I’m working on another post with details about foundational moral instincts, but after some discussion on the ‘Morality arises from instincts‘ post, I realized that I failed to make a couple of things clear. So, I’m inserting this additional post to do that.
First, let me clarify that, in these posts, I’m being descriptive, not normative, not prescriptive. That is, I’m not discussing how I want things to be, but attempting to describe how things are. (At least according to mainstream evolutionary psychology.)
If I were to be prescriptive, it would be to recommend virtue ethics, that is, the philosophy of developing habits and qualities (virtues) that promote the good life, while avoiding or minimizing those habits and qualities (vices) that hinder it. I like virtue ethics because it takes into account human nature, and makes no bones about being geared for the betterment of the adherent.
However, as I’ve discussed with some of you, I’m not slavishly devoted to this view, and see some benefit to a pluralistic approach to normative ethics, checking an ethical proposition against all three of the big moral philosophies: consequentialism, deontology, and virtue ethics.
Now on to the main clarification. Let’s first consider two possible conclusions about moral values:
- Moral values are objective truths, similar to mathematical objects, that exist “out there”, independent of human thought, culture, or biology. With proper reasoning, introspection, or revelation, we can discover these objective truths.
- Moral values are arbitrary human inventions. As creations of human minds, they are culturally relative. Our deepest intuitions about what is right or wrong are simply indoctrination that we receive in our earliest years of development.
I actually don’t accept either one of these views.
The first doesn’t seem compatible with a review of all of the different human cultures that we know of, either today or throughout history. If objective moral truths do exist, we appear to have no mechanism to determine them, at least not in any manner that is compelling enough to generate a consensus.
The second, cultural relativism, in a descriptive sense, is a staple of anthropology. But it is a very uncomfortable conclusion for many people. And I think the very fact that it is so uncomfortable needs to be a factor in our evaluation of it. Why does it feel so uncomfortable? From where does our aversion to it come from?
The second conclusion has an implied assumption. An assumption that modern psychological research is discrediting. It’s the assumption that when we are born, our minds are blank slates, and that we are completely molded by our experiences. This might appear reasonable to anyone who has looked on a newborn, seeing how utterly helpless they are, unable to do much besides cry, suckle, and poop.
This utter helplessness is somewhat unusual in the animal kingdom. When we look at most animals, they are born able to move and navigate the world to some degree, in other words with some abilities and instinctual knowledge.
Human babies’ helplessness immediately after birth is thought to be related to the size of their heads. If human babies stayed in the womb to develop to the same degree that most mammals do before birth, their heads would be too large to fit through a women’s birth canal.
In other words, all human babies are born prematurely, at least compared to the rest of the animal kingdom. This makes the illusion of the blank slate seem plausible. But there’s no good reason to suppose that humans aren’t born with just as many instincts as most animals, although establishing what those instincts are can be scientifically difficult since cultural influences begin very early.
We are not born blank slates, but with powerful instincts, urges, desires, and motivations. These desires aren’t something we decide to have, either consciously or even subconsciously. We simply have them. We don’t decide to have them any more than we decide to be hungry or to feel pain.
These instincts, this basic evolved programming, is so central to our being that it is very difficult for us to imagine any intelligence that doesn’t possess it (which may complicate acceptance of AI sentience, but that’s another issue), or to fully grasp the fact that others may not have the exact same programming, the same balance between various urges and desires, that we do.
Morality arises from this basic programming. The vast majority of human beings have very similar programming, including prosocial programming since we’re a very social species. This prosocial programming heavily influences our moral inclinations. These inclinations aren’t voluntary. How we respond to them may be, but feeling them isn’t.
The programming in all of us is similar, but not identical. And these variances lead to the differences between what feels right or wrong among different people. But the majority of us are similar enough to enable the formation of societies.
This isn’t to say that there aren’t differences in values between human cultures, differences that can often be shocking. There is a reason why most anthropologists are cultural relativists. Hunter gatherer morals are different than farmer morals, which are different than urban morals. The morals of a desert community will be different than the morals of a tropical one.
Morals arise from deeply felt instincts, from evolved programming, from biology, and are adjusted for the environment. This answer, which is somewhat in between conclusion 1 and 2 above, is messy and complicated, but it reflects reality better.
