Vinnie

Is Morality Hardwired Into Us By Evolution?
Neuroethics or Moral Neuroscience

http://www.after-hourz.net/ri/morality.html

Overview:

The April 2004 issue of Discover Magazine features an intense, thought-provoking article entitled "Whose Life Would You Save?" by Carl Zimmer. The article includes a number of moral conundrums along with a discussion of philosopher Justin Green's cutting edge research into a field so young "it still lacks an official name" (what we here term neuroethics or moral neuroscience). We shall discuss Zimmer's article (pp. 60-65), evolution, several moral conundrums and neuroethics in general.

• Are You a Good Person--Several Thought Experiements
• Green's Research and Seven Moral Conundrums
• The Trolley Experiments and the Utilitarian vs Kantian Dilemma in Ethics
• Morality In Primates--Capuchin Monkeys
• The Ultimatum Game
• Evolution of Morality
• Final Thoughts on the Issue

Vinnie

Alonzo Fyfe

The notion of morality being hardwired is a basic contradiction in terms.

A central component of morality is that "ought" implies "can" (and, accordingly, that "cannot" implies "it is not the case that one ought"). In short, there must be an element of choice.

Attaching 'ought' concepts to things that are hard wired is as nonsensical as saying that water OUGHT to flow down hill (in the sense that the water is doing something immoral if it does not flow down hill). Ought concepts simply lose their meaning when we are dealing with things that are 'hardwired'.

Note: This does not mean that morality requires free will. Morality requires choice -- the possibility of things being different as a result of mental processing. Computer programmers have shown us how determined choice works. However, "hardwired" is incompatible with determined choice.

"Hardwired ethics" is like a "round square". It is a basic contradiction in terms.

Matrioshka_Brain

I think the idea is that "morality" is simply the result of our psychology.

Jade

What is the difference between a computer processing information and water flowing down a hill? Just as the computer processes the data flowing through it according to rigidly deterministic (even necessarily deterministic) rules, so too does the hill 'process' the water flowing down it. The specifics of the chip and the software determines the output of a computer, while the specific contours and features of a hill determine where the water will flow, and ultimately where it will come off the hill (its 'output').

You say that morality requires the possibility of a different outcome of mental processing. Assuming you are a compatibilist, this means that the mental processing could have been different if the conditions of the brain had themselves been different. Yet this is exactly the same situation for the water and the hill -- if the hill had a different shape then the water could have flowed differently and come off the hill at a different point.

Vinnie

The title is a catch phrase. It asks a question. It is not a declaration and part of our moral decisions are influenced by a number of things. Millions of years of evolutionary development is probably one of them as the article points out. That is all the title meant. If you read the very ending of my article this would be more transparent.

Or possibly as one person put it on the Straight Dope message boards:

Its sort of a "stacking the deck. Not a complete hardwire situation such as would be seen in the social insects."

Vinnie

Vinnie

Can you elaborate on this a little? It looks like a "basic contradiction in terms" to me.

And what is the basic difference between choice and free will?

Vinnie

Alonzo Fyfe

The original post uses the term 'hardwired', and if this term is to have any meaning at all then one must be able to contrast it with something else. To keep the computer analogy alive, that which is not 'hardwired' is 'programmable'.

Clearly, the distinction between determined choice and events such as water flowing downhill is not the fact that one is determined and the other is not -- both are determined. What distinguishes them is that one involves choice, and the other does not.

For centuries, the determined choice seemed to be impossible. Computer programming is teaching us how it can be done. A useful way to understand the distinction is through the distinction between hardware (hard wired) and software (programmable).

On a very simplistic level, there is no distinction between hardware and software. Software merely makes small adjustments to the hardware. We could, instead, go into the machine and move the electrons around with some tweezers and a magnifying glass -- but it would take longer.

Yet, a useful distinction does exist between hardware and software. We recognize an important difference between a change brought about on a computer as a result of typing on a keyboard, and changes brought about as a result of dropping the computer from a great height. We distinguish events involving the use of a program from those that do not. They are not just differences in degree, they are differences in kind.

