Morality, ethics and atheism

[JimC]

Morality is an aspect of human culture. If it is not something handed down to our species by a deity, it must have some other origin.

That - human culture - is the origin of morality. Attempts to show that moral precepts have emanated from evolved nature are nonsensical. There are just too many - often contradictory ones - in location and time. They are social.

I am not claiming that any moral precepts per se emanate from evolved nature. Rather the claim is that our evolved nature as a social species with a relatively powerful intellect has not only necessitated the development of moral systems, but has also instilled certain tendencies in the species which serve as seeds for those moral systems. Contradictory moral precepts are irrelevant to this claim.

In the discussion from which the quote was taken, the theist cites chimpanzee behavior--referred to obliquely in the response to the theist. The theist was presenting this article as a basis for discussion (the article was originally published at least a few years before the date shown at the link). The article isn't particularly convincing for a number of reasons, but I would suggest the 'proto-morality' exhibited by chimpanzees is an indication that human morality (in all its variety) is a manifestation of our evolved nature--it goes deeper than culture.

[Brian Peacock]

Morality is an aspect of human culture. If it is not something handed down to our species by a deity, it must have some other origin.

That - human culture - is the origin of morality. Attempts to show that moral precepts have emanated from evolved nature are nonsensical. There are just too many - often contradictory ones - in location and time. They are social.

Again, missing my point entirely. I am not asserting that "moral precepts have emanated from evolved nature". Precept means a rule of some sort, and is another way of suggesting I am getting an "ought" from an "is".

What I have said is that our evolutionary history has left us with a series of tendencies (which are by no means "instincts"), largely emotional, deriving from millions of years of small group living. An aspect of those tendencies (amongst others) is the ability to cooperate, to empathise, to have fellow feeling with other humans. Simply, this provides an emotional starting point, built in as it were, to any system of morality which emphasises (as most do) for treating others well. It is not a precept, it is not a system of morality, but it can be made use of in any system developed. In my OP, I was contrasting this with certain strands of religious thinking, which would view the starting point of human compassion as requiring a touch of the divine, something that could not arise in the material world. It can, and it does...

Does a she-dog not love her puppies? Does she not do good by them? Why downgrade instinct in humans but embrace evolved moral tendancies, traits or capacities? Where does the boundary between instinct and evolved moral capacity reside?

[JimC]

To me, the term instinct has connotations of a relatively hard-wired behaviour, one that is inevitable and unlikely to be moderated by cultural factors. I prefer to use the word tendency, which I know is somewhat loose, but removes some of the extremely gene-centric conceptual frameworks posited by some early sociobiologists.

As an example, take the case of children reared in damaging environments, with little parental care and abuse of some kind from other adults. Such upbringing may make it very unlikely that a tendency to compassion, empathy and cooperation will emerge. Or, as an opposite example, perhaps children bought up with positive connections to a large and racially diverse community of adults will not develop as much (if any) of the tendency to be distrustful of out-groups...

And the term "evolved moral capacity" doesn't really fit what I'm trying to describe. Evolved behavioural tendencies (often emotional), sure, but they are not in themselves morals of any sort. But when a culture develops a system of morals, they can provide some sort of motivation via an emotional basis. Empathy with others is not a dry intellectual choice, it is an emotional state that can then be wrapped up in a conceptual framework. The emphasis is on the word "can" - I'm not saying that it automatically will, or that it ought to in some absolutist moral sense...

[macdoc]

Kids are resilient and survive parental abuse tho there are some criminal behaviors that are genetic and perhaps epigenetic as well which leads to "criminal families" ....the genetic component is there "tendency" perhaps as good a word as any but then triggered by abuse over generations.

FAS kids are a control factor against the general population and a very sad case demonstrating there is innate "moral behavior" IF not impaired by alcohol. ( not by the teen drinking but by their mom's )

•••

However ....there is innate moral or social behavior without verbal instruction,
https://greatergood.berkeley.edu/articl ... le_helpers

There are lots of examples evenof cross species moral behaviors. As with all things.....it's complicated.

Mores arise from the population, and laws trying to forbid what the current mores entail as acceptable behavior ( marijuana and gay behavior notably ) run into widepread resistance as prohibiton eras demonstrated with alcohol.

WIth the exception of psychopaths and to a lesser degree sociopaths I think humans are a relatively peacable species when left alone but are subject to social forces to violence and "strong man" ideology.

Young men in their teens are particularly suspectible to training to violence without the ethical brakes that young women demonstrate earlier in their development and men usually get to in their mid 20s.

