Is Morality Dishonest?

[Thomas Knierim]

Vicente: Rajneesh Chandra Mohan accurately said: ... That is to say, only a dishonest person clings to morality.

Rajneesh may have said that, but as it is almost always the case with such quotations, the context is missing, which renders the quotation basically false. Morality has the potential to become hypocritical and dishonest in more or less pathological cases, yes, but this completely misses the core of the issue. The core is that morality is an essential part of human behaviour which evolved, just like the human brain evolved. As such it has specific functions and specific causes. It is not an artifact imposed or added by society. It has evolved with society, or rather with hominids being social animals. We can observe similar behaviour codes in other species, which are innate and which can therefore be called moral instinct. If you wish to go with Dawkin's suggestion to include species-characteristic behaviours into the phenotype, then morality (or better: a sort of ethics "boot" program) is a part of the human phenotyype.

Vicente: A moral person is concerned with ideals,...how we should be, what we should be, how to be convenient to society,...and thus inconvenient to ourself.

It may appear so. In reality, however, a "moral" person is not concerned with ideals, but with strategies. Ideals are just used to encode strategies into memes and such memes serve the effective communication of strategies from brain to brain. One of the strategies which has proven to be enormously successful is reciprocate altruism. "I don't kill you if you don't kill me," or "I scratch your back, if you scratch mine," are some examples of reciprocate altruism. With a little creativity it is quite easy to see how this gets encoded into ideal "biblical" statements, like "Thou shalt not kill," or "Love thy neighbour." Or take the ancient ideal of valor = "virtus et audentia", where the latin words represent the etymological sources of our contemporary terms of virtue and worth.

So, moral "programming capability" is basically innate and ideals/values are merely the encoding of social strategies.

It is likewise easy to understand how the strategy of reciprocate altruism increases the overall survival advantage of a population, because from a game-theoretical point of view, it is a (positive) non-zero sum game, which is sometimes also called a win-win strategy. Individuals behaving in an altruistic way thus increase the overall well-being of their circle which does of course work to their own advantage.

Vicente: But what can we do. We can create a false face; we can pretend to be something we are not.

Yes, this does happen, but it is basically a separate phenomenon. To be more precise, it is a paradoxical phenomenon caused by reflective application of an ideal. Once a society has recognised and adopted certain ideals, or a complex set of them, such as Marxism or Christianity, they tend to become externalised paradigms, or doctrines. This process can lead to tremendous aberrances and -in consequence- suffering, as it has with Marxism and Christianity.

Cheers, Thomas

[vicente]

The core is that morality is an essential part of human behaviour which evolved, just like the human brain evolved.

That is most unfortunate how the brain has evolved. We went from cherishing the heart (Naga, Egyptians, Maya) to worshiping the brain ( http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html )

Morality: conformity to rules of conduct. Under a brain orientated society, those rules are about sustaining a belief that the brain is paramont.

I don't kill you if you don't kill me," or "I scratch your back, if you scratch mine," are some examples of reciprocate altruism

Would you say that those attributes would not exist in an "amoral" heart centered society and their social strategies?

Once a society has recognised and adopted certain ideals, or a complex set of them, such as Marxism or Christianity, they tend to become externalised paradigms, or doctrines. This process can lead to tremendous aberrances and -in consequence- suffering, as it has with Marxism and Christianity.

Yep!

V
:)

[Thomas Knierim]

Vicente: That is most unfortunate how the brain has evolved.

Our brain has evolved in a way that we are pretty good at throwing stones, picking bananas from a tree, or communicating with our conspecifics. It did not evolve in a way that lets us solve differential equations in memory or explain the solution for the free will problem. That is sort of unfortunate. :lol:

Vicente: We went from cherishing the heart (Naga, Egyptians, Maya) to worshiping the brain ( http://www.wired.com/wired/archive/7.11/persinger.html )

Well, it may have to do with the realisation that all the processes which were once ascribed to the heart (emotion, motivation, commitment, etc.) do actually take place in the brain. Ultimately it is irrelevant where they are located, isn't it?

Vicente: Morality: conformity to rules of conduct. Under a brain orientated society, those rules are about sustaining a belief that the brain is paramont.

Morality is ancient. It predates civilisation and it even predates the evolution of homo sapiens. Therefore it has little to do with a brain oriented society. It is simply another piece of the puzzle of mind. I am inclined towards the view that there are objective ethical principles, just as there are objective emotions. This may sound paradoxical to most people, but it is actually the only coherent naturalistic view of the mind.

Vicente: Would you say that those attributes would not exist in an "amoral" heart centered society and their social strategies?

"Amoral" societies have never existed. There may have been societies whose belief and value systems clash with our contemporary belief and value systems, but that doesn't mean they were immoral or amoral. The only important change we notice in recent history is a globalisation of morals. That means society is converging towards a universal set of moral values which are applied not only to the kin, the village, the nation, but to humanity at large. It is not a reality yet, and it may take hundred more years or so, but it is a trend.

