Moral Relativism

Relativism is, of course, the great bete noire of Leo Strauss. I’m generally disinclined to blame everything on Straussianism, but my guess is that this has contributed to the role that relativism plays in post-war conservative accounts of modern U.S. liberalism.

particular action is right or wrong is relative to the circumstances in which it happens

I thought that liberals had gotten a name for being relativists, not because of a tendency to see particular actions as right or wrong relative to the circumstances of their happening, but because of a tendency to see the actors as morally blameworthy or praiseworthy relative to the circumstances of their upbringing or situation in life.

For example, liberals tend to see white collar criminals who want an extra million dollars as more morally blameworthy than regular criminals who rob convenience stores for a few hundred dollars. This is on the grounds that the white collar folks generally have been taught to do better, and therefore ought to do better; whereas the stockingheads have not been brought up in the way they should go and therefore deserve some slack.

Conservatives, on the other hand, seem contemptuous of the notion that some people ought to be held to a higher ethical standard than others. (Note, for example, their widespread reaction to Abu Ghraib: “Saddam did much worse things!”)

I don’t even know where to begin.

There is “moral relativism” and other varieties of relativism as they exist and are meaningful in the context of rigorous academic disciplines in which these technical terms are used.

There is also “moral relativism” and other varieties of relativism as they exist and are meaningful in the context of popular culture and what I guess I’ll call “popular academic culture” in which these terms are casually (though often yet quite earnestly) used.

If people arguing about “relativism” are unable to distinguish one of these contexts from the other, or, worse, deliberately muddle the distinction for rhetorical purposes then, well, they’re wasting my damn time.

Which is almost always.

keith, everyday use of “relativism” includes (i) between culture relativism, (ii) nihilistic individual relativism (that kids, at least pre 9/11, tend to espouse but contradict), (iii) post 1960s relativism about cultural issues usually including some mix of a principle of non interference and muddy autonomy (of the “i do not approve, but…” kind which prohibits outright meddling but frequently circumvented by gossip), (iv) various identity relativisms such as tribalism, nationalism, classism, etc.

all of which are different from metaethical or anthropological relativist theories without precluding philosophical analysis of common use. MY discusses both in his post. if your interest is only captured by one, ignore the other. the whining is getting old.

My point was that the conservatives have a legitimate complaint in the pop-cultural context and thus a technical, academic defense of relativism as not being what conservatives claim it is is is inaqequate at best and disengenous at worst.

Similarly, the conservatives may be smearing technical, academic relativism with the braod brush of the complaints against pop-cultural relativism either because of ignorance or deviousness…but, either way, it’s damn annoying.

Fifteen years ago I read a book of essays, a defense of relativism, that had as its central contention in its introduction that “no one seriously asserts the sorts of extreme relativism that are the cultural conservatives caricatures of ‘relativism’—say, the position that “nothing is knowable, there is no moral distinction possible between actions, there is no ‘truth'”. But, hell, when was the last time these people ever talked to one of their TAs? Because undergraduate classes of all varieties are filled with people making in complete earnestness such extreme and unworkable claims. We are not talking Hume here, we’re talking crude relativism as a convenient and blunt instrument of simpleminded criticism of any infelicitous idea.

Like campus PCism, this vulgar relativism is a legitimate problem the conservatives have opportunistically siezed upon as an issue, distorted, amplified, used as the boogeyman. Nevertheless, that they’ve done so doesn’t mean the problem doesn’t exist.

On the 700 Club moral relativism is exemplified by thinkers like Nietzche (spl?). Although who knows what most people on the right think moral relativism means since I doubt they read Nietzche, they just know they should hate it.

Medium-term lurker, first time poster.

Some conservative condemnations of moral relativism may be aimed at partly-understood deconstructionist theories of morality which tend to be aired by academics. It is not just over-eager undergrads who spew such non-sense, but tenured faculty as well, even if they do not behave or expect others to behave as if they theories they espouse were true.

