, since God gave us all an ability to understand what the UMC is. What God “the judge” does based upon our actions when we face Him after we die is another issue all together
“Your hostage example provides another excellent instance to show how our two ideas differ (and yet are both important). As you point out, killing the innocent shield in order to save your own life DOES violate the UMC. But, as you also point out, there is a good chance a jury would acquit him. Why? Because in human judgment we would take into account the survival imperative he was operating under. It may not excuse him in God’s eyes, but the mitigating motivation may help him here on earth. Would a jury that acquitted him be guilty of moral relativism? Of course, there is no other way for humans to judge. Does that make them ‘evil?’ You tell me. I know it makes them human.”
*** What is legal (slavery in the 19th century, abortion today, etc.) is not the same thing as what is moral. Something can be legal (or excused/overlooked by human consensus), yet immoral.
Regarding your stem cell example, multiple people can violate the UMC. It’s not an either-or situation based on the example you provided. As for what God will do to you for violating this aspect of the UMC, I haven’t a clue and I said so repeatedly in my original paper. I know it’s wrong, but what God “does” about it is a matter between him and the UMC violator. You are blending a discussion of religion (which assigns relative values and punishments for “sins”). I’ve expressly maintained that the UMC is not defined by what a religion says it is. God gave us all the ability to understand what does and doesn’t violate the UMC. That’s been the focus of my analysis. I’ve made no statements about what God does/doesn’t do with a UMC violator.
“This is where we are in the debate right now as a nation.”
*** Yes. Just as 150 years ago we were discussing the rights and humanity of dark skinned people. The fact that society is struggling with an issue has no bearing on whether the issue is intrinsically moral or immoral. The UMC will tell us that. Some great struggles are morally neutral.
“in order to teach the UMC, one must calculate and understand human motivations, not simply act as a stand in for the final judgment.”
*** You misunderstood my comment. I’m not sure that society has to be “taught” how to access the UMC. People who have been beaten down/conditioned like North Korea may need some outside assistance in finding the UMC. But not everyone does. I believe that people honestly looking at what is moral/immoral will, if they are honest with themselves, stand a good chance of knowing what is right and what is wrong on a moral level. The only thing that always requires “teaching” is the teaching of a religion — which I have repeatedly said is not the same thing as understanding the true nature of morality. The two may coincide at points, but are not automatically synonymous.
“I think I must be making you crazy.”
*** Not at all.
“Under (my understanding of) your definition of the UMC, THERE IS NO WAY TO DEFINE KILLING EMBRYOS AS MORAL.”
*** Correct
They are, by definition, ‘innocent,’ and therefore, any attempt to rationalize is just that: rationalization in the human mode. WE may, as a collective society, decide that the already fertilized eggs might as well be put to good use (whatever that means), or we might throw them away, or we might insist they remain in suspended animation for all of eternity. But as a measure against your idea of the UMC, the damage was done when we let couples choose only one of several fertilized eggs and ‘discard’ the others. You would have been more correct to say, “The only way you can RATIONALIZE THE MORALITY of what you propose to do…etc, etc.”
*** I’m not sure I completely follow. An action is either moral or immoral according to the UMC. Humans may decide to act immorally, but pretend that they are not doing so. They do this by rationalizing away key components of the UMC (the individual’s humanity or innocence). This allows them to maintain the public belief that they are not being immoral, because the embryo is not really “human”, the Jew is not really “innocent”, etc. They may try to assert that their actions are in fact moral because they represent human consensus, a society’s teachings, a religion’s beliefs in opposition to the UMC. This doesn’t make their actions moral. They reflect, at best, an attempt to rationalize away the fact that by doing X they are acting immorally, when X would otherwise be seen as deliberately harming an innocent human life.
“morally compelled to implant the frozen, but unused, embryos that we already have into some womb somewhere and bring these babies to life?”
*** That would certainly be a consistent action in keeping with the UMC. Just as the fact that a woman was raped does not mean that the developing child can be morally aborted because it’s unwanted and was conceived by despicable means, neither can we rationalize throwing away fertilized human eggs just because someone made an immoral choice to harvest and impregnate them in the first place. The object in question is a human being (even if it’s a zygote). Killing it is immoral when the life of the mother isn’t at stake.
“I’m NOT DISAGREEING WITH YOUR THEORY OF THE UMC (at least I don’t think so). I am embracing it wholeheartedly, if conceptually.”
