What creates morality?

[Gertie]

I'm another one who believes morality is subjective, and we can best understand it through science.

As for 'What Creates Morality' the current understanding (still in its early stages) is that the origins of morality lie with our ancestors who evolved from simply caring for themselves (staying alive, reproducing) to caring for their off-spring. Mammals with helpless off-spring will only survive as a species if there's some reward in caring for their vulnerable kids (mommy turtles can dump their dozens of hard-shelled, protein filled eggs on a beach and swim off into the blue yonder, a mammal with one or two off-spring who are helpless for years isn't so lucky - and a mate who gets the supper in is handy too). And so evolution provided the mechanisms for keeping mammalian parents around, and on duty. Hence pair bonding, and for example re-purposing oxytocin involved in producing milk, so that Mum gets a blast of warm fuzziness when she's tending her kids. And a rush of anxiety hormones when they're out of sight, or in danger. This is happening even with rats.

Once that giant leap from caring for yourself only to caring for another (off-spring) has been made, once the mechanisms are in place, it's not such a big step to move towards caring for others too. Other kin will feature heavily, because of the genetic advantage - you look after others with similar genes, those genes have a greater chance of being passed on. And specifically as social mammals living in groups, with the survival benefits from co-operation, the 'circle of care' further expanded and other traits evolved. Mirror neurons, empathy, trust, bonding, reciprocal altruism, a sense of fairness, tribal loyalty. And inhibitors on anti-social behaviour, like guilt and shame, and a distaste for cheaters - free-loaders, thieves, murderers and the like who disrupt the bonds of group cohesion.

As we became more and more sophisticated, 'brainy', and began to live in larger and more organised groups, these impulses became more formalised and codified, as rules, manners and social mores. With punishments for transgressors. Over time and from place to place, with the ongoing vagaries of environmental and cultural influences, differences in how this played out over time emerged. But the work of people like Haidt show that there's still much commonality between individuals and cultures based on a fairly simple set of evolved 'moral impulses'.

At some point this all acquired the name 'Morality' and became seen as a thing in itself, as if it had some objective, even religious existence. Now we've become such clever sophisticated critters, and are finding these things out, we can look at those impulses and decide how useful they are in a world so much different to when they evolved...

[Sealight]

Anything with exceptions can't be a universal moral principle.

Why can't it be? Explain please.

[Wilson]

Anything with exceptions can't be a universal moral principle.

Why can't it be? Explain please.

Simply because anything universal has no exceptions, by definition. It's always true.

-- Updated October 14th, 2016, 12:07 am to add the following --

And Gertie, I think you have it exactly right. The one thing I would add is that morality is for the group - not just family members sharing genes, but others in the community, too, although to a lesser degree. Someone who is willing to die for his group, or his battalion, has a sense of morality and responsibility for more than his extended genetic family. So I'm convinced that the mechanism for the extension of morality to those outside one's family came about by group selection. In our hunter-gatherer ancestors, each band of which consisted of maybe 20-50 individuals, only some of which were family, there was competition between groups for food, power, and women. Those groups having more empathy and feelings of community - because of genetic chance plus the fact that many in each group were family - were better able to cooperate and were more likely to survive - better able to provide food for themselves, to fight off predators, and maybe even more successful in killing off other groups - than those groups where everyone was more selfish, more everyone-for-himself. Over time those empathy-sympathy-cooperation-altruism-morality genes became more common as the more selfish groups died out and the more cooperative groups predominated.

[Sealight]

Simply because anything universal has no exceptions, by definition. It's always true.

Could you please give at least one example when something universal has no exceptions?

-- Updated October 14th, 2016, 8:24 am to add the following --

I would like to continue to support the statement that MP "humans not allowed to kill humans" is objective. My first point would be the following: The origin of the MP are social, not personal because in a social group to kill somebody almost always means that a killer will be caught and executed. A fear of that prevents anyone from killing. Is this correct?

-- Updated October 14th, 2016, 8:38 am to add the following --

An addition to the previous: by a social group I mean a group of people inside which every its member can be reached by a majority of other its members.

[Wilson]

Could you please give at least one example when something universal has no exceptions?

