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Rationally Speaking is a blog maintained by Prof. Massimo Pigliucci, a philosopher at the City University of New York. The blog reflects the Enlightenment figure Marquis de Condorcet's idea of what a public intellectual (yes, we know, that's such a bad word) ought to be: someone who devotes himself to "the tracking down of prejudices in the hiding places where priests, the schools, the government, and all long-established institutions had gathered and protected them." You're welcome. Please notice that the contents of this blog can be reprinted under the standard Creative Commons license.

Friday, March 22, 2013

Disobedience Succeeds Essence


by Steve Neumann

There is much that life esteems more highly than life itself... — Nietzsche, Thus Spoke Zarathustra

Jean-Paul Sartre distilled his existentialism into the maxim “existence precedes essence.” He meant that the human being has no predetermined nature, divinely-ordained or otherwise, and that each human being is solely responsible for defining herself. Sartre said that the first principle of (his) existentialism is that “man is nothing else but what he makes of himself.”

University of Washington psychology professor David Barash recently published a nice meditation on the notes of consonance between evolution and existentialism in The Chronicle of Higher Education. Barash ultimately concludes that a 

...philosophy of “human meaning’ can coexist quite well with a science of “genetic influence.” 

Happily, Barash’s notion of human meaning includes the idea that, even though we are completely natural creatures shaped by evolutionary processes, we still retain a unique human freedom. I say happily because Barash doesn’t conclude that humans have contra-causal free will, nor does he jump to the opposite, fatalistic conclusion that no matter what we do, the outcome will be the predetermined same, so why bother. His idea of human agency is roughly the same as mine. As he says:

Within a remarkable range, our evolutionary bequeathal is wildly permissive.

I like Barash’s word choice of “wildly” here. Ironically, though much of my free time is spent thinking about how to persuade people that the difference between us and other animals — even dogs — is a difference of degree and not of kind, I often worry about us forgetting how dissimilar we are to all other animals, at least in one significant regard: that is, freedom. And what I like most about Barash’s article is the notion of freedom as the freedom to disobey. As Agent Smith puts it to Neo in the second Matrix film:

Smith: I killed you, Mister Anderson, I watched you die — with a certain satisfaction, I might add. And then something happened; something that I knew was impossible, but it happened anyway: you destroyed me, Mister Anderson. Afterward, I knew the rules, I understood what I was supposed to do but I didn’t. I couldn’t. I was compelled to stay, compelled to disobey. And now here I stand because of you, Mister Anderson, because of you I’m no longer an agent of the system, because of you I’ve changed — I’m unplugged — a new man, so to speak, like you, apparently free.

Neo: Congratulations.

Agent Smith disobeyed his programmed nature and found out what he really wanted: in his case, the destruction of the Matrix (and of all life, unfortunately). Barash also specifically argues for a type of contra-natural disobedience:

On the basis of evolutionary existentialism, I would therefore like to suggest the heretical and admittedly paradoxical notion that, in fact, we need to teach more disobedience. Not only disobedience to political and social authority but especially disobedience to some of our troublesome genetic inclinations.

Disobedience has a long history in the human species. Even the ancient Hebrews, it can be argued, intuited the need for disobedience by sneaking the wily, skeptical serpent into their creation story. They had their god include the serpent in that paradisal garden, where his new and naive human creations were within arm’s reach of the fruit of both god-like knowledge and immortality. Now, the common Christian response is that God wanted his creations to have the possibility of disobedience — that is, free will — to freely love Him or reject Him, and which would presumably have more authenticity thereby. But I don’t think having the freedom of disobedience need be interpreted in terms of love, in a religious context or not. Disobedience, in my opinion, is first and foremost a route to knowledge, particularly self-knowledge. And it’s self-knowledge the existentialists have traditionally been most concerned with, seeing how it leads to one’s having the ability to define oneself. But Sartre (and existentialists in general) countenances an extreme freedom of the will as the driver behind the quest for self-knowledge, so much so that he assigns ultimate responsibility — and blame. As he says:

If people throw up to us our works of fiction in which we write about people who are soft, weak, cowardly, and sometimes even downright bad, it’s not because these people are soft, weak, cowardly, or bad; because if we were to say... that they are that way because of heredity, the workings of the environment, society, because of biological or psychological determinism, people would be assured.

As a quick aside, I think it’s interesting to note here that Sartre brings up this particular objection back in the cultural backdrop of 1946. It sounds more like the pejorative Twinkie Defenses of the late 1970’s and onward. But I digress. Sartre goes on to say that

...when the existentialist writes about a coward, he says that this coward is responsible for his cowardice... he’s like that because he has made himself a coward by his acts.

From a certain perspective, this is undeniably true: a human being can’t become anything without acting in some sense; but the real crux of the issue is how responsible the individual is, if at all, for who she has become. Like Barash, I think existentialism of a certain strain is compatible with our condition as evolved biological animals. And it’s the idea of disobeying our nature that gives us both the opportunity and the freedom to become what we want. As Nietzsche put it in an early fragment (1872), “Homer’s Contest”:

When one speaks of humanity, the idea is fundamental that this is something that separates and distinguishes man from nature. In reality, however, there is no such separation: “natural” qualities and those properly called “human” are indivisibly grown together. Man, in his highest and most noble capacities, is wholly nature... Those of his abilities which are awesome and considered inhuman are perhaps the fertile soil out of which alone all humanity... can grow.

