In my initial post, my impetus was to contest the seeming reasonable point by moderate christians, in that they could not see any basis for morality other than influence or guidance from a divine being. By "morality", I don't think they were meaning a detailed philosophical underpinning which can rationally show what all moral behaviour should be. I think they are looking for a basis for compassion, empathy and concern for other human beings. A telling religious phrase is "Love others as I have loved you". The implication in that phrase is that humans need the divine example of love, to have any hope of compassionate behaviour towards others.rasetsu wrote: ↑Sun May 01, 2022 1:19 pm
I think you miss my point here in that I am saying it doesn't seem to answer the most basic questions that such a seed must answer to qualify as a seed. According to our intuitions, morality is both objective and non-contingent. Your moral seed is neither. It's not objective because it depends upon values which are satisfied by cooperation and altruism, namely the prospering of the species. The universe doesn't care about the prospering of the species, nor do lions and bears care about human flourishing. And your morals are completely contingent. If our evolution worked out a different way, our morals would be different.
So, my purpose was to suggest that our understanding of the evolutionary path of our species, plus our knowledge of how small social groups of primates behave can be responsible for innate tendencies for cooperation, friendship and empathy. Of course, this is primarily directed at one's immediate tribe, but can grow and encompass much larger entities - a football club is much larger than a hominid tribe!
Hermit alluded to the fact that moral values change. At least part of that is being able to encompass larger and larger groupings of those who deserve our feelings of compassion. In slave-holding societies, black slaves were definitely not in this in-group. As the zeitgeist changed, emancipists insisted that "we are all god's children"...
Of course I agree that "the universe doesn't care about the prospering of the species". But any morality that humans develop is not some Olympian, universal morality, it is indeed contingent, and inextricably bound in our evolutionary history. My argument is simply that any morality that we do develop, certainly with much debate, argument and compromises, has a starting point of emotional responses to fellow humans, derived via natural selection and of purely material origin.
If it were possible (and it may not be) for intelligence to evolve in a species that is largely asocial (perhaps like tigers), I'm sure any moral framework they developed (if any!) would be very different to ours...
I quite agree! In my original post, I made this point:But there is an additional problem in that cooperation and altruism aren't the only evolved drives and inclinations we possess. Selfishness, greed, rape, aggression, and even warfare all have evolutionary underpinnings as well.
(I'm not implying that such distrust of out-groups is the only source of innate tendencies which work against moral strivings, but that it is an important one)There is of course a dark side - competition between rival groups is likely to have generated a tendency for distrust of out-groups...
Any worthwhile system of morality will recognise that humans possess tendencies (innate and/or cultural) which tend to work against the precepts of a morality that wants people to treat other people well. In many religious systems of morality, a supernatural agency such as the devil encourages our dark side. One can argue that the Christian concept of "original sin" is a de facto recognition of the fact that "Selfishness, greed, rape, aggression, and even warfare all have evolutionary underpinnings"...
And finally, an understanding of evolutionary underpinnings of current human nature can never be the basis for an "ought" in developing moral systems, but such an understanding can illuminate the problems and possibilities. Whatever systems of morals we can develop, they are only derived via human striving, not inspired by supernatural entities. But I still believe that the seed of compassion and empathy developed through millions of years of living in small social groups is there to be part of a wider moral system...