Riverwind

I am religious, but for the sake of this thread, I will assume that atheists and agnostics are correct in stating that there either is no God or we cannot know if there is a God, and I will attempt to address 'moral' issues on these grounds.

That out of the way, a couple of terms keep coming up that are very much of interest to me...they are: "Moral Intuition" and "Empathy"

These are asserted by some (many?) to occur naturally from birth. The father of two children (and having been a child myself, once, long upon a time... ), I do not believe that any such things occur naturally but are instead learned behaviors.

What do you say? And why?

JamesBannon

We have capacities that have to be expressed - like language, sense of self, and empathy. Does that answer the question?

HelpingHand

I voted 'other' because I think It's a combination of both. We have some sort of moral intuition at birth but it has to be cultivated. I think the same holds for other primates too.

Greetings

Walter

xunzian

Recent studies in 'moral grammar' make it sound very much like 'universal grammer'. It doesn't mean that all languages are the same, or that specific languages are innate, but rather that language is, itself, innate.

That, and I find Mencius's thought experiments on the innate goodness of man convincing. But I don't necessarily expect others to buy into that.

JamesBannon

I certainly don't buy reformed Christian dogma that we are innately bad.

Xyzzy

It depends on what moral ideals or behaviors you're talking about. Some are clearly innate and natural, and others are learned.

But the "foundation" of all moral behaviors are in fact natural. The moral logic and reasoning which support the differing moral ideals of any particular culture all ultimately derived from innate human moral predispositions.

Riverwind

Thanks for the opinions shared so far. I thought that many here would probably say these things are natural.

To me, young children are about as "natural" as we can get (unless one tries to subjectively analyze ancient civilization). So, I'd like, in addition to the poll, to take a look at these little blank slates we call children.

If 'empathy' and 'moral intution' are natural, we should see them in children. I do not understand why it would have to be taught or encouraged, unless it were not natural and it ran contrary to self-preservation and evolution.

So, I'd like someone to share some concrete and non-isolated examples of the behavior of children that shows this innate 'empathy' or 'moral intuition', please.

Also, perhaps I would divide these two notions further... I will term one 'local empathy' and 'local moral intuition', and I will term the other 'general empathy' or 'general moral intuition'. By 'local', I mean immediate family, friends, and possible a societal, ethnic, or other group. By 'general', I mean all people, no exceptions.

With these useful, broken-down definitions in hand, I can understand mistaking our innate selfishness (I believe selfishness is innate and natural as part of self-preservation and evolution) for 'local empathy' or 'local moral intuition' when we think of how we feel and act toward those who benefit us. However, as I said, I believe this attribution would be a mistake. I see no evidence of 'general empathy' or 'general moral intuition' in children. I do, however, see what could be considered a sort of 'local empathy' or 'local moral intuition'. Again, I believe this is merely selfishness. We naturally know (or perhaps even just find out) how we must treat those close to us in order to survive and, further, to live happily.

HelpingHand

We'd have to watch children grow up without any form of education and see how they would act, I guess.

I do not think 'general moral intuition' is very common even with Christians. It all comes dowm IMHO to how far 'local' really is. The more we learn about the world, the more communication there is, the less 'local' things become.


Greetings

Walter

Riverwind

As a parent, you do watch them grow and learn. So, you see what they are like and how they tend to behave before you begin to try and mold them.

Are you a parent? If not, I wish you the experience. It is both difficult and rewarding.

One thing I can say, however, is that as a "clean slate", they do not relate well to each other and their selfishness and lack of empathy toward other children is more than obvious before being taught differently.

I agree. I do, however, think it is a goal of Christianity (and I know, from my own experience that it is heavily encourage in every church I've ever attended...whether we, as fallible humans, follow that teaching is a different thing).

It seems a 'moving target', but even with the global communication, there will always be 'lines of division' among people groups in the world. Those 'lines of division' will be the ones across which 'local empathy' does not extend and in which 'indifference' seems to always prevail. The world is simply too large to care about and do something about everything we'd like to...can anyone say Darfur (but that's just the one popular cause of Hollywood...there are plenty more).

StarryNight

I voted other, because I believe that "both" is the correct answer.

With regards to empathy we have what are called mirror cells within our skulls which "mimic" another's actions and emotional expressions within our own minds, What they smile, our mirror cells smile too. When they cry, we cry inside. Though structures in the brain may be influenced by experience, with dendrites branching out here and there, basic mirror cells are believed to exist in all humans from birth. Our empathy may be fine tunes by experience and developed by attention, but the basic tool is natural, innate.

With regards to moral intuition, that depends on your particular moral philosophy. Of course, philosophising is an acquired trait, but say for example one believes that pleasure and hapiness are amongst the "goods". Well, there is evidence that psychological conditioning occurs due to natural, genetic tendencies and reactions within the brain, so one is almost compelled on a practical level to value some sort of satisfaction and pleasure.

On the other hand if you are a Ten Commandment theist, then that is almost entirely learned or entirely the product of a certain amount of cultural evolution. I said "almost entirely" because cultural evolution has some of it's roots in natural psychological conditioning, but thinking "Thou shalt not..." is certainly not as universal and natural as learning (and opining) via the forces of reinforcement as we the children of the universe all to some extent do.

Mirror neurons can be found here::angel:

I think that it was the psychologist Piaget who pronounced that children enter a moral phase of development aged aruond twelve, at that time do they begin to integratively comprehend the facts about right and wrong. Now obviously some learning is involved, but perhaps there is an underlying natural developmental phase in the brain, like myelination of the prefrontal cortext in normal teenagers, or to derail a little, the development of sexual awareness, ongoing behind the scenes in the brain which enables or even compells under normal circumstances a sense of justice, goodness and shared humanity...I might be right I might be wrong, but I thank the forces of nature, and especially those who have battled for our freedom, that it's not considered immoral for me to formulate a nontheistic response.