Sunday, October 7, 2012

The Suspicious Coincidence of 'Objective' Morality which lines up with Natural Expectations

Here is the main point of this post:   

Out of the set of possible moralities that God could have chosen, he happened to pick one that lined up excellently with a non-objective morality that would have been evolutionarily generated.

If you are not familiar with both the moral argument for God's existence and evolutionary biology, what I just said probably did not seem significant. My statement is a response to the first chapter of Mere Christianity, by C.S. Lewis. The remainder of this post is an explanation as to why my previous statement is relevant to Lewis' work.

------------------------------------------------

If God exists, then he has the power to define what is right and wrong, no? God is omnipotent and created everything. Therefore, he is afforded the right to define what is morally right and what is morally wrong for everyone. He has the authority to do so because he is God.

These thoughts fall under the ideology of divine command theory.

But is there another possible source for objective morality other than an all-powerful God? While multiple scientists, most notably Sam Harris,  have attempted to assert that there is, I think that they have ultimately failed to do so (for now I will leave it to William Lane Craig to demonstrate the failure of Harris; see the debates I linked for info on this). Before continuing, let me recommend a few  resources on this subject for those who are new to the objective morality debate.

Here is a worthwhile, 5 minute video from Richard Dawkins on the subject. I highly recommend watching it before continuing your reading.
  • http://bigthink.com/ideas/17055
Here are two debates on this subject, if you are interested in delving deeper. They are long, but very worth while:
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rq1QjXe3IYQ
  • http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yqaHXKLRKzg
It would also be a great idea to read the first chapter of Mere Christianity by C.S. Lewis!

Anyway, if there is no higher authority, it impossible for a universal Right and Wrong to exist. The is no objective Good or Evil. Why? Consider the following scenario:

Person A thinks that it is morally wrong for people to be homosexual. Person B thinks that it is not morally wrong for people to be homosexual. Who is right?

Well, both of them in their own eyes. As long as there is no higher authority for either one to appeal to, neither can say that the other is wrong. Both people define a personal morality for themselves.

This does not mean that we have the innate sense that objective morals exist. This, we most certainly do possess.

Now we need to find and explanation for our perception of objective morality. Any explanation for our innate feelings on this subject must meet two criteria. 1) The explanation must be universal and cross-cultural, because morals are wide-spread and similar throughout the global population. 2) The explanation must allow for certain types of cultural variance, because various cultures do exhibit fluctuations from the overall trend.

There are two possible explanations that I know of:
  1. A higher being created the human race with a sense of objective morality
  2. Through the process of evolution via natural selection, along with cultural interactions, humans developed a sense of objective morality.
Keep in mind that in explanation 1, objective morals actually exist. In explanation 2, objective morals do not exist (it only seems like they do because we have been culturally and genetically programmed to think so).

Both explanations 1 and 2 are valid when it comes to why humans have a sense of objective morality.

HOWEVER, and now we are getting back to my main point here, there is an infinite set of morals which God could have chosen to make objectively right. In addition, the set of morals which could have been generated due to evolution via natural selection is limited.

For example, God could choose to make murder objectively right. He could also choose to make doing hand stands 23 times a day objectively wrong. He could do anything at all that he wanted.

On the other hand, perceived morals generated via evolution could not make certain kinds of things seem morally right or wrong. It would be a rarity (not an impossibility, but a rarity), to see a perceived moral Right generated which would hinder the fitness of a population of humans (Although certain exceptions must be allowed because emergent phenomena such as culture and religion have the ability to create anomalies).

Let's nail down one concrete example that can be used to demonstrate the contrast here:
God could make it morally obligatory for people to kill all of their children. You probably feel a sense of disgust at this, but if God had created you with the innate sense that killing your children was Right, then you would not feel that sense of disgust. Rather, you would feel disgust at people who didn't kill their children.

On the other hand, it would be impossible for an evolutionarily generated morality to contain such an idea. This is because killing one's children reduces one's evolutionary fitness to zero.

Here is a brief list of perceived morals which make sense from an evolutionary/meme-based standpoint. If you have questions on any of these at all, PLEASE ask! I don't want to shot-gun you with a list and expect you to agree with me. In fact, I think that unless this makes sense to you based off of your previous education in biology, you should neither agree nor disagree with me until you gain the necessary knowledge. As a biologist myself, I am more than happy to help you gain that knowledge.
  • The existence of strict societal rules regarding marriage/mate choice
  • Why rape seems wrong
  • Why murder seems wrong
  • Why lying seems wrong
  • Altruistic acts such as dying for one's family
  • Nationalistic acts such as dying for one's country (google 'memes biology dawkins' for info on that)
  • Why stealing seems wrong
And so we will return to my main point once again:

Out of the set of possible moralities that God could have chosen, he happened to pick one that lined up excellently with a non-objective morality that would have been evolutionarily generated.

To me, this seems like a suspicious coincidence. Then again, God could have simply created a natural world which would have undergone the generation of life such that environmental pressure would cause a perceived set of morals which lined up with what he had already purposed the objective morality to be. However, there is no reason why an omnipotent being would need to make his morality line up with natural causes. If the 'God made nature do it' argument is to be followed here, then we find ourselves in scenarios such as 'God created through evolution' or 'God made the universe with the big bang.' In every scenario like that, God adds nothing to the equation.

And so we come back once again. God could have picked any morality. It just so happens that the morality we have lines up very nicely with what you would expect from a society that evolved via natural selection.

What we have here, ladies and gentlemen, is a suspicious coincidence.

10 comments:

  1. There's a huge problem you haven't considered, which is the fact that "Natural Expectations" tends to fall into "just so stories" that can explain virtually any sense of morality. If people are selfish, natural selection can explain that. If people are altruistic, natural selection can explain that. It's actually difficult to conceive of any moral system that natural selection couldn't be used to explain away.

