The Moral Sense, Chapter 1
I read Chapter 1 of James Q. Wilson's The Moral Sense1 last night. It has stimulated further thoughts from me this morning.
Can you have morals without free will? According to sociobiology you can, just because your moral sense is a part of you that is determined. It rather begs the question of what morality actually is, however.
James Q. Wilson sheds some light on this. He notes the argument from G. E. Moore that goodness is a basic property, which cannot be subdivided into further basic properties. Yet every time we discuss what is good, we instinctively know what is meant. Likewise when we discuss what "ought" to be the case. The presence of an innate moral sense explains this fact. It is rather like talking of the thrill that a man experiences when he reads a copy of Playboy. This "thrill" might be incomprehensible to a child, but it will not be for an adult. An adult has acquired the feeling to be able to know it in someone else when she sees it. I think the same thing occurs from having a sense of goodness. You know goodness when you see it, and also when you hear it mentioned in ordinary language, because you have associated the word with your own sense of goodness. You start off sharing this sense of goodness with other human beings. This is how you can communicate with each other coherently about this goodness.
This is not to claim that this "moral sense" admits of much necessary content. Much of this must still be left to moral reasoning based on feedback from that sense. But it will suggest at least some minimal content. Tantalisingly, Wilson points to three cross-cultural mores in his first chapter. They are against murder, against incest, and in favour of kindness to children respectively.
One might object that the notion of a more against murder is a tautology. "Murder" means "immoral killing". But the point to be gotten is that killing a human being can never be performed in any society without some kind of moral justification. It cannot be done indiscriminately because the action is never morally neutral. Incest is reviled in nearly all cultures. It does not seem necessary to describe incest as immoral, as long as it occurs between two consenting adults. However, it does not seem desirable to most people anyway, if only because such a desire does seem quite unnatural. Any children that formed from such a union would have inferior genes as well. It would therefore likely be immoral to have children from incest. Kindness to children has obvious moral value as well as obvious survival value, so this seems a reasonable more as well.
Wilson also has an intriguing discussion of criminality. He notes that while violent crime has increased, the percentage of criminals in society has not. It has remained steadily between, say, five and six percent. In other words, immorality, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. This was one of my original requirements for a viable ethic. I am delighted to see it being borne out by Wilson's research.
Of course, one is here seeing the presence of a social norm. Violation of that norm, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. One might indeed, expect this to be true by definition. However, psychologists do make a distinction between statistical norms and social norms. The above behaviour would be true of a statistical norm by definition. It would not necessarily, however, be true of a social norm. It is logically possible that an entire society can in some ways be hypocritical with respect to certain norms to which it pays lip service. I must confess that I do not know the full extent to which this actually happens. But as Iris Murdoch pointed out, lip service should not be despised. Many worthwhile social reforms start with people's becoming ashamed to make certain statements in public. For example, they might become embarrassed about making sexist or racist remarks. In Japan, for example, I read that at that time there was much talk about sexism but little action. But this is not terrible, because at least they are talking about it. An increase in awareness of these issues must over time lead to a reform in actual practices as well.
I find also find intriguing Wilson's protracted discussion of infanticide. Where practiced, it tends to occur only within the first few hours of a baby's life. In other words, before a bond has the chance to be formed between mother and child. This, I think, is even more powerful a thesis than the infrequency of immorality. It is a thesis about the circumscription of immorality. In other words, immorality, if it occurs, occurs necessarily in some kind of circumscribed way.
For a long time, I had a bias that ethics has to be practised in order to be valid. Obviously, this view was very hard to defend. In principle, I think, it must be false, although in practice it does still seem to be true. It is nice, in this respect, to see this sentiment reinforced by concrete observations. One proposed counterexample to this notion is the obvious viability of slavery as an institution in antiquity. In brief, my reply to this was that the people at the time did not think that slavery was immoral. One must allow, after all, for moral ignorance. One must allow for the possibility that one can discover new things about ethics over time. I discuss this more fully in the section on "Reading Cicero".
