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Evolution and Morality

I see morality as an artifact of the Pleistocene, hunter-gatherer culture which forged human psychology.
Orginally, "morality" consisted of those behaviors that promoted tribal survival -- solidarity, altruism, generosity, &c. Moral consideration was an in-group thing which didn't necessarily extend to neighbors or competitors -- which would become problematic when our "tribes" became larger than we could identify with.
 
Both our moral and immoral tendencies have ties to evolved aspects of human psychology.
Keep in mind that much morality (especially religious morality) has nothing to do with being kind to others, but rather with being obedient and acting in ways that benefit those who made up and enforce the moral code. If the human tendency to manipulate others to take their shit and get them to benefit ourselves has ties to evolved desires and traits, then so does this type of "morality".

Then there are the other aspects of morality tied more to cooperation and building trust, such as being honest and not stealing, etc.. Cooperative efforts clearly have benefits that increase reproductive success, so that type of "morality" also has evolutionary ties.

Finally, there is compulsion to help others out of feelings of empathy, which is basically negative emotions triggered by seeing others in distress. Clearly we have an innate motive to act to reduce our negative emotions, and helping such people out of distress is a way to do that? There is plenty of evidence that even very young toddlers (and non-human primates) experience empathy and that it is not socially learned. The advantages of such an innate tendency are various. It could be as simple as it evolved to increase parents quickness and earnestness of response to their own offspring in distress, and like so many traits, it is "sloppy" and spills over to instances and people where their is little evolutionary benefit.

Of course, our immoral tendencies also have ties to evolved traits. So, there is an internal tension. That is where learning and environment come in, which reinforces one tendency and inhibits the other via our evolved ability to form associations and thus learn from socially constructed rewards and punishments.
IOW, even our ability to override and evolved behavioral tendencie is itself dependent on evolved cognitive functioning.
 
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There are a number of different elements that form the basis for morality: compassion; obedience; empathy; honesty; charity; etc.

The problem with religion is that it puts 'obedience' first, and elevates it as the only real virtue - thereby destroying or marginalizing all the others. Political conservatism tends to do the same - obeying the law is everything, and breaking the law is indicative of an evil person.

The combination of black and white thinking, with the flawed idea that people are innately either 'good' or 'evil', coupled with an overwhelming reverence for obedience, leads to all of the horrific outcomes we see from religion and from tyranny - including today's political right, and historically from both extremes of the political spectrum.

It is this that leads conservatives to say (of shooting victims) 'Well he was no angel; he has two jaywalking fines from six years earlier', without even noticing that they are being both absurd and callous. In over-simplified authoritarian follower world, EVERY person fits neatly into 'good' or 'evil', and movement between the two categories is not possible - so any evidence of wrongdoing of even the most minor sort is damning, and puts that person on the other side of the divide - where any bad things that happen to them are essentially either their fault, or if not, are at the very least a deserved punishment for their evil behaviours. As far as such people are concerned, the ONLY thing needed is to justify tagging the victim as 'evil', at which point they no longer have to care whether what happened to them was or was not just, fair, or acceptable - and they are surprised when others do not immediately cease their demands for justice, when a history of minor offenses committed by the victim has been exposed. And, of course, as the very symbols of obedience and authority, uniformed law enforcers are beyond reproach in all circumstances.

Religion takes this absurdity to the extreme; Not only is reality divided neatly and (almost) eternally into 'good' and 'evil'; but the rules are designed to be arbitrary and easily transgressed, and to be impossible to completely conform to for even the most dedicated person. So 'we are all sinners' and we deserve whatever arbitrary punishments the authorities might impose. This technique is not unique to religion - Stalin used it very effectively in his nominally secular Soviet Union - but it originated with religion, and they remain the best at it. Stalin had the good fortune to be trained by the Orthodox Church as a youth, and grasped the potential of this technique to aid tyranny at a very early stage.

Religions and tyrants talk of obedience, compassion, empathy, honesty, and charity; but the last four are so dominated by the first as to be effectively reduced only to a tool by which the disobedient might be made to appear even more vile.

Humanists talk instead of compassion, empathy, honesty, charity and obedience. It is our duty to refuse to obey instructions, orders, laws, or commands that are counter to these other four moral imperatives (while it remains our duty to obey the law, where those laws are not clearly unjust or immoral). But that leaves the moral decisions to the individual - and most individuals are simply too lazy, or too busy, or too poorly informed to make those decisions. Much easier to just obey, and thereby delegate the decision to the authority. After all, nobody can be accused of doing the wrong thing, if they were only obeying orders, right?
 
SLD said:
Did evolution create our morals? Or should we accept what one wag said: "If morals were related to evolution, then it would be the height of morality to make a deposit in the local sperm bank every day."

Personally I found that quote (from Sam Harris) to be a sophomoric view of evolution and morality.