Simply, it's the definition of "universal". Here's the first definition from Merriam-Webster: "including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception"

[Sealight]

Simply, it's the definition of "universal". Here's the first definition from Merriam-Webster: "including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception"

The definition is clear. How about an example? Can you find one?

[Wilson]

Simply, it's the definition of "universal". Here's the first definition from Merriam-Webster: "including or covering all or a whole collectively or distributively without limit or exception"

The definition is clear. How about an example? Can you find one?

Do you want the definition of "definition"? How much clearer could it be? Good Lord.

[Sealight]

Do you want the definition of "definition"?

I don't. Where did that question come from? All I need is one example. And looks like you don't have it.
Another question: Why did you change the topic and began talking about universality? My point was to prove objectivity of the MP. A MP is a social law and is objective for its members. It is not a universal law though. There is a difference between objectivity and universality.

[Wilson]

This is hopeless. The definition of universal includes "without limit or exception", and you ask me, "Could you please give at least one example when something universal has no exceptions?"

And don't change the subject. You didn't ask me for an example of objectivity without exceptions.

[Sealight]

This is hopeless.

I also that this is hopeless.

-- Updated October 15th, 2016, 1:13 am to add the following --

I also see that this is hopeless. A discussion with you is not constructive. Sorry, I am not going to respond to your statements anymore.

-- Updated October 15th, 2016, 1:17 am to add the following --

You didn't ask me for an example of objectivity without exceptions.

You are right, I didn't. You just messed everything up.

[Gertie]

Wilson -

''And Gertie, I think you have it exactly right. The one thing I would add is that morality is for the group - not just family members sharing genes, but others in the community, too, although to a lesser degree. Someone who is willing to die for his group, or his battalion, has a sense of morality and responsibility for more than his extended genetic family. So I'm convinced that the mechanism for the extension of morality to those outside one's family came about by group selection. In our hunter-gatherer ancestors, each band of which consisted of maybe 20-50 individuals, only some of which were family, there was competition between groups for food, power, and women. Those groups having more empathy and feelings of community - because of genetic chance plus the fact that many in each group were family - were better able to cooperate and were more likely to survive - better able to provide food for themselves, to fight off predators, and maybe even more successful in killing off other groups - than those groups where everyone was more selfish, more everyone-for-himself. Over time those empathy-sympathy-cooperation-altruism-morality genes became more common as the more selfish groups died out and the more cooperative groups predominated.''

Cheers .

Yeah that makes sense to me, I struggle to get my noggin around group selection, but I can see what you're saying here -

''Those groups having more empathy and feelings of community - because of genetic chance plus the fact that many in each group were family - were better able to cooperate and were more likely to survive - better able to provide food for themselves, to fight off predators, and maybe even more successful in killing off other groups - than those groups where everyone was more selfish, more everyone-for-himself. Over time those empathy-sympathy-cooperation-altruism-morality genes became more common as the more selfish groups died out and the more cooperative groups predominated''


I'd add that we've obviously evolved traits which lead us to favour/care more about those we personally know and create bonds with. Bonds which had roots in mechanisms required to form attachments to genetically related kin, but can kick in with others outside that. Which would have evolutionary value at a time when we lived in small, tribal groups where everybody knows each other and is mutually dependent on the benefits of cooperation, as you point out.

It's interesting to think about how we're viscerally affected when we see someone in distress, drowning in a river for example, and have an urgent need to rush to help. As opposed to reading about a whole village of people on another continent who will die because they don't have access to clean water. How a charity advert showing a film of a cute puppy in distress, can be more emotionally motivating to help than someone just telling you about abused children. How we're more likely to give to a charity for cancer, if a loved one has died from it, because of its relatable valence. Even how internet interactions can tend to be much more hostile than those in person, because they're not able to trigger social responses in the same way.

So we clearly have 'mechanisms of care' for up close and personal interactions (mirror neurons for example), very effective in the context of small tribal living when they evolved, which become weaker and more conceptualised with distance. And also as you say become relevant when your group is competing against another for limited local resources - who gets access to the nearby grove of fruit tress, etc. We're certainly 'programmed' to see each other in terms of in groups and out groups, in all sorts of ways, which in our massively complex interconnected-at-a-distance way of living now causes lots of probs unimaginable at the time such traits evolved.