I found the "trained killer" syndrome post WWII very interesting as there were some high profile cases where the training kicked in under normally innocuous circumstances and a civilian died.
Some of the cases resulted in acquittal.

I think there IS a heritable moral element to humans modified by the mores of the day ....even adherence to the mores or resistance to them may be heritable.

Epigenetic aspects of that are still not fully understood and is a "here be dragons" area of study.

[L'Emmerdeur]

... If our moral intuitions are good in the sense of being instrumentally useful rather than morally good, it's not clear that they have any utility in picking out moral truths. If our intuition is geared toward benefitting our flourishing, it's not necessarily geared toward being good for identifying objectively true moral statements. It's not even clear that there are moral truths on such a view, and seems to suggest an error theory, that our moral intuitions seem to apprehend the truth or falsity of moral statements when in fact moral statements have no truth value at all; they are simply errors. In that sense, it seems that your explanation of morals leaves the behaviors picked out by our moral intuition, such as altruism, as undifferentiated from the behaviors which our moral intuition does not, such as eating or sleeping, from a moral standpoint. Not murdering has no more moral significance on that view than not eating bitter fruit, or any other non-moral act. Whereas on the theist view, certain behaviors have moral significance, under your view (and jim's), they are undifferentiated from behaviors which do not. (Though it is possible that our moral intuition is good for our flourishing because it picks out moral truths, this is no longer clearly true and isn't necessitated by anything.)

This appears to assume the existence of 'objectively true moral statements.' I do not think that assumption can be justified, but if you want to take a run at it, feel free. To me, the furthest it seems reasonable to go in that direction is 'moral statements that are accepted by most human societies.' People give meaning and significance to moral statements; I am unaware of evidence showing they are anything but a human construct, as opposed to something found in an external, objective source. It is possible to try to shoehorn an objective standard into it as Harris does, but I think that endeavor is futile.

As I pointed out before, human moral systems appear to be necessitated by our nature as a relatively intelligent social species: Purely instinctual behavior has to a large extent been supplanted in our species by behavior motivated by thoughts and emotions. Bees and ants have no use for moral systems because their instinctual behavior facilitates their existence as social species. Lacking such powerful guardrails on behavior, our species relies on systems of morality. The inherently subjective nature of these moral systems does not detract from their value and usefulness, in my opinion.

[JimC]

I agree with the points in your post above, L'emmy. I would like to make the point that, when humans and the societies they live construct moral systems, they can become somewhat perverted in a number of ways. Clearly one of those ways is to skew teachings about morals in favour of the current power system. Another, which can be linked to that, is to base moral systems on religion. In some ways, that was the basis for my OP, to confront a very common assertion by religions that moral systems are impossible without religion, or without a god...

[Hermit]

...I would suggest the 'proto-morality' exhibited by chimpanzees is an indication that human morality (in all its variety) is a manifestation of our evolved nature--it goes deeper than culture.

We can observe behaviours in other animals and recognise the same in us, but moral precepts and ethics are exclusive to homo sapiens. The love, care, and protection animals extend to their offspring as well as the solidarity and cooperation among pack animals are not even manifestations of proto-morality. We are injecting that meaning into our observations of them. It's instinct. Morality does not go deeper than culture.

Don't expect me to defend what I have just written. I have not the foggiest idea how my proposition can be tested. It's fucking metaphysics. I hate metaphysics.

[Brian Peacock]

It's even worse than that - metaphysics leaning into ontology!

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

[Hermit]

It's even worse than that - metaphysics leaning into ontology!

Ontology in turn is the handmaiden of theology.

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

We, and I include atheists and materialists, are nowhere near as rational as we imagine.

[JimC]

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

I was not looking to provide an explanation for morality, at least in terms of an explanation of established moral systems. What I was doing is simply saying that human evolution has left us with an underlying framework, mostly emotional in nature, in terms of how we relate to other humans. This is by no means a complete system of morality, which is indeed a cultural artefact, with lots of layers of philosophy. But I still assert that systems of morality can usefully lean on the positive emotions that our small group evolutionary heritage has left us, while being careful of the potential for the negative.

And I certainly agree with demonstrating that we can show that good outcomes can accrue without recourse to religion. The presence of the potential for emotions such as compassion, firmly material in basis, is just another string in the bow of our assertion that morality can be independent from the "divine touch"...

[Brian Peacock]

It's even worse than that - metaphysics leaning into ontology!

Ontology in turn is the handmaiden of theology.

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

We, and I include atheists and materialists, are nowhere near as rational as we imagine.

You're probably right, but at least we don't outsource our moral thinking to infallible holy books and those inspired individuals who insist on what they mean on behalf of a magically interested superbeing who lives beyond bounds of reality.