1Free Press, 1997.
Can you have morals without free will? According to sociobiology you can, just because your moral sense is a part of you that is determined. It rather begs the question of what morality actually is, however.
James Q. Wilson sheds some light on this. He notes the argument from G. E. Moore that goodness is a basic property, which cannot be subdivided into further basic properties. Yet every time we discuss what is good, we instinctively know what is meant. Likewise when we discuss what "ought" to be the case. The presence of an innate moral sense explains this fact. It is rather like talking of the thrill that a man experiences when he reads a copy of Playboy. This "thrill" might be incomprehensible to a child, but it will not be for an adult. An adult has acquired the feeling to be able to know it in someone else when she sees it. I think the same thing occurs from having a sense of goodness. You know goodness when you see it, and also when you hear it mentioned in ordinary language, because you have associated the word with your own sense of goodness. You start off sharing this sense of goodness with other human beings. This is how you can communicate with each other coherently about this goodness.
This is not to claim that this "moral sense" admits of much necessary content. Much of this must still be left to moral reasoning based on feedback from that sense. But it will suggest at least some minimal content. Tantalisingly, Wilson points to three cross-cultural mores in his first chapter. They are against murder, against incest, and in favour of kindness to children respectively.
One might object that the notion of a more against murder is a tautology. "Murder" means "immoral killing". But the point to be gotten is that killing a human being can never be performed in any society without some kind of moral justification. It cannot be done indiscriminately because the action is never morally neutral. Incest is reviled in nearly all cultures. It does not seem necessary to describe incest as immoral, as long as it occurs between two consenting adults. However, it does not seem desirable to most people anyway, if only because such a desire does seem quite unnatural. Any children that formed from such a union would have inferior genes as well. It would therefore likely be immoral to have children from incest. Kindness to children has obvious moral value as well as obvious survival value, so this seems a reasonable more as well.
Wilson also has an intriguing discussion of criminality. He notes that while violent crime has increased, the percentage of criminals in society has not. It has remained steadily between, say, five and six percent. In other words, immorality, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. This was one of my original requirements for a viable ethic. I am delighted to see it being borne out by Wilson's research.
Of course, one is here seeing the presence of a social norm. Violation of that norm, if it occurs, occurs only a minority of the time and/or for a minority of the people. One might indeed, expect this to be true by definition. However, psychologists do make a distinction between statistical norms and social norms. The above behaviour would be true of a statistical norm by definition. It would not necessarily, however, be true of a social norm. It is logically possible that an entire society can in some ways be hypocritical with respect to certain norms to which it pays lip service. I must confess that I do not know the full extent to which this actually happens. But as Iris Murdoch pointed out, lip service should not be despised. Many worthwhile social reforms start with people's becoming ashamed to make certain statements in public. For example, they might become embarrassed about making sexist or racist remarks. In Japan, for example, I read that at that time there was much talk about sexism but little action. But this is not terrible, because at least they are talking about it. An increase in awareness of these issues must over time lead to a reform in actual practices as well.
I find also find intriguing Wilson's protracted discussion of infanticide. Where practiced, it tends to occur only within the first few hours of a baby's life. In other words, before a bond has the chance to be formed between mother and child. This, I think, is even more powerful a thesis than the infrequency of immorality. It is a thesis about the circumscription of immorality. In other words, immorality, if it occurs, occurs necessarily in some kind of circumscribed way.
For a long time, I had a bias that ethics has to be practised in order to be valid. Obviously, this view was very hard to defend. In principle, I think, it must be false, although in practice it does still seem to be true. It is nice, in this respect, to see this sentiment reinforced by concrete observations. One proposed counterexample to this notion is the obvious viability of slavery as an institution in antiquity. In brief, my reply to this was that the people at the time did not think that slavery was immoral. One must allow, after all, for moral ignorance. One must allow for the possibility that one can discover new things about ethics over time. I discuss this more fully in the section on "Reading Cicero".
1Free Press, 1997.
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