Here, as I see it, the concept of “humanity” is the result of the exploitation of the “wildly permissive” freedom bequeathed us by our evolutionary history, as Barash notes. The individual human being needn’t be metaphysically free in the existentialist’s sense in order to cultivate her animal nature. And while it may be prudent to assign a certain degree of responsibility for the way people “create” themselves, I don’t agree that the coward, for instance, has made himself into a coward on purpose, so to speak. So, for me, something like cowardice isn’t necessarily a fault of the individual so much as the result of a weak will. And I think one’s will can be educated and strengthened, because even the weak-willed individual has, thanks to the evolutionary bequeathal, the freedom to disobey his essence. Of course, the question is exactly how does that happen — how does the weak-willed person educate and strengthen his will? Traditionally, various modes of asceticism have been employed. But there is also a good amount of simple luck involved: one may or may not be exposed to an array of interpersonal and environmental experiences that likewise may or may not sway one’s motivation to do or not do something conducive to educating or strengthening one’s will. 

In a note from 1887 Nietzsche had this to say about asceticism:

I also want to make asceticism natural again: in place of the aim of denial, the aim of strengthening...

To make asceticism natural again is to expropriate it away from its religious roots, where the goal was to tame the human animal and make it obedient to both celestial and terrestrial authority, and now to use it to educate one’s will by imposing restraints on one’s genetically-influenced impulses. So, in a sense, making asceticism natural again involves paradoxically making one’s nature obedient in some ways in order to disobey that nature in other ways. And these other ways relate to the existential quest for human meaning and self-creation. I suppose you could also look at it as a more refined type of asceticism: instead of bludgeoning one’s entire natural endowment into submission, one can pick and choose which impulses to quash and which ones to amplify. And even if one’s life circumstances are stifled or constricted, one still possesses the capacity for disobedience, or what we might call “revolt” in Albert Camus’ parlance. 

In Camus’ The Myth of Sisyphus, we see that the absurd Greek hero is  condemned to “ceaselessly rolling a rock to the top of a mountain, whence the stone would fall back of its own weight”; and Camus explicitly ties Sisyphus’ plight to that of the proletarian worker of his day. Revolt or “scorn” at circumstances is still possible even if one has no hope for a different future. And while Camus seems to believe that even freedom from creating meaning in one’s life is a good thing when seen in a certain light, I think you could also argue that the hour where Sisyphus contemplates his fate, which is what Camus says interests him most, is the timeless moment in which meaning can be created. Our own Sisyphean disposition can allow us to contemplate all kinds of strategies and “games” while toiling at moving one’s rock to the top of the mountain. In fact, in a way we could play with the existentialist’s own phrasing and say that one is condemned to be creative. Consider this: the human brain is a veritable whim-generating machine; we can’t stop thoughts from occurring to us, nor can we stop thinking altogether. When Camus says that “the struggle itself toward the heights is enough to fill a man’s heart” and that therefore we must “imagine Sisyphus happy,” I would say that it is precisely the brain’s propensity for spontaneous activity that is the source of the human — and even animal — impulse to play

What is play? The essence of play is, to my mind, the compulsion to experiment and explore; or, in other words, to revolt and discover. Not only does play merely pass the time, but the imagination can create worlds within worlds. Consider what the human imagination has produced thus far: philosophies, religions, artistic vistas, staggering technologies, etc. As William Blake noted: “what is now proved was once only imagined.” The act of imagining something new does a certain violence to what already exists: it destroys, betrays or at least dispenses with what has already been established. In a sense, the imagination disobeys the essence of what already exists, the accumulated and codified mores that are generally accepted. Combining the imagination and a revised asceticism involves a great deal of courage: the courage to disobey interpersonal, cultural, and biologically-determined patterns of thought and behavior, thereby incurring or inviting the wrath and opprobrium of one’s milieu — and possibly even of Nature herself.

And psychological harm is not the only danger: just as Nietzsche said that life oftentimes values more than existence itself, one may very well lose one’s life through stratagems of disobedience. But isn’t the value of one’s life, the meaning of one’s life, more important than the mere duration of it? Essence doesn’t precede existence, and neither does existence precede essence; they’re contemporaneous and they grow or perish together. But disobedience, properly executed, succeeds both essence and existence. 

I’ll leave you with our modern-day, popular culture Sisyphus, Neo, near the end of the final installment of The Matrix Trilogy:

Smith: Why, Mr. Anderson, why? Why do you do it? Why get up? Why keep fighting? Do you believe you’re fighting for something, for more than your survival? Can you tell me what it is? Do you even know? Is it freedom, or truth — perhaps peace? Could it be for love? Illusions, Mr. Anderson, vagaries of perception, temporary constructs of a feeble human intellect trying desperately to justify an existence that is without meaning or purpose — and all of them as artificial as the Matrix itself. Although, only a human mind can invent something as insipid as love. You must be able to see it, Mr. Anderson, you must know it by now. You can’t win, it’s pointless to keep fighting. Why, Mr. Anderson, why — why you persist??

