The Future of Moral Science

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I think that's an excellent example of both the strength and weakness of how science could answer moral questions.

Given a postulate or starting assumption, there's really not much problem. The assumption in the above proof is that survival (having an evolutionary advantage) is morally good. Easy, given that assumption, to apply game theory or any appropriate scientific application and figure out a conclusion.

Okay, but is the assumption true? If it is, does it apply only to humans, or to all species, or to humans and some other species but not all (not to fleas, ebola and smallpox, let's say)? Those are the questions I can't see being answered by "science," or if they are, what happens if the answers aren't to our liking? I suspect the best theory in the world that says smallpox has as much a right to its niche as we do, will be ignored.

Or we could start with another postulate, that it's moral to minimize total suffering. Many people would consider that reasonable.

Or that it's moral to cause the most net pleasure (pleasure minus suffering), thereby allowing great suffering as long as it creates more pleasure. Not too far from how one raises children, forcing them to attend school and behave, in the hopes it will pay off with a better future.

Starting with either of those assumptions, one could scientifically figure out how to achieve it.

But again, how does one prove those assumptions are the correct ones?

Nope. You have it upside down.

We label things as moral because they are imposed on us by evolution. For example: "Humans -- Don't kill and eat your newborn (immoral) because the species will go extinct if you do (Natural Selection)".

"Morality" is derived from our evolutionary history. We, as semi-rational, partly-thinking beings extend these "rules" elsewhere because of the fuzzy, random-walk nature of how they were derived and the unintended consequences thereof. Killing baby seals is "bad" because they have forward facing eyes (just like babies); killing baby spiders is "good" because . . . um . . . err they aren't "nice".

Our concepts of pleasure and hurt, right and wrong, and etc are just those that optimally advance the growth of the human race (and to a considerable degree that of all living things -- little paramecia flapping their little tiny flagella to get away from the hot spring water in their pond do it because at the synaptic level it feels bad to boil and feels good to get away). Natural Selection provides the mechanism.

Natural Selection has nothing to do with progress or being better. It is just about filling in as many ecological niches and possible and satisfying the "selfishness" of genes.

PS. Smallpox has no more "Rights" than we do. There is no such thing as "Rights".

IMHO of course.

 

[Apathia]

I quoted "A gramme is Better than a damn" from Brave New World.

Wowbagger's reply: "No, this is way less insidious than that!"

I'm glad it's on the low end of the insidious meter. Though once the biological roots of morality are completely elucidated, could not departures from morality be treated medicinally. I'm sure we'll find ways to treat Alex's antisocial behavior.

Meanwhile something has to be done about these vegan friends of mine. Hey, we evolved as omnivores, therefore we ought to eat meat. Also our stomachs were evolved by hunter-gatherers, so rice shouldn't be on the menu.

I'm just singing in the rain.

 

[Dani]

Wowbagger: I remember debating with you some time ago in a similar thread, and I'll be glad to participate here again.

You state that science can answer moral questions. In order to better understand what you're claiming, can you provide a couple of examples of the types of questions science is/will be able to answer? How would you formulate those questions?

Oops, nevermind. I just saw that you already answered the question previously posed by Cornsail.

 

[Senex]

I call Poe.

quality Poe

 

[angrysoba]

Nope. You have it upside down.

We label things as moral because they are imposed on us by evolution. For example: "Humans -- Don't kill and eat your newborn (immoral) because the species will go extinct if you do (Natural Selection)".

"Morality" is derived from our evolutionary history. We, as semi-rational, partly-thinking beings extend these "rules" elsewhere because of the fuzzy, random-walk nature of how they were derived and the unintended consequences thereof. Killing baby seals is "bad" because they have forward facing eyes (just like babies); killing baby spiders is "good" because . . . um . . . err they aren't "nice".

Our concepts of pleasure and hurt, right and wrong, and etc are just those that optimally advance the growth of the human race (and to a considerable degree that of all living things -- little paramecia flapping their little tiny flagella to get away from the hot spring water in their pond do it because at the synaptic level it feels bad to boil and feels good to get away). Natural Selection provides the mechanism.

Natural Selection has nothing to do with progress or being better. It is just about filling in as many ecological niches and possible and satisfying the "selfishness" of genes.

PS. Smallpox has no more "Rights" than we do. There is no such thing as "Rights".

IMHO of course.