On a more gut level, I think certain conservatives think of certain liberals as a class of ‘Byronic’ rebellious anti-heroes who (wrongly, in their opinion) seek either to escape (individualistic relativism) or tear down/reshape (constructivist relativism) the existing moral order.

I think the myths and stories of the left are probably more full of such anti-heroes than the right’s myths and stories, which often seek to portray their heroes as restoring/reenacting lost values of some Golden Age. Indeed, that’s almost the definition of the difference between Progressive and Conservative. Those who proclaim ‘our country sucks because we’ve always neglected the problem of slavery/women’s suffrage/social justice’ are swimming upstream against voters natural self-love of their heritage.

I suspect the vast majority of conservatives in the US at least are either limited govt. Lockean or nonlimited gov’t theistic in their moral reasoning. They subscribe to a moral code that is relatively unvarying in time or place. (Ignoring of course that the interpretations of Locke or the Bible have changed over the years — those other, earlier interpretations were obviously wrong, and our current ones are obviously right.)

It think it would be fair to say that, a few non-theistic ‘national greatness’ conservatives aside, most conservatives tend to be hostile to Hobbes (in domestic politics at least), Rousseau, and others whose moral thinking is more communitarian or constructivist.

How would our Rawls scholars characterize Rawls’ metaethical stance in Justice as Fairness and Law of Peoples?

_non-cognitivists and expressivists are both maintaining positions that other people would regard as the dread moral relativism — the idea that there isn’t *really* any right or wrong apart from people’s feellings_

Matthew: The idea you articulate after the dash is _emotivism_, which is just one among many versions of non-cognitivism or expressivism and a version which most non-cognitivists or expressivists would disown these days.

Matthew said this: “People seek to find a shared moral intuition and then argue about what follows from that intuition. Grounding the intuition in some absolute moral truth is unnecessary in practice because the two parties agree.”

Whereupon, on another board, I said this:”Where the intuitions are in conflict, and the argument is based on the conflicting intuitions, you will have war. If seeking dialogue, look for those intuitions that are shared, and try to build agreement from there.”

And I was gently chided thus:”but I should note that your should watch using intuition. Intuition is a word reserved for the mysterious force of the mind that gives us a certain knowledge or foundation for a knowledge process. It’s precisely ‘intuition’ that most Kantians uphold as the source of reason’s moral authority. Values are something else: they lead to an intentional stance, a desire, an opinion, not knowledge that one is justified in this.”

Later on, I think I used “values” and “preferences” interchangably, but then ran across otsuka’s note on emotivism.

Now I actually think this precision is useful, and pekka’s post very clear, but I fear there are more of us lazy and misguided moral thinkers than he supposes.
…
Jefferson had one set of white-skinned children as servants to another set of white-skinned children, in the same house, treated disparately by reason of their mother’s race or their legitimacy. I find him appalling, even by 18th century standards.

I have no idea what ‘meta-ethical’ means and probably shouldn’t post here.

Anyhow: is there really any doubt that ‘morality’ as we know it is mostly an evolved set of taboos imposed on early primitive societies by their elites? Isn’t it quite obvious that morality is relative – the original taboos were all about survival of a small tribe often in very difficult circumstances – different circumstances for different tribes. So, in one society it might be immoral to have more than one wife, while in another it could be immoral to have less than five.

So, unless you are a religious person who believs that his brand of faith is the only correct one, you just have to be moral relativist. Right? What am I missing?

Oh, and to answer abb1’s question (although there are those on this thread far more qualified than I to do so) let me reproduce his/her “argument” with a few word substitutions and see if that makes the point…

“Anyhow: is there really any doubt that ‘science’ as we know it is mostly an evolved set of taboos imposed on early primitive societies by their elites? Isn’t it quite obvious that scientific facts are relative – the original taboos were all about survival of a small tribe often in very difficult circumstances – different circumstances for different tribes. So, in one society it might be immoral to think that the sun resides at the center of the solar system, while in another it could be immoral to think that the earth does.