Moral values aren’t absolute, but they aren’t arbitrary either.
Related articles
- Morality arises from instincts (selfawarepatterns.com)
- Moral Relativism (episyllogism.wordpress.com)
- Can Morality Mean Something Other Than Absolutist Morality? (richarddawkins.net)
SelfAwarePatterns 
Reblogged this on Episyllogism: philosophy and the arts.
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One of my favorite posts of yours as of yet; I appreciate you really making your case against the blank slate with appeal to physiological/psychological theories (staying true to a recent post of yours on the need for scientifically informed philosophical theories).
It still seems to me that the findings that confirm these instincts are consistent with objective values. (We should be careful with the term ‘absolute’ which implies that they are a value, as absolute, would always command us to act in a certain way – not all moral realists subscribe to a view like this, but rather think that varying moral values give us different amounts of reason for action such that no one value is absolute. It does seem that the utilitarian is committed to the absolute value of pleasure, though.) If we are born with “powerful instincts, urges, desires and motivations” then it doesn’t necessarily follow that morality arises from these, only that, given these innate pro-social instincts, it would be irrational to act immorally. In a previous comment I noted that these instincts might create the underlying motivations that explain our moral psychology. That still might be the case, but now I am starting to think that if these pro-instincts are so deeply engrained, as you have argued, then these instincts give us reason to act morally.
Perhaps the most important debate between Hume and Kant was Hume’s thought that we could only be motivated to act morally if we had certain desires, and Kant’s response that this was not so because it could be rational to act morally from beliefs alone. One way we’ve made philosophical progress from the arm chair is in realizing that Hume and Kant were talking about different things, Hume on motivation and Kant on rationality. The opposite of Hume’s claim that beliefs are not sufficiently motivating would be that beliefs are sufficiently motivating, but that was not Kant’s claim, rather his claim was that beliefs are intrinsically reason giving, and the opposite of that view would be that beliefs are not intrinsically reason giving, which is not what Hume maintained. What is miraculous about this is that it means a theorist can hold that both Hume and Kant were correct (Russ Shafer-Landau is a notable proponent of this view, and David Brink flirts with it, while, I myself, think there is much to commend in the idea). So, before I thought your view was mainly of the Humean tradition, but today’s post has lead me to think that your view might fit with the Kantian tradition as well.
But the most interesting part of your essay is your central postulation that moral disagreement disproves the existence of objective moral truths (I don’t see how disagreement about an answer to a question shows there is not an objective answer to that question, so I’m not convinced by that argument in the slightest as I think it is invalid), but cultural relativism strikes us as too arbitrary because morality arises from evolutionary instincts. But your view seems to be a version of cultural relativism. Different moral belief are true for different societies of persons, it is just that those beliefs are rooted in evolutionary instincts. I think your view is great in that it might lead to a solution to a problem that has long plagued cultural relativistic views: how do we delineate cultures and societies? That task has proven near impossible, but your view suggests the solution that we use lines of evolutionary progress to differentiate current societies; I think it’s a theory worth pursuing. So, cultural relativism doesn’t deny that there aren’t grounds for the current moralities of societies; it just denies that that the moral grounding is the same for all societies. I think your view is very close to this, so I still think your view is a version of cultural relativism.
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Reblogged this on ausomeawestin and commented:
One of my favorite posts of yours as of yet; I appreciate you really making your case against the blank slate with appeal to physiological/psychological theories (staying true to a recent post of yours on the need for scientifically informed philosophical theories).
It still seems to me that the findings that confirm these instincts are consistent with objective values. (We should be careful with the term ‘absolute’ which implies that they are a value, as absolute, would always command us to act in a certain way – not all moral realists subscribe to a view like this, but rather think that varying moral values give us different amounts of reason for action such that no one value is absolute. It does seem that the utilitarian is committed to the absolute value of pleasure, though.) If we are born with “powerful instincts, urges, desires and motivations” then it doesn’t necessarily follow that morality arises from these, only that, given these innate pro-social instincts, it would be irrational to act immorally. In a previous comment I noted that these instincts might create the underlying motivations that explain our moral psychology. That still might be the case, but now I am starting to think that if these pro-instincts are so deeply engrained, as you have argued, then these instincts give us reason to act morally.
