Chapter 8: ETHICS |
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Stages of Moral Development |
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(NOTE: You must read only those linked materials that are preceded by the capitalized word READ.) Where does morality come from? Does it come from religion? Many people think so but evidence indicates otherwise. READ: Morality is not in need of a belief in a deity.
READ:Morality is independent of both a belief in a
deity and religion itself.
READ:Do Our Values Come from God? The Evidence Says
No by Victor J. Stenger at
https://mm-gold.azureedge.net/Articles/vstenger/morality_god.html
READ:A non-religious basis for morality is superior
because religious morality is too rule based (principles) and restrictive
and less flexible than alternative approaches. People often
think and many claim that morality is dependent on religion. Some claim
religious morality is superior to secular morality. Some refer to the
nearly universal association of morality with religion on planet Earth as
evidence in support of their claims. This is backwards!!
Research is
showing that morality is linked with and dependent upon both physical
structures and functioning of the brain and on cultural inheritances.
MORALITY
results form both GENES and MEMES !!!
Neuroscience is
finding the brain structures and functioning that make for the "ethical
brain". How is this so? Humans are social animals and as Aristotle put
it zoon politikon. As such they have evolved in part due to a capacity
to relate to others and have empathy and sympathy for others that serves as
the base for acceptance of basic rules of conduct needed to live with
others in relative peace sufficient to support social or group life and then
the advantages of social life. Evolutionary Psychology is finding/hypothesizing the evolution
of moral notions as an expression of the hardwiring. The brain appears to
have structures evolved and passed on through our genetic makeup (GENES) that provide for EMPATHY and SYMPATHY and
CONCERN for OTHERS. These each in some way enhanced survival ability for
the social species of homo sapiens. Morality is a result of and expression
of those operations. Particular moral expressions or rules are enunciated
and passed on as cultural inheritances and thus MEMES (cf. Richard Dawkins
work).
The primatologist, Frans de Waal, was on of
many who have argued that the roots of human morality lie in social animals
such as the primates, including apes and monkeys. The feelings of empathy
and expectations of reciprocity are necessary for the behaviors needed to
make any mammalian group exist as individuals living in the midst of others.
This set of feelings and expectations of reciprocity may be taken as the
basis for human morality. Neuroscientists are locating that sense in mirror
neurons in the brain.
Everywhere
humans are found and where evidence exists of human culture there is
evidence of a sense of morality. While the particular moral rules may
not be the same there is significant similarities and a commonalities in
purposes served by moral codes. Morality is needed for human community
and humans demonstrate this world wide. There is evidence that all
societies have morality. Is this because they could not exist without some
sense of how we are to behave? Human beings are social beings -they have
language which is a social creation. Humans could not live in groups without
some sort of sense of how to behave in ways that enhances the survival of
the group- hence sympathy and empathy are needed and they are part of
the basis for morality: a moral sense.
Other primates
have the basic for what humans call morality:
“The moral nature of man has reached its
present standard, partly through the advancement of his reasoning powers
and consequently of a just public opinion, but especially from his
sympathies having been rendered more tender and widely diffused through
the effects of habit, example, instruction, and reflection. It is not
improbable that after long practice virtuous tendencies may be inherited.
With the more civilised races, the conviction of the existence of an
all-seeing Deity has had a potent influence on the advance of morality.
Ultimately man does not accept the praise or blame of his fellows as his
sole guide, though few escape this influence, but his habitual
convictions, controlled by reason, afford him the safest rule. His
conscience then becomes the supreme judge and monitor. Nevertheless the
first foundation or origin of the moral sense lies in the social
instincts, including sympathy, and these instincts no doubt were primarily
gained, as in the case of the lower animals, through
natural selection.”--
“Morality is as firmly grounded in
neurobiology as anything else we do or are,” Dr. de Waal wrote in his 1996
book “Good Natured. READ
In
The Ethical Brain
by Michael Gazzaniga (Dana Press: NY, 2005) the neuroscientist describes
experimental evidence to support his claims that the left hemisphere of the
brain operates to unify the various systems within the brain and serves as
an interpreter to fashion stories that become the personal beliefs of each
person. Humans need beliefs and belief systems to
make sense of their sensory inputs. The human species reacts to events
and the brain interprets the reaction. Out of those interpretations
there arise the beliefs by which people guide their actions. Some of
the beliefs lead to rules by which people will live. And so there
emerges a a moral sense upon practical considerations. The left
hemisphere continually functions to interpret events and to create stories
to accommodate the sensory and ideational inputs. Whenever there is
information that does not fit the self image created by the interpreter or
the conceptual framework or belief system previously held and operative,
then the interpreter will create a belief to make sense of it in some manner
or hold it in some way relation to previous information and beliefs.
