If we want to consider whether or not morality has its origins in religion or is dependent upon religion today, we also should consider what we mean by “morality.” I’ve found Marc Hauser’s Moral Minds to be a great source for an understanding of the psychological mechanisms of what could be called the moral sense. We have a certain inborn intuition about what we ought to do, which seems to be similar to our inborn intuitions and capabilities when it comes to language acquisition. This concept of an instinctive ability to learn language is called a universal grammar, and Hauser borrows the concept to talk about a universal moral grammar. There are a few moral sentiments that seem to be universal (don’t lie, don’t murder your children, maybe a few more), and the rest of our morality is populated by the cultural milieu that we are raised in. This is similar to the few grammatical rules that all human languages share, and then we pick up the language of the culture that we grow up in.
This is fascinating information for someone like me who wants to understand the best and latest natural explanations for complex phenomena, but it still doesn’t explain morality. It only explains when we develop a sense for moral questions, and what aspects of our morality that might be universal or relative. And, although there are clear evolutionary reasons for a social/linguistic animal to behave in certain adaptive ways (don’t lie, don’t kill your offspring), it’s not so easy to explain the adaptive advantage of morality. Why didn’t natural selection just give us a desire to always do what morality now dictates? Where does the “ought” come from? What cultural structures are required to support “ought” statements (i.e., can I just make up my own morality and run with it)? Must I believe that “ought” statements refer to real, objective rules in order to live what we (21st century Midwestern Americans) would recognize as a decent, ethical life?
Of course you know that I believe and live that the "ought" comes from being made in the image of a soveriegn God. I am wondering where you think the "ought" comes from? I would be more inclined to think that religion is a reponse to this morality that is deeply embedded in our being rather than religion producing the morality, our sense of morality produces our desire for religion.
ReplyDeleteI think the answer to the last question here--must I believe that "ought" statements refer to objective rules in order to live a decent life?--is almost certainly 'no'. But that's partly because our standards for what a "decent" life looks like are pretty low. Treat your family and your neighbors nicely, don't get in other people's way too much, and you're okay. These are not terribly difficult rules to follow, and they tend by and large to be in our own self-interest anyway.
ReplyDeleteIt seems to me that the more important question concerns the existence of the "ought" itself. On the kind of evolutionary account you're discussing, the moral "ought" sure starts to look like some kind of trick nature has played on us. In the famous words of Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, "Morality is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate." And that, IMHO, is a really problematic view-- one that is almost impossible to live out. When push comes to shove, we seem to recognize that some actions really are better or worse than others. (For a good illustration of this tension, read some Richard Dawkins. He's notorious for insisting from one side of his mouth that morality is basically an illusion of the sort proposed by Ruse & Wilson, and then insisting from the other side of his mouth that religion is responsible for all sorts of obviously evil things.) If that's true, however, then it's appropriate to ask why. Why is it that some actions are morally wrong? How can we understand the nature of moral rightness or moral wrongness? More broadly, we might put the question this way: what must the world be like in order for anything to really be wrong? Theists have a variety of answers to this question; metaphysical naturalists seem to be in a very awkward position, at best.
Martilou—
ReplyDeleteI like Richard Joyce’s way of explaining it (The Evolution of Morality—I couldn’t recommend this book more, by the way, for its thorough analysis of the subject and its accessible style). Basically, he thinks that moral rules, in the way we experience them (“I know I ‘ought’ not do this, but I really want to…”) are useful to a species like ours precisely because they are flexible. So, to answer my question, “Why didn’t natural selection just give us a desire to always do what morality now dictates?” Joyce says that there are some advantages to having the ability to break the rules.
For example, it is clearly advantageous to not kill your own offspring, but we know that infanticide has been practiced in many human societies (I’m not talking about infant sacrifice, which would require a different explanation). We might make some sense of this moral rule breaking by considering what the environmental conditions were for the population that practiced infanticide. They were usually living in extreme conditions, such as the desert or tundra or mountains, and had suffered from continual lack of resources. So, it’s basically a form of birth control in order to preserve the larger population. If we assume that cultural homo sapiens (language speakers who began burying their dead and painting the walls of caves) originated in the resource rich conditions of Africa from 50,000 to 60,000 years ago, we could imagine that a moral rule developed which said, “You ought not to kill your children.” However, when human populations spread into less resource rich environments, people began to break the rule. So, they might have felt this ‘ought’ as strongly as we do, at first. But in extreme circumstances, once the practice became “necessary” for the survival of the group, the practice was no longer seen as immoral. It became morally acceptable. This is the sort of flexibility that Joyce is talking about. And it is this flexibility that could be an important factor for why we were able to survive in almost every environmental condition on earth.