Perhaps the most important debate between Hume and Kant was Hume’s thought that we could only be motivated to act morally if we had certain desires, and Kant’s response that this was not so because it could be rational to act morally from beliefs alone. One way we’ve made philosophical progress from the arm chair is in realizing that Hume and Kant were talking about different things, Hume on motivation and Kant on rationality. The opposite of Hume’s claim that beliefs are not sufficiently motivating would be that beliefs are sufficiently motivating, but that was not Kant’s claim, rather his claim was that beliefs are intrinsically reason giving, and the opposite of that view would be that beliefs are not intrinsically reason giving, which is not what Hume maintained. What is miraculous about this is that it means a theorist can hold that both Hume and Kant were correct (Russ Shafer-Landau is a notable proponent of this view, and David Brink flirts with it, while, I myself, think there is much to commend in the idea). So, before I thought your view was mainly of the Humean tradition, but today’s post has lead me to think that your view might fit with the Kantian tradition as well.
But the most interesting part of your essay is your central postulation that moral disagreement disproves the existence of objective moral truths (I don’t see how disagreement about an answer to a question shows there is not an objective answer to that question, so I’m not convinced by that argument in the slightest as I think it is invalid), but cultural relativism strikes us as too arbitrary because morality arises from evolutionary instincts. But your view seems to be a version of cultural relativism. Different moral belief are true for different societies of persons, it is just that those beliefs are rooted in evolutionary instincts. I think your view is great in that it might lead to a solution to a problem that has long plagued cultural relativistic views: how do we delineate cultures and societies? That task has proven near impossible, but your view suggests the solution that we use lines of evolutionary progress to differentiate current societies; I think it’s a theory worth pursuing. So, cultural relativism doesn’t deny that there aren’t grounds for the current moralities of societies; it just denies that that the moral grounding is the same for all societies. I think your view is very close to this, so I still think your view is a version of cultural relativism.
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Thanks. On Humes vesus Kant, the older I’ve gotten, the more I’m struck by how many arguments are really people arguing past each other with different definitions. Often the limitations of language are involved.
On objective values, you can say they exist, but it would be objective in relation to biology and environment. What is a moral act for a hunter gatherer in a desert environment (such as perhaps mercy killing an old parent no longer able to move) might not be a moral act in an agricultural sedentary environment.
On absolute morality, I think “disprove” is too strong a word. My point was that if it exists, we don’t seem to have any access to it. We don’t have any way to determine to what degree our beliefs and actions match or disagree with it. Given that, it doesn’t seem an especially productive concept to me.
On cultural relativism, I think the popular conception is that it means values are wholly determined by culture (hence the name). Perhaps a better description of my view would be biological-environment relativism. Although I’ll admit that for many practical discussions, there isn’t much of a distinction.
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Thanks for the insightful responses.
I see different moral lives for the hunter gatherer and the sedentary farmer as being compatible with the sort of Platonic realism you reject. There might be a plurality of fundamental moral duties due to their being non-natural properties that make actions worthy of pro-attitudes, such that varying non-natural/evaluative properties of actions make for moral reasons for action (based on those pro-attitudes) that are different for the hunter-gatherer and the farmer. In other words, we can explain different moral lifestyles as being caused by environmental factors that affect the non-natural properties of actions while there still be the same underlying pluralism of moral duties/reasons.
You raise a great criticism in your noting that it doesn’t seem that we have epistemic access to the moral realm. I myself have wondered if we could have real access to this moral realm, such that I have doubted whether we can ever have epistemological certainty on moral matters. Such considerations are what moved me towards non-natural moral realism, as it recognizes that the only certain knowledge of moral matters that we might hope for is a priori.
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Well clarified – here’s a little bit more concrete support from Damasio. Now 120+ pages into ‘Self Comes To Mind’, he concludes a section on the social emotions with:
“Most social emotions are of recent evolutionary vintage, and some may be exclusively human. This seems to be the case with admiration and with the variety of compassion that focuses on the mental and social pain of others rather than on physical pain. Many species, primates and the great apes in particular, exhibit forerunners of some social emotions. Compassion for physical predicaments, embarrassment, envy, and pride are good examples. Capuchin monkeys certainly appear to react to perceived injustices. Social emotions incorporate a number of moral principles and form a natural grounding for ethical systems.”
