In my last blog, sparked by the essentially non-directedness of the Darwinian evolutionary process, I raised what seems to me to be a major problem for those who would reconcile Christian belief with modern science. I want to follow this in a similar vein, turning now to morality, a topic discussed in an interesting piece in Friday's New York Times by the conservative but almost-always-worth-reading columnist David Brooks on the foundations of morality. He is reporting on a recent conference on the topic, where a group of "moral naturalists" argued their case. This is about the claim that morality can be given an entirely natural explanation, no need to get God involved to dictate or support our ethical imperatives. I found it extremely interesting because -- okay, I'm talking about myself again -- the topic is one that has been of major concern and interest to me from the day that I started out as a philosopher, 50 years ago.
As part of our indoctrination into the profession, we junior philosophers were taught that there are some things that the regular world thinks are true (or false) but that we know better. At the head of the list was the most common form of moral naturalism, so-called "evolutionary ethics." This is where you argue that "descent with modification," as Charles Darwin called it, is the key to morality, the most common form being that monster from the past, Social Darwinism. We little philosophical midshipmen learned to regard all such theorizing with a sneer, regarding the whole approach rather like making a bad smell at a vicarage tea party. The great G.E. Moore, in his Principia Ethica, demonstrated that all attempts to relate ethics to evolution falter on the "naturalistic fallacy": evolution concerns "is" statements, claims about matters of fact, while morality concerns "ought" statements.
How things have changed! The greatest credit must go to the Harvard evolutionist Edward O. Wilson, who in his Sociobiology: The New Synthesis (1975) simply ignored the philosophers and declared that the time had come to "biologicize" the subject. Of course, evolution had to be relevant to the all-important topic of what we do and why we think we ought to do what we do -- or why we think we ought not to do what we do. Although the response of the philosophical community in general was one of deafening silence tinged with contempt, as a deeply committed evolutionist I don't think I was alone in my reaction. As they say about any good idea, first you ignore it, then you deny it, and then you say you have known it all along. I and a few others, including the ethicist Peter Singer, went rapidly from ignoring to denial to acceptance -- given the attitudes of our colleagues, a bit like facing death in more ways than one.
We did not all go in the same way. Wilson, like previous evolutionary ethicists -- notably the nineteenth century Herbert Spencer and the twentieth century Julian Huxley (older brother of the novelist Aldous Huxley) -- wanted to justify moral claims on the basis of evolution. All of these people think that the evolutionary process is progressive: it goes from the simple to the complex, from the monad to the man as they used to say (or perhaps today from the worm to the woman), and in its course value increases. Obviously, humans are of more worth than bacteria or, to take things higher up the scale, trilobites or dinosaurs. Hence, morality can be based on evolution and what we ought to do is to promote evolution. (The interpretations of how we should do this are as varied as the Christian interpretations of the Love Commandment. Spencer, an old-fashioned Victorian liberal, wanted to promote laissez-faire. Wilson, a new-fashioned Al Gore liberal, wants to save the rain forests.)
The trouble, as I explained in my previous blog, is that there is very good reason to think that, appearances to the contrary, Darwinian evolution through natural selection is not genuinely progressive. I would rather be a human than a bacterium or a trilobite or a dinosaur, but that is my judgment, not evolution's. So what is the alternative? I and a few others thought that this pointed to what is known in the trade as ethical skepticism or moral nihilism. Perhaps there are no foundations to morality! Perhaps it is all a matter of biology-produced psychology and morality is simply an adaptation to keep us all happy and social.
Of course, morality would break down if we generally realized this, but we then added that part of the adaptation was the conviction that morality is justified -- that is objective in some way -- even though it is in fact subjective. To use an ugly term, we "objectify" moral claims. My only hope of ever getting into the Oxford Dictionary of Quotations is my claim (much beloved by the Creationists because it shows that they were right about me all along) is that morality is a collective illusion put in place by our genes to make us social animals.
Of course there had to be more to the story than this. One thing that had to be shown was that evolution really can produce moral individuals and not just self-regarding monsters. This part of the program has gone very smoothly, with empirical researchers showing in great detail how and why morality is a terrific adaptation for social animals like us humans. Leading the pack today is a Harvard researcher mentioned by Brooks, psychologist and evolutionist Marc Hauser. The point is that ethical skepticism is skeptical about foundations. It doesn't mean that you don't have morality. Rather, it is a matter of where it comes from and what its status truly is.