“So, unless you are a religious person who believes that his religion’s view of science is the only correct one, you just have to be a scientific relativist. Right? What am I missing?”

asg,
science is different – it employs the ‘scientific method’ with observation, theory, experiment and so on. It’s universal. It’s different.

Web,
Survival strategy is the origin of morality – I believe this is what I said, only you expressed it much better.

IOW, at this point of time morality is a dogma based on some very old obsolete survival strategy. People indoctrinate their children the way they themselves were indoctrinated.

The current dogma is only loosely related to a survival strategy that would make sense these days. Take abortion for example: to waste a potential child would be a real terrible thing to do if you lived in a small vanishing tribe, but in today’s China forced abortion may be necessary for their society to survive.

If, indeed, it’s based on survival strategy (or, perhaps, ‘prosperity strategy’), how can it be absolute? It’s relative on so many levels, everything in your environment should have some effect on your morality.

It’s bad for your health to eat pork and drink alcohol in the hot climate – so it becomes a taboo, and later it becomes ‘immoral’, shameful. But it’s fine and even healthy thing to do for people who live in colder places – so, their morality says nothing about it. Unless you drink too much alcohol, of course – that’s immoral.

A convenient litmus for the above discussion is current concern for the forthcoming Iraq elections wherein the outcome may easily prove hostile to US interest.

it remains to be seen how conservative moral authoritarians will react should Iraq elections, perceived as a moral good, prove alien to US longterm policy objectives.

In the latter case, conservatives will find themselves confronted with a morally relativist conundrum of their own making.

My point, of course, is that the entire course of the Iraq war has been one based on policies that prove morally relativist, guided by the ambiguities of public opinion, not on principle. War, by definition, imples a suspension of moral absolutes.

‘One man’s terrorist is another man’s freedom fighter’ = species of moral relativism?

jp wrote:

` War, by definition, imples a suspension of moral absolutes.’

I think this last claim is pretty far off the mark. Many morally absolutist theories of morality have a framework for judging jus ad bello (just wars vs. unjust wars) and jus in bello (just methods of war-fighting). This goes beyond religious absolutism. A utilitarian-of-rights is arguably a moral absolutist if those rights are non-relative, and, depending on empirical facts, people did and do argue for the war on that basis.

Dubious, you are correct, I should have phrased that as:

I don’t think anybody here would want to argue…

here pertaining to the enlightened people commenting on this blog ;)

Just a bit of pedantry: pekka has it wrong regarding relatavistic judgments of mass. Modern relativity theory treats mass as a constant in all reference frames. Einstein defined a quantity called “relativistic mass” equal to gamma*m, where gamma is a relativistic function that depends on the velocity. Einstein did this in order to preserve Newton’s famous equation for momentum:

p = mv

However, physicists later decided that the concept of relativistic mass was useless and instead treat mass as an invariant, even in non-inertial frames, and change the definition of momentum to compensate. A better example, if you want physical relativity, would be ‘velocity’. There is no such thing as the absolute velocity of an object, only its velocity in a particular reference frame.

“Relativists might contend that relativism offers the best explanation of descriptive relativism. This contention would be undercut by relativism’s failure to explain other moral phenomena that it should explain.”

pekka: Could you give me an example of the “other moral phenomena” to which you allude?

Abb1: I’ve been assuming that moral principles are propositions. An example would be the proposition that an action’s being a lie makes the action wrong, so far as its being a lie goes. (This is a defeasible moral principle. Lies which save lives seem permissible, all things considered.) This is an assumption that relativists and objectivists typically share, since both think there are moral truths and since whatever else propositions are, they are assessable as true or false. I outlined what I take to be the crucial disagreements in an earlier comment.

