Evolution cannot account for morality

[The Valkyrie]

And you're trying to tell me you have a degree in psychology. While being totally ignorant of all the research done on depression 

Yup your a troll 

Some people do not even consider psychology a legitimate science, let alone a soft science. If you have some sources you'd like me to look over feel free to share them. But again, I am not really concerned with depression so I suggest you provide something or move on.

Those people don't work in the medical field.

[Belacqua]

Sorry, I'm going to have to start being a bit more straight to the point, as my patience is getting a tad bit lower.

The idea that evolution can account for morality in some straightforward way -- for example, that altruistic people have more babies -- falls into the field of evolutionary psychology. Propositions in this field are notoriously difficult to confirm, since there is no way to conduct a repeatable empirical quantifiable test. (It seems more likely to me that morality is a complex phenomenon, including cultural and traditional elements, which could lead to people with identical DNA having very different moral views, depending on contingent social conditions.) 

Some evo psych papers are better than others, but some of them fall well into the category of wishful thinking just-so stories. 

Here is a recent paper in a peer reviewed journal devoted to evo psych. It posits that groups of religious people, particularly Mormons, and political conservatives, are likely to become more intelligent over time while less religious or more liberal groups will become stupider. It claims that conservative religious people are more grounded and happy while liberals are more likely to be mentally unstable and depressed. 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...22-00327-y

I am very skeptical of this paper's premisses and conclusions. But it met the standards for this professional journal.

[chiknsld]

Administrator Notice
Might be a good idea for you to start actually having conversations.  Especially in threads you started.

And, pro tip, repeatedly saying you aren't a troll doesn't bode well for your future here.

Do with this suggestion what you will...consider this your get out of jail free card.  You only get one.

Kick rocks.

[chiknsld]

I'm not interested in your opinion at all.

You'd better start.

Offer something to the conversation or move on.

[The Grand Nudger]

Any more thoughts on whether it was non cognitive, subjective, or realist morality you were referring to in the op?

I doubt it could have been the first two as they're more directly tied to the biology of the holder than relativist morality is as a cultural possession. Just leaves realist morality. The question (more accurately) becoming..do evolutionary processes yield the apparatus required in order for human beings to accurately perceive states of affairs with a moral import? What do you think? Is there such a thing as being really wrong, and can human senses detect or establish when that occurs?

[chiknsld]

Sorry, I'm going to have to start being a bit more straight to the point, as my patience is getting a tad bit lower.

The idea that evolution can account for morality in some straightforward way -- for example, that altruistic people have more babies -- falls into the field of evolutionary psychology. Propositions in this field are notoriously difficult to confirm, since there is no way to conduct a repeatable empirical quantifiable test. (It seems more likely to me that morality is a complex phenomenon, including cultural and traditional elements, which could lead to people with identical DNA having very different moral views, depending on contingent social conditions.) 

Some evo psych papers are better than others, but some of them fall well into the category of wishful thinking just-so stories. 

Here is a recent paper in a peer reviewed journal devoted to evo psych. It posits that groups of religious people, particularly Mormons, and political conservatives, are likely to become more intelligent over time while less religious or more liberal groups will become stupider. It claims that conservative religious people are more grounded and happy while liberals are more likely to be mentally unstable and depressed. 

https://link.springer.com/article/10.100...22-00327-y

I am very skeptical of this paper's premisses and conclusions. But it met the standards for this professional journal.

That's very interesting, do you think that an advanced species is capable of not having any morality at all? Or do you think that life itself requires morality as it would require group dynamics, compromise, etc.?

[The Grand Nudger]

The earth is full of advanced species that don't appear to identify items of moral import. More of them than us.

[chiknsld]

The earth is full of advanced species that don't appear to identify items of moral import.  More of them than us.

What I mean is a species that is several orders of magnitude more advanced than humans, just hypothetically speaking.

[The Grand Nudger]

Since, again, the vast majority of life on this planet does not appear to possess moral agency, the weight of available evidence is heavily tilted in favor of the proposition. We may ourselves become just such a species, or we may blip out and any one of them continues along. Time and nature is not frozen.

I suppose it highlights another question. Is moral apprehension exclusively advantageous? Personally, I doubt that. It's conceivable (and in fact in practice) that some moral systems may make demands of adherents that could not in any credible way be argued to facilitate reproduction. That could be deleterious to a species, or whatever portion of it's breeding population conforms to it. Conveniently, this is why I doubt that our inherited compulsions fully exhaust the set of moral apprehensions. That more generally..not just related to biology..we can perceive things to be good when they are not good-for us. To be bad, even if they are good-for us. I like to use the examples of apocalyptic people with access to apocalyptic weapons, and gay conversion therapy.

How about you, what do you think?

[Belacqua]

That's very interesting, do you think that an advanced species is capable of not having any morality at all? Or do you think that life itself requires morality as it would require group dynamics, compromise, etc.?

Interesting question. 

If we define morality as a set guidelines for group interaction, then it seems to me (off the top of my head) that any social group would require it. Social primates other than us seem to have customs or social laws for how they organize their hierarchies, who gets the best stuff, etc. Whether we want to call that a morality or not I'm not sure. Some people might want to insist that to qualify as morality, the customs must be conceptualized and therefore something we can debate and codify officially. That would mean that bonobos go by instinct rather than morality. I'm not sure.

There are two very interesting Christian writers who felt that people, in their most advanced state, would grow out of morality. That's if we're defining morality as a set of rules, customs, or traditions imposed on the individual by society or by God, and which the individual may kick against. 

Antinomian Christians like William Blake felt that any sort of codified morality was from Satan. He thought that Jehovah's commandments of the Old Testament were really from the devil, and only Jesus was truly God. He emphasized that Jesus, being a perfect person, didn't follow any moral law but operated only from instinct. And since his instinct was perfect, his behavior was always good. This is a kind of life beyond morality, in which the person acting is so in tune with what is Good that no rules, customs, or mores are necessary. 

Blake was an optimist and thought that very advanced people could achieve a Christ-like state of instinct in this life. Very few Christians agree with him.

In the Divine Comedy, Dante posits a similar state of having a purely good character which places the individual beyond the moral law. Unlike Blake, though, he thought this state is only available to those who have died and been purified in Purgatory. At the top of the mountain, after Dante's sins have been purged, his guide tells him that now he should do whatever he wants, since whatever he wants will be good. (Sin, for Dante, is misdirected desire -- once it is purged all desires are perfectly directed to the Good.) 

So if we think of an advanced society not in science fiction terms but in terms of improved character, I can imagine a culture in which discussion of morality is forgotten, or moot. This would be because people have such clear understanding of what is good that no discussion is necessary. 

(I can imagine such a culture, but I am not optimistic. I am more like Dante than Blake, in that I don't think it's possible in a human lifetime.)