Neo: Because I choose to.

33 comments:

  1. Interesting. Your post reminded me of what I consider probably the most important question in (meta)ethics, which I have seen few philosophers address explicitly; it goes something like:

    "Given that all human moral intuitions are plausibly baked into our psychology by natural selection, can we distinguish between 'defensible' and 'indefensible' moral intuitions, and if so, how?"

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    1. I suppose it depends on how you define "defensible." The more I read and think about ethics, the more I become convinced of a certain perspectivism, if not outright relativism. How can we *a priori* proclaim the supremacy of the values of our society over another? Every society of course seems to do this; but we can't do it without some common factor of evaluation.

      I still mostly side with Nietzsche when he claims that self-overcoming is the essence of morality. In Zarathustra he says that "a table of virtues hangs over every people...behold, it is the table of its overcomings." In other words, what is moral is doing what seems most difficult to a people (or a person). But then I think there's still the problem of the definition of "difficult": what is difficult for one people or person may or may not be difficult for another, etc...

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    2. Ian,

      >"Given that all human moral intuitions are plausibly baked into our psychology by natural selection, can we distinguish between 'defensible' and 'indefensible' moral intuitions, and if so, how?"<

      This is an interesting way of framing the basic question of metaethics but I have the same issue with it that I did with some of Steve's points in the OP, which I wrote about in a post further below.

      While we know that evolution has shaped our moral capacities, I don't think we can identify any moral perspective within us that we could call intrinsic to human nature; our attitudes are always highly conditioned by culture contingencies and personal idiosyncrasies. Given this, the relevant framing of the basic question of metaethics is a non-starter as there are no moral perspectives that we can identify as "baked into our psychology." Hence, the question of which such perspectives are defensible has no actual occasion. Divested of its philosophically-empty reference to natural question, the relevant metaethical question is just that how how we know when a moral perspective is defensible.

      Btw, I say 'moral perspectives' above rather than 'moral intuitions' because I think its also a certain mysteriousness of the word 'intuition' that makes the relevant framing of the basic question of metaethics seem plausible. Using 'perspectives' helps to make clear that in morality all we have are the diverse viewpoints of individuals, and not anything that could be called a rigid (hard-wired) "moral intuition." Philosophical use of the word 'intuition' seems to be the subject of much misunderstanding, confusion, and controversy. In my experience, 'intuition' in a philosophical context is an epistemic status, used in connection with argumentation, rather a feature of psychology; it is a belief, or something that seems true, to some degree of strength, that is held prior to argument. Intuitions in this sense are not fixed, unquestionable beliefs, but starting points in inquiring into what is rationally defensible. If an argument depends on an intuition, then that intuition is a condition of the argument.

      To touch on Steve's point perhaps, a great advance in anthropology in the last centuries was realizing that Western culture was just one view of reality among others, as opposed to the absolute view with respect to which all other cultures more or less fell short. It began to be seem that culture was more a kind of technology than a mirror of reality. To me it seems that part of the thrust of scientism is to reverse this enlightened trend through trying to relocate Western culture in the brain. We do this when we think that ethics and evolution are significantly related subjects.

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    3. To the contrary, anthropology demonstrates that all morality comes down to what we, humans and the other intelligent animals, can be trusted by our social cultures to do right, and distrusted if we do it wrong. And in that sense all beings with a form of culture have moral rules and standards to adhere to. So bats and even our bacteria can in their own ways be as immoral in their respective ways as the rest of us. Just as we are all hard-wired to rely on our intuitive biological functions - you know, those that purposefully direct our sense of what in our respective environments to trust.

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    4. >Given that all human moral intuitions are plausibly baked into our psychology by natural selection, can we distinguish between 'defensible' and 'indefensible' moral intuitions, and if so, how?<

      Personally, I'm a moral nihilist. I don't think there are any defensible moral intuitions. There are only moral preferences which differ from person to person and culture to culture.

      That said, I have my own moral preferences, and I believe in them. They are not defensible or rooted in logic, but they are part of what make up my being. I recognise that my moral preferences come from evolution and the culture I was raised in and do not reflect any fundamental moral truth, but that doesn't stop me from acting morally.

      But if there is no moral truth, is it not irrational to behave morally rather than selfishly? Not at all.

      Rationality is only a means to arrive at true beliefs or to develop good plans of action to achieve one's goals. The ultimate choice of goal is something baked in, not chosen rationally.

      It is not rational or irrational to prefer life to death or pleasure to pain. We have these preferences only because that's how we evolved. Similarly, it is not more rational to prefer selfishness to altruism and morality.

      If we are altruistic, moral people by nature, we should not feel a need to justify our impulse to behave morally.

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    5. Oh, cool, I sort of forgot I made this comment and then came back to see lots of interesting responses.

      Steve: >How can we *a priori* proclaim the supremacy of the values of our society over another? Every society of course seems to do this; but we can't do it without some common factor of evaluation.