*** Which again shows me that like Mr. Ingles, people who genuinely seek answers to these deep seated moral questions will always arrive at the same answers, even when they start with radically different approaches and assumptions. Where we “disagree”, I think, is when you and Ingles keep talking about God’s punishment for violating the UMC, or a specific religion’s tenants, etc. There is no real disagreement here, because I do not say that we can ever know what God will actually do to a UMC violator. I can only say that I know that X is moral or immoral because God has given everyone the same UMC. Beyond that — the consequences of violating the UMC when we face God after we die, or the “rewards” we get for living our life respecting the UMC — it’s only speculation. Common sense and God given logic tells me I’m better off facing God respecting his UMC than violating it, but that’s as much as I’m prepared to say on that issue. But the fact that we don’t know what God will/will not “do” to us after we die does not mean that we can’t all access a God-given UMC. You have, I have, Ingles has.
“My only real debating point with you is your assertion that God deserves to be included among the “independent variables” in a moral calculus. For this we need a longer discussion, and I hope to post my side of it soon. Suffice to say for now, I believe attempting to count God as a variable is one of mankind’s biggest mistakes. Attempting to count God as a variable along with us leads to fundamentalism, crusades, and all sorts of human misery”
*** Re-write your paragraph above and substitute “religion” for “God” and we might find some common ground. I’m not anti-religion, but I know that some religions (like Islamo fascism) can promote immoral actions, and even good religions (like Christianity) can screw up badly (as I recounted in my essay about prayer in school) by substituting “Jesus” for “God”. Don’t confuse the discussion of whether God exists, and whether God can instill a UMC in all of us, with what religion X says about the subject. They are two separate issues.
Phil
“That’s why I think we have to separate and specify the difference between Morality, and what’s lawful, or acceptable in society.”
*** Correct. Slavery was once legal in the US. It didn’t make it moral.
“It’s fairly easy to be immoral, yet lawful.”
*** It’s “easy” if you rationalize your actions to deny the innocence or humanity of the human being you’re deliberately hurting. Otherwise, it’s not that easy.
“You have to really try to be moral, yet unlawful.”
*** Only if a society’s laws are built on immoral grounds. Look again at my original paper and see what I say about free will. I believe that abortion is immoral. But I don’t believe that justifies killing abortionists.
(Sorry if this posts twice. I’m traveling and my internet connection sucks)
Chasm:
I’m still traveling with limited time to respond. Here’s my top line reaction to your comments/observations.
“my formulation does NOT DEFINE WHAT IS OR IS NOT MORAL (I knew this would be a sticking point, so I’ll just keep saying it). That’s why it’s just a survival imperative, not a moral one.”
***The debate is about whether the content of morality can be defined. If your survival imperative cannot define moral content, then by your own words what you say about it is not the subject of this discussion.
“We, as humans, cannot judge him solely on the basis of whether he has violated the UMC, because we are not God, and so we cannot have the correct perspective.”
***Which is why, as I said in my original paper, God will be the ultimate judge of our actions. But we can assess whether an action is or is not in compliance with the UMC, since God gave us all an ability to understand what the UMC is. What God “the judge” does based upon our actions when we face Him after we die is another issue all together
“Your hostage example provides another excellent instance to show how our two ideas differ (and yet are both important). As you point out, killing the innocent shield in order to save your own life DOES violate the UMC. But, as you also point out, there is a good chance a jury would acquit him. Why? Because in human judgment we would take into account the survival imperative he was operating under. It may not excuse him in God’s eyes, but the mitigating motivation may help him here on earth. Would a jury that acquitted him be guilty of moral relativism? Of course, there is no other way for humans to judge. Does that make them ‘evil?’ You tell me. I know it makes them human.”
*** What is legal (slavery in the 19th century, abortion today, etc.) is not the same thing as what is moral. Something can be legal (or excused/overlooked by human consensus), yet immoral.
Regarding your stem cell example, multiple people can violate the UMC. It’s not an either-or situation based on the example you provided. As for what God will do to you for violating this aspect of the UMC, I haven’t a clue and I said so repeatedly in my original paper. I know it’s wrong, but what God “does” about it is a matter between him and the UMC violator. You are blending a discussion of religion (which assigns relative values and punishments for “sins”). I’ve expressly maintained that the UMC is not defined by what a religion says it is. God gave us all the ability to understand what does and doesn’t violate the UMC. That’s been the focus of my analysis. I’ve made no statements about what God does/doesn’t do with a UMC violator.
“This is where we are in the debate right now as a nation.”
*** Yes. Just as 150 years ago we were discussing the rights and humanity of dark skinned people. The fact that society is struggling with an issue has no bearing on whether the issue is intrinsically moral or immoral. The UMC will tell us that. Some great struggles are morally neutral.
“in order to teach the UMC, one must calculate and understand human motivations, not simply act as a stand in for the final judgment.”
