CreateDebate is a social debate community built around ideas, discussion and democracy.
If this is your first time checking out a debate, here are some quick tips to help get you started:
Arguments with the highest score are displayed first.
Argument replies (both in favor and in opposition) are displayed below the original argument.
To follow along, you may find it helpful to show and hide the replies displayed below each argument.
To vote for an argument, use these icons:
You have the power to cast exactly one vote (either up or down) for each argument.
Once you vote, the icon will become grayed out and the argument's score will change.
Yes, you can change your vote.
Debate scores, side scores and tag scores are automatically calculated by an algorithm that primarily takes argument scores into account.
All scores are updated in real-time.
To learn more about the CreateDebate scoring system, check out the FAQ.
When you are ready to voice your opinion, use the Add Argument button to create an argument.
If you would like to address an existing argument, use the Support and Dispute link within that argument to create a new reply.
Empathy is well understood in soft sciences like psychology and sociology. Quite a few great secular moralists used sociology, psychology and in particular evolutionary hypotheses of social cohesion to extrapolate moral ideas that tend to be a helluva lot more convincing to a thinking man than the "because the book with the cross on it said so" shite that theists peddle.
If science is observation and experimentation purposed to gain insight and knowledge into the natural world, its structure, and its behaviour, then morality and empathy can be studied like any other phenomena.
There are hundreds of scientific studies about human empathy and morality out there. They are the studies that told us that altruism is innate, that callousness is learned, that empathy exists in most people, and that some people have no empathy. Interestingly, religious leaders disproportionately fall into the last category there.
You made some interesting points, but I am not entirely sure you addressed a universally applicable morality so much as a set of tools and codes for behavior specifically within a society.
You wrote "They are the studies that told us that altruism is innate, that callousness is learned, that empathy exists in most people, and that some people have no empathy.
Empathy is on uncertain ground regarding its relation to morality, partially because empathy is just as easily used as a tool to understand others for the purpose of domination as it is for the purpose of support.
It is also on uncertain ground because while empathy may encourage and support kindness, that does not necessarily mean it would support honesty or discourage murder. It is easy to imagine committing murder or theft against one person in order to serve the needs of a different person for whom we feel empathy.
True, empathy and reciprocity are critical to societal cohesion, but altruism is not a universally applied behavior. It is generally focused on members of the same society, and more commonly on members of the same family.
Xenophobia is the flip side of altruism toward group members, and is common even among the most altruistic. If one perceives the "other" up as an enemy of one's own group (for whom one feels great empathy), then the reaction is that old-fashioned tribalism and brutality that has been standard from ancient times till now. Many of the men who daily did unspeakably immoral things to Gypsies and Jews in Nazi concentration camps, went home each night to be moral and loving husbands and fathers.
If you hate someone, want to hurt someone, see them as "the other", you can't emotionally empathize with them. What you're talking about in terms of manipulation is cognitive empathy, the ability to abstractly understand the conditions of another person's state of mind and emotions. Emotional empathy is feeling the emotions.
Pyschopaths know the signs and understand, conceptually, the emotions, but they've never really felt them. It's like reading about all the properties of jasmine, knowing every place it grows and every anecdote that was ever written about it, but having never actually smelt the flower.
That's the difference between real empathy and the fake stuff.
I agree with everything you said, but I am at a loss as to how it relates to my point. My point was that empathy explains moral obligations/prohibitions regarding those within our group, (which helps to bind societies together) but does not explain moral obligations/prohibitions regarding those outside the group, including people of whom we have never heard, who exist in our minds only as abstractions.
If you hate someone, want to hurt someone, see them as "the other", you can't emotionally empathize with them.
Sure, but that is my point. We do not empathize with everyone. (That would be exhausting!) Empathy for those within the group binds the group together, but empathy for those outside the group can lead to depletion of group resources, vulnerability to enemies, etc..
Morality does not apply only to behavior to those within the group. Theft is "morally wrong", regardless of whether the person from whom we steal is within the group or not, subject to our empathy or not.
So, I don't think scientific studies of empathy shed much light on concepts of morality that include responsibilities to all people.
There are a plethora of studies that show infants -- the most elementary form of humans, the least influenced by cultural or social ideologies -- have innate empathy and altruism. It's called an unconditioned response. In otherwords, it's as much a product of instinct as reactive facial expressions or the tendency to squat when defecating.
