I recently read the statement, “I don’t know about anyone else, but I find the entire idea of an ‘instinctive morality’ highly disturbing. If we are to shrink and over-simplify our entire moral code down to the existence of a single instinct, we do great harm to its purpose and application,” and I found it disturbing, especially considering the intelligence of the fellow who wrote it.[1]
Not because I disagree. Indeed, the notion that moral codes are nothing more than lists of “goodness genes” is quite disturbing and inaccurate to basic observation. A simple instinct should not vary in the manner that human morality does in its basic constitution from culture to culture. Knocking down this strawman, however, should certainly not mean that morality is necessarily supernatural in origin.
My purpose here isn’t to suggest some new model of how morality and altruism might have evolved; that’s been done and done again by people much smarter than me. I merely wish to point out that saying morality evolved does not mean saying that it sprang fully codified from the unreasoned goo. Human morality is a secondary function of biological drives mediated by a sophisticated brain in a variety of learned, cultural contexts. There’s no reason to see that as a diminution. There’s no reason to see that as anything but perfectly obvious and apparent.
I rather like how Craig Stanford put it in his The Hunting Apes:
“The history of the study of human cognition has been like the peeling of an onion, each layer of which is more cannon of divine intervention that falls beneath the weight of natural explanation. The outer layers come off early; the earth is not the center of the universe and humans are not the preordained centerpieces of the evolution of life. At the onion’s heart is the idea that he human psyche is simply an outgrowth of the evolution of the organic brain. Most of us have no trouble with the first claims, but many still have qualms about the center of that onion.” (p. 164)
The center of the onion is the next, great frontier of scientific exploration. Let’s not surrender it to supernaturalism when there is no good scientific or moral reason to do so.
[1] . That is a quote from this blog post, which I’m not really responding to in its entirety as it’s mostly philosophy and that’s not my forte. I’m just concerned with this specific scientific point. Needless to say, though, Nietzsche probably isn’t the best authority on sociobiology, and I for one have never encountered the term “herd instinct” in any evolutionary literature.
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February 10th, 2008 at 4:02 pm
Oh no! I wasn’t meaning to say that science had absolutely nothing to do with morality, nor was I necessarily trying to “prove the existence of God” with it. (I think that the Argument from Morality is only one piece of a very complicated question/answer session. Alone, it is nothing. When combined with other perspectives, the possibilities are surprising.)
The primary point I tried to drive home with my essay was that the philosophical questions of morality are not negated by sociobiology. I firmly hold that there is more to morality than sociobiology, and this “other side” is dealt with in philosophy. I think it’s illusory to focus on only one side of the equation. Certainly there are benefits to be had by examining the biological impulses that contribute to our moral natures; on their own, however, they cannot provide us with all the answers. I still think there is a place for all our disciplines – from the Humanities to the Social Sciences to the Physical Sciences and beyond – to come together and develop some sort of cohesion. I don’t think we necessarily negate each other.
If I didn’t make this clear in my essay, I am sorry. My statement “I agree … that “The Law of Human Nature” has a biological element (the keys on the keyboard). It is not, however, biology. It is philosophy.” would be better phrased:
I affirm that “The Law of Human Nature” has a biological element (the keys on the keyboard). It is, on its own, not fully competent to address all sides of the Moral Question, the deeper implications of which belong to philosophers.
February 10th, 2008 at 7:53 pm
Alright, like I said, I’m not really critiquing the primary thrust of your essay. I just used that particular quote a launch point to say that the sociobiological approach to understanding morality doesn’t demean it. Sorry if I’ve misused you.