    -MJG

    ReplyDelete
  2. Hi!
    It seems to me that there are a large quantity of scenarios that could not be explained by natural selection. We would start with the broad category of 'things that would lower your reproductive fitness,' although this broad category has many exceptions due to things like culture. Memes often account for these exceptions.

    From that broad base, we can zero in on specific moralities that natural selection could not cause.

    The example I used above was that of 'it is moral to kill one's children.' Here are some more examples:

    -It is morally Right to avoid having children
    -It is morally Right to destroy one's reproductive organs
    -It is morally Right to kill one's family members
    -It is morally Right to jump off of cliffs
    -It is morally Right to spend half of your day throwing pebbles into ponds
    -It is morally Right to spend half of your day throwing sticks into ponds
    -It is morally Right to love red above all other colors

    I realize that there are exceptions to all of these, because we see a lot of exceptions displayed in society. Keep in mind that many of these exceptions are due to religious influence- for example, becoming a monk and never marrying.

    For the purposes of this argument (just like what C.S. Lewis does in Mere Christianity), we must consider broad trends as opposed to getting caught up in the outliers.

    Natural selection certainly can explain selfishness and altruism. However, there are a multitude of broad societal trends that would be unexplainable.

    I acknowledge that to pin anything serious down on this topic, we would need a ton of statistics on various moralities. We would also have to become intense sociologists to understand what is really going on in other cultures. We would also have to account for various religious influences over the ages.

    Without those things, my argument is flimsy at best. Until I free up a tremendous amount of time to pursue this, I will not put much if any stock in it. Way too many sweeping generalizations based off of my limited understanding of the world.

    Hopefully it is still interesting!

    ReplyDelete
  3. Being picky, Sam Harris himself is only singular - not multiple :) When I read his book The Moral Landscape, I was not overly happy with his use of the term "objective" in the context of morality. Science can provide a very good, or rational, or justifiable basis for morality via the minimisation of suffering and the maximisation of well-being (once both are adequately defined), but that basis will not be strictly objective, at least not a priori objective.
    I'm more interested in how we arrived at our moral structures - I've written about it elsewhere and might put some of it on my blog at some stage.

    ReplyDelete
  4. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infanticide_(zoology)

    On the other hand, it would be impossible for an evolutionarily generated morality to contain such an idea. This is because killing one's children reduces one's evolutionary fitness to zero.

    ^This is not true. There are many examples of this happening throughout the animal kingdom. If you want to say that humans are not like the rest of animals and should not be kept to their standards, I completely agree.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. It's not a question of standards. It's a question of r/K reproduction strategies. We are right up the K end of the spectrum and killing our own off-spring is very wasteful of our limited reproductive opportunities. That's evolution generated relativism for you ;) Eating your own young is ok if you are a frog, not as okay if you are a pig and not okay at all if you are a large brained human.

      Delete
    2. Hi Neo!
      That is an excellent point. You just explained that much more technically, accurately, and precisely than I did in many more sentences. Thanks for your input!

      Delete
    3. Not a problem. This sort of thing appeals to the cynic in me :)

      Delete
  5. Hi!
    Thank you for your comment. In order to understand my post, you really need to have a good understanding of evolutionary biology. I will attempt to explain some of the basics here as they apply to the argument. Please let me know if any of this doesn't make sense.

    First, did you read the wiki article? Here is a quote from the second paragraph: "Infanticide caused by sexual conflict has the general theme of the killer (often male) becoming the new sexual partner of the victim's parent, which would otherwise be unavailable. This represents a gain in fitness by the killer, and a loss in fitness by the parents of the offspring killed"

    Note that there IS a gain in fitness in many cases, because the killer is not killing his/her own children, but rather the children of others, which gives their own children a better chance.

    Now, we do have the much rarer case of filial infanticide.

    Keep in mind that this phenomena is not the norm. While it is often times observed, it is extremely rare. Just as C.S. Lewis stated in Mere Christianity, an outlier can be brought up as an example against any statement, but it is the broad trends that we must pay attention to when speaking about a moral argument.

    In my blog post, I should have been more specific about what I was talking about. What I should have said was "killing one's OWN children without added benefits is not something that would not happen 99% of the time."

    As a marine biologist, I can speak to an informative example- broadcast spawners. In the ocean, it is much more effective to launch a ton of gametes into the water and hope that they reach eggs. When this does happen, and new organisms are born, they have absolutely no connection to their parents (the parents can't recognize them). Now, the odds of the parent and child meeting up again is extremely low. If they do meet up, and the parent is hungry, the parent will often attempt to eat the child. This makes sense evolutionarily because 1) the odds of meeting one's own children are low, 2) there is a benefit in eating members of one's own species, and 3) it would cost more than it is worth to invest in the ability to recognize one's own children.

    I'll leave it at this much for now. If you would like more examples, or a better explanation of how biology applies to the argument, I would be happy to go into more detail.

    ReplyDelete
  6. Hello again!
    Here is one more thing to point out:

    If it were the norm in the animal kingdom (or for life in general) to commit filial infanticide, then we wouldn't have a world full of animals/life.

    Animals don't kill their own young, unless there is a significant benefit to them.

    If we wanted to open up another can of worms, we could talk about abortion, as it could be interpreted as filial infanticide. We can discuss that if you would like to.

    Thanks for your comment again!

    ReplyDelete
  7. And, one more thought:

    You can find much of what I'm talking about in the wiki article you sent me!

    I recommend these sections: Infanticide involving sexual conflict, Resource competition, Costs and defenses, and Humans and infanticide. This is almost the entire article, so it may actually be best to just read the whole thing.

    ReplyDelete