The human species has a core set of reactions to challenges. Humans share
similar reactions to situations. They share the evocation of empathy
and sympathy. Humans have mirror neurons that evoke this reaction.
Other primate also have such mirror neurons. They appear to make a
social life possible. Gazzaniga holds that there exists some deep structure
in the brain driving not only a certain common set of values as expressions
of the evoked responses but also the need to create cultural edifices or
social constructs for moral codes. Thus religion evolves to satisfy
that drive.
Religions may
have begun from a instinctual reaction common to humans. It evolved
into a social support system and system of rationalizations (beliefs) that
attempt to make sense of the individual responses to one another and to
situations faced by all humans.
Gazziniga holds
that there are neural correlates of the religious experience in the temporal
lobes of the brain. Temporal lobe epilepsy has as one of its symptoms
a hyper religiosity.
Gazziniga holds
for the possibility of a universal ethics for all humans based on the most
basic of evocations shared by all humans. Current research utilizing
moral sense testing is producing interesting findings in support of the
hypothesis of a genetic base for morality in humans.
For Gazzaniga
humans want to believe, they want to believe in a natural order and they
want a codification of their most basic empathetic responses towards others.
Gazzaniga wants science, as neuroscience to assist the human community to
have what it appears to need and based on the best information available.
So humans are
hardwired and programmed for morality and religion rides in on that as a
context in which the programming results in producing a fuller expression.
This in turn is culturally transmitted and thus the human impulse is most
often being routed through religious institutions and practices.
There is
consideration given to the impact of looking at morality as rooted in the
evolution of the species and in the neural endowment of human brains.
READ:
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Marc D. Hauser, a Harvard biologist,
Hauser has presented an argument with a
hypothesis to be tested empirically. That process is underway . There
is considerable support for it already gathered in work with primates and in
close examination of the works of and research now being conducted by moral
philosophers as well as by primatologists and neuroscientists.
"Morality without religion"
by Marc Hauser and Peter Singer, December, 2005
http://www.centerforinquiry.net/uploads/attachments/HauserSinger.pdf
VIEW: Dr.
Massimo Pigliucci
Research in
Neuroscience has proceeded so far as to call into discussion how humans
are responsible for their actions and the degree to which all ethical
thinking or morality is merely post facto rationalizations for the near
automatic responses made to situations by the brain. READ:
The Brain on the Stand
by
Jeffrey Rosen on recent scientific work and its implications.
How exactly each person develops their ideas about right and wrong is a subject being studied by psychologists. This type of study is part of what is known as Moral Psychology. One of the most famous of the psychologists who does such studies is Lawrence Kohlberg. He has a theory of moral development based upon his research with people from very young ages through the adult years. VIEW: Kohlberg's Theory of Moral Development His work confirms and expands upon an earlier theory by the American Philosopher John Dewey.
To understand each of these six stages read: READ: Kohlberg’s Theory by Robert N. Barger or here Kohlberg used scenarios to elicit responses from his subjects concerning their thinking about what makes an act right or wrong. He was less concerned with their answer as to what they would do or approve of in others as he was interested in their reason for thinking as they did. Here is a simplification of his famous Heinz Scenario:
How would you solve the following scenario which Kohlberg used on
his research subjects ? A man named Heinz had a dying wife. The wife had an almost fatal
disease. The local druggist owned a $20,000 drug that could save her. Heinz could not raise the money in time and he certainly did not
have the cash to buy the drug. Heinz therefore made a decision and that night he broke into the
drug store and stole some of the medication. Should Heinz have done that? Why do you think that? Kohlberg thought that fewer than 25% of people ever progress beyond the fourth stage and do so because of some event that presses them to develop further. Events can force a person to move further. The decision to have an abortion, to resist the draft or to assist your mother lying on her death bed to die quickly and with less pain and suffering are the sorts of events for which individuals must come to face just what it is that makes an action right or wrong. It is at those times and through those events that individuals come to learn what their values are, who they are and what their moral rules will be. Consulting with friends and religious advisors about such matters will bring much advice but leave the decision-making about the rules and the actions to the individual. For more recent studies READ: Learning Right From Wrong READ The Moral Instinct by Stephen Pinker What of the those without an "Ethical Brain" What of the Psychopath and those lacking in Empathy and Sympathy? A cognitive neuroscience perspective on psychopathy: Evidence for paralimbic system dysfunctionBrain scans of convicted serial killers who are diagnosed as psychopaths with the lack of empathy and sympathy indicate abnormal brain patterns. There may be connectivity abnormalities in the orbital cortex region of the brain. The cortical limbic system may be linked to the behavior patterns many would deem to be immoral or even evil. |
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