Unwinding Confusion About Morality

Chapter 9.4: What is it, really? And how nice do I have to be?

Why this book | Title Page | Table of Contents
Preface | Introduction
PART 1
Chapter 1 (1.1) (1.2) | Chapter 2 (2.1) (2.2) (2.3) | Chapter 3 (3.1) (3.2) (3.3) (3.4) (3.5) (3.6)
PART 2
Chapter 4 (4.1) (4.2) (4.3) (4.4) (4.5) | Chapter 5 (5.1) (5.2) (5.3) (5.4) (5.5) (5.6) (5.7) (5.8) (5.9)
Chapter 6 (6.1) (6.2) (6.3) (6.4) (6.5)
PART 3
Chapter 7 (7.1) (7.2) (7.3) (7.4) (7.5) (7.6) | Chapter 8 (8.1) (8.2) (8.3) (8.4) (8.5) | Chapter 9 (9.1) (9.2) (9.3) (9.4)
Chapter 10 | Chapter 11 | Chapter 12 | Chapter 13 | Chapter 14
PART 4
Chapter 15 | Chapter 16 | Chapter 17 |
PART 5
Chapter 18 | Chapter 19 | Chapter 20 | Conclusion
Appendix | Works Cited

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Note: This is an installment of The Freedom Scale: An Accurate Measure of Left and Right. See here for installments of The Distributed Nation: A Plan for Human Independence.

Chapter 9.4

• Where does it come from?

  • We’re taught it

  • It feels right

• What is it?

  • Must-nots and musts

  • Fairness and justice

  • Shoulds and should-nots

  • Customs

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We’re taught it

cultural, instilled

So…

Our natural moral capacity allows us to perceive and conceptualize ethical questions and (hopefully) find satisfactory answers to them. Our experiences show us the benefits of ethical behavior for our own lives, and for the flourishing of human communities. Our emotional understanding creates visceral incentives for developing a moral framework for our activities. In time, these lead to moral systems that help smooth our social interactions and facilitate our cooperative endeavors.

It is a complex combination, and at the end of the day, it does not matter exactly what proportion of each is responsible for our moral capacity or the moral systems we develop. Nor does it matter, for our purposes here, which “came first.” Whether behavior influenced evolution or an evolved biology governed behavior…whether better results led to positive emotional reactions or a preexisting emotional makeup incentivized the kind of behavior that produces better results…the end result is the same. Morality is a natural, powerful, and essential force in our lives.

Hypothetical scenarios, philosophical parables, and experiments with children are all useful ways to arrive at scientific and philosophical truths about morality. At the same time, however, it is impossible to escape the reality of our cultural context…

Each of us, as an individual person, does not develop a moral code in a vacuum. We are taught moral principles as children. We absorb them from the culture around us. When trying to find a way to interact harmoniously with our family and peers, we do not have to stumble through blindly, figuring everything out from scratch. We have help along the way. Culture transmits the accumulated knowledge, wisdom, and experience of those who have come before. Culture is the mechanism for the “ratchet effect”—the reason why we don’t have to re-learn everything in each generation.¹

The children in Tomasello’s experiments displayed uniquely human traits associated with our moral capacity, but when the testing day was done, they went home to families and communities who taught them actual moral principles. But what if they didn’t? What if they had to figure it all out from scratch? Can such a thought experiment give us insight into the sources of the moral codes we follow?

Curious what others thought about this question, I sought an answer in an unlikely place: Disney World.²

I was in line for the Toy Story Madness attraction at Disney’s Hollywood Studios, while my wife and son were off doing Tower of Terror (a ride my one experience of which was more than sufficient). In front of me were middle-aged grandparents with their daughter and toddler grandson…