What is morality?

[Angrboda]

I think it's natural to look for a unified factor underlying all of morality, I just don't think the abstract of 'harm' is it. Otherwise we would have a stronger natural inclination against killing animals that can suffer. I too look for a unified approach, but from a different angle. Jonathan Haidt has proposed that five major dimensions underly our moralistic reasoning. The question of harm, that of fairness, questions of authority, those of loyalty, and the question of ritual/conventional purity (aka 'sacredness'). With the exception of sacredness, these are all values whose norms orient us towards successful functioning within a group. As a social species, I believe we have evolved subconsciously derived values which, taken together, ensure our thriving as a social species. Our nature as a social species is a part of our niche in the environment. Individual humans would not be as successful as groups of humans, and surviving in groups requires proactive advocacy of things like authority and loyalty. (They also are of benefit in the child/parent relationship.) Rather than rely upon conscious thinking about one's situation to push forward these values, evolution has favored those who succeed in groups by favoring those who instinctively derived these values. Thus these values are essentially subconscious in origin, and no a priori reasoning about the benefits of these values can derive them. They are the result of the practical experiment of humans living in greater and less successful groups. That I believe is the uniform factor underlying morality.

When it comes to the question of why we don't have a natural inclination to conclude that killing animals that can suffer is wrong, then the answer is simple. Morality has, as its goal, the flourishing of humans in groups of humans. It isn't about harm qua harm across whatever animal can experience harm, it is human-centric in its origin and reason for existence. Thus we only get to concluding that harming animals is wrong by analogizing them to ourselves. Indeed, in that context the question of why harm of humans is morally significant at all is paramount. Why is harming humans a significant value to embrace? Arguing a sort of tit for tat reasoning about harm doesn't explain the peculiarities of our moral intuitions, that harming animals is not morally significant and harming humans is. It really doesn't explain the kind of pre-thought, intuitive nature of moral reasoning. Nor does it offer much argument for the evolutionary origin of it, or any other origin story. In that, harm to humans comes across as a disembodied value, arising out of nothingness (and collapsing back into nothingness upon inspection).

So I think a rational basis for morality can be found in our moral intuitions having evolved to further our flourishing as a social species. It isn't just one value, such as harm/empathy, but a cluster of values which benefited the animal that lived in groups because the group was stronger and fitter as a whole than any individual could be.

On the pragmatic side, I doubt this will remain as anything much stronger than a conjecture until more is known about how exactly moral reasoning operates in the brain, and that is quite a ways off. However, I think the contours of this theory are very consistent with the contours of morality as experienced by humans, and offers a plausible path toward explaining the development of such intuitions.