In our hyperlinked world, we can know anything, anytime. And this mass enlightenment, says Buddhist scholar Bob Thurman, is our first step toward becoming Buddha. When we can know everything, we can see how everything is interconnected — and we can begin to feel compassion for every living being.
Archive for the 'philosophy' Category
Think about this claim.
It is questionable as to whether it is meaningful at all. Upside down in relation to what? Well, we have designated a northern and a southern hemisphere on our fair planet, with the representation being that the north is on top and the south is down below.
But of course, it could just as easily have been the other way around. There is no objective reason for preferring one to the other. We might discover alien civilizations that position their planets ‘upside down’ in relation to our own.
To declare the universe is upside down is to suggest that our directional preference has some ‘truth’ or objectiveness that the rest of the universe has failed to observe. This is absurd because no such objectiveness exists. We have forgotten that we invented this idea of direction.
This is a metaphor for the absurdity of applying objectivity to human ‘reason’. Just like north & south we have designated certain ideas and limits to better understand and navigate the realms of human knowledge. For something to be outside the limits of human logic (and there are competing logics that each rule out different absurdities) means simply that it falls outside the rules we have invented. The rules so implicit in the functioning of out brains and our language that it is easy to forget we have invented them.
Were our brains and our language different it is easy to conceive that so too our logic might be different. Thus, ‘truth’, like ‘north’, is a word, we invented to describe an idea particular to our place and time. To think that it extends to and beyond the reaches of existence… well the universe might as well be upside down.
I wanted a metaphor and now I have one.
I happened upon an intriguing article over at brooders.net titled: How would a machine think? Probably not like us…
It seems like so long ago that I was entertaining these exact thoughts, latching onto the Sapir-Worf hypothesis to confirm my intuitions about the cognitive nature of language, before I found out their particular research was bunk.
I remember writing about how representations of AI have been woefully lacking in truly imagining the limitations and expanded possibilities of a machine mind. My story ‘Press Any Key’ was based on this very thought, but it is clear to me know how much this is in need of an update.
So I dug this out of the trashcan, on Wed Aug 04, 2004 some thoughts of mine on how that digital thinker might think!
…Think about it, we’re operating on the instructions of human 95, a scared, individualistic, reproductive survival machine. That is what we were built for (if you believe in evolution) however long ago, and we get patches and updates (biologically) as often as Windows.
Greed, jealousy, selfishness, are all products of a survival mechanism built in to keep the whole human race going. But our cognitive applications have evolved faster than our hardware can keep up. We have much more of an emphasis on how we use our brains, and as such we get fat, contract heart-disease and die. Our hardware is still operating on the idea that we run 50 miles a day to get dinner.
So now turn to AI (I’d say DI but it isn’t as catchy). It has no such biological limitations. It’s hardware is only limited by our ability to invent it. I have yet to see a movie that accurately depicts an artificially intelligent being, (maybe T2). Why? Because like the self-loving gods that we are we shape them in our own image. I tend to think that emotions are a biological product of a certain arrangement of chemicals. Before we attached meaning and significance to them they were designed to get the job done, (it’s much easier to kill when you’re angry). But don’t ask me what depression is for. “Crying is a puzzler”
So there is no reason to assume that they are necessary to intelligence and as such why an AI would have them. Considering that AI does not have the same biological heritage as ourselves there is also no reason to assume that it would posses the same left-overs. The inherent selfishness, and greed that is apart of being human (which isn’t to say, love and compassion aren’t also parts) would not be necessarily present in AI.
AI characters which emulate these characteristics (i.e. ‘angry’ robots in I Robot) are due to a poverty of the imagination. We are so used to humanity, that we find it difficult to imagine an emotionless intelligence. To our way of thinking, someone without any emotion is a very ill-minded person.
The consequences of realistically envisaging the AI construct are numerous and intriguing. Suppose we had a suitable default AI receptacle. A hard drive with sensory input devices and output devices. Also suppose that any particular AI could be loaded onto any particular machine, the greatest of all human traits might then be non-existent. And that is an unwavering attachment to our own particular vessels. Imagine a being that had no such hang-up, that they knew if one was broken that could always to uploaded to another. What kind of ramifications would that have for the thought processes of AI?
