I love Steven Pinker.

'many years', 'many others... following'?

And I thought your were a young man... ; )

'many years' is probably 7 or 8 years of my life, which is a significant portion. It started when I read "The Selfish Gene" by Richard Dawkins.

Did you like Dawkin's? I read him when I was older and found him annoying. I am not sure why, perhaps because I came from an evangelical background. He was a bit of a pop star when I was your age.

The one thing that fascinates me about morality is its relative nature: any value system whatsoever becomes moral if it is in the majority.

I certainly liked that book by Dawkins. I read some others, but I felt like he stopped talking about evolutionary biology and started talking too much about the faults of religion. I much preferred him when he sought to bring evolution to the layman. That book very much did catalyse my interest in science and scientific literature, and for that I do thank him.

The neat thing about morality is that it's relative, but it's not arbitrary. It might be true that any value system becomes moral of it's the majority, I would say that moral value systems have some universals, such as the golden rule. Morality is a practical adaptation, it's not just a matter of conjuring up rules and convincing people to follow them.

Absolutely pragmatic: the 'rules' in morality follow when Man tries to capture his particular preferred version of morality. It has a parallel in language where usage always overrides grammar, the latter being an after-the-fact attempt to codify a living and evolving system.

Yes, I'd say that's one of the reasons nobody has come up with an acceptable philosophical explanation for morality that is logically consistent and cannot be disproved with a hypothetical situation in which the philosophical morality proposed would suggest a situation that we know to be intuitively immoral. Eg. Utilitarianism and the trolley-switch problems.

I think it's interesting that science is going to take a shot at it, and it's interesting you drew a parallel with language because there are additional similarities. Noam Chomsky's linguistic revolution with the idea of universal grammatical sense that is imbued into our nature is similar, I think, to the idea that much of our basic moral compass is also imbued into our nature. Steven Pinker, as a linguist, also made that connection, and in the same way that linguists have discovered universals and parallels out of the enormous subjectivity and relativity in the panoply of languages spoken throughout history and the world, perhaps moral scientists will also discover universals and parallels from the convoluted subjectivity of morality.

Is morality a language?

No, but there are striking similarities between the two.

I have always been interested in why certain practices forbidden by religions in the past were done so. Things like polygamy and monogamy, etc. I don't think morality is necessary imprinted on man, but that much of morality is based on experience. But then again, I also admire David Hume.

Ah morality.... what a devilishly difficult topic to discuss, yet a most important one to understand if one wishes to understand the motivations of fellow humans....

I like theories about why we have morality, but I have perpetually been troubled by the idea that my sense of morality has no solid grounding beyond mere extensions of feelings of what I like and do not like.


Oh, and by the way; the article you linked to is strangely reminiscent of an episode of `Bullshit`that I watched not so long ago. Are you familiar with that delightful program? :)

Yes, if you're referring to Penn and Teller's Bullshit. I've only seen a few episodes, and it's highly entertaining and definitely makes some interesting points. I am guarded though because it often seems like cardstacking, and I feel like I might not really be getting the other side of a debate.

Which episode is similar to that article?

Oh, there is certainly cardstacking going on, which suits those two canny magicians :). Penn`s voiceover replies to positions he then lambasts are designed to echoe unrefuted in your head, with the poor guest unable to challenge anything being said, or even get to explain themselves in a critical manner.

But despite that, still worth watching. And hilarious to boot.


I believe that the episode I am recalling was called `Holier than thou`, and lambasted three paragons of religious admiration- Mother Teresa, Mahatma Gandhi, and the Dalai Lama. They also do a little worship of Borlaug and even mention Gates, which is why I found it strikingly reminiscent of that article.

@Chrispminis, I agree with you that Dawkin's books on evolutionary biology are his best. I found the God Delusion boring (perhaps because he was preaching to converted, so to speak). I am speaking as a big fan who has been reading his books and essays for years.

Speaking of which, the newest season begins in ten days!

*excitement*

Oh, good observation Friendly Sword. I suspect that Steven Pinker is a fan of the show then, and Penn and Teller might be fans of Christopher Hitchens in turn. I believe Christopher Hitchens wrote a scathing book about the "real" Mother Theresa.

spyman, oh, he's got some pretty excellent essays too, and I think he had a very interesting TED talk about the limits of human imagination due to evolution.

I never read 'The God Delusion', but I saw Dawkins give a talk on the same topic, and I loved it. However, many of my peers thought it was overly obvious, simplistic, etc..

But I have to say, he's a very clever man.. His wit and general knack for beautiful analogies shines through even when he's straying from his field of expertise (evolutionary genetics).

My two favorite points from the talk which stuck with me quite vividly (it was over a year ago I'd guess)..

1) He challenges the Intelligient Design arguments that try to reduce natural selection to 'random' processes by comparing it to the art of cracking a safe. Of course the amount of time it would take to open the safe is inordinately long if you're just trying numbers at random, but if you have some subtle guides, if you can listen for the little ratchets and clinks that tell you when you're getting close, then you can drastically speed up the process.