Your query about supernaturalism is about what (according to objectivists) makes a moral principle true (when it is true). Supernaturalism (say, some kind of theistic morality) is just one possible form of objectivism. Humbler options might look into objective facts about rational agency (e.g., neo-Kantians) or objective facts about what makes for human well-being (e.g., utilitarians).

Note that moral requirements may be objective even if they depend on the existence of humans or rational agents — so long as their status as moral requirements doesn’t depend on their being endorsed as requirements by the practices/conventions/attitudes of societies/cultures (or, in the limiting case, individuals). Compare: if someone’s in pain, that’s a perfectly objective fact, even as the pain itself is a subjective conscious state that wouldn’t exist if the person experiencing the pain didn’t exist.

JP: by “other phenomena” I was referring back to things like the possibility of genuine moral disagreement. If I judge euthanasia to be morally permissible in a certain case but you judge it to be impermissible, we seem to be genuinely disagreeing. If (as I suggested) relativism implies that we aren’t really disagreeing, it is explanatorily inadequate in this respect.

Which phenomena, precisely, should moral theories in this vicinity be able to explain? A good question — and one to which I have no full answer, or at least no neutral answer. For example: as I said, relativism is a bad basis for tolerance. Saying that this is a defect in relativism assumes the (plausible but nonetheless) morally substantive claim that at least certain forms of tolerance are morally desirable.

Seems to me that there’s a distinction here that’s probably worth making, and has almost certainly been made before, long ago, by better-versed people than me, but there are two different things people could mean by relativism: that different rules of morality apply depending the the agent who commits the action deemed moral or immoral, and that different rules of morality apply depending on who is observing and judging the actions. Call the former “agent relativism” and the latter “judge relativism” until some good samaritan gives me the real terms.

Example of agent relativism: Action X is good if A does it, and bad if B does it.

Example of judge relativism:
Action X is good according to judge J, and bad according to judge K. (and neither is really wrong about morality)

Judge relativism probably encompasses agent relativism (i.e. Action X is good according to judge J, and it is bad if done by A and good if done by B according to judge K), though if you say that judges can have different standards, but those standards have to be objective vis-a-vis agents to be valid morals, then you can have judge relativism without agent relativism.

Of course, then individualism and “judge not, lest ye be judged” sensitivity tends to turn judge and moral agent into the same person.

I think that conservatives are somewhat concerned about about both types. pg’s “soft on poor criminals, hard on rich ones” is agent relativism, and that pisses conservatives off a bit, but I think the broader concern is the judge relativism, where they’re afraid that we must say, for instance, “Female Genital Mutilation isn’t wrong according to the laws of the universe, even if it is wrong according to us.” The fear is that this will not only lead to us viewing morality as relative to the judge, but stopping making moral judgments entirely, on the grounds that it’s all a matter of perspective, so it isn’t worth worrying about.

BTW: re: pg’s example, I don’t quite get what you mean by liberals condemning white collar but not underclass criminality. It seems to me that liberals want to condemn underclass and white collar criminality (albeit without being particularly brutal in prison conditions or sentencing to either), whereas conservatives condemn underclass criminality without feeling that white collar criminality is a very big problem.

I think that one problem that conservatives have is that they want morality to be NECESSARILY the way it is. If a sentimentalist along the lines of Smith or Hume, or an emotivist like Ayer, says “our morals are feelings, which are individual, but those feelings which are fairly widespread, almost universal, constitute what might reasonably be called human nature, which might have evolved into us hard-wired, much like the desire for sugary foods (helping friends, etc),” conservatives are very concerned because morality is contingent, and ask “but then if humans had evolved differently, so that they FELT murder was right, there nothing showing that it’s REALLY wrong.”