Would it lead to an infinite amount of Smith-like duplicates? No, I don’t think so. The primal urge for reproduction is also lost. All the emotional crap that clouds our vision of reality would disappear. I’d like to think these beings would have a very Zen-like appreciation of our world. But of course, what value is there in a creature that can never be happy?
I was looking for something I have previously written on Hume and the Reason vs. Desire dichotomy and I did indeed find a section on Hume from my essay: Evolution, Altruism and Ethics, and whilst it is relevant it’s also very ‘academic’ and embedded in a very different context.
The basic idea is that Hume challenged a dichotomy put most eloquently by Plato story of Phaedrus the charioteer. Phaedrus represents the soul of a man who is constantly pulled by two forces in different directions. One horse named reason, and the other named passion.
However, a closer examination of human decision making reveals that nothing can be done without a desire / passion to do so. Reason only has the power to examine how effective one’s course of action may be in achieving their desire. If I desire to eat a bar of chocolate then eating this chocolate shaped poison would be a very unreasonable thing to do…
So why does the dichotomy exist? Well it helps to explain why we take courses of action that are at times completely irrational. A heat of the moment, a loss of willpower, a feeling of our reason being subjugated by our writhing selfish passions. How can we feel guilty after such an action if we only do that which we desire?
The answer is simply that a person can want more than one thing at once, even completely contradictory things. I can want a healthy, stable and monogamous relationship with my wife, but I can also want to have a quickie with my secretary on my lunch break. Both of these are desires, but one seems to be more informed by reason than the other. This is quite accurate and has to do with the dichotomy of the human brain.
Consider the fact that reason is a recent addition to the cognition of mammals. Underneath it in the primal brain is instincts and more complex instincts. Reason is an abstraction device that allows us to think of things that don’t actually exist, they are long term, non-concrete usually idealistic kinds of things.
How can you fulfil the desire of a healthy, stable, monogamous relationship with your wife? You can’t really, it’s a never-ending desire, the only moments of gratification probably come at anniversary and all the times you thought about but didn’t go through doing something else.
Immediately gratify, sensuous and emotionally driven desires on the other hand are very easily and quickly satisfied. These are powerful forces, forces of nature or forces of selfishness or Satan if you subscribe the religious/cultural mythology Phaedrus has gotten us into. If you exalt reason as the pinnacle of man’s achievements of nature and the natural world, the paragon of animals etc. then it is no wonder you feel a great deal of guilt when you follow these ‘base’ desires.
I don’t think willpower is what the issue is here, we’re talking about a reprogramming of how you view your desires. Faced with the choice of fulfilling the immediate desire and the never-ending desire it’s a contest with a serious handicap.
I think to even up the match a little you need to replace your never-ending desires with concrete ones. If you want a healthy marriage the feeling of having not done something to destroy is nowhere near good enough. In doing this you are focusing on the thing you wish to avoid and fixating on your own weaknesses. Instead think of actions you can do right now that fulfil your abstract desire. Write an e-mail, buy flowers, write a poem whatever…
Only by giving your abstract desires a concrete failure are you giving yourself a real choice. A choice between conflicting passions not between two horses.
Buddhist morality seems to me to be an entirely utilitarian affair. That is, once one realizes that life is suffering and all human beings suffer, the right course of action is to alleviate suffering and replace it with the good: happiness. The good in this case being a specific spiritual happiness as oppose to the tradition material and physical conceptions of happiness common in Utilitarian theory.
Now the problem of Utilitarianism has always been in my view finding the method to best maximize the good. You might work very hard to make a large number of people happy only to find that in doing so you have made an even larger group of people unhappy. Or you just could have simply set off a chain of events which results in the whole earth being destroyed to make way for a intergalactic hyperspace bypass. Whoops.
