Category: Morality inversions

The Age of Morality Inversions

Few illusions are more powerful than moral illusions. We have a powerful innate tendency to believe that some behaviors are good, and some evil. We imagine that these categories exist independently of anyone’s opinion about them, as objects, or things in themselves. This tendency, and hence the very existence of morality, is the result of evolution by natural selection. For the most part, its genetic basis evolved long before the emergence of anything resembling a civilized state. Indeed, similar tendencies exist in other animals. In those times it must have made a significant contribution to the reproduction and survival of those who carried the relevant genes. The predispositions spawned by these genes were quite open-ended and flexible, because there was little chance that they would spawn “dysfunctional” perceptions of good and evil in those simpler times. Times have changed. Instead of contributing to our survival, today these innate tendencies can easily have the opposite effect. They can inspire us with a firm conviction that behaviors that are more likely to result in our extinction rather than our survival are “good.” This is what I mean when I refer to “morality inversions.”

So powerful are our moral illusions that we refuse to believe that they aren’t true. As a result, we erect almost insuperable barriers to self-understanding. Good and evil seem so real to us that we flatly reject the truth that these moral categories exist by virtue of behavioral traits that evolved in the stone age, and in some cases perhaps long before that. It is now abundantly clear that rejecting the truth about something as fundamental as the reasons we behave the way we do is extremely dangerous, assuming we value our own survival.

Once we have accepted the truth about the reasons that account for the existence of what we refer to as morality in human beings, morality inversions aren’t difficult to spot. Simply look for cases in which significant numbers of us start exhibiting behavior that is the opposite of what we observe in every other species on the planet. Individuals of other species behave in ways that tend to increase the odds that the genes they carry will survive and reproduce. Often, we find them actually seeking to suppress the chances that other individuals of their own species will survive if it enhances the “fitness” of their own genes. When the behavior of significant numbers of individuals in our species is exactly the opposite, there must be a reason for it. We must consider the possibility that behavioral traits that once enhanced our chances of survival have become “dysfunctional” in the environment we find ourselves in today.

One such trait is what we refer to as morality, and a fundamental aspect of human morality is its dual nature. Different standards of morality apply depending on whether another individual is identified as ingroup or outgroup. The outgroup is commonly loathed and hated, deemed impure, unclean, corrupt, etc. Look for it, and you will always find it. There was little chance that this trait would “malfunction” during the stone age. The outgroup was always just the next tribe over. To the extent that other groups were known, they were largely irrelevant as far as morality was concerned. Today we are aware of a myriad racial, ideological, religious, and many other types of groups. The trait in question is sufficiently flexible that we are quite capable of identifying any one of them as outgroup. Whatever group it happens to be, we tend to hate and despise its members and deem them immoral. It is quite possible for us to hate and despise groups that are closely related to us and would otherwise pose no threat to us as outgroup, preferring others who are much more distantly related as ingroup, even though they do pose a threat.

The phenomenon of equalism is another aspect of modern human moral behavior. According to E. O. Wilson, we are a “eusocial” species. As noted in the article linked above, to qualify as eusocial, in Wilson’s definition, animals must live in multigenerational communities, practice division of labor and behave altruistically, ready to sacrifice “at least some of their personal interests to that of the group.” The resulting tendency to promote sharing and equal distribution within the ingroup must have enhanced the odds of our survival eons ago. It can hardly be assumed that it will have the same result in a world in which the genetic closeness of those we identify as ingroup has become a matter of coincidence. It, too, has become an abundant source or morality inversions.

It is interesting that in today’s world the white race appears to be uniquely susceptible to such inversions. This seems odd in view of the fact that the same race achieved a dominant presence on several continents where it had never previously set foot in a very short time. Obviously, what we see today was not always the case. Whites are in retreat all over the world, and particularly in the countries where they represent the “indigenous people.” The behavioral traits responsible for morality can lead to radically different outcomes within a few generations in the context of environments that bear no resemblance to the one in which they evolved. The chaotic moral behavior of whites is an excellent demonstration of this fact.

Why is this happening?  “Dysfunctional” outgroup identification certainly plays a major role. Ingroup/outgroup identification among the ruling classes of countries that are still predominantly white is commonly based on ideology. Increasingly, we see them behaving in ways that are sometimes referred to as “woke.”  Their ingroup consists of those who “think right” when it comes to the ideological shibboleths that serve to identify the “good.” It also includes persons in other racial and ethnic groups, who are deemed “good in themselves.” The outgroup consists almost exclusively of other whites who oppose the ideology of the ingroup. As is typically the case for human outgroups, they are hated and despised as immoral, “deplorable,” etc. Only these outgroup whites are deemed capable of sins such as “white privilege” and “white supremacy,” evils to which the favored ethnic and racial groups are deemed immune.

White supremacy, indeed! Are the people who mouth such nonsense not aware that, as far as nature is concerned, our “function” is to carry genes from one generation to the next? There is no God or other entity out there to assign us a “higher” purpose. There is not a life form on this planet that is not a “supremacist” for the genes it carries. All others have gone extinct. That will be the fate of humans who are not “supremacists” as well, whether their skin color be white, black, brown, red, or yellow. Anyone who chooses that outcome in order to preserve the illusion that they are “morally pure,” is welcome to pass into oblivion in the odor of sanctity. I merely ask that, in the process, they don’t try to take the rest of us with them.

Of course, the belief that only those with a certain skin color can be guilty of such sins is racist by the very definition of the term.  Similarly racist is the notion that whites are born guilty of the original sin of slavery even though slavery ended more than a century before any of them were born. Lost in the “conversation” is the fact that it never occurred to significant numbers of “people of color” that slavery was bad to begin with until whites began insisting on it. The fight against slavery and its eventual abolition was initiated and led almost exclusively by whites until the fight was virtually over. It was ended in the US at the cost of over 600,000 white lives. No matter. Whites are supposed to pay reparations for sins they never committed, simply by virtue of being white. The same does not apply to other races. Vast numbers of whites were enslaved by Arabs and Turks at the same time that blacks were enslaved in the US, but no one is suggesting that they pay reparations.

This anti-white racist ideology is fobbed off as “social justice,” an absurd term in itself, implying as it does that modern societies with populations in the millions should be regulated by moral emotions that evolved in the stone age. The remarkable fact about this currently dominant ideology is that it was created and is now maintained primarily by whites themselves. They have been bamboozled by their moral emotions into inventing an ingroup/outgroup complex that has resulted in the transfer of vast resources to other ethnic and racial groups with no prospect whatever that they will receive a comparable benefit in return. Nothing of the sort is observed in any other species on the planet, for the good reason that such behavior would lead to rapid extinction.

A similar morality inversion has resulted from the dominant ideology’s insistence that we are doing an injustice to animals by eating them. No matter that the transition from ape to man would have been impossible without hunting. We are informed by a legion of sanctimonious ideologues that eating animals is “evil,” and we must all become vegans. Since they have never experienced it themselves, they forget that famine has been prevalent throughout human history, and has hardly disappeared in our own time. Establishing these irrational taboos about what we can and cannot eat is harmful in the best of times. In times of famine, it becomes a direct threat to survival.

“Dysfunctional” ingroup/outgroup identification has resulted in another morality inversion of a sort that has been common as the source of the innumerable senseless wars that have been the bane of our species throughout human history. In this case, the Ukrainians are the “good” ingroup and the Russians are the “evil” outgroup. In order to ensure that the “good guys” win, thereby demonstrating how “virtuous” they are themselves, our rulers continue to escalate a conflict that doesn’t concern us, risking nuclear annihilation in the process.

I need not elaborate on the poisoning and mutilation of children in order to “transgender” them, nor the anti-natalism morality inversion. What can one say of these people who are convinced that racing down the path to a biological dead end is “virtuous?” As anyone who glances at social media occasionally is aware, the virtually universal response to these “woke” dogmas by those who oppose them is to perceive their proponents as outgroup. They are denounced as evil, not just as a matter of anyone’s opinion, but as an actual fact. The problem with this is that there are no moral facts. This typically human behavior is also irrational.

Does it seem reasonable, regardless of one’s ideology, to conclude that those of a different opinion wake up every morning wracking their brains to come up with a list of bad deeds to do that day? Does it seem reasonable to conclude that the descendants of those who were “good,” because, within a few centuries, they occupied and became the dominant race on several continents they had never seen before have now suddenly become “evil” because they are behaving in ways that seem tailor made to nullify those results? Neither they nor their ancestors had a clue about the fundamental reasons they acted the way they did in either case. Neither they nor their ancestors understood that it is not possible for anyone to be “really good” or “really evil” because those categories simply don’t exist. They are only imagined. The firm belief that they do exist is based on a powerful illusion that itself exists because it helped us survive in a world that disappeared long ago. The fact that this illusion of moral good and evil can have such diametrically opposite results within a short span of time in the context of environments utterly different from the one in which it evolved seems to suggest that it’s high time for our species to gain some rudiments of self-understanding.

I am not suggesting that one should abandon moral arguments. In an age in which manipulation of moral emotions is the universal weapon for fighting ideological battles, unilateral disarmament is not a viable alternative. Assuming one has any goals in life at all, one must fight for them with the weapons at hand, even if one understands that the very effectiveness of those weapons is based on an illusion. It is not unreasonable to kill a poisonous snake, even if one realizes that the snake doesn’t behave the way it does because it is immoral.