      When I asked the question I wasn't really thinking about cultural differences in moral opinion. Pretty much every culture thinks random murders of ingroup members are bad - what I am getting at is whether the origin of that belief (a moral intuition baked into us by NS) says anything normatively interesting.

      Paul: >Divested of its philosophically-empty reference to natural question, the relevant metaethical question is just that how how we know when a moral perspective is defensible.

      I am not so sure the reference to a natural question is philosophically empty here. Imagine if science found out tomorrow that all human moral intuitions about, say, partiality to kin, were actually just being inserted into our brains by malicious space aliens who wanted to keep our planet poor and exploitable. It seems like I might want to have some second thoughts about those intuitions, in that case?

      (Somewhat) analogously, there are certain moral intuitions which, once their origin is plausibly identified through evo-psych style reasoning, just seem explained away.

      For example, we consider it vastly more important to help a single, identifiable person in trouble right in front of us, than to help strangers at a distance (even if we can help more strangers for less resources and they need it more). I think we should just throw out this intuition, as it looks like it's just an artifact of the kind of social situations H. sapiens confronted once upon a time. The normative/motivational force of the intuition disappears once you 'unmask' it, so to speak.

      Or take other examples: moralized sexual jealousy, moralized disgust at sexual deviance (e.g., homophobia), moralized partiality and devaluation of outgroup members, unwillingness to trade off 'sacred' values for 'secular' ones, scope insensitivity... really, now that we can identify plausible origins for these feelings in the circumstances of our species' history, can't we just chuck them, or at least suppress them?

      My difficulty is that the reason I want to chuck them is because they contradict my strongly consequentialist moral intuitions, which are also 'baked into' me, although in a way that does not make for much of a just-so story.

      I realize that the above is not very philosophically rigorous, but my main point is that I think knowledge of the evolutionary history of our moral intuitions is sometimes *highly relevant to normative ethics,* and yet I don't have a principled theory of how exactly.

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    6. DisagreeableMe:
      >There are only moral preferences which differ from person to person and culture to culture... That said, I have my own moral preferences, and I believe in them. They are not defensible or rooted in logic, but they are part of what make up my being.

      I don't think this attempt to split the difference really succeeds though. If you're going to deny moral truth, why talk about moral preferences at all? Why not just preferences? I have loads of preferences and most of them are amoral. For example, my preference for sourdough bread, or the music of Van Morrison. Why (on your view) make a distinction between those and (e.g.) my preference for humanity's continued existence?

      To me, a moral nihilist who still tries to hold on to moral vocabulary looks a little odd. Kind of like a 20th century materialist who uses the vocabulary of demonology to talk about mental illness.

      But: >But if there is no moral truth, is it not irrational to behave morally rather than selfishly? Not at all.

      ...that is spot on. :)

      >The ultimate choice of goal is something baked in, not chosen rationally.

      It is useful to make a distinction between terminal and instrumental goals and values. For example, somebody might have a goal of distributing bednets to a given village. But that is an instrumental goal, because bednets are only useful for preventing malaria - they have no intrinsic value. But preventing malaria, too, is an instrumental goal, because malaria is only bad inasmuch as it causes suffering and shortens lives. The preference for health and quality life is thus the terminal goal or terminal preference here.

      I think there are many (possibly hundreds) of different human terminal values/goals.

      All of which goes to show that although there may be no rational choosing of the terminal goals, there may be scope for rationally talking about the instrumental goals, and about what the best tradeoffs are between different terminal goals.

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    7. Paul: one clarification. When I said

      >I think we should just throw out this intuition, as it looks like it's just an artifact of the kind of social situations H. sapiens confronted once upon a time. The normative/motivational force of the intuition disappears once you 'unmask' it, so to speak.

      I hope it was clear that my motivation for wanting to throw out the intuition is not "because it evolved" simpliciter (otherwise I would have to garbage all of ethics in a fit of scientism), but rather something more like "because it arose for (natural causal) reasons that cast it in a poor light AND perhaps I have other normative commitments that contradict it."

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    8. Ian, I am not following this :
      'All of which goes to show that although there may be no rational choosing of the terminal goals, there may be scope for rationally talking about the instrumental goals, and about what the best tradeoffs are between different terminal goals.'

      If I determine from experience that being healthy and moderately pain free is preferable to the alternative is that not a rational determination. And say I also determine from evidence and experience that there is an interaction space where I can promote these qualities in others and they feedback onto my own well-being in a positive way. Would it not be rational to pursue that interaction space?

      Can you point me to what I missing? thanks

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    9. @Ian

      >Why (on your view) make a distinction between those and (e.g.) my preference for humanity's continued existence?<

      I think you've answered your own question, in a way. Replace "moral" and "amoral" with "musical" and "amusical" and you could make the same argument against musical preferences. Morality is just one of many categories of preferences we have. This categorisation is perhaps related to emotions or sensations associated with the choices. "Moral" choices are the ones that make us feel righteous. "Delicious" choices are the ones that involve pleasant tastes.

      They are, however, special in the sense that the emotions they produce can be quite powerful, motivating us to judge others, feel guilt, fight and even die for them. This doesn't mean they are ontologically particularly special, it just means that they have a special evolutionary role.