Another thing that had to be shown was that morality is a special case. The reason why we don't voluntarily step in front of a speeding truck is because we see and hear it. In other words, we use evolutionary adaptations like the eye and the ear to sense it. But of course, the truck really exists. Why then is sauce for the epistemological goose not also sauce for the ethical gander? The mere fact that morality is something that came about through evolution -- that we have a moral organ, as Hauser would say -- does not mean that the objects of its reflection are illusory.
That of course is true, but the reply is that even though there may be other ways of sensing the truck -- echolocation for instance -- ultimately you had better sense the truck somehow. In the case of morality, however, thanks to the non-progressiveness of evolution this seems not to be true. We could have evolved completely different sentiments to be social, and what we now think is true we could then think is false or stupid. I like to invoke what I call the John Foster Dulles system of morality, named after Eisenhower's Secretary of State. He hated the Russians, but he knew that the Russians hated him, so he got along with them. Perhaps instead of thinking we should love our neighbors, we could think we ought to hate our neighbors, but we know that they feel the same way about us, so we get along. Here you would think that the Love Commandment is just stupid.
Of course you could still say that the Love Commandment is really true, but generally this is not what you would want to say about objective morality. "Morality is objective but we don't know what it asks of us and may never know what it asks of us." Perhaps the John Foster Dulles system of morality is the true, objective morality, and we poor deluded fools think otherwise.
I should say that when first I started promoting this position, in a book with the somewhat pretentious title Taking Darwin Seriously: A Naturalistic Approach to Philosophy , the shrieks of horror and contempt and ridicule from my fellow philosophers were such that they can still be heard in outer space. Fortunately I have the kind of temperament that thrives on this. For my 50th birthday I made a collage of the critical reviews and sent it as an invitation to all of my critics. A couple had the humor and grace to respond with thanks.
Today, although I suspect it is still a minority position, the kind of evolutionary naturalism about morality that I endorse has far more street cred in the philosophical community. At the invitation of the Princeton University Press I recently put together a collection on these issues and I have not yet heard that philosophers are organizing a boycott. I have just had my 70th birthday and, even if I had wanted to, I could not have put together a like collage of critical reviews.
But rather than just being smug, I want to raise what strikes me as a very important point. It seems to me that we have here more of a challenge to Christian belief than many realize -- and among the many I include those of us who are eager to reconcile science and religion (us, so called, accommodationists). The moral argument for the existence of God is popular and persuasive. If you don't have God, you can't have morality. But if the kind of evolutionary moral naturalism I endorse is true, then you can have morality and God doesn't enter into it at all. This may not make for atheism, but it certainly weakens the case for theism. Once again in the ongoing conflict between science and religion it looks as though science is on the winning side and religion has to beat a retreat.
Religion and Morality (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Capitalism Magazine - Moral Values Without Religion: Does Morality ...
Is Morality Linked To Religion?
The non-existence of an *intelligent* designer is established by the existence of those who can believe in one.
• 'design' and 'purpose' belong only to culture
As long as scientists insist upon using 'machine' and 'mechanism' in explanations of nature -- they will continue to imply purpose and design. Of course living entities express our abstract mechanical and geometrical principles, but there is no divine instruction manual.
• Darwinian consequences make nonsense of religious "certainties"
Long after ‘On the origin of species’ became a treasured historical relic, fundie liars and jokers in philosophy imagine that Modern Evolutionary Theory -- there is no darwinism after all -- will collapse by quoting some non-existent divinity or by uttering glibberish about “survival of the fittest” being a circular argument. Two big lies.
Steve Gould exposed these frauds years ago. He will convince all but the obtuse. They can never forgive Darwin. He broke their iron rice bowl —
Darwin’s master conceptual engine, natural selection, forever abolished from biological explanation the “teleological cause” of Aristotle and the "ideal forms" of Plato. Purpose and Design are dead. These privations are but two facets of Nietzsche’s misunderstood culture critique: God is dead.