Of course, recourse to God may or may not help put a necessary grounding on morality. See the Euthyphro. A really worried moral objectivist then uses a varient of the objection against emotivism: “if God were different, and said murder was okay, then how would we still say that murder is REALLY wrong?” If one considers God the source of morality, full stop, then murder really WOULD be right if God said so: morality would just be a construct of God’s will. But that seems to me to be every bit as relativistic as the moral views that conservatives oppose.

pekka, thanks for your lucid accounts. I still don’t see, however, how moral objectivists are not relying ultimately on substantive moral judgments as givens. To take one of your examples, let’s set up a moral philosophy that attempts to maximize human well-being. “Well-being” can be variously defined, so let’s narrow it down to happiness and assume we can define and measure this. Is it better that humans be happy than unhappy? Humans may prefer happiness, but morality is clearly not a simple matter of preference, since people frequently prefer to violate moral codes, even ones they accept in principle. In what sense, then, is happiness superior to unhappiness? The only sense that would seem to have moral weight is the moral sense, in which case our objective moral system is tautological, no?

I do think evolutionary psychology provides a way out of this. Moral ideas are an observed fact of human behavior, like language. Though the specific propositions vary, all cultures have moral ideas, again like language. If the Darwinian idea is correct, these ideas and their effects on behavior must either have survival value or be noise, like spandrels. Given that morality frequently requires people to act against their most obvious self-interest, and that it is clearly determined at least in part by culture, but is nonetheless present in all cultures, the “noise” hypothesis would seem a non-starter. Therefore, I do think some evolutionary account of morality follows from the theory of evolution itself. If human morality is not a product of evolution, why does it exist?

If morality is seen to provide survival value, I would say at the group level (embracing the minority view among evolutionists, which is group selection), morality can be defined in a way that is not tautological. One does not need to attribute moral value to survival to argue that the social and psychological dynamics that exist are those that have fueled survival. It provides a path to derive the moral from the amoral.

Is such a moral theory relativist? Perhaps not entirely. Since evolutionary psychology rejects the tabula rasa, it does not require that morality be entirely contingent on culture. It seems clear on the basis of observation, however, that morality does contain some cultural contingencies, but may not reducible to these. First of all, since all humans have a common ancestry, and therefore most of the same genes, not all abstract moral possibilities may be present as potentials in the genetic material. Secondly, certain human problems, specifically the problem of living in groups, may be universal, even while others are produced by the local environment. Of course, just because a problem is universal doesn’t mean there is only one solution to it, but it also does not mean the number of viable solutions is arbitrarily large – that is very unlikely for non-trivial problems.

Example: murder. I believe all societies have moral strictures against murder. Most or all also make exceptions (e.g., war). If human societies say that murder is wrong save when the society itself says otherwise, what societies seem really to be asserting then, is that murder must be a social not an individual choice, even though it is often an individual act. From the viewpoint of society’s survival, this makes sense. Arbitrary patterns of murder will destroy it, but it will survive better if it can strike uninhibitedly at competitors without and subversive forces within. Hence, the stricture against murder itself is not relative; all societies regard murder as a group choice (even a pacifist society is simply making one of the boundary choices). How the group decision is made, and what principles specifically underlie it, can vary considerably.

From this view morality is neither entirely culturally relative, nor entirely “objective”. Grounding morality in something that is not in itself moral also makes it possible, though not easy, to make cross-cultural moral judgments. One can ask of any moral conundrum, what solution, if generalized, would best serve the survival and prosperity (in the broadest, not merely the monetary sense) of the players as a whole.

If I may put in another word for evolutionary psychological moral theory…

Asked whether social institutions like language or money are real, our response might be ‘sort of’ since while these phenomena have physical manifestations (sound waves emerge from people’s mouths and chunks of gold unquestionably exist) it is particularistic social agreement rather than their universal physical qualities that make them language or money instead of merely physical phenomena.

They are ‘virtually’ real, in the sense that their reality is information-dependent. Some evolutionary psychologists make a similar argument for morality being ‘virtually’ real, ‘virtually’ objective.

Much like language and money have powerful effects (through human agents) on the real world, and are thus quasi-real themselves, so too moral principles.