However, the Mahayana Buddhists have the answer and what I would regard to be the only answer to this problem which would give someone any hope of redeeming this dangerous ethical theory:
Omniscience.
That’s right. The only way you can effectively (and safely) maximize the happiness of all sentient beings is to know everything, especially the exact effects your actions will cause.
The only person you could really trust to be a utilitarian is an omniscient being after all. When someone is performing all manner of ghastly and counter-intuitive acts such as running people over with trains and killing people for their organs and they say, “Don’t worry, it’s all for the best”, you really wanna be sure about that.
So this seems to be the justification for a whole lot of monks removing themselves from the world and sitting still in a monastery for a few decades. As utilitarians dedicated to helping the suffering of all, they’re trying damn to become omniscient.
Of course, such actions are only justifiable if you believe becoming omniscient is actually possible. If not, I think you just stay way from ‘the ends justifies the means’ theories in general.
It is worth noting that the Judeo-Christian God is often given a pass for all the obvious evil and suffering in the world because he has a ‘grand plan’ and being omniscient we have every reason to trust that it will work out in the end. That all this, blood, sweat and tears are not shed in vain. (Can’t wait to find out how the Holocaust was necessary to the great cosmic game!)
However, this tends to neglect the fact that this god is a professed believe in moral absolutes, I mean we’re talking about written in stone, literally! I mean if killing innocent people is part of the grand plan, that’s all well and good, but you might want to revise your own rules and regulations there Yaweh! You’re not living up to your own standards and by your own definition down live up to being ‘good’ and since God being good is part of your definition as an entity you have just contradicted yourself out of existence.
Apologists can of course counter that this too is part of the plan. That we should act in accordance with his moral absolutes whilst he goes on killing and causing all manner of suffering to fulfil the grand plan. By this stage though there seems to be nothing which can’t be explained by the ‘grand plan’ scenario which renders the explanation the equivalent of, “stop asking questions, just trust me!” (At least that’s what the priest said to me.)
But let us for the moment suppose that this is right. It is now somehow good to lie and murder, because god is good and this is what god does, and yet it is wrong to do these things, god said so. In any case such a dodgy character can clearly be up to no good and it is hardly worth worshiping a lying murderer. But then that was probably part of the plan all along.
I’m trying to come about with a metaphor that will help me express the absurdity of logic. Logic as we all know is a system of rules, inductive and deductive that were created by us people that we use to apply to the world, reality in order to ascertain truth.
We don’t mind the fact the logic was created by us and not reality because we tend to forget that fact and think that it in fact exists independently of us out in the world. It just seems to be a happy coincidence that what qualifies as a rule of logic is that which seems to make sense to the human brain and what is disqualified is that which seems absurd.
I mean if you have a cause you must then have an effect, and X cannot be both P and not P right!!! That just doesn’t make sense!!!
In fact (I’m using the term figuratively) logic appears to be more a corollary of language than anything else. Language rules which are of course governed by the particular arrangements of our brains.
So what is a metaphor (or a simile, or even an analogy) that expresses the absurdity of inventing a system of rules and then finding absolute truth by testing everything against these rules and forgetting the fact that you invented them in the first place?
More on this as it develops…
A reply written by me made about my hypothesis that the laws of human logic are not fixed, universal and ‘immutable.’
If logic is not immutable, how can we know that logic is wrong?
We won’t know what’s wrong. At least not with any certainty. That is the point of the brain in the vat problem. You don’t come to a belief about either proposition with any certainty, you are left with uncertainty, something propositional logic has a real problem with.
Does this mean you jump off a bridge or dismiss tautologies because they are not certain? No, just as scientific knowledge is uncertain but still functional so too can all areas of human thought be seen as a cloud of light amongst the darkness of possibility.
If logic is not a universal truth and law unto itself, the walls of cognition do not come crashing down. We can admit that the axioms of mathematics may be expressions of human cognition that are vastly different from possible alien constructions which we cannot comprehend, but within the system we have constructed they are fundamental. Exploring the nature of that relationship is far more intriguing than postulating our discovery of the mysterious transcendent mechanics of the whole universe.