As a youthful Darwin tartly remarked in an unpublished Notebook [M (entry 128)]: “Plato says . . . that our 'necessary ideas' arise from the preexistence of the soul. [They] are not derivable from experience — read monkeys for preexistence.”
Always the gentleman, Darwin found 'Origins' provocation enough.
What is so hard for you to define between Science and Religion? Maybe I can help you to reason; Science seek for knowledge and the truth. Religion, seeks for the supernatural and dishonesty. Guess what side is moral?
Interesting. Of course, the reference to a dependency of morality on God dismisses all non-theistic religions as being anchored in morality. When will the silliness stop? by silliness I mean the flailing away at science versus religion without a clarification as to what is meant by each term. The gross disagreements in science, especially at the edges, demand the anti-religious scientist define their turf for all to examine.
As for religion, there is no working definition. My reference, the Oxford Dictionary of World Religions, includes nearly ten pages of discourse on the difficulty of defining the term with extensive references to peripheral readings on the topic.
When did morality become a force in human culture? Probably in prehistoric cultures. Karen Armstrong explores four historical movements--Socrates, Buddha, Abraham-to-Jesus, and Confuscius--in her book, The Great Transformation, where non-violence became a part of the moral code. In The Way to Wisdom, Karl Jaspers called this period The First Axial Age.
Of course morality has a biological basis, just as biology has a physics basis, but the mystery remains... how do the physical elements combine to form a cell with a living consciousness... and how do the trillions of neurons in the brain, each brain similar, but unique, function individually and in groups to form thoughts?
http://30145.myauthorsite.com/
Then he admits science is 'winning'. Winning what? Philosophy is about 'what if', and good philosophers don't do a death spiral into the ground of pragmatism. Ruse would be better off using ethics as the higher term and morality as the special, or derived, case and then starting his article over. As it is, his psychological position is just a case of Utopianism, as defined by Molnar, a lopsided harangue based on outward 'goodness' (morality), but hiding a pessimism (man's failure in the moral sphere). As the recently designated 'hall monitor', I'll dig out the book and hopefully sort out some of this--with the understanding that is all a therapist does: 1) sort out, and then says 2) ‘you choose’.
But how does Ruse derive the title of his essay as morality (evolution, Darwinism) making the case 'FOR' god? Is he somehow guilty of circular reasoning: god is ethical, humans act morally, and that proves god exists? Probably not. Is he just being contrary, as the story of his 50th birthday suggests?
Feelings are to be mastered, brought into accord with reason, because ethics is not whether or not your feel fear, but what you do with it once you feel it. Hence, the man who feels afraid acts according to his own estimation of his ability and his potential effectiveness in a situation he must size up properly. His feelings do little more than alert him to an ethical choice at hand.
If, however, the ethical person practices such action long enough, his feelings, which are tempered by "active condition," might become a good indicator of ethical action. This, however, does not seem to be an easy state to acheive in Aristotle's view and certainly one's feelings and instincts should not be assumed equal to the task from the beginning. Instinctively, I pull away when hurt. If I am Paul Atreides, this makes me an animal. Frank Herbert provides good pictures of putting instincts in their proper place.
Chris Henderson
politguard.com
See Wikipedia 'Virtue' and the subheading '...Chinese...', with the implication that morality/virtue 'flows' as part of the natural order, and a person who chooses to 'go with the flow/Tao' has made a positive choice, based on the 'higher' and ineffable, and actively works to maintain it (vs. anybody can choose to go on a diet, but can't stay on it because they have developed no reservoir of Te/Virtue--think gyroscope). Does Aristotle, in N.Ethics see 'ethics' as personal/selfish choices which will indirectly develop 'soul' or beingness, or are they part of adjustment to society, with subsequent benefits (obligations, consequences)therefore PRAGMATIC? Is Ruse discussing morality from the 'pleasing god' (Cat. Imp.) or the more general definition of 'pleasing myself''--i.e., actions, based on my inherent values/virtues, which are so harmonious (Tao as flow, harmony) that I have no need to justify them—to myself or others.
"Don't let others get to you."
"Nobody can 'make' you feel a certain way; you allow them to."
"Stop worrying about what other people think."