Martin Bento – there seem to be a couple different meanings of the word “morality” involved in the issues you discuss. While you want utilitarianism to have some justification (which would of course, have to be a justification in moral terms and therefore be circular, as you correctly point out), I think most utilitarians take maximization of human well-being to be a definition of morality, rather than a particular type of action it requires.

As for the evolutionary theories you discuss, I think these are often seen as describing something like morality that isn’t the same thing. It sounds like you want to assimilate morality to the guides for action given to us by evolution, just as some philosophers (which I actually tend to sympathize with) want to assimilate truth to knowledge, which is the approximation to truth that we have.

Kenny,

Suppose I have an opportunity to steal someone’s car, but refrain because I believe such an activity would be “morally wrong” (I may also refrain for other reasons, like fearing the law, but that’s another question). This is what I mean by morality. What other meanings would there be? I realize that examined psychologically, this phenomenon is quite complex, but I’m interested in why it exists, rather than a detailed account of the subjective experience.

To take maximation of human well-being as the definition of morality still requires a definition of human well-being. There are arguments that people can “grow” through suffering, etc., and counter-arguments, so I’m not sure this solves much.

As for assimulating morality to the guides for action given us by evolution, well, morality is a guide to action, no? If it was not given to us by evolution, whence did it come? Of course, it is not the *only* guide to action evolution has given us, but given that it is present in some form in all human cultures, it would seem to be part of the basic human equipment. If morality is not the principles people describe as “moral” and the behaviors that emerge from them, what is it?

Matthew Yglesias:

“Everyone in the game distances themselves from relativism because it’s become a perjorative word.”

False. Gil Harman.

If ethics is axiomatic, then it follows that the axioms are not capable of non-circular justification, but it doesn’t follow that they are subjective. That’s just a fact about deductive argument.

Valid arguments only establish true propositions if all the premises are true. So, unless it is a contradiction to deny the proposition you are trying to establish, you will always need controversial premises.

Science is no better off than ethics in this respect, as italso requires premises that are incapable of further non-circular justification.

Pekka–

I agree that agents engaged in moral disagreement presume that moral relativism is false. But how does that prove moral relativisim is false?

Moral realism may be something everyone, even those who are theoretically opposed to it, can’t help but assume to be true. But I also can’t help but assume that classical ideas of causation and time are true, no matter how many times physics professors explain quantum mechanics to me.

Gareth, it is true that science requires axioms that cannot be established non-circularly, so these essentially have to be accepted by consensus. For example: the universal behaves according to predictable laws, which rules out miracles. Disagreement on this axiom obviously exists between the scientific and many of the religious, but not between scientists, AFAIK. Hence, agreement with the axiom defines an included and an excluded community. With morality, the axioms are controversial even among proclaimed moralists. True, societies can also divide according to specific moral beliefs, but in the modern multi-cultural world, it is difficult to avoid some arbitration between claims.

OK I’ll take a whack at it.

In a post further up you claim that all human behaviour is the product of the evolutionary process and as such must be either noise or have some survival value and that since moral behaviour is a complex, ubiquitous and transcultural phenomenon it must have some survival value. But here one has to ask why the same couldn’t be said for immoral behaviour which is just as widely obeserved across cultures and can be equally complex.
That aside, the form of morality at the group level you mention can be utterly immoral when judged by the standards of modern moral theory, which require that people abstract from just this group level and hold the same principles universally for every member of mankind.
The Nazis had a very strong group morality which manifested itself negatively against other groups and the same goes for the Hutu and Tutsi – this is an animalistic form of morality which obviously has nothing to do with what we understand by the word. Evolutionary principles like group survival and expansionism are probably rather hardwired in our brains, but it is exactly overcoming these instincts what defines a moral human being in the emphatic sense.
I therefore cannot see how one could possibly derive morality from the evolutionary process.
I think morality arose because our brains developed a bit of extra capacity, which gaves us the opportunity to communicate via signs, to reflect upon our actions and to imagine different possible worlds. It’s a product of human culture and language, dependent on a cognitive space we describe as “free will”. Sure, we somehow “evolved” as human beings to this stage, but it seems to me that cultural phenomena are far too complex to be explained via a recourse to evolutionary processes.

