Moral Reasoning - a very simple explanation

People do not respond well to long complex statements. To reach a broad audience, one must be as concise as possible. Thus, this very simple explanation of the basic function of human moral reasoning. I assure you that it is based on considerable thought and research, and years of reading and teaching about ethics. If you are interested in more, please read past the "simple" part.

Moral reasoning - genetics and propensities

It's all about survival of the fittest - evolution. The better adapted people are to work as a functioning society, the more likely they are to survive conflicts and threats. Over time, the survival attributes of our genetics get tuned and passed down. There are likely many more of these, but these seem to be the main ones as found by independent researchers.

• 1. We are born selfish, but most of us get socialized.
     Basic socialization makes our world function well enough to survive. Most of us are socialized at a very young age, but a small percentage of us are not. They remain egotists, and you need to watch out for them.

  2. We are black and white thinkers.
     This comes from "flight or fight" - that instinctual response that someone is friend or foe. We like simple good and bad decisions. We make intuitive decisions nearly instantaneously, and then seek to justify them with more laborious decision making.

  3. We are hierarchical, we value authority.
     The group that is coordinated does much better in battle, and in responding to a problem. We love strong leaders, and we want them to send clear messages - see the black and white rule above. We love an authority that gives us directions and decisions.

  4. We are tribal, we value others in OUR group.
     People who value their tribal connections work better to protect their tribe. After selfishness, we then identify with our family, and move up to our tribe. Some of us have even arrived at a "nation", and a very small number of us think in terms of our species or the planet.

  5. We resist change, we value traditions.
     If you do it the way it has always been done, odds are better that you will survive into the future. If you change it, you run great risk. We are conservative by nature - whatever worked in the past will work best in the future - don't mess with it. There is a genetic propensity for this whereby about 40% of us lean conservative, and 40% progressive. The rest are middle of the road.

  6. We need meaning and purpose.
     A group that has meaning and purpose has much more energy and enthusiasm in the battle or to fix a problem. Ask any sports coach. This is sometimes called the "sacred", "religion", or "charisma".

  7. We create rights, they are not "discovered", not handed down.
     We started off as an loose collection of individuals with assigned roles - a "bee hive", under God and King. We are gradually creating an interrelated civil society of rules and laws. We create "rights" and "privileges" and "laws" to make things more consistent and adaptive. It seems to work better in a world of relative prosperity than the single strong authority.
     This one is a bit different, in that it is not really a survival attribute, and it is not instinctual at all. This takes a higher level of brain function, a higher level of social development, but it is an evolutionary process. I think, or rather, I hope, it is our future.

A Fuller Exposition

All of this is based on the idea that humans have gradually evolved in response to the pressures and demands of their environment. For a basic explanation of this, see Edward O Wilson, On Human Nature. This is an old book now, but it is a brilliant summary of the state of the science when published. Human traits that foster survival tend to dominate. If one tribe has a tendency to follow strong leaders, and the other is a disorganized band of individuals, the former wins the battles and their genes dominate. Most of the instincts described here come from this book or later writings by Wilson. Jonathan Haidt has done similar work - see his publications. The genetic parts are from the book, Blueprint: How DNA Makes Us Who We Are. by Robert Plomin 

Another helpful survey of literature in this respect is Emotional Intelligence, by Daniel Goldman. It describes the research that indicates that much of what we do is driven by instinct.

It must be noted that everything here is a "predisposition", not a "predestination". For example, we are an aggressive species, but we can control and manage that. It takes some work, and sometimes a level of civilization, but it can be done. The things I am describing are strong tendencies. They are instinctual reflexes which can be managed with some work. But it is important to recognize these instincts, because a very high percentage of the population respond in this way most of the time. It has been my observation that these tendencies probably account for 80% of human behavior. Some of us have conquered one or other instinct, but it is relatively rare that anyone works in the reflective mode all the time.

This is one of my basic rules of life: "Most of us are not paying attention". See a fuller explanation of this here: Rules of Thumb For Life.