*** You misunderstood my comment. I’m not sure that society has to be “taught” how to access the UMC. People who have been beaten down/conditioned like North Korea may need some outside assistance in finding the UMC. But not everyone does. I believe that people honestly looking at what is moral/immoral will, if they are honest with themselves, stand a good chance of knowing what is right and what is wrong on a moral level. The only thing that always requires “teaching” is the teaching of a religion — which I have repeatedly said is not the same thing as understanding the true nature of morality. The two may coincide at points, but are not automatically synonymous.
“I think I must be making you crazy.”
*** Not at all.
“Under (my understanding of) your definition of the UMC, THERE IS NO WAY TO DEFINE KILLING EMBRYOS AS MORAL.”
*** Correct
They are, by definition, ‘innocent,’ and therefore, any attempt to rationalize is just that: rationalization in the human mode. WE may, as a collective society, decide that the already fertilized eggs might as well be put to good use (whatever that means), or we might throw them away, or we might insist they remain in suspended animation for all of eternity. But as a measure against your idea of the UMC, the damage was done when we let couples choose only one of several fertilized eggs and ‘discard’ the others. You would have been more correct to say, “The only way you can RATIONALIZE THE MORALITY of what you propose to do…etc, etc.”
*** I’m not sure I completely follow. An action is either moral or immoral according to the UMC. Humans may decide to act immorally, but pretend that they are not doing so. They do this by rationalizing away key components of the UMC (the individual’s humanity or innocence). This allows them to maintain the public belief that they are not being immoral, because the embryo is not really “human”, the Jew is not really “innocent”, etc. They may try to assert that their actions are in fact moral because they represent human consensus, a society’s teachings, a religion’s beliefs in opposition to the UMC. This doesn’t make their actions moral. They reflect, at best, an attempt to rationalize away the fact that by doing X they are acting immorally, when X would otherwise be seen as deliberately harming an innocent human life.
“morally compelled to implant the frozen, but unused, embryos that we already have into some womb somewhere and bring these babies to life?”
*** That would certainly be a consistent action in keeping with the UMC. Just as the fact that a woman was raped does not mean that the developing child can be morally aborted because it’s unwanted and was conceived by despicable means, neither can we rationalize throwing away fertilized human eggs just because someone made an immoral choice to harvest and impregnate them in the first place. The object in question is a human being (even if it’s a zygote). Killing it is immoral when the life of the mother isn’t at stake.
“I’m NOT DISAGREEING WITH YOUR THEORY OF THE UMC (at least I don’t think so). I am embracing it wholeheartedly, if conceptually.”
*** Which again shows me that like Mr. Ingles, people who genuinely seek answers to these deep seated moral questions will always arrive at the same answers, even when they start with radically different approaches and assumptions. Where we “disagree”, I think, is when you and Ingles keep talking about God’s punishment for violating the UMC, or a specific religion’s tenants, etc. There is no real disagreement here, because I do not say that we can ever know what God will actually do to a UMC violator. I can only say that I know that X is moral or immoral because God has given everyone the same UMC. Beyond that — the consequences of violating the UMC when we face God after we die, or the “rewards” we get for living our life respecting the UMC — it’s only speculation. Common sense and God given logic tells me I’m better off facing God respecting his UMC than violating it, but that’s as much as I’m prepared to say on that issue.
But the fact that we don’t know what God will/will not “do” to us after we die does not mean that we can’t all access a God-given UMC. You have, I have, Ingles has.
“My only real debating point with you is your assertion that God deserves to be included among the “independent variables” in a moral calculus. For this we need a longer discussion, and I hope to post my side of it soon. Suffice to say for now, I believe attempting to count God as a variable is one of mankind’s biggest mistakes. Attempting to count God as a variable along with us leads to fundamentalism, crusades, and all sorts of human misery”
*** Re-write your paragraph above and substitute “religion” for “God” and we might find some common ground. I’m not anti-religion, but I know that some religions (like Islamo fascism) can promote immoral actions, and even good religions (like Christianity) can screw up badly (as I recounted in my essay about prayer in school) by substituting “Jesus” for “God”. Don’t confuse the discussion of whether God exists, and whether God can instill a UMC in all of us, with what religion X says about the subject. They are two separate issues.
Phil
There’s a lot to cover, so this is going to be a collection of points rather than a singular reply. I’ll try to expand on points if people have questions. First off, I know that Dr. Jackson’s familiar with Kuhn’s work, and so he’ll understand what I mean when I say we’re working from different paradigms. And as Kuhn noted, what counts as an explanation can change depending on the paradigm someone’s working from. I freely concede that I “[look] at morality through human eyes”. (This isn’t surprising, though: I am a human. Not only that, I accuse Dr. Jackson of being one, too.)
