Underseer
Contributor
So... I tried starting a conversation about the Euthyphro dilemma, and as often happens when I get into a discussion about ethics, it got sidetracked because I'm apparently one of the few that believe that ideology and higher order thought plays a relatively small role in most of our moral decisions.
I am not very well-versed in neuroscience, animal behavior, etc., so hopefully someone here is more versed in the recent research in these fields and can offer opinions of greater value.
Dawkins and the Trolley Problem
In Dawkins' book The God Delusion, he challenges the moral claims of theists by talking about how much of our morality is simply the product of instinct. This is really the first time I even thought about the role of instinct in moral choices, and this is probably where I started forming my opinion.
Obviously, Dawkins tends to favor instinct as a source of our moral choices because that is a big part of his main contribution to biology: getting people to think about evolution from the point of view of genes rather than individual organisms. In other words, to think about how evolution acts on populations rather than individuals.
This solved the problem of where the behavior of social species came from. If you think about it in terms of individuals and the genes of individuals, becoming a social species doesn't make much sense. One way or another, most or all of the species in a group must do work and take on risks that offer no direct benefit to the individual, but either benefit another individual in the group, or benefits the group as a whole. If you look at it from the point of the individual, it is hard to see how evolution could possibly produce this behavior. However, in most social species, the social group is closely related, so an individual working towards helping other individuals in the group or the group itself is helping individuals with very similar genes. In other words, individuals are free to be selfless because it is the genes that are being selfish, not the individual organism.
Dawkins bolstered his argument about behavior conducive to the group's survival coming from instinct even in humans by referencing a study on the Trolley Problem:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/famous-trolley-problem-exposes-moral-instincts/
Sorry, but I have no idea if this article references the same study Dawkins referenced in The God Delusion. The study Dawkins referenced was performed by a scientist who later lost his career because he got caught engaging in fraud. From what I've managed to read on the matter, the fraud charges did not extend to the specific study Dawkins cited in his book.
The study Dawkins cited had "translated" the Trolley Problem into something that made sense to people from very different cultures. For instance, someone from a primitive stone-age tribe is not going to have a very good understanding of what a trolley is, so when you explain the Trolley Problem to him, your results could be skewed by the individual's attempt to understand a trolley as a purely abstract and unfamiliar concept. So for a primitive bushman from Africa, the story might involve a charging rhino instead of a trolley to get a response more in line with the individual's instincts.
The result showed not only similar responses, but the same percentages of people answered one way as opposed to another way.
Dawkins argued that this shows that for these specific ethical questions at least, the decision had to be a matter of instinct more than ideology because presumably an African bushman would have a wildly different ideology from some yuppie from a big city in a developed nation.
Making Decisions without Realizing It
I don't remember if I encountered this in The God Delusion among Dawkins' arguments for instincts as the source of our morality, or if I just stumbled upon it elsewhere and connected it to Dawkins' arguments myself.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html
Long story short: researchers were able to anticipate what decision a person would make up to ten seconds before the person was even aware they had made a decision at all. To me, this suggests that at least some component of our decision-making is the result of a process other than carefully-considered conscious thought in the prefrontal cortex, and the most likely culprit would be instinct. If instinct has a strong influence on our decisions in general, then it must also have a strong influence on our moral decisions.
Caveat: I have no idea what percentage of decisions nor what percentage of test subjects fell into this category.
Animal Behavior Science and Ethics
A variety of ethical behaviors that we once regarded as the exclusive product of our big human brains turn out to be things that are observed among other social species. A notable example of this would be the concept of fairness:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...s-instinct-science-human-nature-and-sociality
Other social species such as dogs and apes will keep track of which individuals contribute more to the group than others and which contribute less to the group than others. These individuals will thus receive more or less help, thus showing that other animals have a concept of fairness and enforce it in the group. Since animals lack the means to communicate abstract ideas like ideology, this cannot be the result of ideology as we understand the concept. The most obvious explanation is that these other social species must possess a concept of fairness purely as a result of instinct. If dogs and apes can have an instinct for things like fairness, then why not humans as well? Why would we exhibit the same behaviors but derive it from a completely different source as other social mammals?
Obviously, there is more that animal behavior science can tell us about human morality and instinct vs ideology. If you're interested in the topic, there's more stuff here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=frans+de+waal
Evolutionary Biology and Evolutionary Psychology
I have to presume that each of these fields have something to say on this matter, but, uh, I have no idea what that would be. Hopefully, someone reading this can contribute. The question of how social species could possibly evolve the complex behaviors we see has been vexing biologists for a long time, and wasn't really solved until relatively recently when Dawkins introduced the idea of a gene-centric view of evolution. Presumably, research has been done in each of these fields that attempts to solve this particular riddle, and thus both fields probably have something relevant to say on this topic. Damned if I know what that would be, though.
Wild Unsubstantiated Speculation
Being a social species or a solitary species are each viable survival strategies. Individuals in a solitary species don't have to waste any time or effort benefiting others and can worry about helping themselves. Social species can pool their resources in surprising ways that can greatly enhance the chances of passing on your own genes, or at least genes that are very similar, but in exchange for this, individuals must work for the benefit of others, not just themselves.