SLD
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Yes, evolution leads to morals. The first multicelled organisms arose about 600 million years ago. And evolved brains, and social animals.

Sponges and jelly fish et al do not have brains and therefor no sense of morals.

When we are assaulted, robbed, raped, murdered or otherwise mistreated, we react rather strongly. And we react when we have good things happen to us also. We do not have to consult old books of myths to know how to react when such things happen to us, members of our families, or friends.

There have been a lot of claims made about moral absolutes and basically here, evolution has supplied us with absolutes, these feelings we have in response to things that happen to us.

The problem is we have developed brains that can deal with abstract reasoning. We can thus create moral codes based on these objective facts. But we can also develop bad moral codes because we abstractly create things like racism, religious fanaticism, political fanaticism that allows us to create bad moral systems based on these things.

We learn to dislike people not because they harm us by things like assault, robbery or rape, but because they stubbornly cling to the wrong religion, or have darker skins, or other even more petty reasons.

Basically though, objective facts, that we have emotions cause by things that happen to us, because we have large brains that can have emotions, thanks to evolution, is why we have moral and ethical systems. It is our duty to make sure we do not create bad systems of morality based on bad abstract reasons.
 
Cheerful Charlie said:
Basically though, objective facts, that we have emotions cause by things that happen to us, because we have large brains that can have emotions, thanks to evolution, is why we have moral and ethical systems. It is our duty to make sure we do not create bad systems of morality based on bad abstract reasons.
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What constitutes a bad system of morality?
 
I think it's easy to take the underpinning of our cultures morality code for granted. In an evolutionary morality context Hitler's eugenics makes sense.
 
PyramidHead said:
Cheerful Charlie said:
Basically though, objective facts, that we have emotions cause by things that happen to us, because we have large brains that can have emotions, thanks to evolution, is why we have moral and ethical systems. It is our duty to make sure we do not create bad systems of morality based on bad abstract reasons.
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What constitutes a bad system of morality?
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There are no bad moral codes, just obsolete moral codes. The quoted post makes it seem as if some committee was in charge of writing the social contract we all live under. We don't actually have a say in our system of morality. We're born into it.

We do have a say in our personal choices. Some people may decide to not join the crowd waiting to stone an adulteress. If enough people decline to attend a stoning, it will be dropped from the moral code. The critical element of a stoning is not, who will cast the first stone, but who will cast stones seven, eight, and nine? If you can't get the crowd behind a good stoning, it's more like a senseless murder, than justice.

Amendments to moral codes come slowly, but we need to remember, every facet of a moral code is a response to a threat to the group. This is an important distinction. Moral codes are always for the group's protection and this means the individual will sometimes be sacrificed. When changes happen, it's because the original threat has ceased to be seen as a threat.
 
Bronzeage said:
PyramidHead said:
What constitutes a bad system of morality?
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There are no bad moral codes, just obsolete moral codes. The quoted post makes it seem as if some committee was in charge of writing the social contract we all live under. We don't actually have a say in our system of morality. We're born into it.

We do have a say in our personal choices. Some people may decide to not join the crowd waiting to stone an adulteress. If enough people decline to attend a stoning, it will be dropped from the moral code. The critical element of a stoning is not, who will cast the first stone, but who will cast stones seven, eight, and nine? If you can't get the crowd behind a good stoning, it's more like a senseless murder, than justice.

Amendments to moral codes come slowly, but we need to remember, every facet of a moral code is a response to a threat to the group. This is an important distinction. Moral codes are always for the group's protection and this means the individual will sometimes be sacrificed. When changes happen, it's because the original threat has ceased to be seen as a threat.
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How do you square this interpretation with moral systems that are not group-centric? Jains are unwilling to kill anything that moves, even insects. The "effective altruism" movement is centered around doing as much as one possibly can to help poor people who live very far away. Some philosophical positions are misanthropic, and regard voluntary human extinction as a moral outcome.
 
And sometimes bad moral systems are created as it were by committees. Hitler's Germany and Stalin's USSR come to mind. In the US we had segregation and Jim Crow. Sometimes this is done with the consent of the majorities of a population, and sometimes not.

The problems of having ability to think in abstract terms is that we can over ride common sense with nonsense, and historically have done so many times. Bad cultures, bad political systems, bad religions, racism and so on.
 
PyramidHead said:
Bronzeage said:
There are no bad moral codes, just obsolete moral codes. The quoted post makes it seem as if some committee was in charge of writing the social contract we all live under. We don't actually have a say in our system of morality. We're born into it.

We do have a say in our personal choices. Some people may decide to not join the crowd waiting to stone an adulteress. If enough people decline to attend a stoning, it will be dropped from the moral code. The critical element of a stoning is not, who will cast the first stone, but who will cast stones seven, eight, and nine? If you can't get the crowd behind a good stoning, it's more like a senseless murder, than justice.