“But here one has to ask why the same couldn’t be said for immoral behaviour which is just as widely obeserved across cultures and can be equally complex.”

Sure, but the evolutionary advantage of immoral behavior, at least of the most serious kinds, is usually obvious – rape increases your progeny, murder eliminates competitors, theft increases resources. It is the refraining from these things that requires explication.

“That aside, the form of morality at the group level you mention can be utterly immoral when judged by the standards of modern moral theory, which require that people abstract from just this group level and hold the same principles universally for every member of mankind.”

We are trying to explain morality as such here. It is clear that morality exists as a factor in human thinking and behavior. I have asserted that it exists in some form in all cultures, and no one here seems to dispute this. Any theory of morality as such, however, has to apply to all moral systems. It cannot be restricted to one that is specifically modern, and far from universal among modern (or postmodern, if you like) people. What you are doing is taking your particular moral theories and holding that any account of morality must justify them. This is no more legitimate that it would be for a fundamentalist Christian to insist that any general theory of morality must justify a prohibition against gay marriage. You may, of course, feel that your morality is “true” morality, but, frankly, so does everyone else.

If a society held that its ruler should defend the weak in the society against exploitation by the strong, would you call that a moral position?

“The Nazis had a very strong group morality which manifested itself negatively against other groups ”

I could by all rights invoke Godwin here, but I think that meme is virulent, so I’ll pass.

There are many examples of behaviors that many would consider immoral or at least not explicitly legitimized by recourse to morality that have debatable survival value – masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, excessive use of alcohol, gluttony, drug use, homosexuality.

I’m not sure that isolating those cultural phenomena that can be considered moral, suggesting they are detrimental to survival and concluding they must be the product of a single, powerful, selected-for process which constitutes morality is going to hold. I know evolutionary psychology can be very exciting but really, the bars it has jumped are not as impressive as we sometimes think. Even phenomena as deep as face perception – face perception! – can be challenged as being an authentic product of phylogenetic construction. I’ll give you a quote from Cecelia Heyes’ paper “Four routes of cognitive evolution”:

Just as natural selection tends to be conservative with respect to respiratory pigments (e.g., hemoglobin) and revisionist with respect to respiratory structures (e.g., skin, gills and lungs), it is likely that some properties of behavior-control systems are more susceptible than others to phylogenetic change and therefore that they show greater variation across species and in the course of development…. this article [if correct] ..implies that phylogenetic construction is rare and that natural selection is generally conservative with respect to cognitive mechanisms. (p724, Psychological Review vol 110(4), 2003)

You don’t need to be an antiDarwinist to hold evolutionary psychology arguments with skepticism. No-one counters the obvious claim that the brain has structure, and this is not what the evo-psychs do – where they are distinctive is in their interest in how increasingly specific cognitive mechanisms might be wired in. But Darwinism doesn’t dictate that selection can occur unrestricted, but within biological confines, and many psychologists and philosophers feel that e-p can make claims it can’t cash under the defense that it is coherent with Darwinian theory in the abstract (i.e. it fits a model), without first establishing that it fits all the biological requirements.

That said, there is plenty of moral psych research and some of it – e.g. social contract stuff of Cosmides – seems pretty good to me. But I think the point still stands – that this might unfold our moral prejudices, but doesn’t really get us anywhere with a moral framework. In fact, those who are interested in it see it as a problem to be overcome in morality (the yuck factor in acts that we objectively agree do not meet the conditions of being immoral), rather than any kind of foundation. Check out http://www.philosophersmag.com/bw/games/taboo.htm for a fun look at this.