In order for being a social species to work as a survival strategy, each species (or perhaps even each social group) will have to have some kind of standard of behavior. The actual standard will necessarily change from species to species because they live in different ecological niches under different circumstances. What enhances the survival of bees might not be helpful to a tribe of humans. Since animals other than humans lack the ability to communicate ideology to each other, then in every social species other than humans, these standards of behavior must be the result of instinct for the most part (although more intelligent social animals clearly have a "culture" that is taught to younger generations, and one could certainly argue that this can be compared to human ideology however vaguely).
I would argue that this instinctive standard of behavior forms the core of human ethics, or at least the ethics that are common to most cultures. Because we ourselves are human, when we look at other social groups we naturally focus on the ethical decisions that are different and may not fully appreciate just how much of our ethics are similar. While our sentience and culture clearly provide us with the means of violating our own instincts to a far greater extent than other species, it doesn't make sense to me that such instincts would exist in every single social species on this planet except for humans. Surely we must also have strong instincts in this area.
Think for a moment about sexual suicide in some species of animal:
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0701.htm
For some species, the male either dies as a result of mating, is killed by the female or other members of the social group after mating, or is killed and eaten by the female or other members of the social group after mating.
Most humans probably have the same reaction to this stuff that I do: a deep revulsion that certainly feels a lot like instincts exerting themselves on my thoughts. For me, this is particularly repulsive in species like ants or bees because like humans, their offspring require an awful lot of work to raise, feed, protect, and nurture. Of course, it doesn't matter to a bee if the male dies as a result of mating or is killed after mating because a fertile female has an army of infertile females to raise her young for her. The male is simply not needed after mating takes place.
This behavior is repulsive to us because fertile human females don't have an army of infertile females to raise her young for her, but her offspring still requires a lot of work to raise. Other apes arrange their societies in the same harem-thing that most mammals follow, so fertile chimp females can distribute child-rearing tasks to the other females in the social group, but human females (at least those not in polygamous marriages) don't have that option either. The most obvious source of help for a human female is the male she mated with, which explains why sexual suicide revolts us so. Such behavior may not affect the survivability of praying mantises or bees, but it sure as heck would have a very large negative effect on the survivability of human offspring. Thus, our instincts fill us revulsion just from contemplating the idea.
This not only points towards instinct as a source of ethics, but provides a useful definition for morality: whatever improves the survival chances of the maximum number of offspring for the species (which generally translates to maximizing the well-being of as many humans as possible, which is Sam Harris' working definition). It's a crude definition perhaps, but probably the definition that has guided our behavior since before we were able to talk about such things with each other.
Anyway, what do you think?
I am not very well-versed in neuroscience, animal behavior, etc., so hopefully someone here is more versed in the recent research in these fields and can offer opinions of greater value.
Dawkins and the Trolley Problem
In Dawkins' book The God Delusion, he challenges the moral claims of theists by talking about how much of our morality is simply the product of instinct. This is really the first time I even thought about the role of instinct in moral choices, and this is probably where I started forming my opinion.
Obviously, Dawkins tends to favor instinct as a source of our moral choices because that is a big part of his main contribution to biology: getting people to think about evolution from the point of view of genes rather than individual organisms. In other words, to think about how evolution acts on populations rather than individuals.
This solved the problem of where the behavior of social species came from. If you think about it in terms of individuals and the genes of individuals, becoming a social species doesn't make much sense. One way or another, most or all of the species in a group must do work and take on risks that offer no direct benefit to the individual, but either benefit another individual in the group, or benefits the group as a whole. If you look at it from the point of the individual, it is hard to see how evolution could possibly produce this behavior. However, in most social species, the social group is closely related, so an individual working towards helping other individuals in the group or the group itself is helping individuals with very similar genes. In other words, individuals are free to be selfless because it is the genes that are being selfish, not the individual organism.
Dawkins bolstered his argument about behavior conducive to the group's survival coming from instinct even in humans by referencing a study on the Trolley Problem:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/famous-trolley-problem-exposes-moral-instincts/
Sorry, but I have no idea if this article references the same study Dawkins referenced in The God Delusion. The study Dawkins referenced was performed by a scientist who later lost his career because he got caught engaging in fraud. From what I've managed to read on the matter, the fraud charges did not extend to the specific study Dawkins cited in his book.
The study Dawkins cited had "translated" the Trolley Problem into something that made sense to people from very different cultures. For instance, someone from a primitive stone-age tribe is not going to have a very good understanding of what a trolley is, so when you explain the Trolley Problem to him, your results could be skewed by the individual's attempt to understand a trolley as a purely abstract and unfamiliar concept. So for a primitive bushman from Africa, the story might involve a charging rhino instead of a trolley to get a response more in line with the individual's instincts.
The result showed not only similar responses, but the same percentages of people answered one way as opposed to another way.
Dawkins argued that this shows that for these specific ethical questions at least, the decision had to be a matter of instinct more than ideology because presumably an African bushman would have a wildly different ideology from some yuppie from a big city in a developed nation.