I am suggesting that, whatever your goals in life happen to be, they be chosen based on an accurate understanding of how our species came to be, and why it is that we behave the way we do. If we are to learn anything from the example of the “woke,” it is that blindly responding to emotions that make us feel good, whether morally or otherwise, is a good way to follow them down the same rathole to oblivion.

All human behavior is driven by emotional predispositions that exist because, at some time in the past, they enhanced our biological fitness. It should come as no surprise that these predispositions can and do inspire radically different behaviors among individuals living at the same time and same place in the complex societies of the present. We are not rigidly programmed like so many insects. The fundamental drivers of our behavior are open ended and flexible, well-suited to the simple societies in which they evolved. When creatures with large brains but imperfect reasoning abilities try to interpret what those drivers are trying to tell them in the complex societies we live in today, it is predictable that they will not all come to the same conclusions. As the example of the “woke” among us demonstrates, it is quite possible for us to conclude that, in order to be “good,” we must behave in ways that reduce our biological fitness. We stumble into morality inversions.

It is not my intent to prescribe to anyone how they ought or ought not to behave. We are all links in a chain of life that has existed unbroken for upwards of two billion years. We exist because, unlike myriads of others, all of our ancestors over that vast gulf of time managed to survive and reproduce. The mental traits that are the root cause of our behavior, moral and otherwise, aren’t there by coincidence. They exist because they enhanced the odds of that outcome. If, in full knowledge of that fact, anyone consciously chooses to be the final link in that chain, and to follow so many other life forms into the oblivion of extinction, so be it. If they make that choice because it is comforting to them to imagine that they are being morally good, I have no objection as long as they understand what morality is. I merely observe as I wave goodbye that their behavior seems somewhat out of harmony with the reasons they exist to begin with.

 

Why do you do the things you do? Why do you do those things?

If I am to believe the anecdotal evidence I find on the Internet, I am preaching to the choir. Supposedly, the vast majority of educated people in WEIRD (Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic) countries agree with me that morality is subjective. For example, a professor at California Baptist University reports that, when asked whether morality is objective or subjective, about 95% of students starting his Introduction to Philosophy class answered that it is subjective, at a Christian school, no less! The percentage reported from other polls varies according to the type of people asked, but one often finds a majority claiming that morality is subjective.

This is a very counter-intuitive result if you look at what is happening in our societies. A great number of people may claim to believe that morality is subjective, but the number who appear to have even begun to reason about the implications of that fact is vanishingly small. We find people delivering themselves of furious sermons loaded with appeals to moral emotions in favor of such novel “goods” as the mutilation of children and destruction of their ability to reproduce in order to “trans-gender” them, or denouncing human reproduction itself as morally “evil.” These novelties are invariably presented as if they represented moral truths, with the obvious implication that anyone who disagrees with them is objectively evil. One could cite many more examples, yet if morality is truly subjective, such claims cannot possibly possess either legitimacy or authority. The two examples cited above, along with many others, represent morality inversions. They accomplish exactly the opposite of the evolutionary reasons that morality exists to begin with.

A glance at the debates and discussions on the Internet should be enough to convince anyone that no one really takes the reality of subjective morality seriously. For the most part, these conversations consist of fencing matches with conventional weapons replaced by manipulation of moral emotions. The “moral truths” defended in these debates are almost invariably presented as objective facts. People may claim to believe that morality is subjective, but they seldom if ever behave as if they believe it. I know of not a single exception among living scientists, philosophers, or any other prominent public intellectuals. Every one of them makes moral judgments as if those judgments weren’t just a mere opinion, but expressions of some objective fact. They may realize that morality is an artifact of natural selection, but it doesn’t matter. They condemn this and praise that, for all the world as if Darwin had never existed. The only philosopher I’m aware of who did take Darwin seriously was Edvard Westermarck, and he’s been gone now for more than 80 years.

The behavioral predispositions that eventually manifest themselves as moral behavior after percolating through the skulls of creatures with large brains such as ourselves exist because, in an environment we can safely assume is very different from the one we live in now, they happened to enhance the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce. As Richard Dawkins pointed out in his “The Selfish Gene,” these predispositions are not selected at the level of political parties, or religious denominations, or ideological factions, but at that of the replicator; the “vehicle” that carries genes from one generation to the next. Under the circumstances, it seems logical to ask anyone seeking to impose their moral judgments on the rest of us, “How will this benefit the genes you’re carrying around?”

There isn’t a morally correct way to answer this question, for the obvious reason that moral categories have no objective existence. There is no “morally good” or “morally bad” answer, because the universe doesn’t care one way or the other. Based on the behavior of our fellow humans, we must assume in virtually every case the answer would be, “I don’t consciously associate my moral judgments with my genes at all. I make them because they make me feel good. I find them emotionally satisfying.” I can’t say in reply, “That’s not the way you ought to decide.” I have not the slightest authority or basis to make such a claim. I can’t tell them that their answer is morally good, or morally bad, because those categories don’t exist as other than subjective opinions. All I can say is that I find it somewhat disturbing that I live on a planet along with upwards of seven billion others who never ask themselves, at a fundamental level, “Why do I do the things I do?”

Ask any of your fellow humans, “How will the moral behavior you advocate enhance the odds that the genes you carry will survive and reproduce?”, and they are likely to respond with a look of blank incomprehension. They might answer that their version of morality is objectively true, but in 5000 years the best philosophers among us have never agreed on what that objective truth is, for the seemingly obvious reason that it doesn’t exist. They might answer that their morality has been handed down to them by a God or gods, but belief in such beings is an illusion, and an embarrassing one for our species at that. They might also answer that they are serving the equally illusory cause of “human flourishing,” but that begs the question of what constitutes human flourishing. There is no objectively right answer. In my personal opinion, human flourishing would mean the survival of my species, and its eventual acquisition of traits that would enhance the odds that its descendants will survive into the indefinite future. To the extent that any attempt is made to define it at all, however, it generally means a future state in which everyone is happy, and has easy access to anything they might need or desire. However, happiness, in common with every other human emotional state, isn’t a good in itself. Like all the rest, it exists by virtue of natural selection. I submit that this commonly accepted version of “human flourishing” would be far more likely to result in our extinction than our continued survival.

I, too, act the way I do because of emotions. As Hume pointed out long ago, pure reason can provide no answer to question of how we ought or ought not to behave. However, I do take into account the reasons my emotions exist to begin with, and seek to behave in ways that are consistent with those reasons. I have no basis for claiming that everyone should share my values, and act the way I do. I merely suggest that they might consider asking themselves why they exist, and choose the goals they set for themselves in light of the answer to that question. Apparently, few people do. Most of us stumble through life, chasing illusions, and seeking to satisfy emotional urges without ever taking into account why those urges exist. In the case of morality, we seek to satisfy them by demanding that others behave in some ways and not in others, in spite of our utter lack of authority for making such claims. In the process, we make ourselves a serious nuisance to others.

I have no easy solution to the problem. All I’ve really done is describe how humans behave in the environment we find ourselves in today. All I can suggest is that you take it into account and deal with it, whatever your goals in life happen to be.

The Great Equalist Morality Inversion

We exist by virtue of a natural process of evolution. The most likely reason for the existence of those aspects of our being that can significantly affect the odds that the responsible genes will survive and reproduce is natural selection. This includes innate predispositions that are the root cause of our behavior, including moral behavior. We are not robots. These predispositions do not rigidly determine that we will behave in some ways and not in others. This is especially true in the case of our species, because we are creatures with large brains. We can ponder over what these predispositions of ours are trying to tell us in whatever environment we happen to find ourselves in. These facts account for both the remarkable similarities as well as the differences we observe in the moralities of different cultures.

The predispositions that account for our moral behavior spawn a powerful illusion of ought. We imagine that we ought to do some things and ought not to do others as a matter of objective fact. We believe that good and evil exist as objective things, independent of what anyone thinks about the matter. There is no evidence that such objects exist in the natural world. They are a figment of our imaginations that happened to enhance the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce in a particular environment. For almost all of us, this environment no longer exists. There is no guarantee that the predispositions that spawn our moral behavior will have the same outcome in the environments we live in today as they did in the one in which they evolved. It would hardly be surprising if the opposite were the case. In our current environment they may lead to behaviors that are likely to result in our speedy extinction. Supposing that we prefer not to become extinct, it would behoove us to gain some self-understanding; to realize what morality is and why it exists.

Most of us have goals in life, and most of us assign ourselves a purpose. In the process, most of us have no clue why we do that. We commonly imagine that some external deity has assigned us these goals and purposes, even though such beings don’t exist. Often, we imagine that, absent such external forces to assign them, we can have no legitimate goals or purposes, even though in reality we have always assigned them to ourselves. It follows that when we see others acting in ways that oppose our goals and purposes, we imagine that they are deliberately acting in opposition to God, or to objective Good, and promoting objective Evil. In other words, we consider them bad people. However, God, Good and Evil are imaginary objects. They don’t actually exist outside of our minds. Nature makes no judgments whatsoever about what we ought to do, or what is morally bad, or what is morally good.

For example, conservatives commonly imagine that their ideological opponents, the people they call Woke, or Social Justice Warriors are bad people. Of course, those on the left of the ideological spectrum imagine the opposite. However, regardless of whether we are liberals or conservatives, it is unlikely that the first thing very many of us think about when we wake up in the morning is how many immoral things we can do that day. It is probably more useful to attempt to understand the behaviors in question than to simply pigeon hole them as good or evil.