I wouldn't be the first to argue that altruism towards others is taught out of us in the current social paradigms which are really rather artificial.
I remember as a small child being told what the slice of ham I was eating came from, and I refused to eat meat, until my parents gave me the old "well if you don't eat it you won't get anything else". Only by way of force did I suppress my natural aversions.
That's a potent and poignant image for me. It illustrates perfectly how what is innate can be pressured out of someone by what is "normative" or required.
In a globalized world, what are group resources, really? What good is tribalism? I don't dispute that in some hunter-gatherer society a few thousand years ago that endless charitability would stretch resources too thin, but in today's world, it's exactly tribalism and personal selfishness that does that.
The reason why I mention the un-empathetic is because they are our CEO's, our politicians and our resource-hoarders. I read a while back that around 50% of the wealth of the planet is held in the control of fewer than 50 individuals, many of whom run think-tanks that peddle nonsense about the deniability of climate change, the danger of immigration, the threat of terrorism ad nauseam.
They are a very real, very present drain on the health of the planet, on the wealth of the planet, and on the future of our species. Not because they are altruistic, but precisely because they are not.
Sidenote: theft is not always morally wrong. A child steals a loaf of bread from a merchant who controls all the bread, because the child is starving. The moral culpability for that situation lies with the society which allows one fat-cat to own all bread and little children to be so starving and helpless they resort to stealing a loaf.
I cannot really tell whether we are disagreeing on the big question, or just about the little stuff.
There are a plethora of studies that show infants -- the most elementary form of humans, the least influenced by cultural or social ideologies -- have innate empathy and altruism.
This is not really helpful information because it costs an infant nothing to be empathetic or altruistic since they create no obligations or responsibilities on the part of the infant.
You still have not really shown how empathy with individuals leads to or connects to a morality of universal obligations/prohibitions, so I am not really sure about why the empathy matters with regard to morality.
My argument is that the insufficiency of altruism and empathy for more than group cohesion is why a more complex (and contrived) moral construct is required. Otherwise we are left with nothing else to govern the more basic (and older and more universal) programmed rules of force and dominance.
Your Sidenote definitely indicates that you do not expect altruism and empathy to be sufficient, nor universal, nor extended to all equally, despite the discussion of infants.
Sidenote: theft is not always morally wrong. A child steals a loaf of bread from a merchant who controls all the bread, because the child is starving. The moral culpability for that situation lies with the society which allows one fat-cat to own all bread and little children to be so starving and helpless they resort to stealing a loaf.
This is an interesting statement because not only do you assume a lack of empathy and altruism on the part of all, but also because you cite COVETOUSNESS as a justification for THEFT. (Which other of the Ten Commandments would you nullify? :) )
Notice that you set the Merchant up as an outsider in how you phrase the situation; by being rich he is other, and therefore not subject to benefit from the empathy and altruism of the society as a whole. The empathy and altruism of the society does not create an obligation on their part to give their own supplies to feed the child, but to force the merchant to do so. You assume the merchant owns ALL the bread, and that his wealth must somehow exempt him from the benefits of empathy.
You simultaneously make the thief a child, presumably because we have a knee-jerk impulse to empathize with the child, but not the adult merchant.
This is an indication of the proto-moral programming I discussed in other posts. One of our oldest stories is to protect the young, dating back as much as 200 million years.
In a globalized world, what are group resources, really? What good is tribalism? I don't dispute that in some hunter-gatherer society a few thousand years ago that endless charitability would stretch resources too thin, but in today's world, it's exactly tribalism and personal selfishness that does that.
It is interesting. Although you acknowledge the neurological predisposition to empathy and altruism,you do not apply the acknowledgement to other behavioral tropisms.
Moreover, you do not apply the principles of natural selection to the selection for, and maintenance of these tropisms.
I think this is a foundational concept on which we disagree: Whether genetically founded predispositions adjust to new realities without the genes changing first.
My calculation is that obviously they cannot. (By contrast, the paragraph I cited from your post indicates that you think they can.)
My argument is that those genes that did not drive their organisms to tend first to protect their own genes (in their progeny and their family lines) did not get passed on beyond the generations they did not protect. What survived in humans was a strong tendency toward what you disparage as tribalism, and discount as unnecessary in a supposedly globalized world.
Just knowing about something does not imply any of the following:
- On a conscious level
- - Believing it
- - Thinking it is a good idea
- - Wanting it
- On an unconscious level
- - Having the drive to change behavior in accordance with it
or alternately
- - Losing the drive to behave in ways that prevent it
Surely you understand that a billion years of natural selection has not protected those genes for behaviors that do not account for the following realities.