2) Regarding the inculcation of our youth:
He shows a picture from a newspaper article, showing an ethnically/religiously diverse group of children sitting together in costume for some sort of christmas play. It's captioned something like, 'Bobby the Protestant, Joseph the Jew, and Lisa the Sikh, all aged four'.

Naturally, the first response is to say 'Well isn't that nice, all those kids are friends and getting along despite their diverse backgrounds.'

But then he points out the ridiculousness of assigning such potent and all-encompassing world views to young children by going through several rounds of substituting different sorts of (non-religious) philosophies into the caption. (i.e. 'Bobby the transcendentalist, Joe the libertarian and Lisa the epiphenomenalist')

I agree that he's much less fun now that he's an constant anti-something, but he still presented a good (and far less biased than I expected) set of arguments.

Thanks for the link to the article Chrisp - I found it interesting. I wish he had devoted a little more time to "debunking" the reason why morality based on God's authority was wrong. He basically just dismissed it by saying that Plato made short work of it 2000 years ago. I suppose dismissing it as absurd fits in with his worldview better than acknowledging and engaging it. If he engaged the topic I suppose that would maybe seem in his eyes to run the risk of making it seem like an acceptable alternative.

At least he's making an attempt to base morality on something (evolution). I'm afraid that our culture is on the verge of complete moral relativism. If our laws rest on nothing more permanent than the morality of the majority then we may very well be on a sinking ship, morally speaking.

Also, I can't say I was too thrilled to see his reference to Peter Singer - that man wants us to embrace eugenics...I know that his reference was on a different topic, but still, his articale is on morality and Peter Singer is about the last person I would ever want to be an authority on morality.

Also, it doesn't seem all that hard to me to explain the difference between the trolley-switch and the fat man scenarios...

This post is meant to be part of this discussion and is not meant to be inflammatory in any way - if you're going to pick it apart then feel free, but at least do it in a nice way =)

Have you ever read Steven Pinker's book "The Stuff of Thought?" A year or so back I was working for a public radio show and we were trying to have Steven Pinker on to talk about the book, and I was the producer working on the initial research and such. I didn't have NEARLY enough time to read all of it but what I did read was really fascinating. I would HIGHLY suggest it to anyone interested in linguistics and cognitive science.

Oops, one last sentence should have been there: I intend to pick it up again and finish it when I finish up with my current reading.

@Jacob - It's also possible that he might just have thought that engaging the "morality based on god" argument would have made the article too long, and didn't think it was necessary.

Jacob, I think he purposely did not engage the idea of religious morality in more detail because of the obvious fireworks it would set off. He's not really concerned with refuting religious morality, but in setting the grounds for scientifically examined secular morality.

And I agree, I wasn't too happy about the Peter Singer reference either. Pinker is less afraid to make reference to controversial authors because I think he feels that the nature vs. nurture debate is too heavily favoured on the nurture side of things in society and that scientifically speaking, there is a slew of evidence to show that humans do very much have an innate nature, which includes an innate sense of morality. He makes a very compelling case in "The Blank Slate" and treads carefully on the moral ground to assure that his book is not an extreme view of nature, but rather a realistic blend of nature vs. nurture in an era where nurture is too often seen as an explanation, and he makes good arguments that this knowledge does not necessarily lead to some sort of moral degradation.

What's the difference between the trolley-switch and fat man problem? I have no doubt that you can come up with a suitable difference, but I am quite sure that with a number of equally unlikely hypothetical situations you might be less sure. Morality is a tricky subject like that.

Dr Oct. I haven't read that book yet, but I'll certainly put it on the list.

Article I just stumbled upon talking about morality in animals.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1187047/Animals-tell-right-wrong-Scientists-suggest-just-humans-morals.html?ITO=1490

You know, while I may not agree with all of Peter Singer's ideas, I honestly think the reason Pinker mentions him is simply because he's perfectly content to point out the good ideas someone has without necessarily arguing that he endorses all of that persons ideas.

While Peter Singer may have some rather odd ideas regarding newborns and such, and SOME have argued he endorses Eugenics (I haven't seen where he does, but I know some seem to think he does, or that his ideas could lead to Eugenics, I'd like to see more specifically what people are pointing to in that regard), that doesn't automatically invalidate all of his ideas, and I think that's exactly why Pinker mentioned him in the context he did. (Also let's not throw out all of Pinker's article because he mentions one controversial persons ideas in one sentence in an 8 page article).

@Jacob - You say you wouldn't find it too tough to explain the difference between the trolly switch and the fat man scenario... Care to do so? I haven't so far found a practical difference between the two, but I'd love to hear someone who has!