[Brian Peacock]

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

I was not looking to provide an explanation for morality, at least in terms of an explanation of established moral systems. What I was doing is simply saying that human evolution has left us with an underlying framework, mostly emotional in nature, in terms of how we relate to other humans. This is by no means a complete system of morality, which is indeed a cultural artefact, with lots of layers of philosophy. But I still assert that systems of morality can usefully lean on the positive emotions that our small group evolutionary heritage has left us, while being careful of the potential for the negative.

And I certainly agree with demonstrating that we can show that good outcomes can accrue without recourse to religion. The presence of the potential for emotions such as compassion, firmly material in basis, is just another string in the bow of our assertion that morality can be independent from the "divine touch"...

I'm not challenging your views directly Jim. I accept you're not focusing on providing an explanation of morality, but you are seeking to justify a secular moral outlook by invoking naturalistic causes. There's a lot of cross-fertilisation there.

Personally I think we need to have a bit of a chat about free will and how it might tie in with all this.

[L'Emmerdeur]

...I would suggest the 'proto-morality' exhibited by chimpanzees is an indication that human morality (in all its variety) is a manifestation of our evolved nature--it goes deeper than culture.

We can observe behaviours in other animals and recognise the same in us, but moral precepts and ethics are exclusive to homo sapiens. The love, care, and protection animals extend to their offspring as well as the solidarity and cooperation among pack animals are not even manifestations of proto-morality. We are injecting that meaning into our observations of them. It's instinct. Morality does not go deeper than culture.

Don't expect me to defend what I have just written. I have not the foggiest idea how my proposition can be tested. It's fucking metaphysics. I hate metaphysics.

So if morality does not go deeper than culture, are chimpanzees manifesting instinct or culture? When do you suppose this cultural element first arose in our species?

[Hermit]

It's even worse than that - metaphysics leaning into ontology!

Ontology in turn is the handmaiden of theology.

This why I think natural explanations for morality have little force when challenging the claim that we can't have a good without a god. All we really have to do is to point to a good that isn't dependent on religious affiliation or belief. The true believer is still probably going to claim that the good atheist is unwittingly conforming to divine inspiration or instruction, or is a beneficiary of a Judeo-Christian Culture or sets of ethics etc anyway.

We, and I include atheists and materialists, are nowhere near as rational as we imagine.

You're probably right, but at least we don't outsource our moral thinking to infallible holy books and those inspired individuals who insist on what they mean on behalf of a magically interested superbeing who lives beyond bounds of reality.

That's one opportunity for getting shit wrong we manage to avoid. I looks like an important one, but what percentage of the time you spend discussing problems are about the god thingy or any other supernatural entity? In my case it is tiny.

There are thousands of other issues which trap me into confirmation bias, compartmentalisation, evasion, denial and any other mental failures. The number of times I catch myself out is alarming. Worse, I don't know how many logical fallacies and sundry mistakes I commit without noticing. My guess is quite lot, judging by how frequently I notice them in others and I am certain that they are unaware of them themselves.

[JimC]

I'm not challenging your views directly Jim. I accept you're not focusing on providing an explanation of morality, but you are seeking to justify a secular moral outlook by invoking naturalistic causes. There's a lot of cross-fertilisation there.

Personally I think we need to have a bit of a chat about free will and how it might tie in with all this.

I suppose I am giving one type of justification for a secular morality (knowing there are others), but I don't think I'm really invoking a naturalistic cause. Depending on how we define cause, I could not assert that aspects of our evolved nature cause morality to develop, only that they provide an emotional basis for how humans can relate to each other in a positive way. Culturally determined morality systems can (but don't have to) make use of this emotional starting point.

Really, I was trying to demolish a particular religious argument, one often coming from religious moderates (the assertions of fundamentalists are dismissed with much greater ease). I have both read such theological arguments, and heard them directly in my relatively affable discussions with moderate religious people.

Basically, their argument goes like this - if there is no god, and/or if we were not both created by god and imbued with a soul in the process, we would be soulless automatons, able to think but with zero chance of developing values which involve compassion to others, since that can only come from the divine part of our nature, whether we choose to use it or not. They would then probably say that systems of morality are developed by human beings, perhaps not caused by the divine spark, but only those systems of morality which recognise and lean on this divine heritage are worthwhile.

I am simply countering that by asserting that compassion and empathy can and are present (if only in potential) in humans via material causes, available to us as we develop moral systems in any given culture.

I'm not sure how the knotty question of free will is involved. If it is, then we need to complete the philosophical set by including the reality (or not) of consciousness...