Gertie wrote: ↑June 14th, 2022, 10:42 am
Yes sorry I wasn't clear, she starts way back with the first shift in the need to care for young, way before primates. That was the paradigmatic shift in our pre-primate history when our first warm-blooded ancestors moved from self-care to caring for helpless off-spring.
Maternal care is not confined to warm-blooded animals. Hymenoptera (bees and wasps) insects do it; non-social octopuses (mollusks) do it. Most likely some dinosaurs --- cold-blooded reptiles, did it --- which is why most birds now do it. It is a trait that evolved separately in several animal lineages (though it's not certain that all prehistoric reptiles were cold-blooded).
Once those adaptations, those neural mechanisms, are in place, then further extending the 'circle of care' has the genetic raw materials to work with, and branch out in different ways. The human species has its own specific back-story following that, but it's the fact that we are social mammals which lays the foundations for our specific social pre-dispositions. And in humans specifically, our tribal history meant up-close-and-person 'mechanisms of care' and cooperation were evolutionarily useful. Strangers are a very different story.
As I mentioned before, sociality and maternal care are separate traits; they don't always occur together. So it is unlikely one evolved from the other. Moreover, maternal care and and social "ethics" don't produce the same behaviors. Herd animals, for example, while social, do not feed or protect one another. They all fend for themselves (except the young, who are fed and protected by their mothers, among mammals). Only kinship-based groups, wolves, primates, eusocial insects) exhibit care for one another (likely attributable to life-long familiarity and relationships, not an "outgrowth" of maternal care). There is no "circle of care."
Later on we conceptualised the abstract notion of right and wrong, of morality, informed by our specific evolutionary history, but also in terms of principles. If it had happened that crocodilles had developed huge brains able to conceptualise abstract notions of right and wrong, it would be based on very different moral intuitions. Same for ants.
I agree that many animals have some sense of right and wrong, not only with respect to relationships with other members of their tribe or species, but with respect to many things. "Right" and "wrong" are not confined to interpersonal behaviors ("morality"). E.g., don't try to swim a river that is too turbulent and fast-flowing; don't jump from a cliff that is too high; don't eat food that smells bad; don't challenge animals bigger and meaner than you. Some of those do's and dont's are likely built-in and reinforced through experience, others acquired entirely through experience, i.e., the experienced consequences of various behaviors.
Crocodiles, BTW, not being social animals, would have no need for a morality (they do tolerate one another for the most part, peaceably occupying a common area, but they don't cooperate in any way and even occasionally cannibalize each other).
Our specific human evolutionary history gave us broad intuitive commonalities about right and wrong ( see Moral Foundations Theory
https://moralfoundations.org/ ), which are happenstantial and species-specific. Of course then environment/nurture/culture/learning plays a role, and we can also apply reason. And just because we are a social species doesn't mean our useful older 'lizard brain' selfish instincts disappeared, we obviously need them too. And morality is often where selfish vs social plays out.
That's a very rough n ready version of the ''Is'' of the under-pinnings of human morality. If we hadn't evolved impulses to care for others, to feel guilt or shame, what would human concepts of right and wrong or abstract morality be? Would we even have such a notion?
It is only the underpinning of instinctive/intuitive morality. I agree there is a "universal morality" generally observed in all human groups, e.g., "Thou shalt not murder," "Thou shalt not steal," etc. Those prohibitions and a few others are found in all recorded moral or legal codes, some of which long pre-date the Old Testament. They are also observed by illiterate tribes who have no codified moralities. They are universal because social groups in which they were not generally observed would be very short-lived. "Caring for others," however, is not universal. It is common in kinship-based groups, but not in non-kinship-based social groups. And as I said, it seems likely that it arises from the intimacy of those groups, the familarity and interactions of their members from birth, not as an outgrowth of maternal care. There are many cases of animals of different species, mortal enemies or even predator/prey in the wild, who become "best buddies" when raised together.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6vKWk6tc2zY
Then there is the sex problem. The maternal nurturing drive --- a very strong one, not only in mammals but in birds, some insects, and even some mollusks --- is exclusive to females. Very few male mammals exhibit any nurturing behaviors. Protective behaviors, yes; nurturing, no. Nor do male bees (drones) or most male birds (though a few birds do). Yet male animals are equally represented in social species.