The people who seem to understand this best are our politicians. There is a wonderful novel that expands on this idea. It is Interface by Neal Stephenson under the pseudonym of Stephen Bury. The presidential candidate in the story is wired for real time sampling of how various segments of society respond to his speeches. His words are tuned until the audience is madly supportive.

1. We are born selfish, but most of us get socialized.
   Basic socialization makes our world function well enough to survive. Most of us are socialized at a very young age, but a small percentage of us are not. They remain egotists, and you need to watch out for them.

   1. 1. Kohlberg understood this, and it seems clear to me from casual observation. We start off as infants totally focused on ourselves, on "mine". We have this drive just to survive, but it lives on. Our family generally socializes us at an early age, so that we understand the rules of politeness and connectedness - we become family members and then part of a tribe.

      2. It is important to note that some individuals do not make this transition - they have a "personality disorder". The accepted theory for this is that if an individual does not have a meaningful, caring relationship by the time they are two years of age, they never form connections with others. They remain egotistic, they operate for themselves alone. This is important because we have to be on the alert for them. We need checks and balances, we need audits, we need policing, just to keep these 'selfish' individuals from taking advantage of the rest of us. Gross surveys indicate that about 10% of us are out there solely for ourselves.

   2. We are black and white thinkers.
      This comes from "flight or fight" - that instinctual response that someone is friend or foe. We like simple good and bad decisions. We make intuitive decisions nearly instantaneously, and then seek to justify them with more laborious decision making. 

      1. This is a survival mechanism. Our lower brain stem has a fight or flight reaction to the stranger. We decide instinctually whether something is a risk or not. There is a fine exposition of this by Daniel Goldman in his book Emotional Intelligence. This is survey of the current literature, but it does a really fine job of showing how much of what we do is driven by the genetics.   See Thinking, Fast and Slow for more on the science behind this.

      2. We can work to overcome this, but the tendency is strong. Most people do not grasp the subtle nuances of a moral discussion. They want a simple yes or no, a simple up or down. Are you with me, or against me? Anything in the middle is not tolerated well.

      3. Jonathan Haidt explains this instinctual response quite well. I like his general thinking, but I find his categories to be overly complex - it doesn't fit into the black and white framework very well! He calls this one "intuitive primacy but not dictatorship". Works for me!

   3. We are hierarchical, we value authority.
      The group that is coordinated does much better in battle, and in responding to a problem. We love strong leaders, and we want them to send clear messages - see the black and white rule above. We love an authority that gives us directions and decisions.
      Those tribes who responded well to strong leadership tended to dominate in battle over the loosely organized rabble, and their genetics survived. You can see this play out in politics and in economics. It helps explain our constant tendency to follow totalitarian leaders. This is especially true if they are black and white types, who also deliver a message full of meaning and purpose. Wilson found this tendency to be one of the deepest traits of humans. He stated this in an essay published in the New York Times on January 1, 2000.

   4. We are tribal, we value others in OUR group.
      People who value their tribal connections work better to protect their tribe. After selfishness, w then identify with our family, and move up to our tribe. Some of us have even arrived at a "nation", and a very small number of us think in terms of our species or the planet.

      1. This is Wilson again, and now many other researchers. We are social animals. The group that could bind together could defeat the others. We identify with our peers, but not just any peers - they are OUR peers, OUR tribe, OUR group. Haidt calls this "loyalty", but I think "tribe" is more descriptive. Some of us even rise to the level of a national identity. In the US, the European immigrant population never really had tribes. We all came with immigrant histories, and most of us left that behind in favor of the nation. In Europe, the linguistic differences and cultural enclaves of centuries still have some sway. I was visiting with old friends in Florence in 2001. I was telling them how amazed I was that Germans and French and Italians have dropped their borders in favor of the European Union. They agreed that this was an amazing accomplishment - and they were also similarly amazed that Pisa and Florence and Venice were not fighting!