      >It is useful to make a distinction between terminal and instrumental goals and values.<

      Agreed. I was taking this for granted. When I said "goals" I was referring to terminal goals. I was hinting at this by referring to "plans of action" (instrumental goals) and "ultimate choice of goal" (terminal goals). I'll try to remember to be clearer in future.

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    10. >If I determine from experience that being healthy and moderately pain free is preferable to the alternative is that not a rational determination.<

      No, it's not a rational determination. It's not irrational either, it's "arational". This is simply because you have no *ultimate* way to justify your preference for being healthy and moderately pain free.

      If you find pain unpleasant, it is not because you have carefully considered the logic of the situation and come to a rational conclusion, it's because you are viscerally programmed to find pain unpleasant. We could imagine a hypothetical rational being who would find pain to be pleasant (and, indeed, such people exist).

      Similarly, I don't think there's anything inherently irrational about being either an amoral psychopath or a passionate human rights activist. The two people have fundamentally different foundational preferences or axioms regarding morality, and there's no way to get from one attitude to the other by rational thought.

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    11. @DM,
      "If you find pain unpleasant, it is not because you have carefully considered the logic of the situation and come to a rational conclusion, it's because you are viscerally programmed to find pain unpleasant. We could imagine a hypothetical rational being who would find pain to be pleasant (and, indeed, such people exist)."
      You are viscerally programmed by a logically constructed system. So of course it's rational in that sense, as well as in all common sense, to find pain unpleasant.
      And in turn the existing people that you claim have found pain pleasant are not acting rationally, having reached their masochistic positions by both conscious and unconscious irrationality - for irrational purposes in other words. Further, it's not that they find pain pleasant, it's that they find satisfaction in the self punishment that their pain makes self evident.

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    12. Ian,

      Thanks for explaining more about your position. When I said 'natural question' I meant to say 'natural selection'. Sorry about that. The point I was trying to make is that the following:

      >"Given that all human moral intuitions are plausibly baked into our psychology by natural selection, can we distinguish between 'defensible' and 'indefensible' moral intuitions, and if so, how?"<

      is really just the question of how we know when a moral perspective is defensible once the philosophically-empty reference to natural selection is removed.

      You seem to believe that any moral belief whatsoever is a "moral intuition" that is "baked into our psychology by evolution." If so, how do you explain the fact that evolution baked different moral beliefs into the psychologies of different people? For example, why did evolution bake the view that morality is empty into the psychologies of the Logical Positivists but largely of no one else? Why did it bake the view that morality comes from God into some psychologies but not others?

      But maybe you don't believe that all moral beliefs are baked into our psychologies by evolution. If you do not believe this, how can we tell a moral belief that is a "moral intuition" from one that is not? In my first post in this thread I argued that this is a bogus distinction because there are no identifiable moral beliefs that we can claim to be rigid features of human psychology. If a taboo against murdering in-group members is supposed to be an example, note that instances of in-group killing is not uncommon. If "murder" is supposed to be the differentiating concept, note how complex that concept is; murder is "wrongful killing"; is the distinction between okay killing and wrongful killing also baked into our psychologies? If so, why are humans in such radical disagreement on the matter?

      Returning to my point about philosophically-empty reference to natural selection, I don't see what is philosophically at stake in constant reference to evolution. Even if claims that link moral beliefs and evolution were not patent pseudoscience, if evolution is not a reliable guide to what is moral, and hence some other mode of reasoning must be relied upon to determine what is moral, what relevance are evolutionary distinctions?

      (Note that I am not at all anti-evolution or anti-science. I'm just anti-dubious reasoning.)

      So, Ian, here're some questions I hope you'll try to answer: Are all moral beliefs beliefs that are baked into our psychologies by evolution? If so, why do different people have different moral beliefs baked into their psychologies? If not, how do we tell the difference between a baked moral belief and one that is not? Further, where do non-baked moral beliefs come from?


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    13. @Paul, who wrote to Ian: "You seem to believe that any moral belief whatsoever is a "moral intuition" that is "baked into our psychology by evolution."

      Since the belief would be a culturally filtered product of the intuition, Paul has the mechanism working backwards once again.

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    14. Disagreabble,

      We have a very different conception of rationality. I don't believe it is possible to be rational without proper input from our emotions. Damasio has demonstrated the poor rationality that occurs when our reasoning is dis-connected from emotional evaluation.

      By the way I am one of those people who finds a degree (only below a certain threshold) of pain in the right context to be pleasant. I bet most runners would agree with me, and in the right context it is I think rational. While running, what once seemed like pain becomes first tolerated, and then enjoyed at a level that builds healthy development as long as it is mixed with proper recovery.

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    15. @Baron P
      Pleasure/pain are kind of a difficult case because they are practically defined as desirable/undesirable. An argument could be made that to actively prefer suffering to pleasure is contradictory, because if it's what you genuinely want then what you want is not suffering at all but the pleasure you would get from experiences other people would regard as painful.

