{"id":5299,"date":"2007-09-19T13:33:14","date_gmt":"2007-09-19T13:33:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5299"},"modified":"2007-09-19T13:33:14","modified_gmt":"2007-09-19T13:33:14","slug":"where-morality-comes-from","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/?p=5299","title":{"rendered":"where morality comes from"},"content":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Wade’s New York Times article<\/a>, entitled “Is ‘Do Onto Others’ Written into Our Genes?” started off badly enough that I had a hard time reading it. Stopping would have been a loss, because I appreciated the reference to YourMorals.org<\/a>, where (after registering) one can take a nifty quiz.<\/p>\n

Wade begins: “Where do moral rules come from? From reason, some philosophers say. From God, say believers. Seldom considered is a source now being advocated by some biologists, that of evolution.”<\/p>\n

First of all, the evolutionary basis of morality is not “seldom considered.” It has been the topic of bestselling books and numerous articles. Even the student commencement speaker at the University of Maryland last year talked about it.<\/p>\n

More importantly, Wade’s comparison of philosophers and biologists is misleading. Biologists may <\/em>be able to tell us where morals “come from,” in one sense. As scientists, they try to explain the causes of phenomena, such as our beliefs and behaviors. We call some of our beliefs and behaviors “moral.” Biology may be able to explain why we have these moral characteristics; and one place to look for biological causes is evolution.<\/p>\n

But why are we entitled to call some of our beliefs and behaviors moral, and others–equally widespread, equally demanding–non-moral or even immoral? Why, for example, is nonviolence usually seen as moral, and violence as immoral? Both are natural; both evolved as human traits. Moreover, not all violence is immoral, at least not in my opinion. Not even all violence against members of one’s own group is wrong.<\/p>\n

Morality “comes from” reason, not in the sense that reason causes morality, but because we must reason in order to decide which of our traits and instincts are right and wrong, and under what circumstances. Evolutionary biology cannot help us to decide that. If biologists want to study the origins of morality, they must use a definition that comes from outside of biology. One approach is to use the definition held by average human beings in a particular population. But why call that definition “moral”? I would call it “conventional.” Conventional opinion may, for example, abhor the alleged “pollution” caused by the mixing of races or castes. It is useful to study the reasons for such beliefs, but it is wrong to categorize them as moral.<\/p>\n

Perhaps I wrote that last sentence because of my genes, my evolutionary origins, or what I ate for breakfast this morning. Whether it is true<\/em>, however, depends on reason.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Nicholas Wade’s New York Times article, entitled “Is ‘Do Onto Others’ Written into Our Genes?” started off badly enough that I had a hard time reading it. Stopping would have been a loss, because I appreciated the reference to YourMorals.org, where (after registering) one can take a nifty quiz. Wade begins: “Where do moral rules […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5299","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-philosophy"],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5299"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5299\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5299"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5299"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/peterlevine.ws\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5299"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}