Evolution's Morality

Yesterday, I discussed some issues that I had with the concept of "God's Morality,"

Today, I want to talk about some of the same types of problems that exist in a different set of moral theories - those theories that, instead of speaking about God's Morality, speak instead about Evolution's Morality.

Both theories have pretty much the same problems.

A member of the studio audience pointed me to a posting in Pharyngula on this topic.

(See: Pharyngula: Marc hauser - Where Do Morals Come From?)

One of the themes was how people resolve moral dilemmas. He began with a real world example, the story of an overweight woman in South Africa who insisted on joining a tour exploring a cave, and got stuck in the exit tunnel, trapping 22 people behind her. Do you sacrifice one to save many?

Morality has nothing to do with bizarre never-in-a-lifetime-for-the-vast-majority-of-people situations such as these. Morality is designed to deal with the countless everyday encounters between everyday people. They have to do with the lie told a boss to get out of work, the effort to push a stuck neighbor's car out of his driveway on a snowy winter morning, and the decision to return the power tool you had borrowed before moving across country rather than take it with you (though it is a real nice power tool).

We do not design morality to deal with situations in which overweight women get stuck in caves, (or runaway trolly cars threaten to run over people) simply because these are not everyday situations. It would be a waste of effort to mold people's desires so that they act a particular way in these types of situations - particularly since molding a person's desires will also have effects in countless every-day situations as well.

These types of situations may be interesting objects of study if one is curious about how the brain works, but they are not interesting to the study of morality.

Here is one of those way-off-base assumptions that I was talking about.

Imagine a group of people calling themselves 'astronomers'. What they do is they take a group of people and hook them up to machines and asking them questions about planets, asteroids, black holes and dark energy. They declare that one of the most interesting astronomical questions to study is the age of the earth. So, they focus specifically on these questions. They delight in studying the differences between the answers that creationists and scientists give to these questions, and noting what parts of the brain seem to be activated as each group thinks about the process. They note all sorts of interesting regularities and patterns as they think about these questions.

All the while, they claim that they are astronomers, and what they are studying is the age of the earth.

In fact, they are mistaken. They are not astronomers, they are brain scientists. And what they are studying is not 'the age of the earth' but 'thoughts about the age of the earth'.

And it is an absurdity to insist that these are the same thing.

In the realm of astronomy, people seem to be able to tell the difference.

In the realm of morality, a lot of have blinded themselves to this absurdity.

Another absurdity is the idea that when one studies trolley problems or anything similar, that this involves the study of morality at all. These are areas so far out on the fringe of morality that it is possible to argue that they are not within the realm of morality at all.

These are cases where people have a habit of applying moral concepts in a realm where moral concepts do not apply. They are like trying to talk about sunrise and sunset from the point of view of the sun itself.

Morality is an institution created to handle the countless interactions people engage in every day. It is not meant to deal with bizarre situations that very few of us will ever encounter. I have countless opportunities each day to walk off with property that does not belong to me, to lie for personal advantage, or to be lazy and disregard the harmful actions that my actions may cause to others. Others have countless reasons to instill in me an aversion to walking off with their property, to lie, and to disregard the harmful side effects of my actions.

When you take this system and apply them to bizarre virtually-never-in-a-human-lifetime scenarios, you find that they give no clear answer. They were not meant to give a clear answer these types of situations. It is a waste of effort to mold morality to create clear answers in these situations. It is hard enough to mold morality to fit our countless day-to-day interactions.

One of the questions that I would like to ask these researchers is, "So, according to your research, is the proposition, 'Homosexual acts are immoral' true or false?"

This is how we tell the person who is studying thoughts about the age of the earth from those who are actually studying the age of the earth. The person studying thoughts about the age of the earth does not give us any data about the age of the earth - any data at all that answers the question, "So, according to your research, is the proposition, 'The earth is 6,000 years old' true or false?"

They can't help us precisely because they are not studying the age of the earth.

And Marc Hauser and his ilk are not telling us anything about where morals come from. We can't answer that question unless we study morality itself, and we are not studying morality if, what we are studying instead, are thoughts about morality.

I am not saying that they cannot provide useful scientific data. There can collect scientific data by the bucket full. This is genuine scientific data - and the people who conduct the research are doing genuine science. They are not studying morality, but they are still doing science. This is true in the same way our people studying astronomers and creationists concerning the age of the earth are not studying the age of the earth, but they are still doing science.

You are not studying the age of the earth unless you are studying something . . . anything . . . that tells us whether the age of the Earth is 6,000 years old or not. You are not studying morality of homosexuality, for example, unless you are studying something . . . anything . . . that tells us whether homosexual acts are immoral or not. If all you can tell us is that some people judge it to be immoral and others do not - and how their brains differ, then you have given us something that is no different than the person who can tell us that some people judge the Earth to be 6,000 years old and others do not, and how their brains differ.

One of the things that I find easy to imagine is an astromer, who has put a great deal of effort into the study of planets and stars, reading about research being done by so-called 'astronomers' who study brain waves of people who are asked questions about stars, galaxies, and the age of the Earth. He reads about a swarm of people who study this stuff and who insist that they are doing astronomy and that they are discovering astronomical truths. I can imagine him rolling his eyes, as I roll mine, and saying in exasperation, "What in the heck do you think you're doing over there?"