I really think this is a spectacularly bad argument and it is one of the few areas where I agree with Sam Harris that evolution doesn't provide a very good basis for morality. After all species survival is not considered by most evolutionary biologists to drive evolution so your characterization of the mechanism of natural selection appears to be factually incorrect. Furthermore if you take into account what humans are evolved to do then you will see it includes a number of things that we generally don't consider to be good things. Men have an evolutionary predisposition towards wanting to propagate their genes far and wide yet do we usually consider infidelity to be wrong or right? Similarly at least some evidence suggests rape is an evolutionarily useful strategy at least from the point of view of the rapist. Does this make it "moral"? And ultimately we are all products of evolution but it doesn't follow from this that everything anyone does is as moral as each other. This is known as the naturalistic fallacy; it's natural therefore it is good.

 

[Gord_in_Toronto]

I really think this is a spectacularly bad argument and it is one of the few areas where I agree with Sam Harris that evolution doesn't provide a very good basis for morality. After all species survival is not considered by most evolutionary biologists to drive evolution so your characterization of the mechanism of natural selection appears to be factually incorrect. Furthermore if you take into account what humans are evolved to do then you will see it includes a number of things that we generally don't consider to be good things. Men have an evolutionary predisposition towards wanting to propagate their genes far and wide yet do we usually consider infidelity to be wrong or right? Similarly at least some evidence suggests rape is an evolutionarily useful strategy at least from the point of view of the rapist. Does this make it "moral"? And ultimately we are all products of evolution but it doesn't follow from this that everything anyone does is as moral as each other. This is known as the naturalistic fallacy; it's natural therefore it is good.

Natural Selection only "drives" the filling in of ecological niches. The split over the eons into animals and plants and their phyla and into species and subspecies is an artifact of this filling in.

There is not one vector involved. The Universe is a messy place. Evolution by Natural Selection is driven by random variations and not all results are "good", many are neutral, some inconsequential, but all are interconnected.

Human evolution has selected against rape at both a genetic level and, to some extent, on a sociological level. Societies in which rape is prevalent do not survive.

Game Theory does explain this because co-operation provides an advantage to the co-operators -- even though it may be slight.

Swans, among other creatures, mate for life. Is this morality?

Morality is a human label. If not a human construct.

 

[Wowbagger]

I don't have time to respond to individual posts, right now. I just wanted to let everyone know that I read every post, here, and have taken them in as constructive criticism where appropriate.

No, this is not a Poe. (But, perhaps in a few months, or so, I might just post something deceptively similar to this, as an actual Poe. )

To summarize my summaries of my responses: I think we all agree, at least, that science can break moral feelings into its components. I, however, suspect almost all of those core components are not subject to change, no matter how hard someone tries to change them. It would be almost (but not quite) like breaking the laws of physics.

Once more people recognize that, then prediction #1 is bound to be fulfilled, because all other forms of "morality" would be considered invalid.

And, if morality's existence happens to take the form of consequentialism, then prediction #2 gets a chance to be fulfilled, as well. What other form could it take on, that we would still recognize as morality? Even principles change, over generations, to achieve better consequences.

 

[epepke]

Men have an evolutionary predisposition towards wanting to propagate their genes far and wide yet do we usually consider infidelity to be wrong or right?

Now, this is an interesting question in particular, though a fairly narrow one. I, personally, am against monogamy. Though I don't have any objection to other people's doing it, if it's natural for them, it's not for me. I would also go so far as to say that most people who claim to be monogamous aren't, and they come up with behaviors such as "serial monogamy," which I personally find destructive and dishonest.

But what of it, really?

There may be many evolutionary reasons for the expectation of monogamy and moral judgments therefor. They would be complex, but we're humans. We're used to that in practice, and I think that the more intelligent evolutionary biologists are or should be used to coming up with models. I think it would be premature to dismiss it without thorough investigation. There might, for example, be an evolutionary advantage for a woman to assert ownership over a man's reproductive capacity and ensure that he doesn't father children with other women. It's certainly true that a lot of women do this. The question is whether there is some actual reproductive or survival benefit to it. There may be, though it may be obsolete.

 

[Tassman]

Nope. You have it upside down.

We label things as moral because they are imposed on us by evolution. For example: "Humans -- Don't kill and eat your newborn (immoral) because the species will go extinct if you do (Natural Selection)".

"Morality" is derived from our evolutionary history. We, as semi-rational, partly-thinking beings extend these "rules" elsewhere because of the fuzzy, random-walk nature of how they were derived and the unintended consequences thereof. Killing baby seals is "bad" because they have forward facing eyes (just like babies); killing baby spiders is "good" because . . . um . . . err they aren't "nice".