This is an objection to Richard’s argument as to why the ammoralist is compelled by reason to be moral, Why be moral? over at Philosophy, Et cetera.
What would be incoherent is to fail to desire a food you admit you would enjoy eating just as much, unless some further reason can be given for the differential treatment.
I think there are cases where arbitrariness is not equivalent to irrationality. I talk about this in my essay.
However I absolutely agree with you in that there is a definite place for reason in assessing our desires as I talk about here.
Let’s say I love guitars except red guitars. (Which happens to be true)
For our desires to be rational that must cohere or accord with our beliefs about the world. So if I believe that red guitars are actually the best guitars in the world, it is not rational that my desire doesn’t accord with my belief, (unless there was some other reason why I didn’t like red guitars).
To whatever extent we can know, the beliefs which our desires are based on should accord with the world to be considered rational.
So if I believe that painting the colour red on a guitar actually alters the sound of the instrument and that belief is false (which I think it is) then my aversion to red guitars is irrational.
But what about the idea that our desires and moral judgements are reducible or entailed by first order principles. In order for them to be rational they must accord with those principles (which is similar to a coherent desire set).
So if my aversion to red guitars is derived from a aesthetic aversion to all red ‘status symbols’ then it is coherent. (I don’t like red cars either but I don’t mind red T-shirts).
If I did like red bass guitars then there would need to be a reason why I regarded lead guitars and bass guitars as meaningfully different in this context. Otherwise my desire is not in accord with my principle (i.e. the belief or desire about red status symbols).
Of course the aversion to red status symbols may itself by reducible to a further belief or desire, but as long as it is consistent that the desire is rational. And yet it is arbitrary in the sense that it might have been any other colour were it not for the cultural and perhaps physiological associations with the colour red.
But I don’t think you are using arbitrary in this way, you are right to use it in terms of inconsistency.
So if the amoralist cares about the welfare of his friends but not anyone else, there may be a consistent explanation for this. The amoralist may only care about the people who are loyal to him et al. If he doesn’t care about family member who are also loyal to him, just because he is related to them (and no other reason) then we can charge him with irrationality.
However an intelligent amoralist (a sociopath like Hannibal Lecter) may very well avoid these inconsistencies in his desires and beliefs. Certainly even the most moral people may have irrational desires in some aspect of their lives.
So if the amoralist is consistent in his application of a lack of empathy, (and perhaps his disregard for his future self) then how is his immorality irrational?
In this essay I will outline what I regard as the most successful attempt to explain the evolution of altruism. I will then illustrate some of the effects that an evolutionary account of moral behaviour has on cognitivist and noncognitivist theories of ethics. I will argue that evolutionary theory does not undermine Hume’s noncognitivism but supports it and casts doubt on Kantianism.
Evolutionary Explanation of Altruism
Altruism is a term that is used in a wide range of ways. In its strictest application it is taken to mean those actions an organism performs from which they derive absolutely no benefit nor reward. This is a needlessly narrow definition. In The Selfish Gene Richard Dawkins (1976 p.2) argues the mechanics of evolution take place at the level of the gene and that the natural selection favours genes that maximise inclusive fitness, that enable it to reproduce the greatest number of viable offspring possible. With such an ostensibly selfish account of human behaviour the problem of explaining the existence of altruism emerges. Within this context altruism need only mean when an organism (human or non-human) acts to promote other’s interests to the apparent detriment of their own interests and this is how altruism will be used in this essay.
There have been different theories that attempt to explain altruistic behaviour such as David Barash’s account in The Genetic Basis of Kinship. Barash (1976 p.63) argues that sacrificing our own interests for our genetic relatives is consistent with evolutionary theory because such actions increase the chances of genes shared between relatives. This explains nepotist altruism directed to family members known as ‘kin selection’ but not altruism directed at non-relatives as is commonly seen in human societies and advocated by many normative theories.