Chapter 5. Emotions and Feelings
Heading ‘Up and Down the Emotional Range’
‘Self comes to mind: constructing the conscious brain’, Damasio 2010
Click to access self-comes-to-mind_damasio.pdf
… and references ‘The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail: A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment’, Haidt 2001 in the next section under the heading ‘An Aside on Admiration and Compassion’.
Gazzaniga also references Haidt several times in ‘Chapter 5 – The Social Mind’ of ‘Who’s In Charge?’ 🙂
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Thanks. Wow, the whole book is just out there for free. Cool!
‘Who’s In Charge?’ reminder received 🙂
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I am a bit ethically conflicted about posting those kind of links, but the info is just too good to simply recommend the book and not share.
http://ahandfulofleaves.wordpress.com/_/
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As long as the author released it to the public, I think it’s fine.
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You’re left with a naturalist fallacy. ought- is, or appeal to nature. Happy to be of service. The sociopath might simply state, I have outgrown human morality. Of course, an auxiliary idea, nature sees zero problem with giving humanity a sociopath; we find it disagreeable; it becomes might makes right. Moral nihilism is a direct corollary of materialism.
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The naturalistic fallacy is definitely important to keep in mind. As I said toward the beginning of my post, I’m talking descriptively, about what is, not about what I think ought to be. Concluding moral nihilism, in the sense that we shouldn’t prefer certain actions over others, just because the universe doesn’t seem to care, is actually falling into the naturalistic fallacy. I see no reason why we should let the universe dictate our morals to us.
BTW, I addressed the is/ought distinction in a more recent post you might find interesting.
https://selfawarepatterns.com/2014/06/09/sam-harris-the-fact-value-distinction-and-the-problem-with-a-science-of-morality/
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The implication appeared to be that because humans have a predilection for certain types of behaviours that therefore those behaviours are more valid than they would be if we just arbitrarily decided upon them. Your reasoning for why you think we tend to certain behaviours, I think is a bit spurious, as I’m not sure the studies relate to morality, and the argument from cultural relativism seems to plainly falsify any such notion (think cannibals, child-sacrifice, eugenics, warrior-cultures). Morality seems more impacted by conditioning than how we come to see the world, which, by the way, similar studies show, we also naturally come to view the world as designed, and are more inclined to dualism. If you object to either of these beliefs, reduction to the absurd, this would also undo your justification.
But, even granting you this. Whatever you feel is immoral, or what behaviours you find agreeable, has to be concluded to be an illusion, and no more valid than what Joseph Stalin feels is agreeable, or a group of cannibals. You are free to find certain behaviours odious, like sociopaths are free to not. Moral nihilism doesn’t mean humans can’t have morals, or feelings towards behaviour, like humans can have preferences for certain colours; even amorality can be construed to be a type of morality. Moral nihilism recognizes that morals themselves are only existent in concious states, and as such variable; therefore not binding an invalid. If murder heightens an individual confidence and self-esteem, so for him that is correct.
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Your comment seems to assume that we are born blank slates and totally molded by our environment. I recommend reading Stephen Pinker’s ‘The Blank Slate’. For what science has to say about morality in particular, you might want to check out Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory, and in particular his book ‘The Righteous Mind’. It is grounded in empirical science. Both of these books document the science that shows that we are not born blank slates, and that morality is not purely relativist. (Although it is somewhat relativist. Reality is often messy.)
On moral nihilism, I perceive there to be two kinds. Descriptive nihilists, who are skeptical of any basis in nature for morality, and normative nihilists, who think there should be no morality. I actually don’t see myself as either. I don’t think there are any moral truths implied in the laws of physics, but there are in human biology, although actual morality is further constrained by societal norms.
So we have scopes of objectivity. In the scope of physics, no morality. In the scope of human biology, we do have foundational instincts that moral rules arise from. And in cultural contexts, we have specific moral rules. These rules are relativist within the broad constraints set by our biology.