Our concepts of pleasure and hurt, right and wrong, and etc are just those that optimally advance the growth of the human race (and to a considerable degree that of all living things -- little paramecia flapping their little tiny flagella to get away from the hot spring water in their pond do it because at the synaptic level it feels bad to boil and feels good to get away). Natural Selection provides the mechanism.

Natural Selection has nothing to do with progress or being better. It is just about filling in as many ecological niches and possible and satisfying the "selfishness" of genes.

PS. Smallpox has no more "Rights" than we do. There is no such thing as "Rights".

IMHO of course.

I'm sure you're right. I seems clear to me that morals are instinctive derivatives of self-preservation and procreation and are a consequence of natural selection. We can even see see the precursors of morality among the higher social animals, e.g. chimpanzees with their sense of fairness and awareness of the rules of the group and their place in it.

Such moral would have been naturally built into us, because they were beneficial to the breeding and survival of our species as social creatures. Although, over time, they have been modified according to need and our increasing understanding of human nature. E.g. we no longer think slavery is good.

 

[Pup]

Nope. You have it upside down.

We label things as moral because they are imposed on us by evolution.

In general, I agree. Think I've posted elsewhere, saying that if bees could explain their morality, they'd say that sacrificing one's lifetime of labor for the good of the hive was the pinnacle of goodness and morality.

But the problem is that that takes away from all the fun. The postulate is already pre-determined and is exactly what was assumed in the example: the overall survival of humans is by definition good--or at least the survival of one's own genes and closely related ones, the priority lowering as the genes are diluted.

Though evolution itself doesn't have a goal, the continued survival of the fittest genes can instill goals in individual creatures, and humans can therefore feel as if their goal is whatever makes their genes survive best, whether it's empathy, cooperation, sacrifice for the better good, domination, collecting the maximum mates, or whatever. We can start right now applying game theory or whatever scientific analytical tools we have to figure out the answer.

Keeping the question general as I did, not tied to our pre-determined human viewpoint, makes it more interesting because it's unanswerable without saying whose morality one is analyzing scientifically, or in other words, whose benefit is this morality for. If what's moral is labeled based on needs inherited through evolution, it's perfectly possible to label things as moral or immoral based on the evolutionary needs of smallpox and to analyze the result scientifically. We humans just don't like to see the world that way.

 

[Pup]

Men have an evolutionary predisposition towards wanting to propagate their genes far and wide yet do we usually consider infidelity to be wrong or right?

Good example of the complexity of survival. If a man fathers dozens of random children, leaving them all for the mothers to raise because he's off fathering more or simply doesn't have the hunting-gathering skills to support all those women and babies, his genes might be less apt to survive in the long run, than a father who has one or two mates, but invests his hunting-gathering time helping to raise those children to breeding age.

So there are two competing drives, and one sees two competing themes in society, pressure for fidelity and pressure to sire children promisculously. This is why all that complex game theory stuff is involved.

Similarly at least some evidence suggests rape is an evolutionarily useful strategy at least from the point of view of the rapist. Does this make it "moral"?

Very similar to the above. A rapist may have more children, but fewer who survive.

And ultimately we are all products of evolution but it doesn't follow from this that everything anyone does is as moral as each other. This is known as the naturalistic fallacy; it's natural therefore it is good.

Going way out on a limb now with speculation that I'm not even sure I agree with... Is the naturalistic fallacy itself inbred by evolution? In other words, do we label things according to what is best for our genes' survival, and just say some happen to be natural but still okay, while others are examples of the naturalistic fallacy and therefore are not good despite being natural?

We can certainly change our application of the naturalistic fallacy. Gay penguins doing the dirty would have been a prime example of the naturalistic fallacy (natural but not good) circa 1950; today they're used as an example of natural and good. Clearly, we haven't evolved significantly in a generation. That's an example of random social change based on a variety of already-existing traits shifting priority. But it shows how arbitrary and flexible "natural" and "good" are, based on other unrelated definitions of morality.

 

[epepke]

Very similar to the above. A rapist may have more children, but fewer who survive.

Or it may be a niche strategy. I've argued before that homosexuality may have evolved as a niche strategy. Or they might be totally unrelated or what Stephen Jay Gould called a "spandrel." Maybe rape isn't an effective reproductive strategy but sociopathy, which is related, can be an effective survival strategy under certain conditions.

Human behavior is complex. We're not talking fruit flies here. Even fruit flies are pretty complex.

 

[PartSkeptic]

How about a couple of practical applications to see how science would analyze a situation.

Situation 1. Here in South Africa we have a president (Zuma) who had R250 million rand spent on renovating his private house by the government. When the newspapers found out, the ruling party said that they were security upgrades. Since he spent time at his house it was national security point.