The problem of altruism is reconciling evolutionary theory with the existence of organisms that promote the interests of non-relatives (or extremely distant relatives) to the apparent detriment of their own. The most successful evolutionary account of this ‘non-related’ altruism has been ‘reciprocal altruism’ introduced by Robert Trivers in The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism. Trivers (1971 p.83) argues that it can be advantageous for an organism to incur a cost to their own life (eg. giving up food, or risking death) for another non-related organism if the favour is repaid (so long as the benefit of the sacrifice outweighs the cost.) For example a person who saves their neighbour’s child from drowning may increase the chances of their own children’s survival if the action is reciprocated, or intends to be reciprocated.
Reciprocity is important, because natural selection would select against those organisms that would help organisms irrespective of any benefit to themselves. Dawkins (1976 p.197) uses the example of a species of bird that is parasitized with a fatal type of tick. A single bird can remove the tick from every part of its own body except its head where it cannot reach. Consequently the bird can only ensure ongoing survival if another bird removes the tick for it.
An “indiscriminate altruist” or “sucker” as Dawkins calls it, is a bird who will remove the tick from anyone who requires it. A “cheat” is a bird who will happily let birds remove the ticks but will not reciprocate. Dawkins claims that natural selection will surprisingly favour the cheats over the suckers because they can spend more time gathering food instead of grooming other birds. Of course, after the suckers become extinct the cheats will also become extinct because the ticks are not being removed. However the ‘reciprocal altruist’ or “grudger” is the bird that only grooms birds that reciprocate and remembers and punishes those who do not. That is they will reward organisms that cooperate and punish those that cheat. Given the suitable balance (Mackie, 1978) of grudgers, suckers and cheaters, the grudges will be favoured by natural selection.
This explains why evolution will favour those genes pre-disposed to reciprocal altruism. Peter Singer (1994 p.58) notes that this “helps to explain why reciprocity is found amongst all social mammals with long memories who live in stable communities and recognize each other as individuals.”
Richard Dawkins’ bird model is an evolutionary example of Robert Axelrod’s Tit for Tat theory (1984) that supposes that the most rational course of action for an iterated prisoner’s dilemma is to co-operate at first and then punish uncooperativeness and reward cooperation respectively.
It is worth noting that this account of altruism does not explain why many varieties of human morality idealize the character of a person who sacrifices themselves entirely for the good of others and not for any apparent reciprocal benefit. It is also not obvious how this account of reciprocal altruism can explain aspects of human behaviour such as forgiveness. However I will not be exploring that in this essay and will suppose that this account of altruism is equivalent to an account of human moral behaviour.
Impact on Meta-Ethics
What implications does this evolutionary account of altruism have for meta-ethics? In Evolution and the Basis of Morality, Colin McGinn (1979) claims that if morality is to have any independent authority it needs to be associated with reason as cognitivists such as Kant do and not with desires as noncognitivists such as Hume do. This argument suggests that if moral truths can be derived from reason in the vein of Kant’s categorical imperative (1949) then the validity of these truths is not brought into question by the evolutionary explanation of moral behaviour. The argument posits that these truths are objective and independent of human cognition so it is therefore irrelevant how organic the process of our acquiring these truths may be.
McGinn suggests that the evolution of morality can be understood if we consider morality as inseparable from reason, if we suppose, “that the Kantian thesis is right that rationality implies moral sense” (1979, p.165). He postulates that reason has endowed human beings with a host of advantages, and morality is one of the consequences of being a rational being. Morality can therefore be considered a spandrel analogous to the weight of the human brain. The weight of the brain may not itself be evolutionary advantageous but it is a necessary by-product of the cognitive functioning that is advantageous (Gould 1991, p.53).
For McGinn morality is not itself evolutionary advantageous and is at odds with the process of evolution. He thinks this is because morality entails altruistic desires that contradict inherited characteristics “whose evolutionary function, as predicted by gene selection theory, is confined to benefiting the individual and its kin.” His argument can be formulated syllogistically:
P1. Morality entails altruistic acts to non-related organisms
P2. Evolution forbids altruistic acts to non-related organisms
P3. Desires are derived from EvolutionC. Morality cannot be derived from desires
According to McGinn, morality can therefore only be derived from reason, because it has the power to “incline us in a direction contrary to that designed by the laws of natural selection.” The problem with this is premise two has been proven false by the evolutionary explanations of altruism I have detailed above.