I think Joyce makes a lot of sense, and I find his story persuasive. But Joyce thinks this leads to the conclusion that there are no such things as moral. They are merely the products of evolution, and therefore these intuitions are discredited as telling us something real about the world.
But I find this not necessarily to be the case. Consider the mind. We have a pretty good evolutionary story for how the mind came into being, but the mind also seems to be immaterial. So, one could say that, since an immaterial mind doesn’t neatly fit into a physicalist understanding of the universe, then the mind doesn’t really exist as an object. It is an illusion. I don’t think that’s a satisfying answer. Of course the mind is an object, a fact, that we simply have to accept. Could moral rules also be accepted as facts in a similar way?
Or maybe there’s no way of getting around the debunking of moral facts, from a naturalistic standpoint, but it would still make a lot of sense to live as if they did. Consider free will. I currently don’t believe that free will exists. However, that doesn’t really change how I live all that much. In other words, I live my life *as if* free will existed, and I don’t even know how to get around that. In a way, I guess, free will as an operational assumption is inevitable, and so (in a strange way, I know) free will does exist as an existential fact (my experience of it is a fact, a sort of object in the world)… I don’t know if this makes any sense at all…
Matt—
ReplyDeleteI’m wondering why you think that the standard for leading a decent life is low, even as you describe it? It seems to me that a standard described as a “decent” life would be just that, decent. Not spectacular (high). Not base (low). [I know it’s difficult to talk about this with value laden words whose value may depend on the larger answer to our question about religion].
Are you saying that, if we want to live to our highest potential as moral, even spiritual beings, then we need religion to do that?
I think my last comment to Martilou might address some of what you brought up in your second paragraph, about Wilson, Ruse, and Dawkins. I agree with your assessment of what is problematic. “What must the world be like in order for anything to really be wrong?” So, it depends on how much wiggle room I am permitted to have with *really*. Have I provided a satisfactory answer from a naturalistic standpoint for the existence of moral facts? Can I just say that natural selection has “designed” moral rules (judgments that exist because we are a language-using animal and live communally), and my psychological health, and perhaps the health of my family and the community that I live in, depends on my stance in relation to those rules? What do you think?
I’ve been thinking about the following sentences from Matthew’s comment:
ReplyDelete“In the famous words of Michael Ruse and E. O. Wilson, ‘Morality is an illusion fobbed off on us by our genes to get us to cooperate.’ And that, IMHO, is a really problematic view-- one that is almost impossible to live out.”
“More broadly, we might put the question this way: what must the world be like in order for anything to really be wrong? Theists have a variety of answers to this question; metaphysical naturalists seem to be in a very awkward position, at best.”
These are precisely the issues that I’ve been dealing with since I left the Christian faith, and I’m guessing that they make a lot of sense to the majority of my friends and family. But I’m wondering, why is that? Why does it seem so untenable to believe that there is a natural explanation for the origin of morality and at the same time “live out” a moral life? Why do we think that theists have a variety of legitimate answers to the question about the nature of a moral world and naturalists don’t?
I would suggest that history has a lot to do with this. And that is to say, we (Midwestern Americans who live in a culture soaked in Christianity, for the most part evangelical) are more likely to allow a theistic description of the moral world to end the conversation as opposed to a naturalistic description of it. I find this strange. Surely, the theistic explanations are in an awkward position as well.
First, a theistic explanation for anything to be *really wrong* sounds a lot like a god of the gaps argument to someone like me. We experience the world in a way that seems to require some things to be truly wrong. The theist thinks there is no natural explanation for this. Therefore, god must have done it. The problem with this is that this gap in the naturalist’s ability to explain the world is closing, and this is consistent with the historical trend concerning god of the gaps arguments. In my opinion, theists would do well to give up this strategy. Morality is going to have a fairly satisfactory natural explanation in the not so distant future, I predict, and if Christians are leaning on this gap for apologetics, as well as on the gap of consciousness and the gap of the chemical origin of life, then they are going to have a hard fall when those gaps disappear.
But even if we accept the theist’s premise of the existence of god, then we still have some problems. Why did god make these rules and not other rules? If god could have made different rules, then aren’t they relative/contingent in a sense? If so, then god is just a powerful being who is ruling his creatures by fiat, which seems like a domineering tyrant whose rules *really* don’t deserve our assent. We would only follow them if we were afraid of divine retribution from a dictator-like god. Is this the *good* god that theists want us to believe in? Is this not problematic?
