But ultimately, how scary is it to know your deeply held convictions are subject to materialistic opportunism?
We should neither reject nor accept beliefs based on their scariness alone. Let’s check the logic instead...
Is morality an evolved thing? Yes.
Does it mean that “whatever is good for survival, is moral”? Nope.
It seems to me that such conclusion is a result of accepting a more general unspoken assumption, something like “whatever evolved is good for survival, otherwise evolution would not have selected for it”. But taking this the naive way would mean that immoral behaviors are simply impossible—because everything we do is driven by our instincts, our instincts are a result of evolution, which means that our instinctive behavior is good for survival, which means that we must perceive it as moral because morality is also a result of evolution. And yet, we see that many behaviors driven by instinct (such as theft) can be perceived as immoral by others, so clearly something is wrong with this naive interpretation.
Which implies that the evolutionary benefits of morality are less direct. It is not like “morality is simply a set of actions that are convenient for me, plus hypocritically pretending that it is something more”, but rather “being moral as a general strategy increases my survival on average”. Stealing is good-for-me in many situations (otherwise the instinct to steal would not have evolved either), and yet, stealing is immoral. If morality was really the self-serving hypocritical thing as this article suggests, stealing would be considered moral.
How is that possible? First, stealing involves a risk; maybe 9 times out of 10 it gives me nice stuff without having to pay for it, but that remaining 1 time I choose a wrong target and get killed as a result. So it is not worth doing on average, and “morality” means practicing self-control to avoid the kind of action that are harmless and tempting in most cases, and yet harmful on average—which may be difficult to observe in person, but you rely on the wisdom of others who got burned or have observed someone else get burned. This is not the whole of morality, but self-control definitely feels like a central concept here.
However, consider that in today’s supermarkets, you can steal cheap items with impunity. Like, if you grab a cheap pastry and eat it, no one is going to do anything about it. (That’s because “doing anything about it” is more expensive on average than the cost of the pastry you ate. Security approaching you would cause commotion, which means that other customers would be distracted and buy less. There is also a chance that you are a crazy person and might start a fight, which could mean lots of broken things and even more commotion, or a possible injury and a following lawsuit. The employees are all told during their training to just let you eat the fucking pastry and pretend that it did not happen, because the alternative is worse.) And yet, probably most people would agree that stealing in supermarkets is immoral.
Another function of morality is signaling: you signal your ability to self-control, and your willingness to follow the rules. I might not care that you stole something from the supermarket, but I can still notice that you are “the kind of person who steals” and assume that you would also steal from me, given opportunity. Therefore I will never invite you to my home, unlike other people who have a reputation of behaving morally. I will avoid certain deals with you, because I will expect you to screw me over. I might even generalize it further and assume that given opportunity you would also do other forbidden things, not just theft.
But morality goes even further. You can have a society where it is convenient to own slaves, where it is considered normal to own slaves (i.e. owning slaves does not send any negative signal to most people), and yet some people will oppose slavery. That is a historical fact. I am not sure how this works in exact details, but I think it involves generalization of moral principles. Like, first we make a deal that if anyone tries to enslave one of us, the other would come to help (the cost of helping the other is worth the reduced chance of getting enslaved myself); then “protecting your friends from slavery” becomes the thing that all friends are supposed to do, even if they haven’t negotiated it explicitly; and at some moment it generalizes into a belief that perhaps no one should be enslaved… which is controversial when it is expressed for the first time, but the tendency to generalize is latent in many people, so gradually more and more get convinced that slavery is wrong… and at some moment the slaveowners need to actively defend themselves (rather than be obviously in the right), so they go like “yeah, it might naively seem that slavery is wrong, but it is a part of our sacred traditions; if you get rid of slavery the whole society will collapse”, but gradually more people recognize this as self-serving bullshit. So from “self-serving beliefs are called moral” we get to “self-serving beliefs are called out as immoral”.
>If morality was really the self-serving hypocritical thing as this article suggests, stealing would be considered moral.
No because a community that condones stealing as moral would see itself bled dry. It’s not the pathway to good evolutionary fitness. The tension between what a gene “wants” and what the organism “wants” is well-documented within the field of evolution, and you can extrapolate the dynamic to a similar tension between what an individual “wants” and what the community “wants”. The best example of this is “kin selection” where an organism engages in altruistic behavior or even complete sacrifice to benefit their close relatives.
So, morality is doing what is good for the community? That sounds nice (well, depending on who is included and excluded from the definition of the community).
No, my argument is that morality is whatever replicates best. Often it means “doing what is good for the community” because a healthy community is in a better place to replicate its guiding values. But not always.
Evolved mortality doesn’t have to be what is good for the individual at all , and it doesn’t have to be instinctive once culture is available. For instance, societies will evolve at least defensive warfare, and quite possible offensive warfare. That’s pretty bad for the individuals sent off to do the fighting, and they aren’t going to win “on average” if they get killed. Because it is so inherently unatractive, it has to be buttressed by a great deal of cultural mythos about how noble and glorious it is.
True… but this also opens another question, how could the “ability to believe myths that are likely to get you killed” have evolved, especially if one does not believe in group selection.
Because it’s connected with a lot of other things? It’s not that cultural morality is always inimical to the individual .. and it’s not that cultural morality is cleanly split off from cultural Everything Else. Most people have learnt how to make war, how to make families and how to make bread as part of a single package.
Because ability to believe whatever most people around believe was net beneficial. Also, the situation when going to war means risking your life and getting nothing valuable in return is rather modern.