McGinn is questioning the authority of the noncognitivist account of morality on the grounds that it fails to be impartial. McGinn is assuming a cognitivist account of morality in assessing the credibility of noncognitivism. He says, “the requirements of morality are such so as to be acknowledged by any rational being” (1979 p.164). The question begging fallacy can be clearly illustrated below.
P1. Morality requires impartiality /objectivity (cognitivism)
P2. Noncognitivism describes a non-objective moralityC. Noncognitivism is false
McGinn advocates a Kantian conception of morality because it has the necessary objectiveness to rise above the subjective motivations selected for by evolution. If we suppose that our desires to do good are all reducible to evolutionary pressures, a Kantian would be forced to conclude that it is impossible to conduct actions of any moral worth or credibility.
For Kant an action done out of inclination or from your particular emotional constitution has no moral worth. (1949 p.126) It is not moral for a person to undertake kind acts because he is inclined to do so as a consequence of his sympathetic constitution. Kant suggests that an action can only have moral worth if there is no direct inclination to do so and if it is done purely out of duty. Kant thinks tt is not enough that we may claim our motives are derived from reason, for our inclinations still affect our will. Therefore only a person with no inclination or an aversion to do good can conduct actions of moral worth.
The argument may be formulated as follows:
P1. All human beings have evolved inclinations that motivate us to do good
P2. A person with inclinations that motivate him to do good is not moralC. All human beings are incapable of being moral
Even if we concede that not all people have beneficent inclinations, this absurdly restricts all moral worth to only those people with amoral or immoral inclinations.
The Authority of Evolutionary Baggage
It may be argued that a noncognitivist account of morality lacks authority because the subjective desires upon which it is based are just ‘evolutionary baggage.’ This means that my intuitions about caring for my family may just be the strategy of my genes to optimise their perpetuation.
But on what basis is their authority really being questioned? Hume doesn’t suggest that we have complete control over our desires. He admitted that the feelings upon which our moral judgements are based are “certain instincts originally implanted in our natures” (1888 p.121).
Does the influence of evolutionary pressures on our subjective moral judgements undermine their authority? If you agree that morality should be impartial then you already think Subjectivist morality has no authority. If you are a Subjectivist then you think moral judgements have authority to the extent that they convince us. You would think that moral judgements have authority with respect to others only to the extent that they share our sentiments. The evolutionary explanation of our ‘instincts’ would not perturb Hume who says that:
“A man naturally loves his children better than his nephews, his nephews better than his cousins, his cousins better than strangers, where every thing else is equal. Hence arise our common measures of duty, in preferring the one to the other. Our sense of duty always follows the common and natural course of our passions.”
Hume 1896 Part II. Section I.
The problem that an evolutionary account of morality raises is that unless we postulate the existence of objective moral truths it makes moral judgements arbitrary. Our passions are determined by an arbitrary, blind and random mechanism. If the evolution of our species had altered it is likely that our moral intuitions would also have changed accordingly.
Hume
If you accept Hume’s thesis that all moral judgements are ultimately reducible to a desire or passion, then the contents of moral judgements are arbitrary. But, so are the contents of human societies and behaviour, they too are products of evolutionary processes that could have turned out differently.
They are arbitrary in the sense that evolution could have made alternative phenotypic variations if circumstances were different. Suppose that the human reproductive cycle was the same as that of a rodent’s. That in order to prevent regular mass overpopulation we would have to kill those offspring who were genetically weakest. It stands to reason that are moral intuitions regarding the obligation towards children would be markedly altered.
However, moral judgements are not arbitrary in relation to how they correspond to human evolution. My intense desire to survive correlates to the evolutionary predisposition for genetic perpetuation. Human intuitions could not just be anything; they are adaptations that favour the survival of human genes.