"Learn to take control of your life and the things you can change."
Yet, I'm supposed to believe in a perpetually unhappy god who will never be satisfied until a 100% "obeyment" rate is achieved. This omnipotent being's happiness is dependent on the behavior of humans; classic.
Then, I'm supposed to believe the followers who say, "See! God isn't happy!" whenever an earthquake, terrorist attack, tsunami, natural disaster, or any mass loss of life occurs.
Meanwhile, these same followers rent male escorts, kill others for their guaranteed place in heaven, molest children, treat women inhumanely, and bicker with each other about whose denomination is more legitimate. All for an entity that may or may not exist. God must be so proud.
Thanks, but I'll pass.
http://www.provinggod.com
Persuasive? Perhaps for non-critical believers.
"If you don't have God, you can't have morality."
Morality based on God is no morality at all.
But I entirely disagree with your conclusions. The only implication from evolutionary biology is that God and morality are entirely in our experience.. But that is far less important than a rationalist is inclined to think. Our experience is well-honed from eons of evolution. It is nothing like the piles of molecules that is all that is really out there. It invents colors and sounds and organizes our world into thing-ness and the ever present agents. We will not survive without it, even if we must mistake the archetypal for the objective. It does not need to be an accurate representation, but only the functional representation that it is. It is the rationalist's delusion that being an accurate representation would make us "better". It only makes us better at whatever it is we irrationally want to do..
It is unfortunately clear that mistaking morality for an archetypal for the objective not only enables our survival, but has enabled grossly indecent actions. It has turned morality into dogma and taboo and ignored the great diversity of moral thought out there. It has enabled bigotry and intolerance against gay people and corrupted us with unnecessary and dangerous views of sexual ethics. We can do better.
What an evolutionary view of morality offers is a moral realistic and accurate view of morality. With it, we can have an intelligent conversation over moral issues. We can live in a way that acknowledges very different moral views from our own. If morality is due to evolution, then we can reengineer it and optimize it like we did farm animals and plants. We can get morality to work for us, to our benefit, rather than to the disadvantage of some. And of course, no matter how we view morality, the moral sense is ingrained in our minds and we want to be decent towards others and that will continue regardless of what we learn.
Chris Henderson
politguard.com
Now you can judge the strength of the argument yourself but saying:
Morality exists. Morality has no basis in biology, or the physical world.
Therefore it must have a metaphysical explanation.
Chris Henderson
politguard.com
Perhaps evolution or science would have been a better choice of word for the headline. The closing sentence indicates that is really what the author thinks this is all about.
But, "Darwinism" is, I suppose, a better attention getter for use in a headline.
Those are the people you really have to watch out for because they are quite literally scary and provably insane.
The morality of human beings is intrinsic, comes from tribal past evolved over time.
2. Since you have the first problem of not being able to condemn or condone other cultures you now have the problem that it's actually impossible to progress morally. You used the term "tribal past" but you fail to realize that different tribal pasts can lead to different moral cultures. So, without actual transcendental moral facts one moral culture can't actually be better than another just different. We aren't better than a slave owning america just different.
How do you know not to lay down in the middle of the freeway?
How do you know not to stick your head into a bon fire?
DOH!
Plain common sense.
Sure as hell did not come from horrible vile book written some 2000 years ago by a bunch of savages.
Right indeed...religion is a result of an incredibly infant mind that has no understanding of the world around them. It is based on fear.
Why would an all-powerful, all-knowing, all-caring God allow innocent children to die? God's plan?
As to allowing people to die, It comes with the whole freedom of will thing. He must allow us to do evil or He is only a tyrant. Besides, I doubt that God puts as much stake in our time here as we do.
Chris Henderson
politguard.com
If folks would just accept the reality that we evolved on a planet in a universe that is extremely large and extremely hazardous to life as we know it then maybe humanity's focus would be on the long time survival of the human species...The number one moral objective would be protecting the human species for the long term...And not just protecting humans that believe in the god you do and to hell with the rest of humanity as most religions teach!
As long as we have religions that teach their god is the only true god and every other religion is bad then we will stagnant & perish right here on Earth rather than striving to explore & survive in the universe for as long as possible.