But still, there’s a key misunderstanding here, though I tried to be as clear as I could, and it shows in Dr. Jackson’s claim (here in the comments) that he sees nothing in my paper that explains “how evolution determines the content of morality”.
He’s right, of course. But that’s because that wasn’t what I was saying at all. Just the opposite: “I’ve already pointed out the difference between genetics reflecting morality and genetics causing morality…”
As I said, we have an instinctive sense of physics. (Particularly for how other humans move. That’s why, at least for now, we can be fooled by a Photoshopped picture, but totally computer-generated humans still look “wrong” somehow.) This can be enhanced (or degraded, though that’s rare) by training. Major-league outfielders can hear the crack of the bat and see the ball start its arc, and just know that they have to run at a particular angle to the left about fifty yards to be there to catch the ball. They don’t have to do detailed calculations using Newton’s laws, the determination is made at an unconscious level.
But our instincts for physics don’t cause baseballs to land in particular places – that’s new-age blather. Our instinct for physics is a reflection, an approximation, of the underlying reality of the physical laws of the universe we live in. Our physical instincts don’t ‘determine the content of physics’ – just the opposite, the content of physics ends up determining (imperfectly but serviceably, via evolution) our instincts regarding physics.
Dr. Jackson starts from the (virtually) universal sense people have that violence against children is wrong. He works to develop a case that the reason we have that sense/feeling/intuition is because God put it there. And the reason God put it there is… well, he doesn’t really address that directly so far as I can see. Although he doesn’t seem to disagree that those rules are tailored to the universe we live in.
I develop a case that we have that feeling because evolution put it there. And the reason evolution put it there is because it reflects an underlying reality of what humans are and what kind of universe they inhabit.
So there are two entities here – (a) our sense of morality (what Dr. Jackson calls the UMC) and also (b) the content, the reality, that the sense reflects. Evolution can be responsible for the former but not the latter.
And the latter? Item (b)? The ‘content’? Where does that come from? I tried to make the case that the basic form of morality arises by logic from “what humans are, and what kind of universe they inhabit”.
Sure, this is very different picture than the one of God imposing or instilling or injecting us with a moral sense. But it’s internally consistent, and consistent with the data I’m familiar with.
Now, regarding epistemology. Dr. Jackson rightly points out that there is a lot to know out there, and we actually know very little of it, and it certainly seems impossible that we ever could know all that there is to know.
Moreover, as I directly stated, “it may be true that there exist subjects that actually are unknowable, and therefore not amenable to scientific inquiry”. Dr. Jackson contends that such things may be accessible and knowable by other means than the scientific. This may be true, but is not relevant to the point I was making. I was trying to “urge caution before making confident pronouncements on that score”.
It’s true that we can’t know everything. But that fact doesn’t justify a claim that some particular thing is not knowable. Ironically, Dr. Jackson provides a wonderful example in his own reply. In endnote 10, he quotes at length from an article summarizing various scientific findings regarding the details of what males find physically attractive about females.
This is ironic because throughout most of history, if you’d asserted that there was a mathematical formula governing the attractiveness of the female form, you would have had derision heaped upon you. The factors that made up a comely female might have been to some extent definable, and even describable in some ways, but surely not measurable. But studies have found at least a few identifiably numerical constants, at least on average. Might it be possible that we may one day find some of the constants of ‘love’? (And, btw, we need to define terms carefully. Dr. Jackson apparently doesn’t mean ‘eros’. Based on context, it seems unlikely but not strictly ruled out that he means ‘philia’. Presumably he means ‘agape’, but perhaps he has another notion in mind. But that’s a topic for another essay or ten…)
I’m not saying that everything can be measured. I don’t have to say that. What I am saying is that specific pronouncements that specific things cannot be handled scientifically have proven to be incorrect in the past. I don’t think it a huge stretch to assume that others such claims along those lines will be shown to be incorrect in the future. Obviously I think Dr. Jackson’s claim about morality is an example, and I worked to show why I think so.
Raymond —A couple of quick reactions while I’m still traveling.
“Dr. Jackson starts from the (virtually) universal sense people have that violence against children is wrong.”
*** Why should this be “universal”, except for the reasons I stated?
“ He works to develop a case that the reason we have that sense/feeling/intuition is because God put it there. And the reason God put it there is… well, he doesn’t really address that directly so far as I can see.”
*** I did address it — at length — in my original essay, particularly in my discussion of Free Will. God put it there because God created us, and has given us a moral code to live by. He also gave us free will to embrace or reject that moral code. Life has purpose — to see if an individual will exercise his free will and act in accordance with the moral code God gave us, or reject that moral code.