      You might want to substitute specific pleasurable experiences (such as sex) and painful experiences (such as electrocution) for the broad concepts of pleasure and pain and then I would stand by the argument that there is no ultimate rational reason to prefer one over the other.

      >You are viscerally programmed by a logically constructed system. So of course it's rational in that sense<

      In that sense, everything is rational, because everything you do is ultimately a result of your programming. That's not a very useful sense.

      >And in turn the existing people that you claim have found pain pleasant are not acting rationally<

      Perhaps some of them are irrational, but I see no basis for assuming they are all necessarily irrational.

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    16. @Seth_blog
      >We have a very different conception of rationality.<

      Perhaps. For me, rationality can be described in terms of the drawing of justified conclusions, whether about beliefs or appropriate courses of action.

      So it is rational to have a drink of wine, say because you enjoy wine. It might be rational to enjoy wine because you enjoy the feeling of mild intoxication it brings. It might be rational to enjoy mild intoxication because it gives you a general sense of well-being. At some point, however, the buck stops. You get to a belief, such as "I enjoy the sense of well-being I get from mild intoxication" which has no further justification. This is "arational" and is just part of what makes you you.

      >I don't believe it is possible to be rational without proper input from our emotions.<

      Hmm. Well, I think I can conceive of an unemotional rational being, but such an entity would have only beliefs, not motivations. It would have no reason to do anything. (Perhaps it could be compelled to do something the way a machine is compelled to serve, not by an emotional drive but by the nature of its being.)

      But this is quite unlike the case of human beings. I can well imagine that emotionally disturbed people are prone to irrationality. This does not convince me that emotions are fundamentally required for rationality.

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    17. Paul, thanks for the reply, I think I have a better idea where you're coming from now. You asked some helpful questions so I will go ahead & try to answer them.

      >Are all moral beliefs beliefs that are baked into our psychologies by evolution?

      No, what I think is baked into us are many terminal values. Examples would be avoidance of pain, seeking of pleasure, protection of kin, fairness, reciprocity...

      You are quite correct that *beliefs* are not evolved; they are too high-level (although some belief-like entities, such as Aristotelian physical intuitions, may be innate, but let's bracket that). I should have made it clearer from the outset that I *certainly* don't think it makes sense to talk about "the evolution of Deontology" or any such rot.

      >If not, how do we tell the difference between a baked moral belief and one that is not?

      Per above, I'd rather talk about the *terminal values* that are baked into us, not the *beliefs.* Here, the test for innateness is roughly human universality for typical humans (i.e., not pathological cases like psychopaths).

      Generally speaking, I am skeptical about the "depth" of moral disagreement among humans - my impression is that apparent moral disagreement is basically instrumental in nature, and so in principle solvable (in contrast to REAL, non-instrumental moral disagreement with Cthulhu, who just wants to eat your soul).

      >Further, where do non-baked moral beliefs come from?

      In my theory, they are complex a posteriori beliefs about instrumental means for fulfilling (largely shared) human values.

      So it seems that our major disagreement comes from my tendency to see ethics as arising from human terminal values that are part of human nature, and your tendency to see ethics as a more purely cultural/logical construct.

      >In my first post in this thread I argued that [the distinction between moral beliefs and intuitions] is a bogus distinction because there are no identifiable moral beliefs that we can claim to be rigid features of human psychology. If a taboo against murdering in-group members is supposed to be an example, note that instances of in-group killing is not uncommon.

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    18. I disagree, there are values that are built into human nature, and a taboo against killing in-group members is one of them (for a list of human universals, not all of them moral, see here). This theory does not predict, however, that nobody will ever kill an in-group member. It just predicts that in-group killing will be rare, and will typically involve strong moralistic or self-interested motivation of another sort (e.g., "the victim betrayed my trust"). When it comes to typical human psychology, one counterexample does not disprove the rule. "Cats have an aversion to water" is true, even if you find one or two oddball cats that love to swim.

      >Returning to my point about philosophically-empty reference to natural selection, I don't see what is philosophically at stake in constant reference to evolution.

      See my analogy above with the aliens who tamper with our moral sentiments for nefarious ends. What is at stake is whether the none-too-flattering origin of (some of) our moral sentiments should give us pause in our metaethical thinking. (I concede that if you flat-out deny the biological provenance of basic moral sentiments, this is no longer a problem; but I think that denial is very implausible.)

      >Even if claims that link moral beliefs and evolution were not patent pseudoscience...

      I am almost as skeptical as you & Massimo about a lot of evo-psych, but all the same, some of their conclusions are pretty much slam dunks. A great example is the cultural universal of moralized avoidance of incest. It takes about 2 seconds to see the very very plausible evolutionary origin of such a universal, whereas you would be hard-pressed to make a solid case against it on principled ethical grounds without resorting to rationalization & special pleading. Also, notice the Westermarck effect, which suggests that cultural anti-incest norms are not the only driving factor here - there is something innate to moralized incest avoidance.

      >...if evolution is not a reliable guide to what is moral, and hence some other mode of reasoning must be relied upon to determine what is moral, what relevance are evolutionary distinctions?

