Monkey Ethics: Moral Evolution?
27 March 2007 - 9 ניסן 5767 by Huw
Props to Jewschool for this article in the New York Times on theories of the sources of human morality - and the implications. The opening three paragraphs capture all the political levels of the concept - especially in a country where Evolution and Science are imagined to be in a Blue and Red war with faith - well, Christianity really. That’s the only one with a problem - and only some flavours. But ok…
Some animals are surprisingly sensitive to the plight of others. Chimpanzees, who cannot swim, have drowned in zoo moats trying to save others. Given the chance to get food by pulling a chain that would also deliver an electric shock to a companion, rhesus monkeys will starve themselves for several days.
Biologists argue that these and other social behaviors are the precursors of human morality. They further believe that if morality grew out of behavioral rules shaped by evolution, it is for biologists, not philosophers or theologians, to say what these rules are.
Moral philosophers do not take very seriously the biologists’ bid to annex their subject, but they find much of interest in what the biologists say and have started an academic conversation with them.
While covering the various angles, noting the differences between a biological view of morality and an ethical one they even get to “religion” once or twice. What’s interesting to me is that we can use these theories (as I understand this NYTimes article) to link up the theory of Julian Jaynes, expressed in The Origin of Consciousness in the Breakdown of the Bicameral Mind (again, at least as I understand them…).
If the sources of human morals are in simple concepts of empathy,
“Sympathy is the raw material out of which a more complicated set of ethics may get fashioned… In the actual world, we are confronted with different people who might be targets of our sympathy. And the business of ethics is deciding who to help and why and when.”
and then, at some point… (following Jaynes) the Left and Right brains started talking to each other… and this was perceived as divine voices: we have an evolutionary source for religion.
Shocking, I’m sure.