You can assume from this that there is a purpose to life, and that there are consequences for bad actions that occur after we die. [Otherwise, we’re just a talking sea slug that is born, exists, dies, and that’s all there is to it.] I have no idea what the specific consequences for violating a specific moral code is (like, electively aborting a baby, deliberately breaking [i.e. “harming”] an innocent person’s arm just to be malicious, etc.) But reason tells me it’s better to obey a God-given UMC than violate it. Maybe the ‘punishment’ is going to Hell (if such a place actually exists as popular images describe it), or spending an eternity cleaning up horse dung from some heavenly stable, or having to watch an endless series of Laverne and Shirley reruns. Who knows? That’s for God to decide. But not knowing what the exact consequence may be is not the same thing as saying, therefore, no such consequences can possibly exist.
The reason you’re having difficulty with this is because, as you indicate on your website, you have difficulty with the notion that God exists. [Again, believing in God is not the same thing as believing in what one religion says God is]. You reject a priori a God-based answer because to you, God is no different than the tooth fairy. [I’m not being deliberately insulting to your position, just illustrative of how I believe you approach this issue.] Since you reject God as the Creator of the Universe, no God-based explanation can possibly meet your tests. But the tests you offer do not have anything to do with telling us how the content of morality is instilled, other than to focus on religious teaching and game theory, etc. — which have nothing to do with establishing the content of morality.
“And the latter? Item (b)? The ‘content’? Where does that come from? I tried to make the case that the basic form of morality arises by logic from ‘what humans are, and what kind of universe they inhabit’”.
*** This is doublespeak. You have defined content as ‘outcome’. A human, by definition, is a flawed creature who can choose wrong instead of right. By this definition, either choice becomes ‘moral’. Your data-driven analysis is good at telling us what humans do, and how they process information. It doesn’t tell us anything about whether what they do is “moral” or ‘immoral”.
Exactly why is it always immoral (wrong) to deliberately harm an innocent human life in every society, in every period of time? You said above that this notion is “universal” (unless I misunderstood you, and you believe that all morality is relative/conditional). Explain to me exactly why it is according to your data-driven world. Where did this universal notion come from, if not God? How is it instilled in every single human, if not by God? I started my analysis by seeing if science could explain morality, and when it couldn’t turned to God as an answer to be explored. You have started with a scientific explanation, done nothing to show us how science can explain the content of morality, and then equated God with religion so as to reject a God-based explanation — which then allows you to say God is not the answer because God is not the answer. God can be the answer (and I believe I demonstrated exactly how God can be the answer) because, as you still do not seem to concede, there is a different between “imposing” and “instilling”.
Again, your approach is excellent for analyzing how human act in the physical world. It sheds absolutely no light on whether what they do, when they act, is inherently moral or immoral.
Phil
“Might it be possible that we may one day find some of the constants of ‘love’?”
*** You might want to run this past your wife before you get too far down the road with this line of reasoning. When you look at another woman, you may get a smack from your wife, but she isn’t going to confuse a lustful glance with an instantaneous “falling in love” with that female. This fact was never in doubt at any point in time, even before science quantified why men get erections.
Now tell your wife that science will one day be able to quantify why you love her the same way it can quantify how person X prefers redheads to blonds, or women of any haircolor with a hip size within an acceptable parameter. Love is an ethereal emotion. Lust is a physical response. Virtually all men can come to find a woman more or less attractive (vs. completely hideous) who has the right body shape but wrong hair color, but not all men will respond to my wife with the anywhere near the same love I have for her. And I don’t love her just because I’ve known her for a long time — other male friends of ours have known her for a long time too. Or been through battles that somehow “bonded” us. She’s had a lot of battles with male allies in her job, just as I’ve had female allies in my battles in my job. Neither of us fell in love with our battle-mates (though a few of my female friends certainly passed the physical-response attractiveness test.)
Good luck on thinking that a spreadsheet will be able to assess love one day the same way it can predict a purely physical response to the opposite sex!
Take care, Phil
Dr. Jackson contends that ‘morality does not equal advantage’ and ‘morality does not equal consequences’. I think in this section he misunderstands my point, in a few different ways, some minor, some major.
A minor example appears when discussing his “now famous ‘Endnote 15′”, where he notes that in a particular case when he acted morally, he did not engage in “strategic calculation”. I did not suggest that the calculation in such cases needed to be, or even commonly was, performed consciously. No one denies that such unconscious calculation can happen in other cases, like the example I posted a few comments above about an outfielder who knows where to run to catch a pop fly without having to consult a pocket calculator. The judgements we make in this sort of case are largely unconscious and instinctive.