- Plentiful resources is a localized phenomenon.
- Plentiful resources is a temporary condition
- There is no selective mechanism that favors genes that do not tend toward tribalism and protection of group resources
This is good, real food for thought. At the moment I'm writing a dissertation about the nature of perception in humans and other species, and a lot of it is essentially a nature/nurture comparison. What I've found is that while perceptual capacity is fundamentally organic, the ways in which those capacities are utilized often go against what you would expect from a typical reading of evolutionary selection. And the more intelligent the individual, the more this seems to be so.
The fact that the human brain developed a neocortex to allow it to function in ways that enable humans to fundamentally disregard their own instinct is what I call "the trade-off problem".
Imagine an adult human being who, owing to a greatly developed ability to scrutinize the world (what is called "depressive realism") decides that nihilism is the true condition of the universe (a philosophy closer rooted in fact than fiction), and kills herself. Then the very neocortex she developed to allow her an enhanced ability to survive, is the thing that gives her the capacity to deny her survival instincts. It is out of a greater ability to see the world closer to its chaotic reality, that she becomes diametrically opposed to her own evolutionary survival mechanisms.
The more we as human beings understand about the truth of the universe, the more likely we are to have complex neurological processes that allow us to defy our simplest. And I would conclude that the level of denial of instinct is inversely proportional to the degree of development of the "higher faculties".
On the other end of the scale, several studies indicate that those without empathy favour focusing on more base instincts such as hunger, sexual satisfaction, primal needs like the need to dominate, the need to "win", the need to be powerful, the need to display vengeance, anger etc etc.
Thus it seems to me that regardless of whether the common instinct is to pursue base concepts like tribalism and self-interest, those of intellectual superiority among our species often pursue exactly the opposite.
That's why I make the distinction between the empathetic instinct and the tribalistic instinct. Empathy, in my reading, works in tandem with the denial of other more selfish instincts. In fact, I would say it's probably required for it.
Then the very neocortex she developed to allow her an enhanced ability to survive, is the thing that gives her the capacity to deny her survival instincts. It is out of a greater ability to see the world closer to its chaotic reality, that she becomes diametrically opposed to her own evolutionary survival mechanisms.
This has an interesting relationship to the capacity to feel love, regardless of genetic relationship.
In terms of the Darwinian concept of survival, which is centered on the survival of the genes/progeny, not the self, this principle might equate to risking the lives of one's own genetic progeny to protect or provide for adopted children.
I assume it is a development of living in extended families or clans, wherein all the residents carried at least some of one's own genes.
It's interesting to think about. I also find it interesting that you look to the past to explain your present but don't seem to toy with extrapolating your present forwards. But then I really like hypothesising.
Here's one for you: if the general progression of the intelligence of our species is upward (as can be qualified in the continuing development of our technology, our mathematics, our physics, the level of education worldwide, the internet age, the growth in IQ rates), and the general trend in the philosophical sphere is towards a more liberal morality and a freer social ideology (as can be qualified in the growing world freedom index) then our species is at an important juncture in that it is beginning to break away from the socially Darwinistic mechanisms of society that we would once have considered integral to and inseparable from our species.
Higher morality than "I" and "our small clan", I am certain, is the destination if we simply follow the trend and make a future prediction based upon it.
We are seeing the same struggle between the traditional ideology and the liberal ideology, as we are between the human self-interest and the collective interest. What is of course integral becomes actual. Our society is, after all and if nothing else, an outward manifestation of inward cognition.
Kinda gives a whole new spin to "what you think, you become".
It's interesting to think about. I also find it interesting that you look to the past to explain your present but don't seem to toy with extrapolating your present forwards.
True. I tend to look back because the scope is defined. Looking forward is like going through a funnel backwards. We might as well write science fiction, invent new monsters, and invoke the zombie apocalypse. ;)
if the general progression of the intelligence of our species is upward (as can be qualified in the continuing development of our technology, our mathematics, our physics, the level of education worldwide, the internet age, the growth in IQ rates), and the general trend in the philosophical sphere is towards a more liberal morality and a freer social ideology (as can be qualified in the growing world freedom index) then our species is at an important juncture in that it is beginning to break away from the socially Darwinistic mechanisms of society that we would once have considered integral to and inseparable from our species.