I think the difference is similar to the difference between active and passive euthanasia. In that case there is a distinction that can be drawn between actively killing (administering a fatal dose of morphine, etc...) and passively letting die (allowing a disease to take its final course - this could perhaps even include withholding medication that might prolong life a day or so).

Obviously, this is a fine distinction to make, but it is an important one. It is the difference between YOU being the agent of death or the disease being the agent of death.

In the trolley-switch case the trolley is going to cause death no matter what you do and even by pulling the switch the trolley is still the agent of death. This is a case where pulling the switch mitigates the damage caused by the trolley which is a morally praiseworthy action.

In the case of the fat man he is not in any danger of death and by throwing him off the cliff (or bridge, or whatever it was) in order to save the five men on the trolley tracks YOU become the agent of death.

Again, this is a fine distinction and it is perhaps ambiguous enough that I don't think I would really fault someone for whichever choice they made in either case.

Personally, I'm not sure I could throw the fat man off the cliff OR pull the trolley switch. I've been in some crazy situations before (bank robbery - twice) and you just don't know what you're going to do in a life or death situation.

Good thing these are hypothetical, unrealistic cases =)

@Jacob: what is this 'agent of death'? that being the thing which we decide is at fault or the 'cause'. (with our mere human logic)

the difference between you being the agent of death, and the disease being the agent of death? I imagine that you and the patient conclude that death is inevitable. You then provide the patient with a fatal dose of morphine, which the patient administers.

The disease is still blamed for the death because neither you nor the patient would have taken those actions if the patient wasn't terminally ill. What is the Agent of death in this case?

Obviously our human logic and reasoning is limited, so we can't tell for certain that the disease will actually kill unless we let it progress without intervention.

Again in the real world we can't be sure pushing the fat man onto the tracks will stop the train car. (we are told in this problem, but in the real world you can never be 100% sure of anything)

and i think it is these doubts in our logical/critical reasoning which lead our 'morale instinct' to take over the decision making...
imho

USA must mind its own business inside its own territory.
more it pokes its nose eveyrwhere, more enemies it will form.
hail nationalism, damn democracy , damn globalisation.
hail nazism, hail fascism

and down with rascism.

@orthaic

Like I said, the distinction is a fine one. I can understand why many people don't view it as a difference. I do view it as a difference primarily for religious reasons. I believe that God makes it clear in the Bible that we are not to take the lives of others.

This is not meant to start another religion thread, but merely to show my position a little more clearly. There are certainly people who would make the distinction I made even without religious reasons.

@Jacob I think that was a very well thought out answer and brought up some aspects I hadn't through of before. Thank you!

I'm not sure I still see the logical difference (ie you are still deciding who lives and who dies, and putting someone in danger who would not have otherwise been) but you do bring up some slight differences in the two scenarios. I'm still not sure though that it's not really just a matter of what we as humans instinctively find objectionable, and i agree that I do find something more objectionable about throwing someone in the way than just pulling the switch, not that I can be sure what I'd do, if anything, in either situation.

@KingTigerTank - What?

@Jacob

I actually kinda agree with you. When thinking about it i don't know whether i would pull the switch, because rationally i see it as the same as pushing the man and yet I know if i had a choice of where to crash my aircraft I wouldn't hesitate to aim for the lowest population density area.

That said I think that is me rationalising not throwing the switch. I don't know how i would react in a real life situation.

I think the latest kookiness from good KingTigerTank deserves reposting.

"USA must mind its own business inside its own territory.
more it pokes its nose eveyrwhere, more enemies it will form.
hail nationalism, damn democracy , damn globalisation.
hail nazism, hail fascism

and down with rascism."

As to the actual theme of the thread, I think that the fact that it's reached the point where there's an argument over whether there's a moral equivalent between euthanasia and disease shows how moral theory is quite separate from reality.

Yeah it's a run-on.

Well Jacob, you have some good points, but I'm still not really seeing the difference between the fat man and the trolley switch, other than the fact that the fat man requires you to physically throw him. You mention that the fat man was in no real danger, but neither was the man working on the other track before you switch it.

The agent of death thing doesn't really ring with me because in a string of causative events, it's difficult to say which one is the "real" cause or the "real" agent of death. If you threw the fat man over, the trolley would still be the thing that kills the fat man. You threw him over, but it's similar to throwing the switch because it involves a conscious decision on your part to value the lives of a few over the life of one. If I'd be the agent of death in the case of the fat man, despite that technically the trolley hit him, I would say that I was also the agent of death in the case of the man working on the other track if I throw the switch because he was in no danger until I took it upon myself to make a conscious decision to throw the switch.

It's interesting how the trolley problem changes if the man on the other track happens to be say, The President, for whatever kooky reason. Or say, five children are playing on a live track, and one smart cautious child is playing on a dead track because he knows it's safer, and you have the opportunity to switch the track and kill the only child who was responsible enough to play on the safe track. How many people or children have to be on the main track before it's worth it to switch it?

42?