Human moralities have always been concocted and altered in a chaotic, and sometimes whimsical fashion.\u00a0 They are all manifestations of innate behavioral\u00a0predispositions\u00a0that are probably quite similar\u00a0across all human populations.\u00a0 However, in conscious creatures with large brain such as ourselves, these predispositions can be interpreted very differently as a function of environment, culture, and pre-existing versions of morality.\u00a0 As a result we see wild variations in the\u00a0“end product” in the form of moral rules.\u00a0 Moralities have always evolved in this way over time, both now and in the distant past.\u00a0 In spite of the arbitrary nature of the process, the evanescent “moral laws” that happen to pop up and then disappear from time to time are perceived as objective things, unchanging, and independent of the social\/biological process that actually gave rise to them.\u00a0 This seemingly irrational perception actually makes perfect sense.\u00a0 Morality exists because the traits responsible for it evolved, and they evolved because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.\u00a0 It turns out that the most effective way to improve the odds was to program the perception of moral rules as objective things.\u00a0 However, they are not objective things, but manifestations of subjective emotions.\u00a0 You might say that we are hard-wired to believe in hallucinations.\u00a0 The chaotic process of “updating” a given version of morality referred to above happens when different individuals believe in different hallucinations.<\/p>\n
I recently ran across a good example of the process in action in an article in New York Magazine entitled “This Is What\u00a0a Modern-Day Witch Hunt Looks Like<\/a>.”\u00a0 The particular moral rule at issue was the degree to which the terms “transgender” and “transracial” can be treated as equivalent.\u00a0 Rebecca Tuval<\/a>, an assistant professor (usually a junior, tenure track professor) of philosophy at Rhodes College in Memphis, had recently published an article in the feminist journal Hypatia<\/em> entitled, “In Defense of Transracialism<\/a>.”\u00a0\u00a0 Perhaps she thought the article was merely harmless padding for her resume, the better to facilitate her eventual promotion to full professor.\u00a0 It didn’t turn out that way.\u00a0 A vicious attack on her began in the form of an open letter to Hypatia<\/em><\/a>, now signed by some hundreds of her academic colleagues, expressing “dismay” at the “harms” Tuvel had caused by her inappropriate conflation of the terms noted above.\u00a0 The witch hunt continued with poison pen attacks posted at the usual social media suspects, culminating in an abject apology by “a majority of Hypatia’s<\/em> board of associate editors” rivaling anything ever seen in Stalin’s Great Purge Trials.\u00a0 I half expected to see a paragraph admitting that the journal’s staff had conspired with Trotsky<\/a> himself to promote the counter-revolutionary plots of the Left Opposition<\/a>.\u00a0 A few days later, editor Sally Scholz and Miriam Solomon, president of Hypatia’s<\/em> board of directors, fired back with disavowals\u00a0of the disavowal.<\/p>\n This is basically the manner in which moralities have always (culturally) evolved and changed.\u00a0 As societies change, the members of particular ingroups, and especially ingroups that define themselves primarily by ideology, may experience strong moral emotions in response to supposed “evils” that were previously matters of indifference.\u00a0 They then seek to manipulate the moral emotions of others so that they, too, perceive what amounts to an emotional whim as an objective thing.\u00a0 This “thing” takes the form of an\u00a0evil that exists independently of the evolved emotional predispositions that actually inspired the perception.\u00a0 Members of other ingroups with different narratives, or members of the same ingroups responding more strongly to other moral emotions, push back, seeking to manipulate moral emotions in the opposite direction.\u00a0 Whoever is the most effective manipulator wins, and a new “moral law” is born.<\/p>\n The whole process is fundamentally irrational.\u00a0 Why?\u00a0 Because it amounts to a competition between alternative mirages.\u00a0 The evolved emotional traits that are responsible for this aspect of human behavior exist because they happened to improve the odds that the responsible genes would survive and reproduce.\u00a0 However, they did so at a time that was radically different from the present.\u00a0 There is no guarantee that they will have the same result today as they did then.\u00a0 None of this makes any difference to the parties to these disputes as they blindly chase their alternative illusions.\u00a0 They are seldom aware of the connection between their behavior and its ultimate cause in emotional traits spawned in the process of evolution by natural selection.\u00a0 The illusion that they are champions of a thing-in-itself called the Good is so powerful that it probably wouldn’t matter even if they did know.<\/p>\n The above\u00a0describes the process by which\u00a0we currently\u00a0seek to resolve the issues that arise in complex modern civilizations by\u00a0attempting to satisfy emotional whims that are probably much the same as those experienced by our ancestors in the Pleistocene.\u00a0 The results are seldom benign.\u00a0 Sometimes the damage is limited to the destruction of some junior professor’s career.\u00a0 Sometimes it involves warfare that costs millions their lives.\u00a0 One can certainly imagine more rational ways of adjudicating among all these emotionally inspired whims.\u00a0 However, I am not optimistic that one of them will be adopted anytime soon.\u00a0 We are moralistic creatures to the core.\u00a0 We are addicted to construing something we want as “the Good,” and then manipulating the moral emotions of others to get it.\u00a0 The effect “the Good” might actually have on the odds of our genetic survival is normally a matter of utter indifference.\u00a0 We live in a world of irrational creatures, all seeking to satisfy emotional whims without the least regard for whether they accomplish the same thing as\u00a0they did when they evolved or not.<\/p>\n That’s the reality that we must deal with.\u00a0 All of us must find our own way of coping.\u00a0 However, as a tip to my readers, I suggest you think twice before publishing in a philosophical journal.\u00a0 Unless, of course, you actually like to be bullied.<\/p>\n