      That is exactly the question I was trying to solicit answers to in my original comment. I think evolution is responsible for the broad strokes of our moral human nature - not for high-level things such as our belief in virtue ethics or whatever else, but for the psychological nature that makes "flourishing" seem attractive to us in the first place (while Cthulhu only wants to eat yummy souls).

      We find ourselves with the basics of our moral sentiments "programmed" into us by a completely amoral statistical process that only "cares" about gene survival. What do we do with this information? I don't have a full answer, but "genetic fallacy" notwithstanding, this information does NOT seem to me to be philosophically empty.

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    19. Disagreeable,
      'Hmm. Well, I think I can conceive of an unemotional rational being, but such an entity would have only beliefs, not motivations. It would have no reason to do anything. (Perhaps it could be compelled to do something the way a machine is compelled to serve, not by an emotional drive but by the nature of its being.)'

      I thought we were talking about 'human beings' and 'human rationality'. That was the context for my comments.

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    20. Ian,

      Fine clarification of your view. I see that our point of disagreement is superficial though perhaps tenacious. I agree that morality is based in part on evolved human nature and I would not say that morality is a free-floating cultural construct that has nothing to with human nature as understood by biology. What I object to in your view might be described as willingness to mix what we might call 'cultural language' (e.g. moral language) with natural science language in a happy-go-lucy way. These languages have a different physics (purpose and process of formation) and to some ears - ears that I believe are better attuned to epistemic tonalities - mixing them is cacophonous. Formally speaking, linking concepts like morality and evolution or love and neurons is like mixing Christian theology with astrophysics (e.g. rapture will occur when cosmic microwave background radiation has faded to a certain threshold). (Note: this is not to say that theology and morality, love, etc. are conceptually on par; the latter are normative while the former is non-empirically positive.)

      When an evolutionary biologist brings in the concept of morality, or a neuroscientist brings in the concept of love, he is not "getting scientific" about morality and love any more than the theologian is "getting scientific" about rapture in the above case. All three cases consist simply in a projection of personal views onto science.

      As to the difference between natural science language (NSL) and cultural language (CL), here are some notable differences: NSL is developed for the purpose of understanding the natural world; NSL is fully under the control of natural scientists (i.e. scientists can make up words and change word meanings as it suits the science); NSL is ideally empirical and decidable (i.e. NSL terms ideally refer to observable situations such that its clear when a term fits or does not). CL has none these properties; no one is in control of it; it's non-empirical; it exists for general human purposes rather than for the study of the natural world; etc.

      The reason that talk of morality or love (or CL generally) in conjunction with science is problematic, more precisely, is that for it to be legitimately scientific, science would need to take control of the language and treat it as if it were an empirical language - a twofold bogus move at minimum and a rocket-sled into pseudoscience. It is because these moves are illegitimate that "science of morality" etc. is always a projection of personal views onto science a la rapture and the state of cosmic microwave background radiation.

      Regarding morality and science, while we can say general things, such as that evolution surely shaped our moral capacites, there's an intractable conceptual buffer between the language of morality and the language of natural science due to the fact that the languages are fundamentally different animals.

      While theologians are free to interpret cosmology according to their theology, Lawrence Krauss, as a scientist, would rightly be impatient with the introduction of theological terms into cosmology. To the extent that evolutionary biologists and neuroscientists do not have a similar impatience with morality, love, etc., they are pseudoscientists.

      Now Ian, I know you just want to say that certain basic *values* are baked into human psychology by evolution. The problem with this is that "value" is still too culture-laden (etc.) to link seriously with biology. It's like only wanting to say in astrophysics that the sun is divine. Regarding incest and in-group-killing taboos, it is far better to use terms that could be applied to any animal, such as aversion and attraction. What would it mean to say that a bee values pollen?

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  2. Interesting post, but I again would approach the topic from a very different, perhaps opposite frame of view.

    The emphasis seems to be on the need to constantly 'fight' and 'disobey' our nature. We cannot disobey our involuntary, unconscious processes, nor do I think should we try. That seems to me to be like looking at a door and trying to see a chair.

    Our natural, unconscious, involuntary processes while imperfect provide a way for us to smoothly navigate our environment. I agree that one aspect that makes us dissimilar from other species rests in our ability to recognize that our involuntary perceptions, biases etc... can be flawed. Our conscious process similarly are also flawed sometimes interfering with and degrading our unconscious process (eg. anxiety, depression, over self-consciousness etc....).

    I see the power of our conscious free will residing in this reflective process to inform the unconscious so that it gradually becomes less flawed. Our conscious reflection is no less part of our nature than are our unconscious processes. I believe these two aspects are interdependent and non-separable.

    My process of successfully finding meaning has been directly proportional to my ability to engage with the supportive interaction between these seemingly opposing aspects.

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    1. Seth_blog -

      "The emphasis seems to be on the need to constantly 'fight' and 'disobey' our nature. We cannot disobey our involuntary, unconscious processes..."

      Yes, that's precisely what I think is needed, if we want to become more than a humanimal. But, I think that successfully creating a new nature for ourselves, so to speak, will also involve turning those new aspects into instinct-like capacities, kind of like the way a professional athlete makes certain actions and behaviors "second nature."