On the plus side, we're also cognitively sophisticated critters who can understand our impulses and apply reason too. And with Morality becoming seen as a Thing in Itself, with notions of objective Right and Wrong, can help us to extend these natural triggered impulses to care, on the intellectualised basis of principle.

[Wilson]

As for 'What Creates Morality' the current understanding (still in its early stages) is that the origins of morality lie with our ancestors who evolved from simply caring for themselves (staying alive, reproducing) to caring for their off-spring. Mammals with helpless off-spring will only survive as a species if there's some reward in caring for their vulnerable kids (mommy turtles can dump their dozens of hard-shelled, protein filled eggs on a beach and swim off into the blue yonder, a mammal with one or two off-spring who are helpless for years isn't so lucky - and a mate who gets the supper in is handy too). And so evolution provided the mechanisms for keeping mammalian parents around, and on duty. Hence pair bonding, and for example re-purposing oxytocin involved in producing milk, so that Mum gets a blast of warm fuzziness when she's tending her kids. And a rush of anxiety hormones when they're out of sight, or in danger. This is happening even with rats.

I also think empathy and caring for others must have started with moms caring for their newborn babies, without which no species where the newborns are helpless could have survived. In the case of mammals, I can envision it as a kind of self-love, where the mother felt the newborn growing and moving inside her, kind of separate but kind of not, and carrying that over after the birth, feeling that the baby was still part of her, along with the warm feelings you mentioned. And once evolution comes up with a beneficial mutation, it can modify it, in this case extending it to bonding with mate and family, and eventually to non-kin. What I don't think anybody understands is how exactly DNA can program our brains to have empathetic feelings and other emotional tendencies. I think mirror neurons and similar structures are part of it, but there are many other characteristics which require other mechanisms - our tendency to prefer the opposite sex in most cases, our fear of death, our tendencies toward selfishness, aggression, cooperation, and so on. How in the world does DNA arrange our brain structure and connections to accomplish that? Almost complete mystery.

Another aspect of that empathy and sympathy for others is that it isn't necessarily universal. There are degrees of empathy, and for certain people none. The reason for that when it was developing in hunter-gatherer times was that it wasn't a good idea to share everything with other groups. Better for your group's survival to provide food and protection for your own, and to be wary of other groups, who might be hungry and hostile and wanting to kill your men and steal your women. That is the origin, I believe, of the fact that we all divide the world into "us" and "them", sometimes with the unfortunate results of racism and religious discrimination and xenophobia. Luckily, I think that very gradually, as we see other cultures on TV, we have the capacity to include other nations and cultures into our own circles of empathy, as we see that others in the world are not all that different.

[Gertie]

What I don't think anybody understands is how exactly DNA can program our brains to have empathetic feelings and other emotional tendencies. I think mirror neurons and similar structures are part of it, but there are many other characteristics which require other mechanisms - our tendency to prefer the opposite sex in most cases, our fear of death, our tendencies toward selfishness, aggression, cooperation, and so on. How in the world does DNA arrange our brain structure and connections to accomplish that? Almost complete mystery.

I don't have a clue about the workings of DNA myself, but I'm sure you're right. And the inklings about an area like neuroscience which is key in understanding ourselves and our attitudes to each other and the world, is barely scraping the surface. Brains are unimaginably complex, and we're still at the stage of prodding bits and seeing what happens. Still, I think at the moment we can construct a plausible Big Picture account of something like Morality which makes sense of the clues we have. Which ain't bad, when you think of the centuries of ways peeps have grappled with morality. And even that level of understanding has the potential to change attitudes, re-evaluate how we think about morality, once it becomes part of the curriculum, seeps into the zeitgeist.