All of us categorize others in terms of ingroup and outgroup. All of us assign a status to those in our ingroup. No matter how small it is, we establish a pecking order. We also tend to be territorial. At the time these behavioral traits evolved, there was no ambiguity about any of these things. Our ingroup was the group of 150 individuals, give or take, to which we belonged. The outgroup consisted of the people in the territory adjacent to ours. In such small groups there was also no ambiguity about what behaviors were considered morally bad and good. It never occurred to anyone to question the moral consensus of the group. We knew what people were above us and below us in the pecking order. At the same time, we deemed it proper that food and other resources should be shared within the group. Thus, although status was certainly important, there was also a spirit of equality within the group.

Today, we are aware of groups that are massive by comparison; citizens of particular countries, members of political parties, racial groups, religious faiths, and so on. Evolution didn’t provide for this eventuality. We are quite capable of identifying any of these categories as our ingroup or outgroup. It is also quite possible for us to imagine that our backyard, or our country, or even the entire planet, is our “territory.” The result can occasionally be what I refer to as a “morality inversion.” Behavioral traits that promoted survival in our ancient environment accomplish precisely the opposite in the environment we live in today.

By way of example, let’s consider the behavior of leftists in modern western societies in light of these facts. Their ingroup consists of those whose ideology is similar to theirs, and their outgroup consists of conservatives; people who oppose their ideology. They imagine that those in the conservative outgroup are morally evil and deplorable, after the fashion of our species since time immemorial. They tend to place little value on having children, and often consider it positively immoral. Their ingroup consists not of a few hundred, but of potentially millions of others, so they assign differences in status not only to individuals, but to racial, religious, and other subgroups within these massive ingroups. At the same time, they place great emphasis on the spirit of equality mentioned above. They are “equalists,” in that they not only believe that subgroups within their group ought to be treated equally, but actually are physically and mentally equal. The fact that this is highly unlikely in the case of subgroups that have been isolated from each other in different environments for tens of thousands of years doesn’t matter. The equality of groups is accepted as a matter of faith, a quasi-religious belief. The same irrational behavior was evident in the case of the Blank Slate dogma, which was propped up for over half a century before it finally collapsed under the weight of its own absurdity.

The territory of the ingroup is commonly imagined to be the entire planet. Thus, international borders are to be ignored. The principle of equality requires that all members of the ingroup be allowed to come and go as they please within the planetary territory. Those who favor individuals who are most closely related to them genetically are referred to as “white supremacists.” In other words, they are deemed to be morally bad. I am not aware of another species on the planet that behaves in ways that put others of their species that are most closely related to them at a disadvantage.

These behaviors are all perfectly understandable in terms of the open-ended innate predispositions that inspire them. It should also be obvious that they don’t accomplish the same thing as the behaviors that those same predispositions inspired in the environment in which they evolved. You might say they have become “dysfunctional” in the much different environment we live in today. For example, as noted above, leftists have encouraged genetically and culturally alien foreigners, perceived as “equals,” to move into and occupy their territories. This is not a symmetrical process, because if western leftists were to do the same thing in the countries of origin of these aliens, it would be referred to as the evil of colonialism. Leftists not only do not reproduce at a rate sufficient to prevent a gradual decline in their numbers, they often declare reproduction by members of their ingroup a positive evil. No other species on the planet exhibits behaviors similar to these, for the obvious reason that it is a sure path to extinction. It goes without saying that the vast majority of conservatives are no more aware of the evolutionary root causes of their behavior, and can be every bit as “dysfunctional” as a result.

Such behaviors are not objectively evil because there is no such thing as objective evil. There is no objective reason why any human being either ought to or ought not to strive to become extinct. However, some of us do not share that goal, including myself. If anyone who understands the basic psychology of our species decides on due consideration to become extinct, I have no objection. Their removal from the gene pool is probably “good” in terms of my personal goals. However, I do object when they seek to drag the rest of us down with them. There is no objective reason why we ought or ought not to resist their attempts to have us accompany them into extinction. However, we may very well have personal reasons. In that case, there is also no objective reason why we can’t fight back, either. Supposing that, like me, you include survival among your personal goals, I suggest that’s what you do.

Evolution, Revolution, and the Moral Philosophy of E. O. Wilson

Human history is a record of the attempts of our species to reconcile behavioral traits that evolved eons ago with rapidly and radically changing environments. Today we can follow the results of our latest experiments on social media as they develop in real time. As we observe the behavior of those around us, ranging as it does from the extravagant to the whimsical to the absurd, one salient fact should be kept in mind. With few exceptions, the actors in this drama don’t have a clue why they are doing the things they do.

We suffer no such confusion when it comes to the behavior of other animals. We don’t imagine that they are acting according to an “objective moral law,” revealed to them by their gods. We don’t imagine that they act the way they do because of a lively interest in the welfare of all chimpanzee kind, or all giraffe kind, or all alligator kind. We don’t imagine that they are motivated by a “culture,” which has somehow magically materialized out of thin air. We don’t imagine that they have nobly decided to dedicate their lives to the “flourishing” of their species. We realize perfectly well that they behave the way they do because that behavior has enabled their ancestors to survive and reproduce. Only when it comes to ourselves do we fall under the spell of such extravagant mirages. We are so addicted to the illusion of our own uniqueness that we have rendered ourselves incapable of grasping the seemingly obvious; that we are no different from them when it comes to the fundamental motivators of our behavior.

No doubt aliens visiting our planet would deem it a great joke that those among us who refer to themselves as “scientists” and “experts” assured us with perfectly straight faces for upwards of half a century that these fundamental motivators, known as “human nature” in the vernacular, didn’t even exist. The fact that the thing they denied was the reason for their denial made it all the more absurd. Our situation today is little better. There is a palpable sense in the air that a system that served us relatively well for many years is collapsing around our ears. A few of the brightest among us realize that the reasons for this are to be found in the human nature that was denied for so many years. They hopefully suggest that overcoming our problems is a mere matter of tweaking the old system here and there to bring it into better harmony with the evolved, emotional behavioral traits that we commonly refer to by that name. I have my doubts.

Consider, for example, the case of E. O. Wilson, one of the “brightest among us” I refer to above. Read the final two chapters of his Consilience, and you will see that Wilson understands perfectly well that human morality is a manifestation of emotional predispositions that evolved eons ago, just as Darwin suggested in his The Descent of Man. He realizes that these predispositions evolved because they happened to enhance the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce in the context of small groups of hunter-gatherers, and that it is hardly guaranteed that they will produce the same result in the vastly different societies we live in today. He understands that, if the above conclusions are true, then morality must necessarily be subjective, a point of view he refers to as “empiricism.” He calls the opposite point of view, the belief that there is an objective moral law that exists independently of anyone’s opinion on the matter, as “transcendentalism.” He comes down firmly on the side of empiricism. And then he goes completely off the tracks. He tells us what we “ought” to do in a manner that would be completely irrational absent the assumption of “transcendental” morality.

I agree with Wilson (and Darwin) that what he calls the “empiricist” explanation of morality is correct. If so, then the “root cause” of human moral systems, in all their myriad forms, can be traced back to emotional predispositions that exist because they evolved via natural selection. These predispositions evolved in times radically different from the present, and we probably share versions of some them that are little different from those that existed in our pre-human ancestors. I personally conclude from this that, before blindly acting in response to my moral emotions, I need to ask myself if responding in that way is likely to have the same result as it did in the Pleistocene, or if, perhaps, in the context of the very different societies we live in today, it may accomplish exactly the opposite.

I have set goals for myself in life that I consider to be in harmony with the reasons for the existence of my moral emotions. They include my own survival and reproduction, the preservation and continued evolution of my species into forms that are likely to survive in plausible futures and, beyond that, the continued survival of biological life itself. If behaving as I am inclined to behave by virtue of my moral emotions will not serve those goals, but will, in fact, act against or defeat them, I conclude that I need to resist acting blindly in that way. There is no reason at all that any other individual is morally obligated to share my personal goals. However, I have, at least, laid my cards on the table. If someone tells me I am morally obligated to act in a certain way, or in other words that I “ought” to act in that way, I must insist that they also lay their cards on the table. Do they, too, have personal goals in life, and are those goals compatible with my own? If not, and they are simply blindly demanding that others act in ways that satisfy their moral emotions, what makes them think I’m obligated to comply? Unless one believes in a “transcendental” morality, no such obligation can exist. In spite of this, Wilson insists that I, and all the rest of humanity, “ought” to do what he wants.

The ”logic” Wilson marshals in support of this demand is less than compelling. It can be found in “Ethics and Religion,” the next to last chapter of his Consilience. He begins with an attack on G. E. Moore’s “naturalistic fallacy,” which he wrongly interprets as something akin to Hume’s prohibition against hopping over the is/ought divide. He assures us that this fallacy is itself a fallacy, “For if ought is not is, what is?” This non sequitur is what scientists refer to as “hand waving.” The question implies a “transcendental” moral ought, which is impossible if there are no transcendental good and evil. As we read on, we learn how he arrived at this remarkable question. He accomplishes the trick by simply hopping from the categorical ought of morality to the conditional ought of utility. Just as we “ought” to use a hammer rather than a screwdriver to drive a nail, we “ought” to do some things and refrain from doing other things to conform to the moral fashions prevailing among the academic tribe. As he puts it:

Ought is not the translation of human nature but of the public will, which can be make increasingly wise and stable through the understanding of the needs and pitfalls of human nature.