Consider Dr. Jackson’s quote about the UMC: “It is ‘instinctive’ in the way it reveals itself. But the content of the value(s) it expresses is not due to simple ‘instinct.’” As I noted, I also made the distinction between the instinct and the content, in the same way that an instinct for the physics of thrown objects differs from the actual physical laws that make thrown objects follow the courses they do. I simply draw the conclusion that if it walks like an instinct, and quacks like an instinct, then it’s probably an instinct. Or at least, that if someone wants to say it’s not an instinct, they’d have to show that clearly.
Dr. Jackson also points out cases where ‘doing the right thing’ leads to material harm for the person doing it, such as his example of refusing to fire someone for invalid reasons, and losing his own job. But I never claimed that following the moral choice would at all times lead to the optimal possible material situation.
Indeed, even in the highly abstract ‘games’ I discussed, I pointed out that the theoretical optimal score was rarely if ever achieved by the ‘moral-ish’ strategies I described. “Tit For Tat” does about as well as any realistic strategy can, but if there were a ‘magic strategy’ in the IPD that could make everyone else cooperate, while the ‘magic strategy’ always defected, it could do far better. The problem is that no such strategy exists.
From a purely selfish standpoint, doing whatever you want whenever you want sounds nice, but the reality is that other people will not go along with that. What works is, well, what we’ve seen throughout history to work – mutually beneficial cooperation, punishment for defection, etc. Sometimes this means you accept less than you want.
What do you get in exchange? I’m an electrical engineer and computer programmer. I understand to a much greater extent than most exactly how the computer I’m typing this on works. But, working alone, I could never have built it. Even if Leonardo da Vinci had been born today and received a full modern education, he could not have built a computer alone. And all the other material comforts that I have, the majority of which I don’t have even a rudimentary idea of how to make?
One of the reasons I don’t go stealing things that I want is because the penalty for that is being kicked out of the ‘game’, at least for a while. (The main reason we have punishments is for the deterrent effect they have.)
But there are more reasons than just that. (Though that’s a major reason for most people – look up what happened during the 1969 police strike in Montreal.) Whatever we may think about what science can say about love, I do love my family and friends and their welfare is important to me. I want them to be happy (indeed, my personal definition of ‘love’ in the ‘agape’ sense is ‘the state where the happiness of another becomes important or essential to your own’) and so I work to treat them well. I also believe that (at least) the vast majority of people are worthy of being loved, and one of the reasons I try to treat people well is because they might one day be someone I love. I explicitly noted the non-material advantages Stalin and Saddam forsook in their quests for power.
Would Dr. Jackson like to live in a world where everyone rolled over and fired people for petty whims or political consideration? Would he like his loved ones to live in such a world? “What if everyone did that?” may be simple enough for a child to grasp when a parent is trying to explain morality to a child, but no less profound a concept. Taking a moral stand may cost in some ways, but it can pay off in other ways, long-term.
As Damon Runyan says, “The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that’s the way to bet.” Moral action doesn’t always lead to optimal long-term results either, but most of the time – on average – in the general case – well, I think that’s the way to bet. And as Dr. Jackson pointed out in endnote 15, you never know how it might work to do so. Dr. Jackson’s good outcome in that other case, as he himself states, did not come from a suspension of natural law. I see it as natural laws working the way I’ve claimed they do.
Even if moral action were only slightly more likely than not to lead to better long-term outcomes, it would still be an advantage that evolution could work on. Over thousands or millions of years, even very small advantages become significant. (Again, this is evolution responding to a real advantage in the real world, not evolution creating such an advantage.)
Yes, doing the right thing can hurt, even kill. I’ve never been in the situation where I had to risk my life to save a stranger, but I like to think I would do so. I certainly want to live in a world where strangers would help me (or my loved ones) if I were in need, and I hope I’d be willing to do my part to make this that kind of world if the need arose.
BTW, Dr. Jackson, when I said you didn’t address the reason God instilled the UMC in us, I was talking about the question of: Why that specific moral code? Could God have picked a different one? If not, why not?
I understand why you say a code was ‘instilled’. I was asking why that code and not some other one.
Again we have the problem of different paradigms. You define morality as “that which God instills”. You offer the feeling of the UMC as evidence for the command.
I work to account for the existence of that feeling without appealing to a God to instill it. Of course that won’t result in a morality ‘instilled by God’. But if we define morality in more common terms – something like “the principles that should govern how we relate to others” – then it can result in “shoulds” and “shouldn’ts”, “goods” and “bads”… and even “right” (in the sense of ‘correct’) and “wrong” (in the sense of ‘incorrect’).
