Some people on this board believe that humans are hard-wired to exhibit certain moral tendencies. Typically they say that humans are hard-wired to obey moral rules that contribute to social cohesion, such as rules against murder and theft. As I see it, this claim is obviously untrue, so I’m wondering if anyone can explain why they believe such a thing. But first let’s look at the arguments in favor of it.
Argument from animal behavior. The argument here is that some animals exhibit behaviors that we can identify as being similar to morally-driven behavior in humans. Hence those behaviors must supposedly be encoded in the genome of those animals, and encoded in our genome as well.
Human moral behavior is not similar to animal behavior, however. To see this we need only look at the animal most closely related to us, which is the chimpanzee. Jane Goodall has observed chimpanzees in the wild eating their own babies. We, on the other hand, do not eat our own babies. Indeed, if we went into a restaurant and saw baby on the menu, we would be quite displeased.
Argument from universal behavior among humans. This argument is that human beings from all times and places exhibit certain moral behaviors. Hence those morals must be innate and encoded in the human genome, since it’s not possible that thousands of different social groups all over the globe would develop the same morality separately.
There is no universal moral rule, however. The most basic moral rule in our society is against killing, but it’s far from universal. The Mongols under Genghis Khan happily killed tens of millions of people. The ancient Aztecs gladly sacrificed thousands of human victims. In ancient Greece and Rome, many parents killed their own female children because males were more valuable to the family. It’s estimated that a quarter to a third of all girls were killed in this manner. In some places on earth today, authorities are still struggling to stamp out this type of infanticide.
Argument from behavior towards an in-group. According to this argument, humans have no hard-wired rules for treating other people in general, but we do have hard-wired rules for treating members of a certain social group to which we belong.
However, we have no innate rules towards being moral to anybody. The previous example of parents murdering their own children demonstrates as much. If genes don’t force human beings to leave their own children alive, then surely genes don’t force us to do any nice thing for anybody.
Argument from hard-wired except when not. This is the idea that the human brain is hard-wired for certain moral rules, but that the process of being raised in a society where the norms are different can override those rules.
This, however, is a contradiction in terms. If some aspect of human behavior can be readily modified, then it is not hard-wired by definition.
IIRC Goodal reported on one chimp that did kill babies, but not her own, and it was not a common occurrence, I remember seeing the documentary of the case and the incident looked more like the description of a serial killer, a good example, Goodal said, of chimps also being capable of suffering mental issues like humans do. What it was common was to see chimps hunting and killing other species like colobus monkeys, but normally they do not eat their own babies.
The hardwiring is genetic, and there always will be genetic variability. If you believe anything is hardwired, it is the desire to reproduce, right? Yet many people, both gay and straight, do not have this desire. Our morality being hard-wired in a similar way doesn’t mean that every person is moral.
As for killing, it is murder, not killing, and those in the tribe are the ones the prohibition concerns. I hope you are not saying anyone claims pacifism is hardwired.
The first is in our genetics. We are hard wired to be CAPABLE of being moral, but we are also hard wired to survive. The only reason, you and most other humans beings are generally nice to each other (not trying to kill or injure) is that we are comfortable enough. There is enough water to go around, enough food and means of keeping ourselves amused. This brings me to the second reason. If you remove any of those basic human needs that is when “immorality” kicks in. Our need to survive overrides that need to be moral.
Since we are “fat and happy” we will continue to be moral. There is no need for an outside source of morality. Of course even though something is hardwired or instinctive that does not mean it can not change. Say my genes were set for me to be 6 feet tall but I did not get the nutrition required to grow at a normal rate. I will never reach my “genetic height”. It is the same with hard wired behaviors. If they are not reinforced (good parenting) and the conditions I live in are not favorable (famine, drought, war) then my moral sense will not reach its full potential. That does not mean I never had them.