Zuma claimed he did not ask for the refurbishments at his Nkandla home, which included a helipad, a swimming pool, an amphitheatre, a refreshments shop, a cattle enclosure and a chicken coop. He claimed he knew nothing about what was going to be done or what it would cost.

He has been defended by the ruling party at all turns.

To ordinary rational people this is immoral. The man derived enormous financial benefit through devious means, and then lies about it. South Africa is a democracy and Zuma is voted in.

How does science even begin to analyze such a situation?

Situation 2. The police are corrupt and collect fines by any means that can. They photograph your vehicle and then send a ticket with a false speed on it. Is it moral to ignore the fine? (You cannot argue it in court. You must pay the fine first, and it just never gets a hearing date).

Situation 3. In Zimbabwe Mugabe claimed that the colonial whites stole the land from the black natives. So he says that the government can take the land from the successful white farmers and give it out to poor blacks. Is that moral? (It is not successful as he has ruined the economy).

Situation 4. You accept cash to avoid value added tax. You do so because "every body does it". Also the government spends exorbitant amounts of money on themselves, and wastes the taxes, so you feel "justified". When found out do you admit it, or do you lie?

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Here is a short, simple and dirty version of what is in part at stake.

Someone: Science can be used to do morality.
Someone else: Yes.
A "pain in the ***" skeptic: No.
The problem is that you can't use the scientific method to show with scientific evidence that neither the yes nor the no is either true/right/correct or false/wrong/incorrect.

The rest is cognitive relativism and amounts to that between these two words: Created and discovered morality is created in brains and not discovered as say gravity. In other words morality involves choice, subjectivism/relativism and it ends here:
"Man is the measure of all things: of things which are, that they are, and of things which are not, that they are not" - Protagoras.

The rest is always in effect the following claim: For good/bad or any other positive/negative I can do those words just as objectively as e.g. gravity. And the counter argument for us, the skeptics, is that you confuse your thinking as being objective in the same sense as e.g. gravity. That is it.
It is not objective for anyone who claims to the effect of either good or bad that it is objective. It is subjective and precisely because it is subjective the following is possible:
Someone: This is good and not bad.
Someone else: No, it is bad and not good.

With regards

 

[epepke]

Here is a short, simple and dirty version of what is in part at stake.

Someone: Science can be used to do morality.
Someone else: Yes.
A "pain in the ***" skeptic: No.
The problem is that you can't use the scientific method to show with scientific evidence that neither the yes nor the no is either true/right/correct or false/wrong/incorrect.

Well, that applies to Sam Harris, and we should have figured that out at least since Hume. I always thought it was funny that Hume got so famous for an observation that I thought so trite, but I guess it was needed for some.

Still, science could be used to study morality and figure out what the hell it is. People think they know what morality is, or at least they say they do, but I think that's probably just the morality talking. That is, one of the things morality does to a brain is convince it that it knows morality. That would be a very interesting thing to try to study.

I don't know, but there's a possibility that this thread might have something to do with what is possible to do.

 

[Tommy Jeppesen]

Well, that applies to Sam Harris, and we should have figured that out at least since Hume. I always thought it was funny that Hume got so famous for an observation that I thought so trite, but I guess it was needed for some.

Still, science could be used to study morality and figure out what the hell it is. People think they know what morality is, or at least they say they do, but I think that's probably just the morality talking. That is, one of the things morality does to a brain is convince it that it knows morality. That would be a very interesting thing to try to study.

I don't know, but there's a possibility that this thread might have something to do with what is possible to do.

It has nothing to do with Hume, in western philosophy it has been out there since Protagoras

Yes, you/I/we can study morality using science and it works in an indirect manner, because it can inform us about more ways than one to understand what morality is. But it doesn't solve the is-ought problem. The only way to solve the is-ought problem is to stop believing that there is at least one objective case of it is so, which can be turned into an subjective ought.

 

[Wowbagger]

Well, the presentation is over. All I will say l, for now, is that it seemed to go over better than I thought it might!

 

[Dani]

Ok, now I hope to contribute with something useful and fresh, unlike with my first post.

The change in attitude has a couple of steps to it:

The first step is already very much covered: Figure out HOW science can help answer moral questions.

The second, more difficult, one is: Have it recognized, by scientists and philosophers, as this is the ONLY reliable, effective way to answer such questions, going forward. Everything else is outdated and/or delusional.

You mean that science is the only way to introduce the necessary data to help answer moral questions, or you mean that science is the only way to directly answer those moral questions?