It is irrational to get rid of my desire to survive just because my motivations are arbitrary. My intense desire for survival may just be a stratagem of my genes for optimal perpetuation, but that itself does not make it rational to commit suicide.
Evolutionary psychologists hypothesize that a fear of spiders is one example of evolutionary baggage. Our species happened to reside in an environment where spiders were responsible for many fatalities. Consequently those persons with genes that predisposed persons to fear spiders and restrict their contact with them would be favoured by natural selection (Oshman, 2001).
It is rational to dump the evolutionary baggage of a fear of spiders, not because it is arbitrary but because it is unwanted. Having terrifying arachnephobia is no longer needed when we are quite able to distinguish between harmful and harmless spiders and for the most part no longer reside in an environment where they pose a great threat to our survival.
My morality is as arbitrary as my left hand; through a random process of genetic mutation it has evolved as an adaptation because of its ability to increase my genetic fitness. Morality is still useful just like my left hand, and it is as irrational to stop using morality because of its origins, as it is to stop using my left hand. Of course I can stop using my left hand if I want to. The arbitrariness of moral distinctions only serves to undermine a cognitivist theory of ethics that supposes that moral judgements are not arbitrary but objective laws independent of human cognition.
The question of retaining moral judgements then is reduced to a question of desire. Do we want to utilise judgements whose agenda is the ongoing survival of the species (at the level of the gene) through a system of rewarding co-operation and punishing cheating?
Hume wrote “’Tis not contrary to reason to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” Thus for a noncognitivist like Hume, it is neither irrational nor rational to be moral. Consequently, there is no rational basis on which to criticize the amoralist who does not care to make or be bound by moral judgements.
It may be argued that my desire to submit to the figments of evolution is itself influenced by those figments. However I am supposing that the influence is not so great that I am unable to freely make a choice. If this were not the case, the debate over making moral judgements would be moot as the ability to be moral and make decisions it premised upon moral agency, upon freedom of will.
Kant
The only way to be objectively moral and avoid ‘evolutionary baggage’ from tainting our moral judgements seems to be to devote oneself completely to reason in a Kantian fashion. However, it is not a forgone conclusion that reason is above evolutionary pressures. In The Evolution of Reason, William Cooper argues, “the laws of logic emerge naturally as corollaries of the evolutionary laws” (2003, p.5).
If you accept Kant’s thesis that moral judgements can be conducted entirely without emotion, and suppose that the faculty of reason itself is not littered with evolutionary baggage, then it is rational to formulate your moral judgements in this way. Reason will allow you to perceive ethical reality and rise above the delusions of our biological influences. For a cognitivist like Kant it is rational to be moral, because morality itself is a consequence of the laws of reason.
However, there are serious doubts about how the human brain fashioned through the organic process of evolution can happen upon the ability to perceive a logical reality independent of human experience. Konrad Lorenz writes:
“Kant’s statement that the laws of pure reason have absolute validity, nay, that every imaginable rational being, even if it were an angel must obey the same laws of thought, appears as an anthropocentric presumption.”
(Quoted in Cooper, 2003, p.16)
If Cooper is right in insisting, “logic is not extra-biological but wholly emergent from evolutionary processes” (2003, p.13) then noncognitivists like Kant are left with no human faculty with which to escape the arbitrariness and subjectiveness of human behaviour and moral judgements.
Evolutionary theory would debunk moral realism, but not moral theory as described by Hume. Philosopher and Neuroscientist Joshua Greene writes, “we can understand our inclination towards moral realism not as an insight into the nature of moral truth, but as a by-product of the efficient cognitive processes we use to make moral decisions.” (2003, P.848)
In this essay I have outlined what I regard as the most successful attempt to explain the evolution of altruism. I have illustrated some of the effects that an evolutionary account of moral behaviour has on cognitivist and noncognitivist theories of ethics. I have argued that evolutionary theory does not undermine Hume’s noncognitivism but supports it and casts doubt on Kantianism.