If god didn’t make the rules, then they exist merely as a brute fact about the world, just as the rules of physics. They would be “good” for us in a way that makes practical sense to us. We will live better lives. We will be healthy. We will have healthy communities. And these practical explanations will be natural explanations, which are available to the naturalist as well as the theist. In which case, theists don’t really have such a unique advantage in their ability to explain the moral world.
[Continuation of the comment above…]
ReplyDeleteMy point here is not to say that theistic explanations of morality are problematic and naturalistic explanations are not. They both have their merits and they both have their problems. And I’m suggesting that we (Midwesterners) just seem to be more willing to accept the theistic answer because we have been around people who accept the theistic answer as a conversation stopper. I no longer think that the theistic answer is a conversation stopper (obviously), and I actually do think that natural explanations are satisfying for what they are—naturalistic explanations of the origin of morality. I’m not trying to “live out” that explanation, because it’s not something that even presents itself in that way.
I was reading Charles Taylor’s *Sources of the Self* and came across a section that I think articulates what I’ve been driving at. I’ll quote him here at some length:
ReplyDelete“If…our language of good and right makes sense only against a background understanding of the forms of social interchange in a given society and its perceptions of the good, then can one not say after all that good and right are merely relative, not anchored in the real? To say this would be to fall into an important confusion. Certainly what emerges from this is that good and right are not properties of the universe considered without any relation to human beings and their lives. And to the extent that our natural science since the seventeenth century has been developing on the basis of a conception of the world which is maximally freed from anthropocentric conceptions…, we can say that good and right are not part of the world as studied by natural science.
“But from there, it is an unjustified leap to say that they therefore are not as real, objective, and non-relative as any other part of the natural world…
“Of course, the terms of our best account [of how to make sense of our lives] will never figure in a physical theory of the universe. But that just means that our human reality cannot be understood in the terms appropriate for this physics…Just as physical science is no longer anthropocentric, so human science can no longer be couched in the terms of physics. Our value terms purport to give us insight into what it is to live in the universe as a human being, and this is a quite different matter from that which physical science claims to reveal and explain. This reality is, of course, dependent on us, in the sense that a condition for its existence is our existence. But once granted that we exist, it is no more a subjective projection than what physics deals with.”
Since I’m not very far into Taylor’s book, whatever use I make of him here is merely cherry picking and doesn’t necessarily fit in with Taylor’s larger argument. But what I want to say is that natural explanations of the origin of the moral sense and moral judgments are useful for what they are—an attempt to place human experience within the framework of the physical world. But it seems legitimate to me, at the same time, to take Taylor seriously about the need to deal with human matters in the terms that make the most sense of our lives. The terms that give the best account of our experience, such ‘good’ and ‘wrong’ and ‘dignity’. And I find it most useful to speak of the moral reality which we experience in terms of health, for both individuals and communities. Which is to say, in the most comprehensive way possible.
Although I consider myself "religious," I don't believe that religion (in its traditional meaning) is a necessary or sufficient source of morality. Both "religious" and "nonreligious" people have done great good and great evil.
ReplyDeleteI am amazed that most of us on this planet seem to define "good" and "evil" in remarkably similar ways. But whether to attribute this agreement to God's "natural law" or to evolution may be a meaningless question, since both ultimately can be reduced to Mystery.
I mean to say "since both ultimately come down to Mystery."
ReplyDeleteKen—
ReplyDeleteYour point about Mystery is well taken. I’ve been thinking about the conversation we once had about natural piety. That’s still something that I want to explore/adopt, and it requires the willingness to just accept mystery at some point. This is probably one of those points.
Obviously, there's a LOT here worth discussing-- I don't have time right now to try to address every issue Sub-sub-librarian has raised. The really short version of my response would be this: You should definitely get a copy of Robert Adams's book Finite and Infinite Goods. It's the best contemporary theistic account of the nature of morality, and I think it satisfactorily addresses pretty much all the questions you've asked here. You might also be interested in John Hare's God's Call, which is a somewhat different approach.
ReplyDeleteTo provide a little more substance (btw, in spite of the numbered points, I'm not trying to make an argument here; I'm just summarizing some thoughts):
1. I think that the question do we need religion in order to live moral lives? is kind of a red herring. Maybe that's my own quirkiness coming through, but it's not a question that strikes me as especially pressing or important.