This does not mean that every person who has bad parents and live in a place with war and drought is going to be immoral. It just sets a scene that makes it more likely that you would be willing to do a lot more, than most of us, to survive.
That some humans steal and kill (and, I guess somebody somewhere is eating a baby right now) doesn’t challenge the “hard-wired” argument because the rest of us are disinclined to tolerate such behaviour. And I suggest “[t]he most basic moral rule in our society is against killing” is incorrect. I would substitute “incest”, and even that’s not universal.
Anyway, to cut to the chase, is this rather specious argument of yours supposed to lead to the conclusion that morality comes from God? I’m not aware of any universal moral rules even among people who profess to believe in God.
I think humans are hard-wired to be dependent on other humans. From that need, each individual can (and does) distill some moral codes about how humans ought to treat each other —usually heavily influenced by the expectations of others about what one will end up believing in along those lines.
As a general rule individuals behave according to their own distillation of those rules, although under some circumstances some individuals perceive themselves to be in a “situation” where they are already not being treated as they “should” be and therefore may permit themselves a wide latitude in violating those codes while still “believing” that that’s how it ought to be.
Humans are complex creatures who’s behavior is shaped by an inscrutable and highly individual mix of genetics and environment. This mix leads to everything fromDoctors Without Borders to serial killers. Is this really controversial? I’m honestly not sure what the OP is getting at. He seems to be refuting an argument nobody has made.
I suspect he’s leading up to “atheists eat babies”.
Our moral instincts are a collection of urges that structure our social behavior. However, like all urges, different individuals will possess them to a greater or lesser extent, and they are in constant tension with other instinctive drives.
For example, I don’t think anyone would argue that desires for food, sex or sleep aren’t instinctive. However, at any given time the desire for one can override the desire for the others. So the fact that sometimes some people don’t act on their moral instincts is not evidence that they don’t exist.
Furthermore, HOW we respond to our moral urges is profoundly shaped by the culture we grow up in. We all may have a rough sense of “fairness” – that people should get what they deserve – but how that plays out in different cultural contexts can vary wildly.
The argument from genetics is actually helped by a certain amount of moral variability. If we were hardwired to a specific morality, this would be bad from a genetic fitness perspective, since certain situations might occur that might wipe out your entire tribe if they all acted the same. If instead you are genetically predisposed to have some variablity on your life outlook, there is more of a chance that some of your genes will survive if you and others with your genes encounter a different-than-expected situation.
And of course, as others have pointed out, it would be even more ideal if your moral outlook, and more importantly, your actions regardless of morality, were adaptable to your environment. And that is indeed the case. Humans moral outlook can be entirely explained by a certain amount of inborn variability modified by the environment.
I’m sorry, but this is rather weak sauce. You seem to be attacking some straw man who believes that one’s genetic composition entirely, 100% determines their behavior in every circumstance.
Human moral behavior is not analogous to animal moral behavior because chimpanzees have been observed to do immoral things. But the wide variability in chimp (and human) behavior isn’t in dispute. All that we need for this analogy to work is a propensity for chimps to behave in a number of ways that are, broadly, akin to human moral behavior. It simply won’t do to point out a chimp killing her babies and say “Nope, chimps have nothing akin to a moral sense.”
There is wide variability throughout human cultures concerning what particular behaviors are moral. But this doesn’t mean that humans don’t have a hard-wired propensity to act “morally”, it merely says that the full content of many specific rules are not set in stone and are subject to cultural refinement. We seem to have a broad and overwhelming aversion to murdering others without cause; this aversion is not inconsistent with parents killing infant daughters because males could support the family better.
We have no propensity toward behaving morally towards an in-group, because genes do not “force” parents not to kill their infant children. But genes don’t “force” us to behave in any way, any more than they “force” us to have particular physical or mental traits – if someone’s leg is cut off then his genes aren’t “forcing” him to have no leg; if someone learns calculus then his genes aren’t “forcing” his brain to suddenly possess this knowledge; and similarly, we are shaped by our environment and circumstances to such a degree that it’s as silly to say “Jenny killed her baby so we have no hard-wired propensity to moral behavior” as it is to say “Jenny had her leg cut off, so we have no hard-wired propensity to have two legs”.
