The Difficult Question of Morality: Is it really so difficult?

[randomc]

Forgive me if i'm being obtuse, but how is it reasonable to conclude that morality is an 'old' trait from the fact that the amygdala is an 'old' part of the brain?

The conclusion seems to rely on the assumption that the amygdala has not been subject to evolutionary pressures for the given period of time.

 

This is just a question BTW, as per the OP; i'm not trying to incite an argument.

[toastywombel]

Forgive me if i'm being obtuse, but how is it reasonable to conclude that morality is an 'old' trait from the fact that the amygdala is an 'old' part of the brain?

The conclusion seems to rely on the assumption that the amygdala has not been subject to evolutionary pressures for the given period of time.

 

This is just a question BTW, as per the OP; i'm not trying to incite an argument.

 

On the contrary the amygdala has been subject to evolutionary pressures for a long time. It is the idea that life-forms that are social (like humans) require basic morality to survive.

 

By basic I mean essentially "Do onto others as you would like them to do onto you". Social creatures that do not partake in this golden rule would find it harder to pass their genes on, over time. Example) Murderers get sent to jail or put to death (If the legal system works well of course ). The idea is that social creatures that don't have some sense of basic morality are then rejected by their respective society.

[iNow]

Another from the long line of "put that in your pipe and smoke it" files on this topic:

 

 

http://atheistexperience.blogspot.com/2010/08/more-risible-moral-arguments-for-god.html

 

Moral precepts rooted in human empathy and consequences, while no one would claim they are perfect, at least have a real-world referent. Human beings, being thinking creatures, can understand the difference between observed positive and negative consequences. Moreover, another point she ignores in her claim that secular morality leads only to "self-preservation" is the fact that we are a social species, and our instinct for self-preservation is still tied to species success. It is not the norm for human beings to exist in total isolation, and in order to coexist we develop behaviors that are beneficial to maintaining that coexistence. (And humans are far from the only species that do this. Basic moral behaviors

have been observed in a number of primate species

, as well as in such animals as dolphins and dogs.)

 

If anything, it is religious "morality" that stems from self-preservation, because a person who adopts moral behaviors simply in order to please a god whom he fears will punish him otherwise is not really a moral person, just a terrified, submissive and broken one. He has been given no reasons to be "good" other than to avoid negative consequences to

himself

. Beyond this he has been given no understanding of the positive benefits of his moral behavior. Religious morality, as has been said here many times, gives people

bad

reasons to be

good

. If you live a moral life simply to score yourself a ticket to heaven, you're doing it wrong, and worst of all you haven't been given the intellectual tools to understand why.<

more at the link

>

Edited August 24, 2010 by iNow

[iNow]

Anyone else?

[AzurePhoenix]

K, a lot of people are questioning the existence of immorality when morality is obviously advantageous.

There are several points of explanation. And for the sake of simplicity, in this post I'm mostly going to regard immorality as that which violates the golden rule.

 

1) Nothing is perfect and aberrations will occur.

 

2) Humans are a cultural species, we're not shaped just by our instincts. Our surroundings and upbringing go a long way in shaping our behaviors and world views. For example, this is one reason why kids who grow up in neighborhoods that harbor a prominent gang presence find it extremely difficult to avoid getting involved in the gang life. Religion is another prime example. It's no advantage to me evolutionarily to sacrifice my kid to a god, but if I'd been raised in a religious society where the act was deeply ingrained in us as normal and holy, I'd likely not question having to do it even if I didn't want to.

 

3) Immorality can be evolutionarily advantageous too, if you can avoid the consequences.

When all of a society is cooperative and innocent, all it takes is one mutant "cheater" who is willing to prey on the innocent, exploit them, steal, whatever, to become mightily successful. This means the cheaters will overrun society and quash the moralists unless the moralists themselves go on the defensive. Eventually an evolutionarily stable balance is achieved between the two, with most going about their lives playing by the rules, while cheaters exist in just enough numbers and cheating just enough to avoid arousing too much suspicion and retribution from the cheated masses.

 

I suspect that people who exhibit interpersonal apathy all the way up to low level sociopathy (not to the extent of serial killers, just folks who have no qualms exploiting other folks) aren't necessarily poorly raised or dickish aberrants, but are just examples of this alternative strategy. And in modern western society, I would also suspect it's so much easier to get get away with being self-serving cheater than it was in pre-agricultural days, when you had to live in a very close group of no more than the same few dozen people your entire life.

 

Modern civilization is so vast and complex that not only is it easier to escape notice in the masses, and reasonably never meet the exploited again, but it's far easier to hide your cheating in the complexity of the modern world. Not to mention that as far as I can tell, such behaviors are explicitly tolerated, even highly valued in certain modern fields, such as sales and business, the media, politics, law, etc.

 

Does understanding morality help us stop from doing bad things?? Then why do people eat meat, when killing a sentient being is morally wrong?

In what way is not eating a bunny advantageous to you or your family or larger community? How does killing it hurt you? Point is, eating meat is ultimately a practical thing to do. And so it's practical to kill stuff made out of meat. So there's no reason for it to have become one of humanity's universal standards of immorality

[Serena2003]

Morality evolved before religion did, hence why we are not the only species with moral values. Religion only manipulated it. Immorality naturally accompanies as a counter-balance which may be subjective in accordance to a certain situation.