There is a lot to unpack here.
I would actually argue that the changes you discuss later in the post are precisely the result of "the socially Darwinistic mechanisms of society" and that we are not breaking away from them at all. The expansion of freedom worldwide (liberal morality and a freer social ideology) is not due to a change in the philosophical sphere, but due to a change in leader selection as societies become increasingly complex. This is primarily a result of social Darwinism.
- 1 - Higher IQs correlate with historical complexity.
We do see that the longer a region has had a continuous complex social and economic structure, the higher the average IQs are. (China has a higher average IQ than Japan, which beats the West (Europe & the US) which beats Africa, etc..)
Having said that, one of the primary reasons for general growth of intelligence in the past couple centuries is the combination of better nutrition and prenatal care. Much of the measurable and extrapolated IQ growth is not a function of gentic fitness, but cultural development of farming and medical technology.
- 2 - High IQs are only needed for survival/success in complex societies.
This may be unrelated correlation, but I do not think so. In agrarian and pre-agricultural societies, survival is determined primarily by physical characteristics like strength, speed, dexterity, resilience to drought and hunger, and having an effective immune system. Having an IQ much over 100 does not confer much survival advantage, or help much with the simple tasks of farming, etc.. Being a genius just would not help it rain enough to get the crops to grow. As a result, IQ was not likely to be a major factor in mate selection, etc.
The more complex the society (hence the more complex tasks are) the more likely higher intelligence will increase success, wealth and status, and therefore attractiveness, which would augment selection for intelligence. Once the Industrial Revolution hit, economic success was greatly enhanced by higher intelligence, and now it almost entirely depends on intelligence.
An IQ of 75 or 80 is far above average (by 10-15 points) in central Africa, and sufficient for rural life and subsistence farming. However, that same IQ is insufficient for most jobs in the US, and people are virtually unemployable with IQs less than 85, even at simple jobs like washing dishes or flipping burgers.
- 3 - Strength/ force rule simple societies, and Intelligence rules complex ones.
There is a very strong correlation between societal complexity and the importance of intelligence vice physical strength as how one attains political and social power. A degree of force is always required, of course, but the simpler the society, the more likely the ruler attained power by his own physical violence.
I would argue that the movement away from physical strength as the primary factor in government selection is a main cause of more liberal social ideologies.
- 4 - Force is restrictive and intelligence is liberating.
To a hammer, every problem looks like a nail, so those who gain power through violence tend to rule that way; as a result, they have to institute and enforce restrictive social ideologies in order to maintain power. We see that even in modern societies based on rule by force (USSR, Nazi Germany, Iran, and any other dictatorship you care to name.
By contrast, those societies governed by those selected for mental capabilities tend toward more freedom, and more liberal moralities. Republics tend toward this precisely because the whole concept of a constitutional republic is founded on intelligent design of government, intelligent choice of leaders, who govern by idea and influence. This applies equally to capitalism and markets as to politics, and the two spheres feed into each other, as demonstrated by the current US president, France's Emmanuel Macron, Mit Romney, the political lives of Rockefellers and Kennedys, etc..
An alternate explanation
It is possible that the connection between IQ and more liberal morality and freer social ideology is only a result of IQ interacting with free market capitalism.
The majority of the world's wealth has been created through free market capitalism, and it is possible that it is the prosperity created by the capitalism that creates the tolerance for freedom, especially with respect to sexual mores. (A society with enough wealth to support an out of control welfare system does not have to control female sexuality and associated pregnancy risks.)
- 5 - Darwinism is more social in complex societies.
All of this tends to select for intelligence, and therefore success and societal status and power through standard Darwinian mechanisms:
-Degree of success in navigating the physical and social landscape
-Ability to access resources
-Ability to attract fertile reproduction partners
-Ability to protect our progeny and advance their reproductive success
The fact is that higher IQs confer a much greater advantage in accomplishing these things in more complex societies than in simple ones.
Moreover, the fact that people tend to cluster by economic success makes it more prevalent that people will tend to breed with people of similar IQs. This has caused a tendency to widen the IQ bell curve, and cause it to correlate ever more strongly with economic success and political power.
Quite a few great secular moralists used sociology, psychology and in particular evolutionary hypotheses of social cohesion to extrapolate moral ideas that tend to be a helluva lot more convincing to a thinking man than the "because the book with the cross on it said so" shite that theists peddle.