2. We--that is, contemporary English speakers--do seem to have a concept of moral wrongness (and other moral properties). The question I want to ask is, roughly, is there anything in the world that actually exemplifies the property of moral wrongness? So to some extent, I do agree with Taylor: even if our concept is in some sense a cultural artifact, we can still ask whether that artifact latches on to some really existing thing. (For comparison's sake, think of a game like Monopoly... Monopoly is clearly a human invention, and yet there really is such a thing as Monopoly.)
3. To determine what our concept of moral wrongness is--and therefore, to determine what the property of moral wrongness would have to be like, if there really is such a thing--we can look to the features of our moral discourse. Our discourse establishes a role for moral wrongness such that whatever it is that is best-suited to play that role is justifiedly thought to be moral wrongness.
4. Our discourse suggests that moral properties are (at least) objective, knowable, normative, categorical, and authoritative.
5. Theists can suggest a number of properties that are plausibly thought to be objective, knowable, normative, categorical, and authoritative. Divine command properties are the classic suggestion; I favor appealing to divine attitudes.
6. There seems to be no naturalistic property that can satisfy the role established for moral properties by our moral discourse. (Between points 5 and 6, I think it's safe to say that this is not a god-of-the-gaps line of reasoning.)
7. Theists who understand moral properties to be essentially constrained by the divine nature don't need to worry about morality turning out to be arbitrary.
And I guess that's it in a nutshell. Adams's book would be well worth your time, though.
Shalom!
Matt—
ReplyDeleteThanks for the book titles. I’ll take a look at those.
Again, I think your question makes sense. You ask, “…is there anything in the world that actually exemplifies the property of moral wrongness?” As I’ve said, what I want to suggest is that theism seems like the only unproblematic answer to us (Midwestern Americans who have grown up in a Christian, largely evangelical, culture) because of the way we’ve experience our morality. That is, with the assumption that it comes from a god. It’s the way I experienced morality until I was 27 years old (I’m almost 31 now, by the way). And to be honest, I was afraid that I would take a swan dive into the bottomless pit of depravity when I started to realize that I no longer believed in a god. But that never happened. And I still experience moral rules in largely the same way. I have an intuitive sense that I ought not to do certain things, or that I ought to do certain things. I feel guilty when I don’t do the right thing. And I still *want* to do the right thing. I don’t just want to do the action (tell the truth, help feed the hungry), I want to follow the rule. I want to do the right thing even when I don’t want to do the thing that’s right (does that make sense?). And I’m friends with other atheist who experience the world in the same way. They are upstanding, and in some cases, model human beings. So, by my personal experience, and by my personal knowledge of other atheists who haven’t lost their moral integrity, I’ve come to the realization that morality is something that can be experienced and lived out without the assumption that you’re making: that the ‘ought’ must only come from a god, or there’s no *real* reason to obey it. I mean, let’s be honest—many, many, many believers flaunt moral rules all the time, even though they supposedly have a *real* reason to obey them. So what’s the *real* difference here? Isn’t the important thing that we live with each other and treat each other in a way that is fair and just and civil? The practical implications of our behavior is what should be important, not the belief about the existence or non-existence of a god.
Now, I think this still leaves the question of the social implications of religion and morality. In other words, it may be the case that my experience and the experience of the small number of friends of mine who are atheists are not good representations of the human population. It may be the case that the majority of human beings need to believe in a god to live what we would consider to be decent, meaningful lives. Human societies may actually need religions to live in peace, love, and understanding. This is why I think people like Sam Harris and Richard Dawkins are a little quick on the draw when it comes to determining whether or not religions do more harm than good. And, of course, this is an empirical question. I'm curious to know if you think this is also a red herring...
Matt, I understand if you don’t really have the time to address all of these issues. Thanks for adding to the discussion.
Actually, it may be more accurate/helpful for me to say that I do view and experience morality in a slightly different way compared to the theist. But, an atheist’s view and experience of morality can still be very similar to the theist’s view and experience. And it’s something that’s still worth wanting.
ReplyDeleteMatt says, “Our discourse suggests that moral properties are (at least) objective, knowable, normative, categorical, and authoritative.”