At this point, Wilson’s “ought” no longer has anything to do with the term as we commonly associate it with morality at all. It is completely divorced from its evolutionary origins, and has been re-defined to mean conformity to the “public will” that supposedly exists in societies utterly unlike those in which that evolution took place. Wilson does not feel obligated to explain to us how conforming to the “public will” is likely to enhance the odds of our genetic survival, or his genetic survival, or the continued survival of biological life in general. In fact, he has passed from “empiricism” to “transcendentalism,” promoting a personal version of the “good” which he has convinced himself is “good-in-itself,” but is really just the expression of an ideal that he finds emotionally comforting.

To what end is this “public will” to be made “wise and stable?” Translated to the present, which “public will” are we to prefer? The public will of that half of the population that supports Trump and agrees with his agenda, in the process condemning those who oppose him as evil, or the public will of that half of the population that opposes Trump and all he stands for, in the process condemning those who support him as evil? Wilson doesn’t leave us in suspense. The “public will” he refers to is the one generally supported by tenured university professors. Referring to conservatism he writes,

By that overworked and confusing term I do not mean the pietistic and selfish libertarianism into which much of the American conservative movement has lately descended.

This assertion that “much of the American conservative movement” is morally bad flies in the face of Wilson’s claim that he is a moral “empiricist.” Absent belief in a “transcendental” objective morality, it is mere gibberish. In keeping with the rest of his tribe, Wilson also considers globalism a “transcendental” good-in-itself. In his words,

In the long haul, civilized nations have come to judge one culture against another by a moral sense of the needs and aspirations of humanity as a whole. In thus globalizing the tribe, they attempt to formulate humankind’s noblest and most enduring goals.

This, too, is the affirmation of a purely objective moral code, and flies in the face of the reasons morality evolved to begin with. It decidedly did not evolve to meet the “needs and aspirations of humanity as a whole,” nor did natural selection ever take place at the level of a “global tribe.” In conforming to the moral ideology of his own tribe, Wilson falls into some amusing contradictions. He promotes globalization and open borders as “good,” but then informs us that,

The problem of collective meaning and purpose is both urgent and immediate because, if for no other reason, it determines the environmental ethic. Few will doubt that humankind has created a planet-sized problem for itself.

He goes on to evoke all the familiar environmental dangers we face, citing among others overpopulation leading to starvation, degradation of the water supply, etc. He is particularly alarmed at the increasing rate of extinction of other species, and of the specter of a world in which biodiversity is a thing of the past. If Wilson is really worried about the environment, why is he such a promoter of globalism and open borders? Think of it. Large portions of the globe in Europe and North America were occupied by peoples with a low birthrate, ensuring gradually sinking populations and a consequent decrease in environmental degradation and the possibility of restoring some level of biological diversity. Instead, in keeping with what Wilson suggested they “ought” to do, they threw open their borders and allowed a massive influx from regions with rapidly increasing populations, thereby rapidly accelerating environmental degradation.

Beyond that, Wilson’s globalist “ought” is a good example of how moral emotions can “malfunction,” outside of the environmental context in which they evolved. His big brain combined with modern means of transportation and communication have enabled him to imagine the existence of a global “tribe.” His moral emotions then suggest to him that no artificial borders “ought” to limit or restrain this “tribe.” The result is a classic morality inversion. From a genetic point of view, the evolved behavioral traits that promoted the survival of small, territorially isolated tribes eons ago now accomplish precisely the opposite when blindly applied to a global “tribe” of over seven billion people.

I don’t mean to pick on Wilson. From my personal point of view he represents the best and the brightest of modern academics. I merely point out that, like the rest of his tribe, and the rest of mankind in general, for that matter, he imagines that he “ought” to promote “human flourishing,” or he “ought” to promote “moral progress,” or he “ought” to promote a “just society.” In the process, he never stops to consider that, absent the motivating power of innate predispositions, it would never occur to him that he “ought” to do anything. In all likelihood those predispositions are similar to those that motivated our human and pre-human ancestors hundreds of thousands and probably millions of years ago. They are the only reason that we imagine that we “ought” to do anything at all. They evolved by natural selection, not because they promoted “human flourishing,” or “moral progress,” but because they happened to increase the odds that the genes responsible for their existence would survive. Under the circumstances it seems at least reasonable to consider whether the things we imagine we “ought” to do will accomplish the same things today.

There is no reason that anyone “ought not” to devote their lives to “human flourishing,” or that they “ought not” to fight for what they imagine is “moral progress.” I merely suggest that, before blindly pursuing those goals, they consider whether they make any sense at all given the fundamental reasons that we imagine we “ought” to do some things, and “ought not” to do others.

Meanwhile, as a system that seems to have served us well for more than two centuries appears to be collapsing around our ears, we hear suggestions on all sides that we need a revolution, or that we need to demolish the system and replace it with a new one, or that we must have a civil war to destroy those who disagree with us. It can be safely assumed that the people offering these suggestions are at least as clueless as Wilson when it comes to understanding the “root causes” that motivate their behavior. Before we join them in fighting for, and perhaps sacrificing ourselves for, the noble goals they dangle so invitingly in front of our noses, it may behoove us to consider our own goals in life in light of an accurate understanding of the fundamental factors that motivate us to have any goals at all. It may turn out that fighting for “noble causes” is not really the most effective way to achieve those goals after all.

Corona Comments

There are no objective oughts, no objective goods, no objective values, and no objective moral virtues. That is a simple statement of fact, and implies nothing whatsoever regarding how we ought to behave. Facts bear no implications about what we should do, except as means to an end. We must decide for ourselves what ends to seek. Objective facts may then inform us what we “should” do if we want to achieve the goals we set for ourselves.
Whatever the goals we set for ourselves happen to be, in large measure if not totally, they are a response to our “nature”; predispositions that are as much innate as our arms and legs. These predispositions are similar but not identical among human individuals, and they exist by virtue of natural selection. In other words, at some point and in some environment, they promoted the survival and reproduction of our ancestors. It cannot be assumed that their influence on our behavior will have that result in the very different environment most of us live in today.

Our nature does not determine our behavior, in the sense that it does not dictate what we must do in this or that situation. Rather, it inclines us to act in some ways, and not in others. It is fundamentally emotional, in humans as well as in other animals. We happen to have very large brains, and so can ponder over what our emotions are trying to tell us. We can reason about how we ought to respond to them. However, our reason is far from infallible. As the reasoning process becomes more complex, the outcome regarding what we “ought” to do will vary increasingly among individuals. This is doubly true by virtue of the fact that most individuals respond to their emotions blindly, never considering or taking into account why those emotions exist to begin with.

The above is illustrated by the response of our societies to the spread of COVID-19. The situation is anomalous, in that few of us have experienced anything like it. As a result, an appropriate response to it is not neatly packaged among our preferred or habitual responses to everyday occurrences. One result of this is that we find unusual differences of opinion about how we should react to the virus, even among those whose ideology, whether “liberal” or “conservative,” was formerly a reliable predicter of what their response to a given situation would be. Two factions have formed; those who tend to agree that we ought to take extreme measures to control the spread of the virus, and those who tend to believe that this “cure” is worse than the disease. At the moment the former faction has the upper hand, although the latter hasn’t been silenced completely.

Both factions present their arguments as if they are defending an objective truth. In fact, that is impossible, because objective “oughts” do not exist. What they are really defending is something they want, or value, and what they want or value represents their response to emotions that exist because they evolved. That statement applies not just to our response to a virus, but to every other form of conscious human behavior.

Emotional responses are bound to vary to some extent across populations that have been widely separated by time and space, but they tend to be quite similar, as one would expect of traits that happen to promote survival in a given species. Fear and avoidance of death is one trait almost all of us have in common. The emotional root cause of this fear probably hasn’t changed much, but in creatures with large brains such as ourselves, our behavior isn’t rigidly determined by our genes. We think about what our emotions are trying to tell us, and how we should behave in response. Needless to say, we don’t always all come to the same conclusions, regardless of how similar the underlying emotions happen to be.

In the modern human societies that exist in western Europe and North America, fear of death may well be a greater motivator than ever before. We have few children, and can reasonably expect that those children will survive to adulthood. That was not the case in societies that are more typical of our past, where a large fraction of children didn’t survive past their first few years. Death was not exactly welcomed, but we were more likely to accept it as a matter of course. Now we are more inclined to treat it as an unmitigated calamity, and one that must be staved off as long as possible at all costs. In the case of the virus, it almost seems some of us believe they will be immortal if only they can avoid catching it. Under the circumstances, such drastic steps as shutting down complex modern economies appear to be completely rational. We hand wave away any negative affect this may have on our own and future generations by simply assuming that the global economy will quickly recover afterwards. If we follow the chain of logic that is used to justify this behavior to its ultimate source, we will always find an emotion. The emotion is followed blindly, without regard for the reason it exists to begin with. That reason is that it once enhanced the odds of survival and reproduction of the genes that give rise to it. The question of whether it will have the same result if blindly reacted to in a completely different environment is treated as if it were entirely irrelevant.