Human behavior is variable, so we have no hard-wired moral behavior. But, by my comments in (3), this is prima facie silly. Further: Genetic hard-wiring can’t give specific rules to follow in every outcome of the uncountably infinite collection of circumstances in which we find ourselves. We have only propensities to behave in certain ways, subject to our ability to interpret any particular circumstance, colored by our level of intelligence, our upbringing, our cultural context.
(I take it you disagree with the thrust of Lewis’s Mere Christianity?)
It’s either hardwired or woo. Take your pick. It’s really that simple.
And by hardwired, let’s be clear that it’s predisposed and not predestined. The social environment plays a big role in how the hardwiring manifests itself, but you don’t need woo to explain human behavior.
How so? We, in the modern day United States, have an aversion to killing babies up close and personal. (Though not so much of an aversion to having our government do that in foreign countries.) But as I mentioned, there have been some societies in the past where human killed a large percentage of their babies without a second thought. There are some such societies today. Hence there is no universal moral rule against killing babies, or even against killing one’s own babies.
If there is a hardwired morality, it wouldn’t be a universal one but a tribal one. Don’t kill members of your own tribe, but go ahead and kill members of that other tribe.
What you’re saying, if I interpret it correctly, is that moral hard-wiring does exist and determines morality in a majority of humans but not all. However, the idea that “the rest of us” (i.e. a majority) are always disinclined to to tolerate killing and theft is untrue. I’ve already given several examples of societies where there was and still is widespread tolerance of murder. Similarly, there have been societies where theft was perfectly accepted, for instance among the native peoples of some South Pacific islands. And, as you remarked, even incest was accepted in some places.
My point is simply this. There is no universal moral rule. By which I mean, first, there is no rule accepted by all human beings, and second, there is no rule accepted in all human societies even if it’s rejected by a few individuals.
In cultures and in eras where infant mortality neo-natal infanticide does not carry the same shock value, and it’s done before bonds with the infant are established. Even so, it’s done counter to our wiring. This is esepecially true when artificial cultural pressures like religion are involved. Nothing can cause people to subvert their natural, empathic and nurturing instincts like religion.
This too. Ethical impulses are not (usually) universalized. We feel them for thiose we imprint as “us,” and not for “them.” That’s why Americans (who are mostly Christians, by the way) don’t have any particular aversion to the slaughter of innocents in other countries as long as they can be imprinted as an “out” group.
Your response is that you split our moral hard-wiring into two categories. On the one hand, you say, we are wired to struggle for survival and ignore morality in cases where basic physical needs are at stake. On the other hand, when we have sufficient food and water and other basics, then we are hard-wired towards moral behavior.
However, within either circumstance there is still wide variability in human behavior. I see no evidence that being in a situation of desperate need causes During the Holocaust those in concentration camps were certainly not fat and happy, yet many showed incredible displays of solidarity and generosity towards each other. So I see no evidence that such circumstances make it significantly more likely that humans will become immoral.
On the flip side, I see no evidence that people who are fat and happy have any large propensity towards moral behavior. A point that one of my professors emphasized a great deal was that in the West, we have a bias against the poor which leads us to assume that any movement which spawns violence, indecency, or barbarism must arise from poverty. (Witness the number of people who insist that Islamic radicalism arises from poverty.) However, when we study history, we often find that the most radical and violent movements actually arise from the middle class. So it’s perfectly possible for individuals and sizable groups to be comfortable in the financial sense and yet also be entirely immoral.
How is behavior shaped by an inscrutable mix of genetics and environment distinguishable from behavior with no genetic component? Or, to use skeptic language, how is the hypothesis falsifiable?