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I partially agree with that point. However, this just gets us into nature vs. nurture; to what degree is behaviour nature or nurture. Though I stipulate your main contention, I’m still inclined to say nurture has much more to do with morality than nature; it’s impossible to deny this against the backdrop of human history.
Morals are either existent outside of concious states or not, if not they can be a useful tool, or an obstacle to overcome.
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When I was younger, I definitely thought nurture was the prime cause of our behavior. But the science behind nature has impressed me, notably the studies that tracked down identical twins separated at birth, and discovered how similar their adult personalities were. I now think nature vs nurture is a false dichotomy. It’s both.
It can be an unsettling conclusion, because it means that parenting, education, and socioeconomic class can make a difference, but can’t provide a guarantee. Our genetics matter, although it would be equally wrong to think genetics=destiny.
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Excellent post! I’m going to have to come back and read some of these again. Right now I’m here off a link from your current post. I do have one comment in reaction to:
I think there is some difference between animal instincts and “urges, desires, and motivations.” New-born horses are able to run within hours of being born. (Considering that wild horses are usually moving, this is pretty important!) Humans don’t approach these capabilities at all. Many infant animals do go through periods of helplessness, although usually not on par with humans.
All animals have urges — hunger or sex, for example — but instincts usually (to my mind) apply to coded behaviors — suckling or running, for example. When you consider language and our place in society, humans learn most of their behaviors. We’re born much like general computers with no (or very little) programming (maybe like a BIOS embedded), whereas animals are born with a lot of their system hardwired (or burned in ROM).
All that said, I agree very much about a kind of “shadow” programming — or maybe predispositions? — that humans have. Perhaps our minds, just in virtue of how they are, have natural tendencies towards morals. These give rise to that sense of ‘well, you just know.’ Certainly some of that is cultural and environmental, and it’s hard to separate nurture from nature, but some of it may be in some fashion innate.
Consider that any reasoning society would discover some form of mathematics. Plato’s realm of perfect forms might not be literally real, but the world of ideas certainly seems to have some kind of reality. Perhaps our apprehensions of morality, or even god, come from this realm of ideas?
(Oops, I meant to be brief!)
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Thanks Wyrd!
I do think we’re born with extensive programming. But we don’t perceive it because it’s so natural to us, so much a part of what we are. Indeed, the programming is so primal, that we can scarcely conceive of a mind without it, which is why people assume AI would have things like hate, fear, care about its own survival and wellbeing, etc.
On mathematics and platonism, that’s a particularly deep rabbit hole which I go into in other posts. For my take, this might be a good one: https://selfawarepatterns.com/2014/08/05/logic-has-empirical-foundations-sort-of/
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Perhaps our innate programming is similar to the hardware architecture of a computer — data buss size, CPU speed and caches, BIOS, general architecture and what not. What we acquire through learning is analogous to the software.
I’ve long wondered if “IQ” wasn’t very similar to CPU speed or data buss size. A higher IQ just allows faster (and perhaps more accurate?) processing of information.
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I think we have to be cautious with the analogies. But the brain itself strikes me as a massively parallel cluster of processors with the bus, processor, caches, bios, for each processor all jumbled together. I like BIOS or firmware as a analogy for our innate programming, although I think that innate programming is probably far more extensive than we might like to think. Our acquired knowledge and intuitions strikes me as a mix of stored data and self programming.
From what I’ve read, the whole software / hardware dualism is problematic with the brain, at least in its natural state. It does rewire itself constantly, which I suppose is a type of software, but there’s no data port or mechanism to load and unload data or software. (This might seem incompatible with my views on uploading, but I think an uploaded mind would have to emulate a lot of brain hardware.)
I’ve become progressively more skeptical of IQ over the years. The tests seem to me to be measuring education far more than innate intellect. Not that I don’t think some people are naturally smarter than others. And separating innate from acquired intellect is extremely difficult.
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“I think that innate programming is probably far more extensive than we might like to think.”
Depending on exactly what you see there, I’m not sure if we agree or not (but we may). When I think about all the learning that takes place in a lifetime, it seems to pale compared to anything innate. I certainly don’t disagree there is considerable hardwiring underlying it.