In the case of the virus, our innate fear of death has triumphed over all other emotions. We don’t take into account the fact that, while that fear exists for a reason, the programmed death of our physical bodies and consciousness occurs for exactly the same reason. Our fear of death and our programmed death both promote the survival of our genes. Our genes don’t protect us from death indefinitely. Rather, they insure that we will die, but at a time that is optimum for insuring that they will not die. They have been around, in different forms but in an unbroken chain, for more than two billion years. For all practical purposes, they are potentially immortal. I happen to share the goal of my genes. That goal is no more intrinsically good or virtuous than someone else’s goal to accomplish the opposite. However, it does seem to me to have the virtue of being in harmony with the reasons I exist to begin with, and to be formed in full awareness of why the emotions that motivate it exist to begin with as well.

It does not seem “better” to me to be blindly blown about by the shifting winds of my emotions in a completely different environment than the one in which they evolved. The blind fear of death can be and often is trumped by an equally blind response to other emotions. Consider, for example, such slogans as “Death before dishonor,” “Give me liberty or give me death,” and “A fate worse than death.” Those who coined these slogans and those who were moved by them were no hypocrites. In the past we can find myriad examples of such individuals laying down their lives in defense of their principles. These principles were based on other innate emotions than fear of death, perhaps including hatred of the outgroup, or territoriality, or the struggle for status. Thus, while emotions are the basis of all our actions, they can motivate goals that are diametrically opposed to each other in different situations. I merely suggest that, instead of reacting to them blindly, we may find it useful to consider why they exist to begin with. That seems to me particularly true in the case of events as profound as global pandemics.

Designer Babies: Is Morality Even Relevant?

It is no more possible for designer babies to be objectively “good” or “evil” than it is for anything else to be objectively “good” or “evil.” These categories have no objective existence. They exist by virtue of subjective emotions that themselves exist by virtue of natural selection. Despite their higher intelligence, humans react blindly to these emotions like other animals. By this I mean that, in considering how they should act in response to their emotions, humans do not normally take into account the reason the emotions exist to begin with. So it is with the debate over the “morality” of designer babies. It is an attempt to decide the question of whether to allow them or not by consulting emotions that evolved eons ago, for reasons that had nothing whatever to do with designer babies.

This method of deciding how to behave may seem absurd, but, in fact, emotions are the root cause of all our behavior, in the sense that no decision about how to act can be based on pure reason alone. Reason cannot motivate anything. Follow a chain of reasons about how to behave back link by link, reason by reason, and, in the end, you will always arrive at the real motivator, and that motivator is always an emotion/passion/predisposition. These motivators exist because they evolved. By the very nature of the reason they exist, it is not possible for it to be “really good” if we respond to them in one way, or “really bad” if we respond to them in another. We can, however, consider whether a particular response is “in harmony” with the motivating emotions or not, in the sense of whether that response is likely to have a result similar to the result that accounts for the existence of the emotions or not. In other words, we can consider whether the response will enhance the odds that the genes responsible for the emotion will survive and reproduce or not. Continue reading “Designer Babies: Is Morality Even Relevant?”

On the Illusion of Moral Relativism

As recently as 2009 the eminent historian Paul Johnson informed his readers that he made “…the triumph of moral relativism the central theme of my history of the 20th century, Modern Times, first published in 1983.”  More recently, however, obituaries of moral relativism have turned up here and there.  For example one appeared in The American Spectator back in 2012, fittingly entitled Moral Relativism, R.I.P.  It was echoed a few years later by a piece in The Atlantic that announced The Death of Moral Relativism.”  There’s just one problem with these hopeful announcements.  Genuine moral relativists are as rare as unicorns.

True, many have proclaimed their moral relativism.  To that I can only reply, watch their behavior.  You will soon find each and every one of these “relativists” making morally loaded pronouncements about this or that social evil, wrong-headed political faction, or less than virtuous individual.  In other words, their “moral relativism” is of a rather odd variety that occasionally makes it hard to distinguish their behavior from that of the more zealous moral bigots.  Scratch the surface of any so-called “moral relativist,” and you will often find a moralistic bully.  We are not moral relativists because it is not in the nature of our species to be moral relativists.  The wellsprings of human morality are innate.  One cannot arbitrarily turn them on or off by embracing this or that philosophy, or reading this or that book.

I am, perhaps, the closest thing to a moral relativist you will ever find, but when my moral emotions kick in, I’m not much different from anyone else.  Just ask my dog.  When she’s riding with me she’ll often glance my way with a concerned look as I curse the lax morals of other drivers.  No doubt she’s often wondered whether the canine’s symbiotic relationship with our species was such a good idea after all.  I know perfectly well the kind of people Paul Johnson was thinking of when he spoke of “moral relativists.”  However, I’ve watched the behavior of the same types my whole life.  If there’s one thing they all have in common, it’s a pronounced tendency to dictate morality to everyone else.  They are anything but “amoral,” or “moral relativists.”  The difference between them and Johnson is mainly a difference in their choice of outgroups.

Edvard Westermarck may have chosen the title Ethical Relativity for his brilliant analysis of human morality, yet he was well aware of the human tendency to perceive good and evil as real, independent things.  The title of his book did not imply that moral (or ethical) relativism was practical for our species.  Rather, he pointed out that morality is a manifestation of our package of innate behavioral predispositions, and that it follows that objective moral truths do not exist.  In doing so he was pointing out a fundamental truth.  Recognition of that truth will not result in an orgy of amoral behavior.  On the contrary, it is the only way out of the extremely dangerous moral chaos we find ourselves in today.

The moral conundrum we find ourselves in is a result of the inability of natural selection to keep up with the rapidly increasingly complexity and size of human societies.  For example, a key aspect of human moral behavior is its dual nature – our tendency to perceive others in terms of ingroups and outgroups.  We commonly associate “good” traits with our ingroup, and “evil” ones with our outgroup.  That aspect of our behavior enhanced the odds that we would survive and reproduce at a time when there was no ambiguity about who belonged in these categories.  The ingroup was our own tribe, and the outgroup was the next tribe over.  Our mutual antagonism tended to make us spread out and avoid starvation due to over-exploitation of a small territory.  We became adept at detecting subtle differences between “us” and “them” at a time when it was unlikely that neighboring tribes differed by anything as pronounced as race or even language.  Today we have given bad names to all sorts of destructive manifestations of outgroup identification without ever grasping the fundamental truth that the relevant behavior is innate, and no one is immune to it.  Racism, anti-Semitism, bigotry, you name it.  They’re all fundamentally the same.  Those who condemn others for one manifestation of the behavior will almost invariably be found doing the same thing themselves, the only difference being who they have identified as the outgroup.

Not unexpectedly, behavior that accomplished one thing in the Pleistocene does not necessarily accomplish the same thing today.  The disconnect is often absurd, leading in some cases to what I’ve referred to as morality inversions – moral behavior that promotes suicide rather than survival.  That has not prevented those who are happily tripping down the path to their own extinction from proclaiming their moral superiority and raining down pious anathemas on anyone who doesn’t agree.  Meanwhile, new versions of morality are concocted on an almost daily basis, each one pretending to objective validity, complete with a built in right to dictate “goods” and “bads” that never occurred to anyone just a few years ago.

There don’t appear to be any easy solutions to the moral mess we find ourselves in.  It would certainly help if more of us could accept the fact that morality is an artifact of natural selection, and that, as a consequence, objective good and evil are figments of our imaginations.  Perhaps then we could come up with some version of “absolute” morality that would be in tune with our moral emotions and at the same time allow us to interact in a manner that minimizes both the harm we do to each other and our exposure to the tiresome innovations of moralistic bullies.  That doesn’t appear likely to happen anytime soon, though.  The careers of too many moral pontificators and “experts on ethics” depend on maintaining the illusion.  Meanwhile, we find evolutionary biologists, evolutionary psychologists, and neuroscientists who should know better openly proclaiming the innate sources of moral behavior in one breath, and extolling some idiosyncratic version of “moral progress” and “human flourishing” in the next.  As one of Evelyn Waugh’s “bright young things” might have said, it’s just too shy-making.

There is a silver lining to the picture, though.  At least you don’t have to worry about “moral relativism” anymore.

 

 

Why Did They Vote The Way They Voted?

Ask anyone who voted in the recent election why they voted the way they did, and they are sure to have some answer.  They will give you some reason why they considered one candidate good, and/or the other candidate bad.  Generally, these answers will be understandable in the context of the culture in which they were made, even if you don’t agree with them.  The question is, how much sense do they really make when you peel off all the obscuring layers of culture and penetrate to the emotions that are the ultimate source of all these “logical” explanations.  There are those who are convinced that their answer to this question is so far superior to that of the average voter that they should have more votes, or even that the average voter should have no vote at all.  Coincidentally, the “average voter” is almost always one who doesn’t vote the same way they do.

Claire Lehman recently wrote an interesting essay on the subject at the Quillette website.  Her description of these self-appointed “superior voters” might have been lifted from the pages of Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind.  In that book Haidt uses his parable of the elephant and its rider to describe the process of moral judgment.  It begins with a split-second positive or negative moral intuition, which Haidt describes as the “elephant” suddenly leaning to the left or the right.  Instead of initiating or guiding this snap judgment, the “rider” uses “reason” to justify it.  In other words, he serves as an “inner lawyer,” rationalizing whatever path the elephant happened to take.  Here’s how Lehman describes these “riders”:

This is one reason why charges of wholesale ignorance are so obtuse. “High information” people ignore evidence if it conflicts with their preferred narrative all the time. And while it may be naïve for voters to believe the promises of Trump and the Brexit campaigners — it has also been profoundly naïve for the cosmopolitan classes to believe that years of forced internationalism and forced political correctness were never going to end with a large scale backlash.