If it's the former, I agree in the broad sense. If it's the latter, I disagree for a simple reason: most moral questions are ill-defined for the purpose of finding a factual, objective answer. In practice, though, this doesn't have any effect on our obvious and trivial (when it comes to these discussions) broad agreements on morality.

The evidence that we can do this comes in a few forms:
* Historic Trends: Violence is going down, poverty is going down, intelligence is going up, etc. This is largely driven by the first step. Forces against this, from those who deny the recognition in the second step, seem to be getting weaker, over time; giving more fuel for Prediction #1.

* The discoveries the evolutionary origins of our morality, seem to point in the general direction of Prediction #2. If we take survival of the genes as a key foundation (or proto-morality, as I called it in an earlier thread), it becomes clearer that "well being" has its roots going all the way down there.
(Of course, most of our history reserved this for family members, we have discovered reciprocal altruism among strangers can help us survive even better! So, our moral concepts move onto the well-being of a greater number of people, over time.)

Let's agree with your evidence. If (as it appears to be) your claim is that science can directly answer moral questions in general, your evidence is not really evidence of what you claim, and that's pretty obvious: the historic trends you refer to have happened without a "moral science" to directly answer moral questions. Science is certainly improving at being able to inform us of the outcomes of certain actions, and surely has influenced these historic trends. No one seems to be denying this.

Yes, this is more along the lines of "discovered".

If it was merely "chosen", it would not be very scientific, would it?

I might be wrong, but I think what Sophronius was trying to ask is if you meant descriptive as opposed to normative. From what I gathered, you're making the stronger claim, so in a way you're really saying "chosen", but that's probably not the best term to use in this context. Let's say, figuratively speaking, "chosen by science". Sophronius, am I wrong?

For example, corporal punishment: Should students be beaten as an act of discipline?

This is the type of question I was referring to as ill-defined for the purpose of finding objective, scientific answers.

In practice, your answer might not differ at all from my answer, including the use of scientific data. The difference is that the question itself, as many other moral questions, lacks specificity from an objective point of view. My guess is that our difference has a lot more to do with how we structure what we mean than with what we ultimately mean.

I think my approach has more logical coherence in that it better accounts for the meaning of the different terms at use and its logical implications. For example, I seem to be far more demanding than you about the fact that scientific questions need to be of a descriptive nature, avoiding any type of unnecessary ambivalence. "Should", without an explicit and specific goal within the question, conveys a subjective and ambivalent meaning that makes a question scientifically useless.

To me, your claim sounds a lot like "science can answer ambivalent questions".

You're seeing a paradigm shift. I'm seeing lack of clarity. All else being equal (as it seems, in practice), I'll stick with clarity.

Well, I could be wrong about #2! If all the data from science starts moving away from consequentialism, and onto something else: That something else would be the foundation of morality. And, I would only be correct about Prediction #1.

How would you collect that type of data when consequentialism would be a priori in the method you're proposing? In other words: how would you falsify the idea that consequentialism is the only approach if consequentialism is embedded in your method? An example of how you would solve this?

 

[Beerina]

1. Game Theory is intrinsically part of our Universe.
   
2. Evolutionary_game_theory^WP explains why co-operation has a slight evolutionary advantage over non-co-operation.
   
3. Co-operation is "morality".
   
4. QED.

Free-choice cooperation works well. People in the past have noticed this and tried to force cooperation, not realizing why it works. It is no longer cooperation.

 

[angrysoba]

Natural Selection only "drives" the filling in of ecological niches. The split over the eons into animals and plants and their phyla and into species and subspecies is an artifact of this filling in.

Err...really? Is it not more broadly that within species individuals who can propagate their genes more than others within their species will flourish and the ones that produce fewer of their own genes will be weeded out?

There is not one vector involved. The Universe is a messy place. Evolution by Natural Selection is driven by random variations and not all results are "good", many are neutral, some inconsequential, but all are interconnected.

Indeed which means it makes little sense to simply watch what happens in evolution and declare the winner "moral". Yet that seems to be the upshot of all this talk of evolutionary normative ethics.

Human evolution has selected against rape at both a genetic level and, to some extent, on a sociological level. Societies in which rape is prevalent do not survive.

I would like to see some evidence for this claim.

Besides, whether or not a society will exist in the long-term is hardly a useful metric for determining (in most cases) what counts as a moral or immoral act.

Game Theory does explain this because co-operation provides an advantage to the co-operators -- even though it may be slight.

Swans, among other creatures, mate for life. Is this morality?

Morality is a human label. If not a human construct.

And? I am not even sure what these random observations have to do with the subject at hand.