      2. As Wilson said, this often culminates in a commitment to national soccer teams. Whatever works!

   5. We resist change, we value traditions.
      If you do it the way it has always been done, odds are better that you will survive into the future. If you change it, you run great risk. We are conservative by nature - whatever worked in the past will work best in the future - don't mess with it.

      1. When we get something working right, like how to build a house that will stand, or how to raise cattle or crops, we tend to keep doing it that way. The ones who go off and change it, or who can't remember the song, or the story that tells them how to do it, tend not to survive. The ones who follow the traditions are the survivors. I think less than 10% of us are innovators, and rightly so. When I walk into the bank, I don't want the teller to make up a new way to handle my transaction - just do it the way it's supposed to be done, thank you very much.

      2. This means that moral traditions speak strongly to us. "It has always been that way." "You just don't do that." It bothers us greatly to depart from what has always been done. Some of our moral thinkers even use this tendency to point to something called "natural law". It was made by God to operate that way, and there is no way to depart from that without moral evil. But, of course, we made up this principle to capitalize on this need for consistency. See the last point here.

   6. We need meaning and purpose.
      A group that has meaning and purpose has much more energy and enthusiasm in the battle or to fix a problem. Ask any sports coach. This is sometimes called the "sacred", "religion", or "charisma". I think "meaning and purpose" are more descriptive. A group with a strong sense of purpose will defeat a loose confederation. We need meaning and purpose in our lives. We look to our strong leaders to provide this, and if they do not, we tend to create it on our own. This is a major source of our religious tendencies. We find it very helpful to see all of reality as revolving around us as the center. We may have gotten away from the planet Earth as the center, but we still hold human kind to be the highest form of life and meaning.
      Even those of us who think we have moved beyond religion are still driven by uplifting goals. I would push them up a bit higher, to the level of the planet - the GAIA - and to all living, sentient beings, wherever they be or however they are created or manufactured.

   7. We create rights, they are not "discovered", not handed down.
      We started off as an amorphous collection of individuals with assigned roles - a "bee hive", under God and King. We are gradually creating an interrelated civil society of rules and laws. We create "rights" and "privileges" and "laws" to make things more consistent and adaptive. It seems to work better in a world of relative prosperity than the single strong authority.
      This one is a bit different, in that it is not really a survival attribute, and it is not instinctual at all. This takes a higher level of brain function, a higher level of social development, but it is an evolutionary process. I think, or rather, I hope, it is our future.

      1. This is not an innate tendency in our genetics. It is a revolution in thinking, similar to the agricultural revolution. We only discovered the idea that we could actually cultivate crops about 10,000 years ago, after hundreds of thousands of years of hunting and gathering. It changed everything, giving us the ability to form cities, armies, nations. Civilization came from agriculture - a change in how we thought about ourselves, and our dependency on the planet. We are now in charge of it, not at its mercy.

      2. Just so, the idea that rights can be created, identified and constructed, was a major revolution in social thinking. Initially, authority delivered what rights we possessed, God and / or the King. The revolution came about when Locke and company stood society on its head, and decreed that the state is the product of the people, at the service of the people. From that point on, rights are something we create, not something granted by authority. We create these "rights" and "privileges" and "laws" to make things more consistent and adaptive as circumstances change.

      3. You might think that a highly directive society, a dictatorship, would work much more efficiently and effectively than a loosely organized democratic squabble. Efficiency perhaps, but creativity, energy, commitment - not likely. Amartya Sen in his book, Development as Freedom makes the case that our societies prosper in what really counts when humans are "free", when we control our own destiny to some extent. Freedom or democracy is not the result of affluence, but the other way around. The human creativeness and energy that freedom unleashes is the source of broad wealth. He compares parts of India, and developing countries and China to make his point. Humans are amazing, and they are even more so when they are relatively free.

Created on ... 2007.12.12 

Updated on 2010.03.07

Copyright 2023 Carl Scheider