Making Decisions without Realizing It
I don't remember if I encountered this in The God Delusion among Dawkins' arguments for instincts as the source of our morality, or if I just stumbled upon it elsewhere and connected it to Dawkins' arguments myself.
http://www.nature.com/news/2008/080411/full/news.2008.751.html
Long story short: researchers were able to anticipate what decision a person would make up to ten seconds before the person was even aware they had made a decision at all. To me, this suggests that at least some component of our decision-making is the result of a process other than carefully-considered conscious thought in the prefrontal cortex, and the most likely culprit would be instinct. If instinct has a strong influence on our decisions in general, then it must also have a strong influence on our moral decisions.
Caveat: I have no idea what percentage of decisions nor what percentage of test subjects fell into this category.
Animal Behavior Science and Ethics
A variety of ethical behaviors that we once regarded as the exclusive product of our big human brains turn out to be things that are observed among other social species. A notable example of this would be the concept of fairness:
http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog...s-instinct-science-human-nature-and-sociality
Other social species such as dogs and apes will keep track of which individuals contribute more to the group than others and which contribute less to the group than others. These individuals will thus receive more or less help, thus showing that other animals have a concept of fairness and enforce it in the group. Since animals lack the means to communicate abstract ideas like ideology, this cannot be the result of ideology as we understand the concept. The most obvious explanation is that these other social species must possess a concept of fairness purely as a result of instinct. If dogs and apes can have an instinct for things like fairness, then why not humans as well? Why would we exhibit the same behaviors but derive it from a completely different source as other social mammals?
Obviously, there is more that animal behavior science can tell us about human morality and instinct vs ideology. If you're interested in the topic, there's more stuff here:
https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=frans+de+waal
Evolutionary Biology and Evolutionary Psychology
I have to presume that each of these fields have something to say on this matter, but, uh, I have no idea what that would be. Hopefully, someone reading this can contribute. The question of how social species could possibly evolve the complex behaviors we see has been vexing biologists for a long time, and wasn't really solved until relatively recently when Dawkins introduced the idea of a gene-centric view of evolution. Presumably, research has been done in each of these fields that attempts to solve this particular riddle, and thus both fields probably have something relevant to say on this topic. Damned if I know what that would be, though.
Wild Unsubstantiated Speculation
Being a social species or a solitary species are each viable survival strategies. Individuals in a solitary species don't have to waste any time or effort benefiting others and can worry about helping themselves. Social species can pool their resources in surprising ways that can greatly enhance the chances of passing on your own genes, or at least genes that are very similar, but in exchange for this, individuals must work for the benefit of others, not just themselves.
In order for being a social species to work as a survival strategy, each species (or perhaps even each social group) will have to have some kind of standard of behavior. The actual standard will necessarily change from species to species because they live in different ecological niches under different circumstances. What enhances the survival of bees might not be helpful to a tribe of humans. Since animals other than humans lack the ability to communicate ideology to each other, then in every social species other than humans, these standards of behavior must be the result of instinct for the most part (although more intelligent social animals clearly have a "culture" that is taught to younger generations, and one could certainly argue that this can be compared to human ideology however vaguely).
I would argue that this instinctive standard of behavior forms the core of human ethics, or at least the ethics that are common to most cultures. Because we ourselves are human, when we look at other social groups we naturally focus on the ethical decisions that are different and may not fully appreciate just how much of our ethics are similar. While our sentience and culture clearly provide us with the means of violating our own instincts to a far greater extent than other species, it doesn't make sense to me that such instincts would exist in every single social species on this planet except for humans. Surely we must also have strong instincts in this area.
Think for a moment about sexual suicide in some species of animal:
http://waynesword.palomar.edu/ww0701.htm
For some species, the male either dies as a result of mating, is killed by the female or other members of the social group after mating, or is killed and eaten by the female or other members of the social group after mating.
Most humans probably have the same reaction to this stuff that I do: a deep revulsion that certainly feels a lot like instincts exerting themselves on my thoughts. For me, this is particularly repulsive in species like ants or bees because like humans, their offspring require an awful lot of work to raise, feed, protect, and nurture. Of course, it doesn't matter to a bee if the male dies as a result of mating or is killed after mating because a fertile female has an army of infertile females to raise her young for her. The male is simply not needed after mating takes place.
This behavior is repulsive to us because fertile human females don't have an army of infertile females to raise her young for her, but her offspring still requires a lot of work to raise. Other apes arrange their societies in the same harem-thing that most mammals follow, so fertile chimp females can distribute child-rearing tasks to the other females in the social group, but human females (at least those not in polygamous marriages) don't have that option either. The most obvious source of help for a human female is the male she mated with, which explains why sexual suicide revolts us so. Such behavior may not affect the survivability of praying mantises or bees, but it sure as heck would have a very large negative effect on the survivability of human offspring. Thus, our instincts fill us revulsion just from contemplating the idea.
This not only points towards instinct as a source of ethics, but provides a useful definition for morality: whatever improves the survival chances of the maximum number of offspring for the species (which generally translates to maximizing the well-being of as many humans as possible, which is Sam Harris' working definition). It's a crude definition perhaps, but probably the definition that has guided our behavior since before we were able to talk about such things with each other.
Anyway, what do you think?