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  3. Steve,

    Aren't all our desires ("impulses") genetically influenced? Further, aren't all of them also influence by our culture, personal beliefs, and developed psychological idiosyncrasies?

    If so, what sense does the distinction between a more or less free and disobedient agency and its "nature" or "genetically-influence impulses" make? This sounds to me like a thin secular gloss on the battle between the celestial angel and the terrestrial inner beast within each person, or between God and Satan.

    With our desires, we could not tell how much is "our nature" and how much is not even if the the relevant distinction between 'natural' and the 'non-natural' were clear here. Given this, I think it's questionable whether the general distinction is valid.

    My own approach is not to be concerned with the "naturalness" of desires but to assess them ethically and prudentially as a homogeneous class.


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    1. Paul -

      "Aren't all our desires ("impulses") genetically influenced? Further, aren't all of them also influence by our culture, personal beliefs, and developed psychological idiosyncrasies?"

      In short, yes.

      But I'm also trying to make sense of the traditional dualism of Reason vs. Passion; or, as you put it, between the "celestial angel and the terrestrial inner beast." It may be a secular version of this, but I think the fact remains that these two tendencies (or whatever we call them) are in conflict. And instead of valuing one more highly than the other, or suppressing one over the other, I'd personally like to see a synthesis or true sublimation take place.

      Both reason and passion emanate from our biology-influenced-by-culture, I think that's clear. And while I can still assess things ethically-prudentially, I'm more concerned with *cultivating* our nature. How do we improve it?

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  4. Well of course our existence does have self fulfilling meaning and survival purposes, and independent choice making beings are forced to learn from their mistakes, whether they are capable of learning well or not.

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  5. @Steve

    I'm not sure the view you present really works for me. I don't really believe in free will (unless it's of the deterministic, compatibilist sort) so as far as I can see whatever we do, that's what is in our nature to do. The idea of fighting your nature doesn't really make sense to me because if you fight some impulse it's because it is in your nature to do so.

    The idea of morality being about overcoming basic animal instincts also doesn't really work for me. The basis of our morality is just as rooted in our animal instincts as are our selfish impulses. Overcoming your basic animal instincts could just as easily be construed as learning to ignore your conscience and empathy.

    However, insofar as you advocate self-improvement through asceticism, introspection etc, then you might be right. I just wouldn't frame it in quite the way you do.

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    1. The second part of your post is the same point I have been trying to make although I expect we perceive it differently. Conflict, constraint, & opposition are all unvoidable.

      We can frame any concept we value as something to be achieved by fighting against that which we see conflicting, constraining or opposing it. This is a view based on separation. I don't think that is a useful frame if we hope to achieve the 'synthesis' Steve refers to. In my view 'synthesis emerges when we see the non-seprability between what we value and what opposes it. There is a 'systhesis' in the interaction waiting to be discovered if we can orientate ourselves toward it.

      I think free will is something we value. I don't think it exists as some separate pure entity and don't find it to be a useful concept. I do think we have some capacity for meta-cognition and reflection on how we frame, perceive and recieve our experiance. The way we approach these capacities impact our involuntary unconscious responses.

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  6. But, isn't "freedom" dependent on the social-political constraints within a particular society? Isn't our behavior not only shaped by evolutionary means, but cultural ones as well? To be frank, I think such an introspective philosophy like existentialism can only have originated in a well-cultivated European country, not those in the third-world.

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    1. Bert -

      1. I think social-political constraints do affect one's freedom, e.g., insofar as they can disobey social customs and legal precedents; but I don't think one's freedom to disobey one's genetic 'programming'.

      2. I might be inclined to agree with you about a philosophy like existentialism not being likely to sprout in a third-world country in *modern* times, mainly because the sheer numbers of people living together in such dense areas would tend to draw them into social concerns as opposed to introspective ones; but one of the most introspective philosophies of all time originated and flourished in India - i.e., Siddhartha Gautama and Buddhism...

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  7. Regarding human behavior, "cultural determinism" seems to me to be as misguided as "biological determinism". Human brains biologically evolved to be able to generate new codes and therefore new culture.

    (Example: This week's arguments before the Supreme Court on gay marriage.)

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  8. "Happily, Barash’s notion of human meaning includes the idea that, even though we are completely natural creatures shaped by evolutionary processes, we still retain a unique human freedom. I say happily because Barash doesn’t conclude that humans have contra-causal free will, nor does he jump to the opposite, fatalistic conclusion that no matter what we do, the outcome will be the predetermined same, so why bother"

    I still don't understand how philosophy operates. I'm trying my best. It seems one simply chooses a philosophical view that one finds useful and then argues for its truth. For instance, I have yet to be graced with evidence for indeterminism or determinism. I find it useful to operate as if a form of free will exists. I, however, cannot claim free will exists without a way to test that claim. So Barash may say we have a unique human freedom but that assertion remains only an idea, pitifully absent of substantiation.

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    1. You are caused to choose, but you have been given (by who knows what) the responsibility to assess the consequences. You've been caused to be free to choose from at least a yes or no option, and thus been freed to learn that you may have made the wrong choice.

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