Let me deal with each of these from my perspective:
Objective—We want to say that morality is objective. I take this to mean that morality is supposed to exist as an 'object' out there in the world, and something that is distinguished from just the 'subjective' experience that I have in my own mind. (This is slightly different than the issue of moral relativism, which I think 'categorical' is supposed to cover.) Well, I think morality is accurately described as 'objective' in the sense that it is not possible, even in the naturalists view, for morality to be a solitary affair. It is not 'subjective' in the sense that it is entirely something that I experience that is unique to me. We seem to share the experience. And it's not something that I can just make up on my own. I can come up with a bunch of rules that I want and expect my friends and family to abide by, like bowing whenever I enter the room, but that doesn't make it a moral rule.
Knowable—We want to say that morality is knowable. This is easily explained by naturalism. See *Moral Minds* by Marc Hauser. Morality seems to be a lot like language. We have an intuitive sense of what's right and wrong. This seems to be built upon a universal moral grammar, that is a kind of skeleton upon which a more developed moral system of beliefs is built, based on the cultural milieu in which a person grows up. We know morality a bit like we know a language.
Normative—We want to say that moral rules are normative. I assume this is just to say that moral rules are rules and they have umph. To say that we 'ought' to tell the truth is different from saying that, because there are dark clouds outside, it 'ought' to rain. And saying we 'ought' to tell the truth is different from saying we 'ought' to chew our food with our mouth closed. The 'ought' of morality has a unique normative position. Joyce is a good one to read on this. I've already explained how natural selection could have produced this kind of normative rule phenomenon in a comment above.
[Continuation of comment above...]
ReplyDeleteCategorical—We want to say that moral rules are categorical. Well, I think some philosophers want to say that moral rules are categorical. This is one where I would have to say that we don't actually experience. Morality has been described as categorical by some since the 18th century, but it doesn't seem to have much to do with how we first make moral judgments. 'Categorical' is supposed to indicate the necessary nature of a moral imperative. It means that the rule is necessary, without regard to the situation. This is supposed to be in contrast to 'hypothetical' imperatives, which are contingent on the situation. So, there's something about 'tell the truth' and 'keep your promises' that is supposed to be categorical. We could make it a universal rule. And the hypothetical imperatives are the ones that deal with situations in their context. So, should I tell the truth to my wife about whether or not I used the last square of toilet paper without replacing the roll? Yes. I mean, what's the point in lying about that, we don't have any kids so I can't blame it on them... Should I tell the truth if I'm being interrogated by the enemy during a time of war? Should I tell the truth about the location of my valuables, or my family, while being held at gunpoint by a burglar? Should I tell the truth when I'm trying to keep a surprise birthday party a secret? No, no, and no. These are hypothetical situations that are supposed to be distinguished from the categorical imperative. Well, there's a significant amount of psychological research out there that indicates that we don't actually *do* morality (make moral judgements) with categorical imperatives in mind, but many *talk* about morality in terms of categorical imperatives after the fact (a spectre of Konigsberg hovering over the Western intellectual mind...). Again, see Hauser on this. We seem to always be affected by the 'hypothetical' nature of the moral situation. We can't really escape the context when making moral judgements. We seem to only do that when justifying our moral decisions, when doing philosophy.
Authoritative—We want to say that morality is authoritative. Where does the authoritative nature of morality come from if not from a god? Well, it seems likely (or at least possible) that morality originally developed in primitive cultures without it being connected to the authority of the gods (check out my second comment in "God Evolves"). Morality would have derived its authority from the community. The rules (tell the truth, return favors, don't club your siblings to death) would have been observed and enforced by the close-nit group that homo sapiens lived in during our pre-historical cultural development. We've transferred the authority to an invisible god, at some point, but this doesn't mean that morality goes away when the invisible god goes away. At least for me.
[Continuation of comment above...again...]
ReplyDeleteHowever, there is still the issue of when another culture actually does find something morally acceptable (for example, the purification of the Arian race by the Nazi's) and we want to say that they were wrong. They should never have done that. We want to say that it was 'objectively' and 'categorically' wrong to do that (in the way that Matt was using those terms). The only response I think I can give is to say that the morality that the majority of us in the West would like to prevail is not guaranteed. From where I stand, it's up to us, the majority (or at least, significant proportion) of human beings who want to live in a just world, to make sure that a just society, or just societies, will prevail. There's no guarantee that there will be a happy ending. We are the ones who must be vigilant, because there is no one else to do it for us.
(Silentio has pointed out to me that there are naturalists who are moral 'realists' and who deny moral relativism. Right now, I don't understand how that would work.)
So, am I still talking about 'morality' here? Have I described something close enough to what we think the word 'morality' refers to, or is it so far out there that the term no longer applies? Is this kind of morality worth wanting?