We should neither reject nor accept beliefs based on their scariness alone. Let’s check the logic instead...
Is morality an evolved thing? Yes.
Does it mean that “whatever is good for survival, is moral”? Nope.
It seems to me that such conclusion is a result of accepting a more general unspoken assumption, something like “whatever evolved is good for survival, otherwise evolution would not have selected for it”. But taking this the naive way would mean that immoral behaviors are simply impossible—because everything we do is driven by our instincts, our instincts are a result of evolution, which means that our instinctive behavior is good for survival, which means that we must perceive it as moral because morality is also a result of evolution. And yet, we see that many behaviors driven by instinct (such as theft) can be perceived as immoral by others, so clearly something is wrong with this naive interpretation.
Which implies that the evolutionary benefits of morality are less direct. It is not like “morality is simply a set of actions that are convenient for me, plus hypocritically pretending that it is something more”, but rather “being moral as a general strategy increases my survival on average”. Stealing is good-for-me in many situations (otherwise the instinct to steal would not have evolved either), and yet, stealing is immoral. If morality was really the self-serving hypocritical thing as this article suggests, stealing would be considered moral.
How is that possible? First, stealing involves a risk; maybe 9 times out of 10 it gives me nice stuff without having to pay for it, but that remaining 1 time I choose a wrong target and get killed as a result. So it is not worth doing on average, and “morality” means practicing self-control to avoid the kind of action that are harmless and tempting in most cases, and yet harmful on average—which may be difficult to observe in person, but you rely on the wisdom of others who got burned or have observed someone else get burned. This is not the whole of morality, but self-control definitely feels like a central concept here.
However, consider that in today’s supermarkets, you can steal cheap items with impunity. Like, if you grab a cheap pastry and eat it, no one is going to do anything about it. (That’s because “doing anything about it” is more expensive on average than the cost of the pastry you ate. Security approaching you would cause commotion, which means that other customers would be distracted and buy less. There is also a chance that you are a crazy person and might start a fight, which could mean lots of broken things and even more commotion, or a possible injury and a following lawsuit. The employees are all told during their training to just let you eat the fucking pastry and pretend that it did not happen, because the alternative is worse.) And yet, probably most people would agree that stealing in supermarkets is immoral.
Another function of morality is signaling: you signal your ability to self-control, and your willingness to follow the rules. I might not care that you stole something from the supermarket, but I can still notice that you are “the kind of person who steals” and assume that you would also steal from me, given opportunity. Therefore I will never invite you to my home, unlike other people who have a reputation of behaving morally. I will avoid certain deals with you, because I will expect you to screw me over. I might even generalize it further and assume that given opportunity you would also do other forbidden things, not just theft.
But morality goes even further. You can have a society where it is convenient to own slaves, where it is considered normal to own slaves (i.e. owning slaves does not send any negative signal to most people), and yet some people will oppose slavery. That is a historical fact. I am not sure how this works in exact details, but I think it involves generalization of moral principles. Like, first we make a deal that if anyone tries to enslave one of us, the other would come to help (the cost of helping the other is worth the reduced chance of getting enslaved myself); then “protecting your friends from slavery” becomes the thing that all friends are supposed to do, even if they haven’t negotiated it explicitly; and at some moment it generalizes into a belief that perhaps no one should be enslaved… which is controversial when it is expressed for the first time, but the tendency to generalize is latent in many people, so gradually more and more get convinced that slavery is wrong… and at some moment the slaveowners need to actively defend themselves (rather than be obviously in the right), so they go like “yeah, it might naively seem that slavery is wrong, but it is a part of our sacred traditions; if you get rid of slavery the whole society will collapse”, but gradually more people recognize this as self-serving bullshit. So from “self-serving beliefs are called moral” we get to “self-serving beliefs are called out as immoral”.
>If morality was really the self-serving hypocritical thing as this article suggests, stealing would be considered moral.
No because a community that condones stealing as moral would see itself bled dry. It’s not the pathway to good evolutionary fitness. The tension between what a gene “wants” and what the organism “wants” is well-documented within the field of evolution, and you can extrapolate the dynamic to a similar tension between what an individual “wants” and what the community “wants”. The best example of this is “kin selection” where an organism engages in altruistic behavior or even complete sacrifice to benefit their close relatives.
So, morality is doing what is good for the community? That sounds nice (well, depending on who is included and excluded from the definition of the community).
No, my argument is that morality is whatever replicates best. Often it means “doing what is good for the community” because a healthy community is in a better place to replicate its guiding values. But not always.
Evolved mortality doesn’t have to be what is good for the individual at all , and it doesn’t have to be instinctive once culture is available. For instance, societies will evolve at least defensive warfare, and quite possible offensive warfare. That’s pretty bad for the individuals sent off to do the fighting, and they aren’t going to win “on average” if they get killed. Because it is so inherently unatractive, it has to be buttressed by a great deal of cultural mythos about how noble and glorious it is.
True… but this also opens another question, how could the “ability to believe myths that are likely to get you killed” have evolved, especially if one does not believe in group selection.
Because it’s connected with a lot of other things? It’s not that cultural morality is always inimical to the individual .. and it’s not that cultural morality is cleanly split off from cultural Everything Else. Most people have learnt how to make war, how to make families and how to make bread as part of a single package.
Because ability to believe whatever most people around believe was net beneficial. Also, the situation when going to war means risking your life and getting nothing valuable in return is rather modern.