Right, the abstract concept of morality involves intellectualised pondering, but the framework for that pondering derives from our evolved gut responses.
I disagree. The "framework" for
pondering moral issues is the same one we use for pondering all other problems and puzzles, i.e., defining a goal, observing phenomena, such as the predictable consequences of various behaviors, and noting which actions on our part advance us toward that goal and which impede us or divert us from it. It is the same "framework" (approach, or methodology) we use for designing a highway system, locating a mineral deposit, or landing a spacecraft on Mars. Intuitive/instinctive behavioral propensities and judgments prejudice that process, and even when they are consistent with the goal they can't be relied upon, especially as axioms of a rational morality.
I.e., as Hume claimed, you can't derive "oughts" (moral principles) from "is" (biological facts).
Yeah agreed. Hume nailed it re the physical facts of the world, including our biology. And we now have a clearer idea why some things disgust us and some feel right. Churchland went off and studied the evolutionary neuroscience of it.
Well, what disgusts us and what feels right is highly idiosyncratic. And those feelings (in all their variety) likely have origins in individual neural idiosyncracies, not in the maternal instinct (which would be difficult to explain in males). What disgusts us or feels right is not a reliable foundation for morality.
Now onto the part we've debated at leeeeength
We disagree, on the other hand, about the goal of "leveling the playing field." It is not level, for any species, and cannot be made level without sacrificing the interests --- and thus welfare --- of some agents to promote those of others. In my view it is for each agent to decide what sacrifices he will make for that purpose, if any.
But we've debated this point at length before.
Here's where I think consequentialism and common sense come in. It seems to me if we are genuinely committed to a foundation of promoting the well-being of sentient creatures we are inevitably in the moral business of making sacrifices when others' welfare is at stake. We don't need special provisos for it, or to make a public/private distinction about where it applies, it's inherent in the foundation.
Well, I disagree.
There is no criterion, no grounds, for favoring Alfie's welfare over Bruno's, nor any independent "scale" for comparing and measuring welfares. Alfie's welfare is advanced to the extent his interests are satisfied; Bruno's to the extent
his are satisifed. Their respective interests may have little in common, and there is no basis for claiming that Alfie's interest in X "outweighs" or is "more important" than Bruno's interest in Y.
Now, in many cases Alfie will have an interest in Bruno's welfare, and that interest may override other interests he may have. In that case he will sacrifice one or more of those interests to satisfy that higher-ranking interest. (Interests occur in a hierarchy, and one will always sacrifice a lower-ranking interest to satisfy a higher-ranking one).
We can rank interests
within hierarchies, but not
between hierarchies.
One (public) aspect of that is we live in inter-dependant societies where we have to organise ourselves somehow or other, and if we want to do that morally we should try to ensure all members of that society have the opportunity to flourish.
I agree. But we can only do that if all members are
maximally free to pursue their own interests, since those are what determine each person's welfare, his "flourishing."
That is basic to this moral foundation. We are never going to be able to do that perfectly, but we have a moral obligation to try to provide everyone with the basic flourishing toolkit.
But there is no "basic flourishing tookit"! The "toolkit" Alfie needs to flourish may be very different from one Bruno needs. There are, to be sure, things everyone needs to live, but those fall far short of the things one needs to "flourish" (for most people --- mendicant monks may be an exception). Could a pianist whose passion is music flourish if his piano was seized and sold to feed a hungry drug addict? And, of course, merely feeding the addict would not likely enable him to flourish. How many pianos may be seized from how many musicians, how many paintings from how many artists, how many cameras from how many photographers, may be seized to assure the addict's flourishing?