In fact, high information people are likely to be much better at coming up with rationalisations as to why their preferred ideology is not only best, but in the national interest. And high information rationalisers are probably more likely to put forward theories about how everyone who disagrees with them is stupid, and is not deserving of the right to vote.

As a representative example of how these people think, she quotes the philosopher John Brennan:

And while I no doubt suffer from some degree of confirmation bias and self-serving bias, perhaps I justifiably believe that I — a chaired professor of strategy, economics, ethics, and public policy at an elite research university, with a Ph.D. from the top-ranked political philosophy program in the English-speaking world, and with a strong record of peer-reviewed publications in top journals and academic presses — have superior political judgment on a great many political matters to many of my fellow citizens, including to many large groups of them.

It would seem “some degree of confirmation bias” is something of an understatement.  What, exactly, does “superior political judgment” consist of.  In the end it must amount to a superior ability to recognize and realize that which is “Good” for society at large.  The problem is that this “Good” is a fantasy.  All it really describes is the direction in which the elephant is leaning in the minds of individuals.

There can be no rational or legitimate basis for things that don’t exist.  It is instructive to consider the response of secular philosophers like Brennan if you ask them to supply this nonexistent basis for the claim that their version of “Good” is really good.  The most common one will be familiar to readers of secular moralist Sam Harris’ The Moral Landscape.  Whatever political or social nostrum they happen to propose is good because it will lead to human flourishing.  Human flourishing is good because it will lead to the end of war.  The end of war is good because it will result in the end of pain and suffering.  And so on.  In other words, the response will consist of circular logic.  What they consider good is good because it is good.  Question any of the steps in this logical syllogism, and their response will typically be to bury you under a heap of negative moral intuitions, again, exactly as described by Haidt.  How can you be so vile as to favor the mass slaughter of innocent civilians?  How can you be so ruthless and uncaring as to favor female genital mutilation?  How can you be so evil as to oppose the brotherhood of all mankind?  Such “logic” hardly demonstrates the existence of the “Good” as an objective thing-in-itself.  It merely confirms the eminently predictable fact that, at least within a given culture, most elephants will tend to lean the same way.

Philosophers like Brennan either do not realize or do not grasp the significance of the fact that, in the end, their “superior political judgment” is nothing more sublime than an artifact of evolution by natural selection.  They epitomize the truth of the Japanese proverb, “Knowledge without wisdom is a load of books on the back of an ass.”  In the end such judgments invariably boil down to the moral intuitions that lie at their source, and it is quite impossible for the moral intuitions of one individual to be superior to those of another in any objective sense.  The universe at large doesn’t care in the slightest whether humans “flourish” or not.  That hardly means that it is objectively “bad” to act on, passionately care about, or seek to realize ones individual moral whims.  It can be useful, however, to keep the source of those whims in perspective.

One can consider, for example, whether the “rational” manner in which one goes about satisfying a particular whim is consistent with the reasons the whim exists to begin with.  The “intuitions” Haidt speaks of exist because they evolved, and they evolved because they happened to increase the odds that the genes responsible for programming them would survive and reproduce.  This fundamental fact is ignored by the Brennans of the world.  What they call “superior political judgment” really amounts to nothing more than blindly seeking to satisfy these “intuitional” artifacts of evolution.  However, the environment in which they are acting is radically different from the one in which the intuitions in question evolved.  As a result, their “judgments” often seem less suited to insuring the survival and reproduction of the responsible genes than to accomplishing precisely the opposite.

For example, the question of whether international borders should exist and be taken seriously or not was fundamental to the decision of many to vote one way or the other in the recent U.S. presidential election.  Lehman quotes Sumantra Maitra on this issue as follows:

[T]his revolutionary anti-elitism one can see, is not against the rich or upper classes per se, it is against the liberal elites, who just “know better” about immigration, about intervention and about social values. What we have seen is a “burn it all down” revenge vote, against sententious, forced internationalism, aided with near incessant smug lecturing from the cocooned pink haired urban bubbles. Whether it’s good or bad, is for time to decide. But it’s a fact and it might as well be acknowledged.

It is quite true that “forced internationalism” has been experienced by the populations of many so-called democracies without the formality of a vote.  However, it is hardly an unquestionable fact that this policy will increase the odds that the genes responsible for the moral whims of the populations affected, or any of their other genes, will survive and reproduce.  In fact, it seems far more likely that it will accomplish precisely the opposite.

A fundamental reason for the above conclusion is the existence of another artifact of evolution that the Brennans of the world commonly ignore; the universal human tendency to categorize others into ingroup and outgroups.  I doubt that there are many human individuals on the planet whose mental equipment doesn’t include recognition of an outgroup.  Outgroups are typically despised.  They are considered disgusting, unclean, immoral, etc.  In a word, they are hated.  For the Brennans of the world, hatred is “bad.”  As a result, they are very reticent about recognizing and confronting their own hatreds.  However, they are perfectly obvious to anyone who takes the trouble to look for them.  As it happens, they can be easily found in Lehman’s essay.  For example,

Bob Geldof calls Brexit voters the “army of stupid”. US philosopher Jason Brennan describes Trump voters as “ignorant, irrational, misinformed, nationalists.”

She quotes the following passage which appeared in Haaertz:

But there is one overarching factor that everyone knows contributed most of all to the Trump sensation. There is one sine qua non without which none of this would have been possible. There is one standalone reason that, like a big dodo in the room, no one dares mention, ironically, because of political correctness. You know what I’m talking about: Stupidity. Dumbness. Idiocy. Whatever you want to call it: Dufusness Supreme.

In other words, the hatreds of the “superior voters” are quite healthy and robust.  The only difference between their outgroup and some of the others to which familiar names have been attached is that, instead of being defined based on race, ethnicity, or religion, it is defined based on ideology.  They hate those who disagree with their ideological narrative.  Outgroup identification is usually based on easily recognizable differences.  Just as ideological differences are easily recognized, so are cultural and ethnic differences.  As a result, multi-culturalism does not promote either human brotherhood or human flourishing.  It is far more likely to promote social unrest and, eventually, civil war.  In fact, it has done just that countless times in the past, as anyone who has at least a superficial knowledge of the history of our species is aware.  Civil war is unlikely to promote the survival of the human beings effected, nor of the genes they carry.  “Low information voters” appear to be far more capable of appreciating this fundamental fact than the Brennans of the world who despise them.  The predictable result of the “superior judgments” of self-appointed “high information voters” is likely to be the exact opposite of those that resulted in the existence of the fundamental whims that account for the existence of the “superior judgments” to begin with.

It is useless to argue that human beings “ought” not to hate.  They will hate whether they “ought” to or not.  We will be incapable of avoiding in the future the disastrous outcomes that have so often been the result of this salient characteristic of our species in the past if we are not even capable of admitting its existence.  When Robert Ardrey and Konrad Lorenz insisted half a century ago that the existence of ingroups and outgroups, what Ardrey called the “Amity-Enmity Complex,” is real, and made a few suggestions about what we might do to mitigate the threat this aspect of our behavior now poses to our species in a world full of nuclear weapons, they were shouted down as “fascists.”  In the ensuing years the “experts” have finally managed to accept the fundamental theme of their work; the existence and significance of human nature.  They have not, however, been capable of looking closely enough in the mirror to recognize their own outgroups.  Those who spout slogans like “Love Trumps Hate” are often the biggest, most uncontrolled and most dangerous haters of all, for the simple reason that their ideology renders them incapable of recognizing their own hatreds.

There is nothing objectively good about one version or another of “human flourishing,” and there is nothing objectively bad about social unrest and civil war.  However I, for one, would prefer to avoid the latter.  Call it a whim if you will, but at least it isn’t 180 degrees out of step with the reason for the whim’s existence.  We are often assured that flooding our countries with unassimilable aliens will be “good for the economy.”  It seems to me that the “good of the economy” can be taken with a grain of salt when compared with the “bad of civil war.”  It is hard to imagine what can be fundamentally “good” about a “good economy” that threatens the genetic survival of the existing population of a country.  I would prefer to dispense with the “good of the economy” and avoid rocking the boat.  By all means, call the “low information voters” racist, bigoted, misogynistic and xenophobic until you’re blue in the face.  The fact that one was “good” rather than “bad” in these matters will make very little difference to the rest of the universe if one fails to survive.

I have no idea what the final outcome of the Trump Presidency will be.  However, I think “low information voters” had reasons for voting for him that make a great deal more sense than those given by their “superiors.”  One does not necessarily become more rational or more intelligent by virtue of having a Ph.D. or reading a lot of books.

donkey-and-books

Moral Emotions and Moral Truth

There are moral emotions.  There is no such thing as moral truth.

The above are fundamental facts.  We live in a world of moral chaos because of our failure to accept them and grasp their significance.

Eighteenth century British philosophers demonstrated that emotions are the source of all moral judgments.  “Pure reason” is incapable of anything but chasing its own tail.  Darwin revealed the origin of the emotions as the result of evolution by natural selection.  It was left for the Finnish philosopher Edvard Westermarck to draw the obvious conclusion; that there is no such thing as moral truth.

David Hume is often given the credit for identifying emotions or, as he put it, “passions,” as the source of moral judgments.  According to Hume,

Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.

