Beyond “the Moral Instinct”
A Posts entry from Monday, January 14, 2008After reading an eight-page tract on “morality” in today’s Times, I feel as if much of the recent scientific literature on subject matter typically associated with the humanities is not only incredibly predictable, but also attempting to hide its preference for closet essentialisms. Now we have “God genes” and “love genes” to explain socially-constructed concepts—a return to phrenology.
Steven Pinker:
The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.
We see right away that this initial derivation already contains all the typical characteristics of the idiosyncrasies of English psychologists—we have “usefulness,” “forgetting,” “habit,” and finally “error,” all as the foundation for an evaluation in which the higher man up to this time has taken pride, as if it were a sort of privilege of men generally. This pride should be humbled, this evaluation of worth emptied of value. Has that been achieved?
Now, first of all, it’s obvious to me that from this theory the origin of the idea “good” has been sought for and established in the wrong place: the judgment “good” did not move here from those to whom “goodness” was shown! It is much more that case that the “good people” themselves, that is, the noble, powerful, higher-ranking, and higher-thinking people felt and set themselves and their actions up as good, that is to say, of the first rank, in contrast to everything low, low-minded, common, and vulgar. From this pathos of distance they first arrogated to themselves the right to create values, to stamp out the names for values. What did they care about usefulness!
It is amazing to think that after over one-hundred years of thought, mankind still lives in the wake of the rebellion against institutionalized Christianity. Rationality, for all of its merits, has produced little to instill hope in civilization. The coming ecological crisis will be its ultimate test. If the pursuit of “reason” fails us, what will emerge in its wake? Will there be something to emerge, pre-supposing our own survival as a species? If post-modernism constitutes such a manifestation, how can it offer itself to an imminent critique of reason that, following Marx, allows us to actually pursue a progressive, pragmatic alternative?
But what am I talking about here? Enough, enough! At this stage there’s only one thing appropriate for me to do: keep quiet. Otherwise, I’ll make the mistake of arrogating to myself something which only someone younger is free to do, someone “with a greater future,” someone more powerful than I—something which only Zarathustra is free to do, Zarathustra the Godless…
These are the goals of a new “superman.”
Alex Taylor
Most “scientific literature” seen in today’s media (not including Times articles by Steven Pinker and the like) are not written by scientists. This is one of the main problems of modern science: a complete failure to get out the right message. Most “science” we see in the media treats correlation as causation, and hypothesis as theory or fact. Pop psychology and the like boil science down to a simplified sound-bite that resembles faith. Since when is morality a subject usually associated with the humanities? There have always been psychological, soteriological, economic and all sorts of other explanations of morality (although as you go back in time the line starts to blur between scientist and philosopher). What are you trying to say with that Nietzsche quote? That “good” people who were “noble” and “high-minded” set up the artificial structure of morality? In using adjectives like “noble” and “high minded”, Nietzsche presupposes that moral behavior came about after humans had developed culture. The truth is that altruistic behavior started in simple organisms millions of years ago, because it was a good way to gather more food and defend oneself. As we evolved more developed brains, and especially the homeostatic regulatory process that eventually became our emotional system (endocrine, limbic, etc.) developed behaviors and feelings that were to our survival advantage. Social structures like retribution have clear advantages in species with good memories. There are game theory equations to calculate what kinds of behaviors will develop in what percentages in the population (given points systems that would be next to impossible to accurately produce for a given environment) in Steven Dawkin’s Selfish Gene. Twin studies and epidemiological studies have shown that certain personality traits are affected by certain genes. There is a huge body of evidence showing all of this. I do understand and agree with what you’re saying about people taking it too far and trying to account for social structures that are clearly human constructs and not created by genes - i.e. God. But also realize that there has to be some basis for a religious experience - it has neural correlates. The structure of your brain is a result of your genes and experiences (and nutrition and drug use) and so all of those things have to be present for you to have what would typically be considered a normal religious experience. If you don’t have certain passageways in your thalamus (mainly used for sex) then the rhythm of ritual chanting or song will not appeal to you in the same way as if you do. I’m not saying that there is a God gene, but that if you take away a certain gene the qualitative experience of God will not be the same. I dig what you’re saying about climate change. It’s time for science to articulate its position, rid itself of religious symbols (listing off awards and degrees of speaking professors, Dr. Sanjay Gupta, the aura of the lab coat) and practice discipline and integrity. I think that you think that modern science says that there is a “God gene” is completely understandable and indicative of institutional science’s failure to act and articulate as it should. The impossibility of theories of morality that don’t take biology and evolution into account means that it’s all the more imperative that good science is understood by everyone(example of something that doesn’t make any natural sense: “It is much more that case that the “good people” themselves, that is, the noble, powerful, higher-ranking, and higher-thinking people felt and set themselves and their actions up as good, that is to say, of the first rank, in contrast to everything low, low-minded, common, and vulgar. From this pathos of distance they first arrogated to themselves the right to create values, to stamp out the names for values. What did they care about usefulness!”) Reason isn’t everything, and it’s not well spoken, but why you gotta hate?
The Author
Bryan Klausmeyer
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