Thread: Morality and its source

Originally Posted by JimmyHAD

Absolutely part of the question. Which came first, the cultural influences or the intuitive ? Maybe it is a chicken and egg question.

I lean towards an evolutionary explanation. There is a bunch of literature on the "altruistic instinct" -- and I see "altruism" as a fancy word for the golden rule.

I have not explored this very deeply and am only aware of the mentioned literature from a Google search I just did looking (unsuccessfully) for a book I read many years ago that did discuss this.

The book discussed computerized experiments involving the "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" that showed an evolutionary advantage to altruism. This depended on the "iterated" aspect -- expecting to deal with the same "player" again in the future. This may even hint at a partial answer to why different cultures tend to be less altruistic towards each other than they are internally.

EDIT: As to "chicken and egg". Perhaps it's like tool use. We have the built in ability to both use and invent tools but culture gives each generation a leg up on technique. Maybe we are just not as good at this with morality as we are with tools.

UPDATE: Found the book I was looking for: The Evolution of Cooperation by Robert Axelrod, Basic Books, ISBN 0-465-02122-2 (1984).

I see an updated version is available on Amazon: Amazon.com: The Evolution of Cooperation: Revised Edition (9780465005642): Robert Axelrod: Books (along with a few other Axelrod books).

There is a Wikipedia article: The Evolution of Cooperation - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Okay, I have two cents. Here they are.

I'm of the opinion that there is a constant, absolute morality, but I don't believe it is a universal morality of the cosmos. The universe doesn't much care what we do on our ball of mud.

I believe morality derives from our chromosomal imperative to survive as a species. Being frail, squishy creatures, it's to our advantage to work together in societies. We can't effectively work together without empathy, rules, standards, and so on, but, within that framework, there's a tremendous amount of wiggle room.

Good is whatever helps our chromosomes to survive. Evil is whatever hinders our chromosomes. All the other seemingly shifting morals are really societal mores which are highly fluid and situational. They're sometimes relevant, often times not.

Or, I could be wrong.

EDIT - Oh, I see TexasBob posted above in much the same vein.

Originally Posted by AZrider

Okay, I have two cents. Here they are.

I'm of the opinion that there is a constant, absolute morality, but I don't believe it is a universal morality of the cosmos. The universe doesn't much care what we do on our ball of mud.

I believe morality derives from our chromosomal imperative to survive as a species. Being frail, squishy creatures, it's to our advantage to work together in societies. We can't effectively work together without empathy, rules, standards, and so on, but, within that framework, there's a tremendous amount of wiggle room.

Good is whatever helps our chromosomes to survive. Evil is whatever hinders our chromosomes. All the other seemingly shifting morals are really societal mores which are highly fluid and situational. They're sometimes relevant, often times not.

Or, I could be wrong.

Reasonable POV, I think.

Question: How much of that is understood instinctively and how much must be learned culturally?

What TexasBob and AZrider are postulating makes a lot of sense to me. Whether there is a supernatural component, i.e. religious or spiritual, we won't know until we, as Hamlet says, 'leave this mortal coil' ..... then we will either know or there won't be anything to know.

Originally Posted by AZrider

Being frail, squishy creatures, it's to our advantage to work together in societies.

You have to ask yourself why, if we humans are only frail squishy creatures, have we survived thus far, dominated all the other life on earth and even managed to travel off the planet. It is the power of our minds that set us apart from other living creatures.

Originally Posted by TexasBob

Reasonable POV, I think.

Question: How much of that is understood instinctually and how much must be learned culturally?

That's a very good question.

I don't know.

For example, empathy may be an instinctual behavior but it can be nurtured or thwarted by cultural influences. The instinct for altruism can likely also be heavily influenced by culture. A primary instincts seems to be to observe and mimic the behaviors of the members of one's society.

I'm inclined to say that culture (society) can, largely trump any instinctive sense of morality but that for a culture to sustain itself any length of time, it must mostly adhere to that basic morality.

If falls back question of the chicken and the egg.

Originally Posted by welshwizard

You have to ask yourself why, if we humans are only frail squishy creatures, have we survived thus far, dominated all the other life on earth and even managed to travel off the planet. It is the power of our minds that set us apart from other living creatures.

Well, sure, that's certainly true; the power of our minds sets us apart. But, we've also survived because of our ability to cooperate and act together in large groups. Without that cooperation, none of the technology (space going or otherwise) which we use to dominate all other life would exist.

The power of my mind would not protect this frail and squishy creature in a toe to toe with a polar bear!

Originally Posted by TexasBob

I lean towards an evolutionary explanation. There is a bunch of literature on the "altruistic instinct" -- and I see "altruism" as a fancy word for the golden rule.

I have not explored this very deeply and am only aware of the mentioned literature from a Google search I just did looking (unsuccessfully) for a book I read many years ago that did discuss this.

The book discussed computerized experiments involving the "Iterated Prisoner's Dilemma" that showed an evolutionary advantage to altruism. This depended on the "iterated" aspect -- expecting to deal with the same "player" again in the future. This may even hint at a partial answer to why different cultures tend to be less altruistic towards each other than they are internally.

Altruism. hmm.

To put your self out for someone expecting nothing in return.

There's not a great deal of evidence to suggests true altruism exists.

Originally Posted by gregs656

Altruism. hmm.

To put your self out for someone expecting nothing in return.

There's not a great deal of evidence to suggests true altruism exists.

Maybe your just not looking hard enough. Or maybe you just live in a bad neighborhood -- physically or metaphorically.

Originally Posted by TexasBob

Maybe your just not looking hard enough. Or maybe you just live in a bad neighborhood -- physically or metaphorically.

no, I studied it and there just isn't much to prove it happens.

It would seem that when ever someone helps someone else, they do it to make them feel better or as a kind of karma thing, as a result of a past favor or in anticipation of a future one.

True altruism, gaining nothing, expecting nothing, and accepting some cost as a result of helping someone, doesn't seem to exist.