References
Axelrod, Robert (1984) ‘Tit for Tat’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.88-92
Barash, David (1979) ‘The Genetic Basis of Kinship’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.63-6
Cooper, William S. (2003) The Evolution of Reason, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
Dawkins, Richard (1976) The Selfish Gene, Oxford: Oxford University Press
Greene, Joshua (2003) ‘From neural ‘is’ to moral ‘ought’: what are the moral implications of neuroscientific moral psychology?’ Neuroscience, Vol. 4, p.847-50
Gould, Stephen J. (1991) ‘Exaptation: A crucial tool for evolutionary psychology’ Journal of Social Issues, Vol. 47, p.43-65
Hume, David (1888) ‘Reason and Passion’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.118-23
Hume, David (1896) A Treatise of Human Nature, Oxford: Clarendon Press,
http://oll.libertyfund.org/ToC/0213.php (accessed 19 May 2005)
Kant, Immanuel (1949) ‘Pure Practical Reason and the Moral Law’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.123-31
Mackie, J.L. (1978) “The Law of the Jungle: Moral Alternatives and Principles of Evolution”, http://www.royalinstitutephilosophy.org/articles/mackie_jungle.htm (accessed 19 May 2005)
McGinn, Colin (1979) ‘Evolution and the Basis of Morality’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.164-6
Ohman, A., et al. (2001) ‘Emotion drives attention: detecting the snake in the grass’, Journal of Experimental Psychology: General Vol. 130(3) p.466-78
Singer, Peter (1994) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University
Trivers, Robert (1971) ‘The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism’ in Peter Singer (ed.) Ethics, Oxford: Oxford University Press p.78-88
In Invincible Ideas Richard argues that some propositions are ‘invincible’ because any attempt to defeat them is self defeating or “the act of opposition is itself an instance of what is being opposed.”
I find this line of reasoning very intriguing and at least ostensibly persuasive. Of course with Philosophy one is always very wary of an argument that concludes that its conclusion is indefeasible. Even in the case of apriori ‘truths’.
Take the example of argument. Can one successfully argue that argument is worthless? Don’t they commit the very sin they are railing against? Well, yes they do. Let’s replace argument with conflict, one can argue that conflict is worthless and what we really should be doing is cooperating with one another. But in the process of arguing this, you are going to be coming into conflict with people who do not share this view. Suppose you happen to convince everyone of this view, the conflict would consequently disappear and if things worked out, your argument might be validated.
Replace conflict back with argument again and suppose that we are now living in a world without arguments and it is much better for it. Doesn’t the fact that it required the proponents of the theory to argue for it, contradict the very thesis they are arguing for? Well, not really because the statement “all argument is worthless” is probably a misinterpretation of their thesis. And something along the lines of “the world would be better without argument” may be a more favourable interpretation.
The act of arguing for this thesis is itself a Wittgensteinian Ladder, to be climbed and then disposed of after you have reached its conclusion. I don’t think that we have to use the elements the thesis opposes to reach its conclusion automatically disqualifies the argument.
This shouldn’t be confused with obvious hypocrisy, such as “violence is absolutely wrong so I will kill anyone who is violent.” I think that is the key, is this idea of absolutes. If someone believes that conflict is absolutely wrong, then naturally if they are to act in accordance with that principle they must not conflict with other people, even to convince them of that principle.
The most famous example of this kind of self-referential fallacy is, “there is no truth.” One cannot affirm this statement is a truth without contradicting themselves. This causes many people to conclude that it is hence true that truths exist, this is to commit an either/or fallacy.
As a truth subjectivist, I am committed to the idea of “there is no truth” without affirming it as a truth. For if I am committed to this idea I must accept that it is possible that anything is true, even the possibility of there being truths.
Thus, perhaps there is no truth emerges.
People often respond that if nothing is true then why should I bother with your argument for that conclusion. But this is myopia, for they cannot see Wittgenstein’s Ladder leading them to a different point of view.
Consequently, I reject the notion that there philosophical ideas that are invincible to defeasibility whilst affirming the possibility of their existence.
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