If you disagree with that, then you have to claim that racists, anti-semites, genocidal dictators and whathaveyou are capable of having a coherent moral value system.

And why not? Moral proposition: “individuals of my tribe (however defined) are much more precious than other individuals” is very common. First 1000 US casualties in Iraq is a big event, while Iraqi casualties aren’t even counted. It’s called patriotism, and it’s a laudable moral value. How far is it from racism and anti-semitism?

Found your site through blogspot and wanted to say hi

Alex,

“There are many examples of behaviors that many would consider immoral or at least not explicitly legitimized by recourse to morality that have debatable survival value – masturbation, anal sex, oral sex, excessive use of alcohol, gluttony, drug use, homosexuality.”

I think gluttony is easily understood as an adaptation to an unreliable food supply that is maladaptive with a reliable one. Other than that this list seems to come down to non-reproductive sex and mind-altering substances. I agree that non-reproductive sex is hard to explain on the basis of selfish genery, but I’m with the group selectionists, and population control mechanisms pose no difficulty there. As for mind alteration, it seems to exist in most cultures (perhaps the Islamic are an exception – I’m not sure if they do drugs in Saudi Arabia or have in the period of Islamic rule, other than mild mind alterants like caffeine and nicotine). Perhaps it fills a poorly understood need related to human intelligence. In most cultures, though, it seems to be contained by religion, which would seem to make it fairly neutral for survival value.

In any case, morality poses a dilemma for Darwinism that other behaviors of negligible or even moderately negative survival value do not. That is because morality frequently requires behaviors directly and strongly contrary to individual self-interest, at least obvious self-interest. I know of no other factor in human behavior present so strongly across cultures that does this to anything like the same degree.

I don’t offhand see the relevance of your quote about face recognition. Could you clarify?

“But Darwinism doesn’t dictate that selection can occur unrestricted, but within biological confines, and many psychologists and philosophers feel that e-p can make claims it can’t cash under the defense that it is coherent with Darwinian theory in the abstract (i.e. it fits a model), without first establishing that it fits all the biological requirements. ”

Are you saying that evolutionary psychology requires the existence of biological mechanisms that are not required by other accounts of morality (at least by other materialist accounts; obviously, it requires more than supernatural accounts)? Why would this be so? Or are you saying the EP has not given a sufficiently convincing account of how the attributes it posits would be selected for under selfish genery?

“this might unfold our moral prejudices, but doesn’t really get us anywhere with a moral framework ”

If I understand your distinction, this is another way of saying it is descriptive of morality as an aspect of human psychology, but doesn’t justify or undermine particular moral theories, save in terms of their survival value and perhaps their consistency with inborn human tendencies.

“the yuck factor in acts that we objectively agree do not meet the conditions of being immoral ”

I don’t know who the “we” is in that sentence, but I don’t think there is any consensus among humanity on the “objective” conditions of what is moral. I also don’t think emotion can be taken out of it because its demands are too strong. Few people can be logically argued into laying down their lives, and morality is often capable of this level of motivation. The Yuck factor is the test you linked seems primarily a case of overgeneralization. It is not hard to see why in general sex with dead animals or siblings would be taboo, and the fact that a test can posit scenarios where such are not harmful is not to me very significant. Moral reactions have to be very general because they so frequently are applied to situations with high uncertainty. For example, the test tells us a brother and sister had sex and this was not harmful to themselves or others (or it fancies it said that, though I think leaping from “guilt-free pleasure” to “not harmful” requires a number of unspoken assumptions). Were we to encounter such a situation in life, how would we know if was not harmful, if we believe such situations generally are harmful? It is something that can be specified in a test, but not known in real life, and our moral instincts are for the purpose of dealing with life, not of taking tests.

dubious, thanks. I’ve heard of Dennett’s work, but haven’t read it. The rest of what you’re saying is familiar to me.