Amendments to moral codes come slowly, but we need to remember, every facet of a moral code is a response to a threat to the group. This is an important distinction. Moral codes are always for the group's protection and this means the individual will sometimes be sacrificed. When changes happen, it's because the original threat has ceased to be seen as a threat.
Click to expand...

How do you square this interpretation with moral systems that are not group-centric? Jains are unwilling to kill anything that moves, even insects. The "effective altruism" movement is centered around doing as much as one possibly can to help poor people who live very far away. Some philosophical positions are misanthropic, and regard voluntary human extinction as a moral outcome.
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It can be easily squared and even triangulated. Moral codes are a response to environmental threats. Some people see a grave threat to their soul, or some conceived afterlife. This moves them to do things which seem strange to the rest of us earthbound creatures.

A moral code should not be confused with a philosophy. Two very different things.
 
PyramidHead said:
Bronzeage said:
There are no bad moral codes, just obsolete moral codes. The quoted post makes it seem as if some committee was in charge of writing the social contract we all live under. We don't actually have a say in our system of morality. We're born into it.

We do have a say in our personal choices. Some people may decide to not join the crowd waiting to stone an adulteress. If enough people decline to attend a stoning, it will be dropped from the moral code. The critical element of a stoning is not, who will cast the first stone, but who will cast stones seven, eight, and nine? If you can't get the crowd behind a good stoning, it's more like a senseless murder, than justice.

Amendments to moral codes come slowly, but we need to remember, every facet of a moral code is a response to a threat to the group. This is an important distinction. Moral codes are always for the group's protection and this means the individual will sometimes be sacrificed. When changes happen, it's because the original threat has ceased to be seen as a threat.
Click to expand...

How do you square this interpretation with moral systems that are not group-centric? Jains are unwilling to kill anything that moves, even insects. The "effective altruism" movement is centered around doing as much as one possibly can to help poor people who live very far away. Some philosophical positions are misanthropic, and regard voluntary human extinction as a moral outcome.
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You have to look at them as to how they exist within an environment of moral systems. Jains would probably cease to exist if left to themselves, or if everyone in their society became a Jain. They might simply be parasites, but there is probably a useful role (or niche) that they occupy that provides a net benefit to society. There is also the symbolic value that these groups or types of actions provide as a way of affirming more basic values. In other words, they are not actually misanthropic to the society or to themselves as evidenced by the fact that they continue to thrive.
 
PyramidHead said:
Bronzeage said:
There are no bad moral codes, just obsolete moral codes. The quoted post makes it seem as if some committee was in charge of writing the social contract we all live under. We don't actually have a say in our system of morality. We're born into it.

We do have a say in our personal choices. Some people may decide to not join the crowd waiting to stone an adulteress. If enough people decline to attend a stoning, it will be dropped from the moral code. The critical element of a stoning is not, who will cast the first stone, but who will cast stones seven, eight, and nine? If you can't get the crowd behind a good stoning, it's more like a senseless murder, than justice.

Amendments to moral codes come slowly, but we need to remember, every facet of a moral code is a response to a threat to the group. This is an important distinction. Moral codes are always for the group's protection and this means the individual will sometimes be sacrificed. When changes happen, it's because the original threat has ceased to be seen as a threat.
Click to expand...

How do you square this interpretation with moral systems that are not group-centric? Jains are
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A group who are...
unwilling to kill anything that moves, even insects. The "effective altruism" movement is
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A group who are...
centered around doing as much as one possibly can to help poor people who live very far away. Some philosophical positions are misanthropic, and regard voluntary human extinction as a moral outcome.
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So far, you haven't given an example of a moral system that is not group-centric - only of moral systems that (factually incorrectly) claim to be.
 
So just because they can be regarded as groups mean they are group-centric? That's a bit pedantic, bilby. I was giving examples of moral systems that are not primarily centered around preserving the integrity of whatever tribe or clan it identifies with, contrary to Bronzeage's assertion. Unless the in-group is simply all living things, Jainism seems like a moral code that doesn't function to protect an in-group from foreign threats. I'm not sure I buy the distinction between moral codes and moral philosophies either. Any conceptual system that requires one to consider the interests of others rather than just oneself is a type of morality. It need not have anything to do with social cohesion or reciprocity, even though most early (and many current) examples do have this focus.
 
PyramidHead said:
What constitutes a bad system of morality?
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The moral system can be abstract but the execution of that system in the real world is objective.

Human moral systems evolved randomly in response to the human reaction to the system in action.

The idea of King has changed in the minds of humans due to the actions of Kings.

Human systems change slowly however and humans haven't been at it that long. They only really began playing with the idea of democracy a few hundred years ago and are still in their infancy in how they implement the ideals of democracy.
 
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