However, when he wrote the above, Hume was really just repeating the earlier work of Francis Hutcheson.  It was Hutcheson who demonstrated the emotional origin of moral judgments beyond any serious doubt.  I encourage modern readers who are interested in the subject to read his books on the subject.  I have quoted him at length in earlier posts, and I will do so again here.  Here is what he had to say about the power of “pure reason” to isolate moral truth:

If conformity to truth, or reasonable, denote nothing else but that “an action is the object of a true proposition,” ‘tis plain, that all actions should be approved equally, since as many truths may be made about the worst, as can be made about the best.

There is one sort of conformity to truth which neither determines to the one or the other; viz. that conformity which is between every true proposition and its object.  This sort of conformity can never make us choose or approve one action more than its contrary, for it is found in all actions alike:  Whatever attribute can be ascribed to a generous kind action, the contrary attribute may as truly be ascribed to a selfish cruel action:  Both propositions are equally true.

But as to the ultimate ends, to suppose exciting reasons for them, would infer, that there is no ultimate end, but that we desire one thing for another in an infinite series.

Hutcheson followed up this critique of reason with some comments about the role of “human nature” as the origin and inspiration of all moral judgment that might almost have come from a modern textbook on evolutionary psychology, and that are truly stunning considering that they were written early in the 18th century.  Again quoting the Ulster Scots/British philosopher as well as my own comments from an earlier post:

Now we shall find that all exciting reasons presuppose instincts and affections; and the justifying presuppose a moral sense.

If we assume the existence of human nature, the “reasons” fall easily into place:

Let us once suppose affections, instincts or desires previously implanted in our nature:  and we shall easily understand the exciting reasons for actions, viz. “These truths which show them to be conducive toward some ultimate end, or toward the greatest end of that kind in our power.”  He acts reasonably, who considers the various actions in his power, and forms true opinions of the tendencies; and then chooses to do that which will obtain the highest degree of that, to which the instincts of his nature incline him, with the smallest degree of those things to which the affections in his nature make him averse.

Of course, versions of the Blank Slate have been around since the days of the ancient Greek philosophers, and “updated” versions were current in Hutcheson’s own time.  As he points out, they were as irrational then as they are now:

Some elaborate Treatises of great philosophers about innate ideas, or principles practical or speculative, amount to no more than this, “That in the beginning of our existence we have no ideas or judgments;” they might have added too, no sight, taste, smell, hearing, desire, volition.  Such dissertations are just as useful for understanding human nature, as it would be in explaining the animal oeconomy, to prove that the faetus is animated before it has teeth, nails, hair, or before it can eat, drink, digest, or breathe:  Or in a natural history of vegetables, to prove that trees begin to grow before they have branches, leaves, flower, fruit, or seed:  And consequently that all these things were adventitious or the effect of art.

He concludes,

Now we endeavored to show, that “no reason can excite to action previously to some end, and that no end can be proposed without some instinct or affection.” What then can be meant by being excited by reason, as distinct from all motion of instincts or affections?  …Then let any man consider whether he ever acts in this manner by mere election, without any previous desire?  And again, let him consult his own breast, whether such kind of action gains his approbation.  A little reflection will show, that none of these sensations depend upon our choice, but arise from the very frame of our nature, however we may regulate or moderate them.

The fact that Hutcheson believed that God was the origin of the emotions in question in no way detracts from the power of his logic about the essential role of the emotions themselves.  No modern philosopher sitting on the shoulders of Darwin has ever spoken more brilliantly or more clearly.

In considering the relevance of the above to the human condition, one must keep in mind the fact that any boundary between moral emotions and other emotions is artificial.  Nature created no such boundaries, and they are an artifact of the human tendency to categorize.  Of all the emotions not normally included in the category of moral emotions, the most significant may well be our tendency to perceive others of our species in terms of ingroups and outgroups.  Our outgroup includes people we consider “deplorable.”  They are commonly perceived as evil, and are usually associated with other negative qualities.  For example, they may be considered impure, disgusting, contemptible, infidels, etc.  Outgroup identification is universal, although the degree to which it is present may vary significantly from one individual to the next, like any other subjective mental predisposition.  If one would explore and learn to understand his moral consciousness, he would do well to begin by asking the question, “What is my outgroup?”  The “deplorables” will always be there.

Consider the implications of the above.  Follow the abstruse reasoning of the “experts on ethics,” to its source, and you will find the whole façade is built on a foundation of emotions that evolved in times utterly unlike the present because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.  Look a little further, and you’ll find the outgroup.

Follow the arcane logic of theologians touching on the moral implications of this or that excerpt from the holy scriptures, and you will find the whole façade is built on a foundation of emotions that evolved in times utterly unlike the present because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.  Look a little further, and you’ll find the outgroup.

When bathroom warriors, or anti-culture appropriators, or the unmaskers of inappropriate Halloween costumes rain down their anathemas on anyone who happens to disagree with them, consider what motivates their behavior, and yet again you will find emotions that evolved in times utterly unlike the present because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.  Look a little further, and you’ll find the outgroup.

Stand in a crowd of Communists as they sing the Internationale, or of Nazis dreaming noble dreams of the liberation of Aryans everywhere from the powers of darkness as they sing the Horst Wessel Song, and you will find that the emotions those songs evoke evolved in times utterly unlike the present because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.  You won’t have to look very far to find the outgroup, either of Communists or Nazis.  Millions of them were murdered in the name of these two manifestations of higher morality.

We live in a time of moral chaos because these truths have been too hard for us to bear.  As Jonathan Haidt pointed out in his The Righteous Mind, we tend to invoke our inner moral lawyer whenever we happen to disagree with someone else about what ought to be.  We consult our moral emotions, and seek to justify ourselves by evoking similar moral emotions in others.  In the process we bamboozle ourselves and others into believing that those emotions relate to real things that we commonly refer to as good and evil, that are imagined to have an independent existence of their own.  They don’t.  They are merely illusions spawned by emotions that evolved in times utterly unlike the present because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.

In a word, what we are doing is blindly following and reacting to emotional whims, even though it is questionable whether doing so will have the same result as it did when those whims evolved.  For that matter, we don’t even care.  As long as we can satisfy whims that evolved in the Pleistocene, it matters not at all to us that they will accomplish precisely the opposite in the 21st century to what they did then.  The result is what I have referred to as a morality inversion.  Instead of promoting our survival, the emotions in question promote behavior that accomplishes the opposite in the radically different environment we live in today.  It matters not a bit.  As long as we “feel in our bones” that the actions in question are “Good,” we cheerfully commit suicide, whether by donning a suicide belt or deciding that it must be “immoral” to have children.  We imagine that these actions are “noble” and “morally pure” even though all we have really done is satisfy atavistic whims without the least regard for why those whims exist to begin with, and whether responding to them is likely to accomplish the same thing now as it did millions of years ago or not.

Again, we live in a world of moral chaos because we have been unable to face the truth, simple and obvious as it is.  There is nothing “bad” about that, nor is there anything “good” about it.  It is just the way things are.  I personally would prefer that we face the truth.  Perhaps then it would occur to us that, since we can hardly do without morality, we would be well advised to come up with a simple moral system that maximizes the ability of each of us to pursue whatever whims we happen to find important with as little fear of possible of being threatened, vilified, or otherwise subjected to the penalties that are typically the lot of outgroups.  If we faced the truth about the real subjective origins of what have seemed objective moral certainties to so many of us in the past, perhaps at least some of us would be more reticent about seeking to impose their own versions of morality on those around them.  If we faced the truth, perhaps we would realize that our universal tendency to blindly vilify and condemn outgroups represents an existential threat to us all, and that the threat must be recognized and controlled.

These are things that I would like to see.  Of course, they represent nothing more significant than my own whims.

The “Moral Progress” Delusion

“Moral progress” is impossible.  It is a concept that implies progress towards a goal that doesn’t exist.  We exist as a result of evolution by natural selection, a process that has simply happened.  Progress implies the existence of an entity sufficiently intelligent to formulate a goal or purpose towards which progress is made.  No such entity has directed the process, nor did one even exist over most of the period during which it occurred.  The emotional predispositions that are the root cause of what we understand by the term “morality” are as much an outcome of natural selection as our hands or feet.  Like our hands and feet, they exist solely because they have enhanced the probability that the genes responsible for their existence would survive and reproduce.  There is increasing acceptance of the fact that morality owes its existence to evolution by natural selection among the “experts on ethics” among us.  However, as a rule they have been incapable of grasping the obvious implication of that fact; that the notion of “moral progress” is a chimera.  It is a truth that has been too inconvenient for them to bear.

It’s not difficult to understand why.  Their social gravitas and often their very livelihood depend on propping up the illusion.  This is particularly true of the “experts” in academia, who often lack marketable skills other than their “expertise” in something that doesn’t exist.  Their modus operandi consists of hoodwinking the rest of us into believing that satisfying some whim that happens to be fashionable within their tribe represents “moral progress.”  Such “progress” has no more intrinsic value than a five year old’s progress towards acquiring a lollipop.  Often it can be reasonably expected to lead to outcomes that are the opposite of those that account for the existence of the whim to begin with, resulting in what I have referred to in earlier posts as a morality inversion.  Propping up the illusion in spite of recognition of the evolutionary roots of morality in a milieu that long ago dispensed with the luxury of a God with a big club to serve as the final arbiter of what is “really good” and “really evil” is no mean task.  Among other things it requires some often amusing intellectual contortions as well as the concoction of an arcane jargon to serve as a smokescreen.