Yep.
That does not automatically mean it is wise to discount the because-the-old-book-said-so argument. There are some fairly convincing reasons to believe old stories simply because they are old.
(I know. Just, please, hear me out.)
Natural selection applies to ideas, as well as to societies and organisms.
When discussing the nexus between natural selection and the Nietzscheian idea that "truth serves life," Dr. Jordan B. Peterson said that "the oldest stories are the truest stories," because the only stories that are told continuously for long ages are the ones whose patterns, attitudes, and values help those who internalize and follow them to survive, thus being truth serving life. The untrue stories stop being told because those who believe them die out.
Many like to consider morality or moral codes to be mankind's oldest "stories". Very little has changed in the core of moral codes ensconsed in the Ten Commandments, the Vedas, and other repositories of "Ancient Religious Wisdom." Even agnostics and atheists tend to embrace prohibitions against killing, dishonesty, and theft.
However, even less has changed from ancient myths like the Enuma Elish, the Epic of Gilgamesh, the Classical Myths, the Egyptian Myths, and the Bhagavad Gita. These include relationship patterns that underlie many (possibly most) modern stories.
Jung called the basic elements of these stories archetypes and they point toward values (truths) like courage, strength, and loyalty, and toward behaviors like combat, marriage, and striving to rise to power.
The male rise to power and dominance by strength, and the physiological attraction of females to dominant and forceful men is a major element in these stories, as it is in history and modern life. This is because the relationship between reproductive opportunity and physical dominance and force are based on prehistoric stories and patterns of behavior that seem to be coded in our genes.
This means that moral concepts like non-violence are newer concepts than loyalty and courage, and that loyalty is a newer concept than the drive to dominate. This would indicate that force and dominance have been better verified by more time (millions of years) than has loyalty, which has been better verified by more time (thousands of years) than has non-violence (centuries).
This does not necessarily mean the newer values like modern morality are untrue, merely that they are less thoroughly verified.
I don't really agree with this idea that older moralities are better verified ones, especially when the insinuation is that those older "codes" ought to be thus held in higher esteem. All species evolve, develop, and hopefully inhumans that development is synonymous with improvement. I certainly think the morality of the nonviolent person today is far more admirable than the morality of the raping and murdering Israelites five or six thousand years ago.
The perfect example of the danger of evolutionary theory being skewed into social philosophy is the right-wing ideology of social darwinism, eugenics etc.
We've come a long way since the measure of a man was how many slaves and wives he owned.
You'll also note the tendency for these stories of "great heroes" and womanizers are written by men, who admire the men they're telling stories about. I'm not quite so sure the lowly little women of those stories would have the same perception about the whole thing, given the opportunity to speak freely.
I don't really agree with this idea that older moralities are better verified ones, especially when the insinuation is that those older "codes" ought to be thus held in higher esteem.
I did not insinuate anything of the kind.
I was merely applying a set of concepts and principles, including natural selection (a scientific principle) to examine the thread's topic by extending the concept of morality beyond the usual anthropocentric realm wherein morality is merely a set of IDEAS.
The relationship between dominance behavior and reproduction is far older than humans. In fact dominance hierarchies display in lobsters, a species that has existed for approximately 230 million years. There are structures in the brain of both lobsters and humans that relate to this.
If morality is a universal reality, not just a construct of human culture, then it would have to be older than the moral concepts you refer to later in your post (a couple centuries, at most), and older than the values in our body of myth (several millennia), and probably older than than the archetypes that form the basis of our oldest myths.
It would have to predate the earliest known burial rituals (350,000 years).
This leaves us very little to work with:
- Reproduction opportunities linked to dominance hierarchies
- Force and courage
- Protecting our young
- Not eating our own species.
Personally, I think this is setting the bar pretty low. You obviously agree.
I am not saying "you are an idiot" by choosing this side of the argument.
I simply do not think Can science answer moral questions? is the right question.
Moral questions are about subjective reality.
Scientific questions are about objective reality.
When we address moral issues, the question we are asking is Is this right?
When we address scientific issues, the question we are asking is Is this correct (or true)?
These are very different sorts of questions, and the requirements of the scientific process (empirical evidence, control groups, measurability, etc.) are unsuited for the mutability and vagaries of moral concepts.
I think the questions closest to morality that science might be able to examine are those having to do with Utilitarianism (the greatest good for the greatest number of people) and how to achieve a Utilitarian ideal.