The hardware/software analogy is mainly to illustrate how hardware both limits and defines what the machine is capable of. At the same time, the vast array of software is far greater than the hardware.
Look at it this way: on some level, most humans are fairly similar. What is it that makes people unique? Isn’t it the life-time of experience and knowledge that causes such variety?
“[The brain] does rewire itself constantly, which I suppose is a type of software, but there’s no data port or mechanism to load and unload data or software.”
If you remember yesterday, it’s because your brain’s state changed. All your memories are encoded in “re-wiring” (mainly in strengthening of synapses, AIUI). What’s called “muscle memory” is also a re-wiring of the hardware associated with a particular physical action. Musicians and athletes practice endlessly to accomplish this re-programming.
We don’t seem to have RAM in the sense of memory that can store whatever is needed, be cleared, and re-used. Our brains seem more like the early hardwired computers. The “software” is, in both cases, actually (mutable) hardware.
“I’ve become progressively more skeptical of IQ over the years.”
Yeah, it’s been devalued over the years on multiple counts: Most tests have a contextual component that skews the results for those unfamiliar with the context. And we’ve realized that life requires a lot more than IQ, so a “high IQ” does not necessarily equate to a “high value” of that person. Plus there turns out to be different kinds of intelligence; some people are naturally good with kids, for example, but may not necessarily seem highly intelligent in the traditional sense.
I tend to equate ‘intelligence’ with ‘brightness’ and generally not at all with ‘education.’
So I’m not sure if I agree intellect can be acquired in any large degree. I suspect brain “processing power” is one of those innate characteristics similar to natural physical skills. But that’s just a sense I have.
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I think we broadly agree. One thing I’d amend to my comments is that it might be that innate programming, from a strictly information storage size perspective, may be far less than acquired programming, but that it has an outsized influence on our behavior. The innate code may sit at more primal layers.
I think our individual uniqueness comes from a mix of genetics and experiences. Identical twins raised separately have strikingly similar personalities. Although those separate twins are usually still raised in similar cultures. It’d be interesting if there was ever a case of separated twins being raised in radically different cultures.
On RAM, we do have “working memory”, which sounds broadly similar to RAM. Of course, like all of these analogies, it’s a rough one.
“The “software” is, in both cases, actually (mutable) hardware.”
I like that phrase, “mutable hardware”. It expresses a concept I’ve struggled to express before.
On intellect, it depends on exactly what we mean by the term. I do think someone’s effective intellect can be acquired, although it’s constrained or enhanced by their innate capacities. I also think someone who engages in head trauma sports or uses lots of mind altering drugs diminishes their original natural mental capacities over time.
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“I think we broadly agree.”
I agree! 😀
“…it might be that innate programming, from a strictly information storage size perspective, may be far less than acquired programming, but that it has an outsized influence on our behavior.”
Ooh! Very good way to put it. We are aligned then. My hardware/software analogy says the same thing. Much less “hardware” than “software” but the machine limits and defines what the software can do. But most machines can run a variety of software.
“Identical twins raised separately have strikingly similar personalities.”
Sometimes, but sometimes not (I knew a pair in high school, and they were quite similar). It’s really hard to separate nature from nurture. Even among children born at different times, but raised in basically the same context there can be large differences in personality, and these often come from each individual staking out territory unique to them. On the other hand, there are cases where one twin is gay and the other is straight (which we’re pretty sure is hardwired), so clearly there are both nature vs. nurture things going on there.
And, to your point, any parent will tell you that kids seem to come with a pre-packaged personality, especially with regard to boys vs. girls.
In fact, the more I think about it, the more examples of innate ability I find. Musical ability seems hard-wired (perfect pitch certainly seems to be). Math ability might be another.
“On RAM, we do have “working memory”,…”
That’s a good point. What the heck is going on there? Even in a RAM chip, something changes physical state. Any memory, of any kind, has to represent some kind of state change. Are short-term memories similar to RAM chips that need to be constantly refreshed, rather than SRAM chips which don’t and more resemble long-term memory?
“…head trauma sports or uses lots of mind altering drugs…”
Absolutely. Damage the hardware and the capability of the machine suffers.
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