And as we’ve both noted, we come to broadly similar conclusions about what’s “right” and “wrong”, though we may understand the meanings of those terms differently. We both feel the same outrage at seeing great ‘wrong’, of course, but we can both account for that feeling in our own ways, too. Indeed, such feelings/intuitions are pretty much universal for some things, like violence to children.
As to why that feeling is universal among humans – well, because they’re humans. All humans have wanted food, disliked pain, expected unsupported objects to fall, etc. And, as I’ve been trying to lay out, instincts like that are pretty much necessary for people to live as human beings. We aren’t solitary hunters like bears or wolverines, we’re social creatures, and we raise children in communities. We’ll work to protect children (at least, ones that we recognize as members of ‘our community’, see the discussion of ‘in-group’ in my original paper) because anything but ‘Pregnant women and children first!’ is automatically genocidal over the long term. We don’t initiate violence against innocent adults, even if we want to sometimes, because otherwise we’d run the risk of having such violence directed against us at other times. Again, these are rarely (and don’t have to be) conscious calculations, but instincts. (You might benefit from reading Darwin’s Dangerous Idea, particularly the section regarding “our Neitchean past”.)
Yes, this invokes self-interest, however ‘enlightened’. But even more traditional morality such as you propose still invokes self-interest. It postulates extra-universal consequences (of some kind) and, as you say, “it’s better to obey a God-given UMC than violate it”. I can only presume you mean “better for you” – as in, that it leads to the best long-term outcome from your point of view.
(What if God wants to find out who’s really selfless, and punishes those who do good? After all, only a really good person would do good even though they’d be punished for it…)
I’m not trying to make fun of your position, I’m trying to illustrate that even traditional morality appeals to self-interest. The only ones that don’t are the Eastern types that assert that, really, there’s no such thing as the self. And I’m pretty sure we both disagree with that idea.
I hesitated posting this, because it’s a side issue to this whole debate and I don’t want to get into an abortion debate here. (I’d be willing to on another thread, but not here.) Still, I figure it’s worth noting.
Dr. Jackson asserts that any definition of ‘humanity’ that applies later than the moment a “single sperm and a single egg… unite” is “subjective nonsense” and “[r]ationalization disguised as objective analysis”. I disagree, and I would like to point out why.
He asserts that the UMC “is directly infused by God into each human being at the moment of conception”. I’m extrapolating from the text, but since he says that “Innocence is not an issue because tumors, cysts, and other clumps of bio-matter have no soul”, I have to assume that he means that a soul is ‘infused’ into a zygote at the moment of conception.
But this leads to problems when applied to the real world. Let me quote a bit from Wikipedia: “Identical twins occur when a single egg is fertilized to form one zygote (monozygotic) which then divides into two separate embryos… If the zygote splits very early (in the first 2 days after fertilization) they may develop separate placentas (chorion) and separate sacs (amnion). These are called dichorionic, diamniotic (or “di/di”) twins, which occurs 20-30% of the time. Most of the time in identical twins the zygote will split after 2 days, resulting in a shared placenta, but two separate sacs. These are called monochorionic, diamniotic (“mono/di”) twins. In about 1% of identical twins the splitting occurs late enough to result in both a shared placenta and a shared sac called; monochorionic, monoamniotic (“mono/mono”) twins. Finally, the zygote may split extremely late, resulting in conjoined twins.”
It is possible to arrange for this artificially. A blastula (a collection of undifferentiated cells that the zygote splits into) can be divided into two, each of which will then develop separately. Once they divide some more, the new blastulas can be divided again. A indefinite number of genetically identical individuals can be created from a single zygote, though in nature I’ve never heard of more than three. (Apparently, identical triplets have happened.)
Now, if the soul is infused at the moment of conception, we have a difficulty. Taking the simple case of twins, which one has the soul? Or does each have half a soul? Or does God ‘supplement the soul supply’ in such cases with an extra? If so, when? At the moment of splitting? Or does it happen earlier – does God, at conception, infuse an extra soul in a zygote that It ‘knows’ will split later? Is there an objective way to detect zygotes that have an extra soul waiting for the split? Or if the extra soul comes later, is there an objective way to tell which twin had the original and which one got the ‘bonus soul’?
(To use Dr. Jackson’s words, I’m not being deliberately insulting. I’m simply trying to make plain the difficulties that this idea runs into when confronted with unusual cases.)
Based on many considerations far outside the scope of this debate, I regard the formation of the brain as the moment (or at least, the earliest possible moment) that humanity could be ascribed to a fetus. (If you’re curious, see here: “http://ingles.homeunix.org/rants/atheism/braincase.html”.)