Consider, for example, a paper by Professors Allen Buchanan and Russell Powell entitled Toward a Naturalistic Theory of Moral Progress.  It turned up in the journal Ethics, that ever reliable guide to academic fashion touching on the question of “human flourishing.”  Far from denying the existence of human nature after the fashion of the Blank Slaters of old, the authors positively embrace it.  They cheerfully admit its relevance to morality, noting in particular the existence of a predisposition in our species to perceive others of our species in terms of ingroups and outgroups; what Robert Ardrey used to call the Amity/Enmity Complex.  Now, if these things are true, and absent the miraculous discovery of any other contributing “root cause” for morality other than evolution by natural selection, whether in this world or the realm of spirits, it follows logically that “progress” is a term that can no more apply to morality than it does to evolution by natural selection itself.  It further follows that objective Good and objective Evil are purely imaginary categories.  In other words, unless one is merely referring to the scientific investigation of evolved behavioral traits, “experts on ethics” are experts about nothing.  Their claim to possess a philosopher’s stone pointing the way to how we should act is a chimera.  For the last several thousand years they have been involved in a sterile game of bamboozling the rest of us, and themselves to boot.

Predictly, the embarrassment and loss of gravitas, not to mention the loss of a regular paycheck, implied by such a straightforward admission of the obvious has been more than the “experts” could bear.  They’ve simply gone about their business as if nothing had happened, and no one had ever heard of a man named Darwin.  It’s actually been quite easy for them in this puritanical and politically correct age, in which the intellectual life and self-esteem of so many depends on maintaining a constant state of virtuous indignation and moral outrage.  Virtuous indignation and moral outrage are absurd absent the existence of an objective moral standard.  Since nothing of the sort exists, it is simply invented, and everyone stays outraged and happy.

In view of this pressing need to prop up the moral fashions of the day, then, it follows that no great demands are placed on the rigor of modern techniques for concocting real Good and real Evil.  Consider, for example, the paper referred to above.  The authors go to a great deal of trouble to assure their readers that their theory of “moral progress” really is “naturalistic.”  In this enlightened age, they tell us, they will finally be able to steer clear of the flaws that plagued earlier attempts to develop secular moralities.  These were all based on false assumptions “based on folk psychology, flawed attempts to develop empirically based psychological theories, a priori speculation, and reflections on history hampered both by a lack of information and inadequate methodology.”  “For the first time,” they tell us, “we are beginning to develop genuinely scientific knowledge about human nature, especially through the development of empirical psychological theories that take evolutionary biology seriously.”  This begs the question, of course, of how we’ve managed to avoid acquiring “scientific knowledge about human nature” and “taking evolutionary biology seriously” for so long.  But I digress.  The important question is, how do the authors manage to establish a rational basis for their “naturalistic theory of moral progress” while avoiding the Scylla of “folk psychology” on the one hand and the Charybdis of “a priori speculation” on the other?  It turns out that the “basis” in question hardly demands any complex mental gymnastics.  It is simply assumed!

Here’s the money passage in the paper:

A general theory of moral progress could take a more a less ambitious form.  The more ambitious form would be to ground an account of which sorts of changes are morally progressive in a normative ethical theory that is compatible with a defensible metaethics… In what follows we take the more modest path:  we set aside metaethical challenges to the notion of moral progress, we make no attempt to ground the claim that certain moralities are in fact better than others, and we do not defend any particular account of what it is for one morality to be better than another.  Instead, we assume that the emergence of certain types of moral inclusivity are significant instances of moral progress and then use these as test cases for exploring the feasibility of a naturalized account of moral progress.

This is indeed a strange approach to being “naturalistic.”  After excoriating the legions of thinkers before them for their faulty mode of hunting the philosopher’s stone of “moral progress,” they simply assume it exists.  It exists in spite of the elementary chain of logic leading inexorably to the conclusion that it can’t possibly exist if their own claims about the origins of morality in human nature are true.  In what must count as a remarkable coincidence, it exists in the form of “inclusivity,” currently in high fashion as one of the shibboleths defining the ideological box within which most of today’s “experts on ethics” happen to dwell.  Those who trouble themselves to read the paper will find that, in what follows, it is hardly treated as a mere modest assumption, but as an established, objective fact.  “Moral progress” is alluded to over and over again as if, by virtue this original, “modest assumption,” the real thing somehow magically popped into existence in the guise of “inclusivity.”

Suppose we refrain from questioning the plot, and go along with the charade.  If inclusivity is really to count as moral progress, than it must not only be desirable in certain precincts of academia, but actually feasible.  However if, as the authors agree, humans are predisposed to perceive others of their species in terms of ingroups and outgroups, the feasibility of inclusivity is at least in question.  As the authors put it,

Attempts to draw connections between contemporary evolutionary theories of morality and the possibility of inclusivist moral progress begin with the standard evolutionary psychological assertion that the main contours of human moral capacities emerged through a process of natural selection on hunter-gatherer groups in the Pleistocene – in the so-called environment of evolutionary adaptation (EEA)… The crucial claim, which leads some thinkers to draw a pessimistic inference about the possibility of inclusivist moral progress, is that selection pressures in the EEA favored exclusivist moralisties.  These are moralities that feature robust moral commitments among group members but either deny moral standing to outsiders altogether, relegate out-group members to a substantially inferior status, or assign moral standing to outsiders contingent on strategic (self-serving) considerations.

No matter, according to the authors, this flaw in our evolved moral repertoire can be easily fixed.  All we have to do is lift ourselves out of the EEA, achieve universal prosperity so great and pervasive that competition becomes unnecessary, and the predispositions in question will simply fade away, more or less like the state under Communism.  Invoking that wonderful term “plasticity,” which seems to pop up with every new attempt to finesse human behavioral traits out of existence, they write,

According to an account of exclusivist morality as a conditionally expressed (adaptively plastic) trait, the suite of attitudes and behaviors associated with exclusivist tendencies develop only when cues that were in the past highly correlated with out-group threat are detected.

In other words, it is the fond hope of the authors that, if only we can make the environment in which inconvenient behavioral predispositions evolved disappear, the traits themselves will disappear as well!  They go on to claim that this has actually happened, and that,

…exclusivist moral tendencies are attenuated in populations inhabiting environments in which cues of out-group threat are absent.

Clearly we have seen a vast expansion in the number of human beings that can be perceived as ingroup since the Pleistocene, and the inclusion as ingroup of racial and religious categories that once defined outgroups.  There is certainly plasticity in how ingroups and outgroups are actually defined and perceived, as one might expect of traits evolved during times of rapid environmental change in the nature of the “others” one happened to be in contact with or aware of at any given time.  However, this hardly “proves” that the fundamental tendency to distinguish between ingroups and outgroups itself will disappear or is likely to disappear in response to any environmental change whatever.  Perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is to refer to the paper itself.

Clearly the authors imagine themselves to be “inclusive,” but is that really the case?  Hardly!  It turns out they have a very robust perception of outgroup.  They’ve merely fallen victim to the fallacy that it “doesn’t count” because it’s defined in ideological rather than racial or religious terms.  Their outgroup may be broadly defined as “conservatives.”  These “conservatives” are mentioned over and over again in the paper, always in the guise of the bad guys who are supposed to reject inclusivism and resist “moral progress.”  To cite a few examples,

We show that although current evolutionary psychological understandings of human morality do not, contrary to the contentions of some authors, support conservative ethical and political conclusions, they do paint a picture of human morality that challenges traditional liberal accounts of moral progress.

…there is no good reason to believe conservative claims that the shift toward greater inclusiveness has reached its limit or is unsustainable.

These “evoconservatives,” as we have labeled them, infer from evolutionary explanations of morality that inclusivist moralities are not psychologically feasible for human beings.

At the same time, there is strong evidence that the development of exclusivist moral tendencies – or what evolutionary psychologists refer to as “in-group assortative sociality,” which is associated with ethnocentric, xenophobic, authoritarian, and conservative psychological orientations – is sensitive to environmental cues…

and so on, and so on.  In a word, although the good professors are fond of pointing with pride to their vastly expanded ingroup, they have rather more difficulty seeing their vastly expanded outgroup as well, more or less like the difficulty we have seeing the nose at the end of our face.  The fact that the conservative outgroup is perceived with as much fury, disgust, and hatred as ever a Grand Dragon of the Ku Klux Klan felt for blacks or Catholics can be confirmed by simply reading through the comment section of any popular website of the ideological Left.  Unless professors employed by philosophy departments live under circumstances more reminiscent of the Pleistocene than I had imagined this bodes ill for their theory of “moral progress” based on “inclusivity.”  More evidence that this is the case is easily available to anyone who cares to look for “diversity” in the philosophy department of the local university in the form of a professor who can be described as conservative by any stretch of the imagination.

I note in passing another passage in the paper that demonstrates the fanaticism with which the chimera of “moral progress” is pursued in some circles.  Again quoting the authors,

Some moral philosophers whom we have elsewhere called “evoliberals,” have tacitly affirmed the evo-conservative view in arguing that biomedical interventions that enhance human moral capacities are likely to be crucial for major moral progress due to evolved constraints on human moral nature.

In a word, the delusion of moral progress is not necessarily just a harmless toy for the entertainment of professors of philosophy, at least as far as those who might have some objection to “biomedical interventions” carried out be self-appointed “experts on ethics” are concerned.

What’s the point?  The point is that we are unlikely to make progress of any kind without first accepting the truth about our own nature, and the elementary logical implications of that truth.  Darwin saw them, Westermarck saw them, and they are far more obvious today than they were then.  We continue to ignore them at our peril.