A fascinating piece from the New York Times by Steven Pinker called the "The Moral Instinct" - Thanks Katie!!
The starting point for appreciating that there is a distinctive part of our psychology for morality is seeing how moral judgments differ from other kinds of opinions we have on how people ought to behave. Moralization is a psychological state that can be turned on and off like a switch, and when it is on, a distinctive mind-set commandeers our thinking. This is the mind-set that makes us deem actions immoral (“killing is wrong”), rather than merely disagreeable (“I hate brussels sprouts”), unfashionable (“bell-bottoms are out”) or imprudent (“don’t scratch mosquito bites”).
My "ah-hah!" moment quote:
The institutions of modernity often question and experiment with the way activities are assigned to moral spheres. Market economies tend to put everything up for sale. Science amoralizes the world by seeking to understand phenomena rather than pass judgment on them. Secular philosophy is in the business of scrutinizing all beliefs, including those entrenched by authority and tradition. It’s not surprising that these institutions are often seen to be morally corrosive.
"Ah-hah Ah-hah!"
The other external support for morality is a feature of rationality itself: that it cannot depend on the egocentric vantage point of the reasoner. If I appeal to you to do anything that affects me — to get off my foot, or tell me the time or not run me over with your car — then I can’t do it in a way that privileges my interests over yours (say, retaining my right to run you over with my car) if I want you to take me seriously. Unless I am Galactic Overlord, I have to state my case in a way that would force me to treat you in kind. I can’t act as if my interests are special just because I’m me and you’re not, any more than I can persuade you that the spot I am standing on is a special place in the universe just because I happen to be standing on it.
Not coincidentally, the core of this idea — the interchangeability of perspectives — keeps reappearing in history’s best-thought-through moral philosophies, including the Golden Rule (itself discovered many times); Spinoza’s Viewpoint of Eternity; the Social Contract of Hobbes, Rousseau and Locke; Kant’s Categorical Imperative; and Rawls’s Veil of Ignorance. It also underlies Peter Singer’s theory of the Expanding Circle — the optimistic proposal that our moral sense, though shaped by evolution to overvalue self, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings.
"So F--ing cool" moment:
"The science of the moral sense also alerts us to ways in which our psychological makeup can get in the way of our arriving at the most defensible moral conclusions. The moral sense, we are learning, is as vulnerable to illusions as the other senses. It is apt to confuse morality per se with purity, status and conformity. It tends to reframe practical problems as moral crusades and thus see their solution in punitive aggression. It imposes taboos that make certain ideas indiscussible. And it has the nasty habit of always putting the self on the side of the angels.
I have never wanted to comment so badly on the second to last paragraph of an essay in my life. I will do it here because it is not possible to comment on a New York Times Op Ed piece.
Dear Dr. Pinker,
While I agree quite emphatically with about 98% of your op-ed piece in the NY Times ("The Moral Instinct"January 13, 2008), the last example you make about climate change I found objectionable and subject to faulty reasoning.
On the whole suggesting that human moral reasoning follows a certain utilitarian logic, sounds correct. However, upon reaching the example of the climate crisis, you suggest that voluntary limitations of fossil fuel intake (for example trading in a Hummer for a hybrid) would not actually have a major effect on climate change and thus, more workable solutions must be found. This strikes me as an unwise suggestion. A persons decision to drive a hummer is already a moral choice, one that reflects values that are expressed so often and with so little comment as to have become described as the reality of global circumstance. That circumstance being the wests usurpation of resources far in excess of those wrought by the Chinese and Indian populations you make reference to. So if just driving a hummer is a moral choice already, why is choosing not to drive one less advisable?
Though the decision by a handful of wealthy people with drivers licenses decision not to drive large vehicles is not immediate and effective, it is suggestive and iterative. They are providing an example of a critical approach to the dominant moral framework of Western Culture, which I think it's safe to suggest could be described as Market Capitalism. Thus the substantive effect of their choice may be nil, but the evocative effect is large. And doubtless (I don't know, I don't own a hummer, or haven't recently decided not to drive one) I would bet that the the decision to not drive a hummer, is one that can be immensely rewarding on a personal level.
So in that case, mere pragmatism is not the basis for all 'globally correct' moral choices. Sometimes as Mother Theresa suggests, it is important to learn to do without, or to change an aspect of your own behaviour - not because it is actually going to change anything external, but because as a person of moral awareness you have made a realization that even if it is too late, you would feel like an immoral being, and be participating in the destruction of something you hold dear (community) by not changing your behaviour.
In fact this characterization of morality as having pay-offs smacks of that Western Capitalism (reciprocity being the measure of all things) I just mentioned. Whatever happened to; "just be good for goodness sake?" Might that be a hole in your argument? A convinced moralist might see it as one.
By discounting the actions of Americans choosing to reduce their fossil fuel consumption as less valid or perhaps misguided you are discrediting an important moral shift, the one from a totally thoughtless consumption to a more balanced perspective. It may be true that wealthy North Americans are the only people who can afford the choice to make these sacrifices; however they are also the who, ones at this point in their own cultural history - should be thinking the most about making those choices. I am not afraid to suggest that for wealthy North Americans voluntarily reduction of consumption is of major moral importance. I include myself as a wealthy North American.
Thus your example of, "the illogical conservatism of American Drivers" is actually an example of very useful and necessary part of moral evolution. It may not change anything material, but it will suggest changes to those abiding moral frameworks that govern Western consumers choice sets. Or at least it would, if you didn't belittle it so.
In fact I think what Pinker is suggesting is that individual actions in this circumstance carry less weight than large scale institutional moral decisions (carbon vouchers etc..) and I guess what I am trying to suggest in a roundabout way is that what has brought us to this circumstance is a set of individuals choices, writ large over an entire cultural and industrial practice. The way to undo this mess is not only going to involve magnitudes of change. People will also have to start thinking with a new set of moral ideas. I think voluntary reduction is one such idea and though it may not provide the big money excitement of say, changing ocean currents it will in the long term provide pretty workable solutions to the more pernicious problem of culturally institutionalized greed.(God I am beginning to sound Biblical aren't I?)
Okay, I am done now and my moral framework is telling me if I don't walk the dog I'm a heartless a-hole. That probably didn't make much sense thanks for staying with me.