This handles the case of identical twins much less ambiguously. In the particular case of conjoined twins, if one of them doesn’t have a brain, then I would have no hesitation whatsoever letting that tissue die to save the other twin that has a brain. When both have a brain, and only one can be saved… well, I sincerely hope I’m never faced with such an awful decision. To quote my original paper, “some moral quandaries have no easy answer.”
One last comment for now. Dr. Jackson puts the UMC into words as ‘do not deliberately harm innocent human life’. I personally would phrase it as ‘do not harm others unnecessarily’. This, to my mind, better accounts for things like collateral damage during war – which even Dr. Jackson in his original paper agreed was permitted, though I’m sure we both agree it should be minimized as far as humanly possible. I think harming people guilty of a crime is necessary for its deterrent effect, proportionate to the crime itself. I may be mistaken (so don’t take this as correct without confirmation from Dr. Jackson) but the way he seems to conceptualize things, when someone commits a crime and becomes ‘not innocent’, they lose their right to protection from harm in proportion to the severity of the crime. This results in similar outcomes from somewhat different starting points.
But I’d like to draw attention to Dr. Jackson’s statement in his reply to me: “the more men try to define morality through common consensus… the less likely we are to be dealing with an inherently moral issue than a self-serving rationalization, or a religious or secular flight of fancy.”
It was for this reason that Dr. Jackson had to pick an unambiguously immoral action as the centerpiece of his original essay, and he found it in the rape and murder of a child. Essentially everyone agrees this is horribly wrong, and it highlights the central principle we express in somewhat different words above.
But principles are not prescriptions. Consider a different venue – the stock market. If you want to make money in stocks, there’s only one principle you need to follow, and it’s elegant, straightforward, simple, and guaranteed to work: “Buy low, sell high.” It is, however, famously difficult to put into practice.
There are cases where essentially everyone agrees you should sell – e.g. Enron, after the revelations of their chicanery. (Though even before the story broke, there were those who had their doubts.) Not every case is quite so pellucid, though, and reasonable differences of opinion can arise.
Similarly, in the moral realm, difficult decisions with no clear answer need to be made. I’ve given at least two examples of extremely ambiguous ones: the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, and dying conjoined twins, only one of which can be saved. Other areas are somewhat less urgent but have rather wider latitude for decisions. Consider a Polynesian island girl clad only in a loincloth, an American teenager with a sensibly long skirt and covered cleavage, and an Iraqi girl in full burqa. Each intends to be, and believes they are, dressed modestly. I think modestly is an admirably principle (in some ways I’m glad to only have sons, and in other ways I fear for the temptations they’ll face growing up in the future fashion world) but the principle itself doesn’t specifically dictate a particular application.
However, the devotees of the free market that seem to collect here should understand that even though it can be hard to figure out how to make money on the stock market, and ‘irrational exuberance’ can rule at times, on average a stock’s price is a pretty good measure of its value. And it seems to me that much of traditional morality – certainly the universal items that Dr. Jackson appeals to – have stood the test of time quite well.
I will note, though, that situations can change. The Jewish dietary laws were quite sensible in many ways for the times they arose. Putting cheese with meat for any length of time, absent pasteurization and refrigeration, will swiftly result in rotten meat. However, this was extrapolated to the (so far as I can see) unfounded prohibition on having meat and cheese in the same meal. We should take such rules under careful advisement, certainly, but even Dr. Jackson agrees that specific pronouncements should also be taken with a grain or two of salt.
A roundup of a few other points: fbaginski says “…one could say that we have not fully understood particle physics and if we did we could take chance away and be left with a destined universe.” Dr. Jackson phrased this in his original essay as “…the fact that I see something as random doesn’t necessarily mean that it is random.” Unfortunately, there are results that appear to rule out non-random interpretations of QM: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bell_inequality A minor point, but one worth noting.
As to your contentions about entropy and evolution, I’ve seen others make such calculations, and all of them have suffered from some flaw or another. I’m a computer programmer, and I invested a fair amount of time investigating evolution on a computer, and determined to my satisfaction that the principle works (http://ingles.homeunix.org/software/minev/ – if you download and extract the package, you can see some of my results explained in detail). The fossil record and the hierarchical nested tree of relationships illustrated in DNA (and the fact that both of these independent phenomena agree with each other so phenomenally well) satisfies me that it works.
Oh, and finally, I do not “reject a priori a God-based answer”. All I’ve been doing, through the whole debate, is echoing Laplace: “I had no need of that hypothesis”. I make no secret that I find the traditional notions of gods (both pagan, and the monotheist Judeo/Christian/Islamic version) dubious at best, but in this debate I am not trying to ‘disprove’ God or anything like that. Indeed, I have explicitly not excluded the idea. I’ve simply been trying to show that the concept is not necessary to account for the kinds of morals Dr. Jackson bases his case on.