Another aspect of that empathy and sympathy for others is that it isn't necessarily universal. There are degrees of empathy, and for certain people none. The reason for that when it was developing in hunter-gatherer times was that it wasn't a good idea to share everything with other groups. Better for your group's survival to provide food and protection for your own, and to be wary of other groups, who might be hungry and hostile and wanting to kill your men and steal your women. That is the origin, I believe, of the fact that we all divide the world into "us" and "them", sometimes with the unfortunate results of racism and religious discrimination and xenophobia. Luckily, I think that very gradually, as we see other cultures on TV, we have the capacity to include other nations and cultures into our own circles of empathy, as we see that others in the world are not all that different.

Totally with you on that! Tribalism, in group/out group dynamics, Us vs Them - these tendencies make sense in our evolutionary context, but that doesn't mean the ways they're expressed how we live now are beneficial.

And on the individual level, while we've been focussing on our social/cooperative impulses here, you're right to point out it isn't all rosy there either. Our prehistoric core is still centred on survival and reproduction, care for self and competition. That's the basic material these caring and cooperative adaptations had to work with, the default conditioning if you like - maintaining the homeostasis of the organism, and reproducing. And that's still there too. We're a complicated, messy kludge of sometimes contradictory impulses - well I am anyway . And when times are tough, resources low, we're more apt to revert to drawing in that circle of care, to me and mine.

I like Haidt et al's Moral Foundations Theory as a digestible overview, it's a work in progress, but it tries to bring things together in a nice (but perhaps overly tidy) way -

Moral Foundations Theory was created by a group of social and cultural psychologists (see us here) to understand why morality varies so much across cultures yet still shows so many similarities and recurrent themes. In brief, the theory proposes that several innate and universally available psychological systems are the foundations of “intuitive ethics.” Each culture then constructs virtues, narratives, and institutions on top of these foundations, thereby creating the unique moralities we see around the world, and conflicting within nations too. The five foundations for which we think the evidence is best are:

1) Care/harm: This foundation is related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. It underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.

2) Fairness/cheating: This foundation is related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. It generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulated the theory in 2011 based on new data, we emphasize proportionality, which is endorsed by everyone, but is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]

3) Loyalty/betrayal: This foundation is related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. It underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."

4) Authority/subversion: This foundation was shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. It underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.

5) Sanctity/degradation: This foundation was shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. It underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions).

We think there are several other very good candidates for "foundationhood," especially:

6) Liberty/oppression: This foundation is about the feelings of reactance and resentment people feel toward those who dominate them and restrict their liberty. Its intuitions are often in tension with those of the authority foundation. The hatred of bullies and dominators motivates people to come together, in solidarity, to oppose or take down the oppressor. We report some preliminary work on this potential foundation in this paper, on the psychology of libertarianism and liberty.

continues here http://www.moralfoundations.org/

[The Dark Wanderer]

To answer the question concretely, in part by instinct. Animals have been known to aid each other, even outside their own pack or species.

Secondly, cause and effect. Strike a man and he shall surely strike you back. Be convicted of a crime and you shall surely pay the consequences. Thus most with common sense take steps to avoid these, lest he be a fool.

Unlike Kirkegard, Descartes and the like I reject the notion of morality coming from some higher deity. Although I do not reject the existence of such a power, nor can I accept it, since no empirical evidence has yet to be revealed.

Many claim they know right from wrong feel it even as empty and this give them an idea of right and wrong. like Descartes had an idea of God therefore it must be true. A mere idea in itself carries no validity unless backed up by undeniable fact. I shall not insult your intelligence by pointing this out further.

So if we then reject deity, and as Nietzsche and proclaim God dead, is all permitted?

Nonsense! There are still laws governing all of civilisation. Laws perhaps, if one naively thinks so, were made to create a just society. What then of all those slaughtered in the name of so called justice? These laws, though to keep us from destroying ourselves, largely serve to keep the elite in power and facilities its abuse.

If we reject these too then is all permitted?

So, we are left with instinct, cause and effect and empathy to guide our ethics.

What these ethics might be is a speculation for another thread.

[Anthony Edgar]

Only the God who created the universe and everything in it can decide what is objectively good or evil, in my opinion. So without God, objective morality ceases to exist, as then all that's left is opinion - the subjective morality of individual humans. Then, why should the opinion of one person be worth any more the opinion of someone else? Even the Mafia has its own code of morality.