How are we to draw this distinction? We draw it based on whether the events can be described in terms of relationships among propositions -- some sort of propositional logic or programming code. The events involved in a laptop hitting the pavement has nothing to do with a code -- sets of propositions relating to each other in particular ways. On the other hand, programmable events involve lines of code, each representing a proposition, each logically related to other propositions. The best way to understand software events is to understand the code.

Mental events use a code written in terms of propositional attitudes, called 'beliefs' and 'desires'. (Note: There are efforts underway to actually make a belief/desire computer code. If successful, expect computers themselves to have beliefs and desires in the future.)

As a result of our interaction with the physical world, our propositional attitudes change. We acquire new beliefs and new desires. We are programmable.

The claim that all desires are hard-wired is belied by our cultural differences. This is, perhaps, the strongest proof that morality is not 'hard wired' because, if it was, we would have never allowed slavery, or never have abolished it. Societies would not shift from allowing homosexual contact to condemning it, then back to allowing it again. We would never have permitted women to vote, replaced monarchies with democracies, or dreamed up the idea of "trial by jury".

A major part of this fact that the brain is programmable by experience is that our desires can be shaped by those experiences -- particularly by the experiences of praise, blame, reward, and punishment. This is nothing new; the power of positive and negative reinforcement in conditioning has been known for millenium. We (like most mammels today) were practicing this art long before we had the capacity to understand it.

Morality requires determined choice, we have determined choice in a computer code of logically related propositions, a computer code of logically related propositions exists in the brain through in the propositional attitude of 'belief' and 'desire'. Morality, then, concerns our propositional attitudes insofar as they can be modified by experience, specifically through the experience of praise, blame, reward, and punishment.

Morality, by definition, deals what is programable, not what is hard wired.

What is 'hard wired' does have an influence on morality, because 'ought' implies 'can' and 'cannot' implies 'it is not the case that one ought'. It is not the case that we ought to teleport the child out of the burning building, because we cannot do so.

To the degree that certain characteristics are hard wired (e.g., our aversion to pain, our preference for people who are close to us), then it is a foolish to say that we ought to act contrary to these hard-wired traits as it is to say that we ought to violate the laws of physics.

These studies determine the boundary beyond which the concept of ethics cannot sensibly pass. But morality concerns with is on the inside of that boundary, not with what research shows to exist on the outside -- with what is determined to be 'hard wired'.

Alonzo Fyfe

Consider a basic program to play a game of chess.

The computer examines a set of legal moves, and attaches a value to each outcome.

At the start of the decision-making process, a number of options are possible. On the first turn, the computer could move each of eight pawns one square or two; and each knight to one of two squares, for a total of 20 possible moves. All moves are possible.

Now, one of the arguments that had been used in favor of 'free will' for millenia is that there is no sense in thinking of several options being possible if they are not genuinely possible (that is, if the person does not actually have the power to select among any of the options). Thus, the classic argument that choice requires free will.

The computer program views all 20 options as possible, evaluates and weighs the outcome, and then makes a selection within the context of an entirely determined system. The computer shows us how choice is possible within a determined universe.

Vinnie

Thank you for the elaboration with the chess example

copiae

There is no room for choice in a deterministic universe.

Fact of the matter is, any "choice" that the computer made could easily have been predicted by any individual that knew what rules the computer used to make that decision. Also, if we were to "rewind" the universe, if you will,up to the point prior to the computer making the decision, there will be no change in the decision. Indeed, the decision cannot be viewed as the result of a choice, merely the progression of an inevitability.


Back to the OP, I sincerly doubt that morality is hardwired into us, simply due to diversity of morality displayed by cultures throughout the world. If morality WAS hardwired into us, surely there would be some grain of similarity displayed through the cultures?

But, alas, no. Throughout history, there have been times (often, eras) where that which is morally abhorrent to us now - slavery, torture, rape, murder, have been viewed as morally permissible by various cultures.

Although, and actually, come to think of it, the one thing that has almost never been seen as morally permissible is theft (unless you count killing someone and taking his possessions as theft), but i suspect that this is due to other reasons... After all, surely evolution would favour intelligent theft? (Increasing your resources, and thus your likelyhood to survive & prosper, with no fear of retribution?)