Cheers, Thomas

[TruthSeeker]

"Amoral" societies have never existed. There may have been societies whose belief and value systems clash with our contemporary belief and value systems, but that doesn't mean they were immoral or amoral. The only important change we notice in recent history is a globalisation of morals. That means society is converging towards a universal set of moral values which are applied not only to the kin, the village, the nation, but to humanity at large. It is not a reality yet, and it may take hundred more years or so, but it is a trend.
The scary thing is that so far, the global morality has been based on american morality.... :o :uhoh:

[Gatton]

Thomas Knierim
Morality has the potential to become hypocritical and dishonest in more or less pathological cases, yes, but this completely misses the core of the issue. The core is that morality is an essential part of human behaviour which evolved, just like the human brain evolved. As such it has specific functions and specific causes. It is not an artifact imposed or added by society. It has evolved with society, or rather with hominids being social animals. We can observe similar behaviour codes in other species, which are innate and which can therefore be called moral instinct. If you wish to go with Dawkin's suggestion to include species-characteristic behaviours into the phenotype, then morality (or better: a sort of ethics "boot" program) is a part of the human phenotyype.
Although I agree that morality is an essential part of human behaviour, I disagree that it evolves like the human brain. It doesn’t necessarily evolve like the brain evolves, but rather it’s manipulated and transformed by humans to best fit the existing community and “trends”. To me, it looks more like an unofficial set of laws or a rigid etiquette that encompasses our lifestyle. It tells us what is right and what is wrong but it does so in the context of the present society. Morality isn’t evolving; it merely has different calibrations which don’t necessarily improve each time it undergoes a change. They just change according to the ephemeral demands and standards of society, not through evolution in itself.

Thomas Knierim
Well, it may have to do with the realisation that all the processes which were once ascribed to the heart (emotion, motivation, commitment, etc.) do actually take place in the brain. Ultimately it is irrelevant where they are located, isn't it?
It could also be explained that we started moving away from feelings generally affiliated with the heart – love being the obvious one – and started exalting cold calculations of the brain to improve our standing in society. Ironically, we’re moving away from our innocent, pure humanity while we’re chasing to achieve the ultimate happiness capable of being achieved by a human.

Thomas Knierim
Morality is ancient. It predates civilisation and it even predates the evolution of homo sapiens. Therefore it has little to do with a brain oriented society. It is simply another piece of the puzzle of mind. I am inclined towards the view that there are objective ethical principles, just as there are objective emotions. This may sound paradoxical to most people, but it is actually the only coherent naturalistic view of the mind.
I’m convinced that there is such a thing like moral instinct but as man grew more intelligent and civilized, he started corrupting morality and shaping it to his own advantage. North-American morality differs from Indian morality, for example, and that’s not because it just so happened to evolve naturally in different directions. Centuries of manipulating and twisting the social etiquette that we call morality has done a lot of damage which might be irreparable.

Thomas Knierim
"Amoral" societies have never existed. There may have been societies whose belief and value systems clash with our contemporary belief and value systems, but that doesn't mean they were immoral or amoral. The only important change we notice in recent history is a globalisation of morals. That means society is converging towards a universal set of moral values which are applied not only to the kin, the village, the nation, but to humanity at large. It is not a reality yet, and it may take hundred more years or so, but it is a trend.
I don’t think there’s such a thing as immoral or amoral. How cruel or strange it may seem, there is always a morality that is accepted and seen as normal by a community.

[redraven]

I think people can and do, hide behind morality while nourishing a very diseased heart. I wonder sometimes if some person would simply acknowledge that they are bad, in spite of their ethical behavior, that they would become a much better person. You can be sick and functional as well as sick and dysfunctional, which psychology has trouble dealing with, because it thinks dysfunctional equals sick.

This is often not true. I have worked with severe mentally ill people, and as a rule they are drug addicts and criminals, but there are a very few who are much more sane people than the people servicing them, including me, they are just dysfunctional. There hearts are pure, but there isn't any way for them to become the modern functioning animal, and our places for them in society often crassly undervalue them.

I don't have the answer to that, except to be compassionate towards the people you meet. A little bit of service work would help a lot of people.

[Michael]

You touched on something which has given me much cause for thought over the years. I believe many who we like to call insane are actually highly sensitive and insightful people who find the world too much, too intensely painful. This is also true of many people who are preceived as dysfunctional.

Their situation is made worse by the morally superior attitude taken towards them by society at large.

They get judgement rather than compassion.

I have found all your posts refreshingly honest and pragmatic. Again, thank you.

[redraven]

I think a big part of my philosophy is pragmatism. I realize that pragmatic philosophy is not a good thing in certain things, because further investigation often yields a better answer, but when it comes to what I was calling the personal and social realm, until our science of personal and social things catches up with our very complex and sophisticated culture, pragmatism often saves the day.

I had one woman that I loved very dearly, not as a lover, but almost like a child, who had a severe form of bipolar called schizoaffective disorder. She was so shy, and incredibly intelligent, completely unable to express herself except in rare moments, and the least amount of negative energy would literally send her hiding into the corner.

She was really unable to do group therapy, which she needed badly to increase her social skills. I really felt for her, but her family was loving, and she was one of the most loving people I've ever met. And, in condemnation of our culture, completely useless in our way of looking at things.

A very tragic story, but I think she was able to have some kind of happiness by sticking close to her family and realizing that she needed to be a little thicker skinned. She tried so hard, and she never did drugs or stole money... A true arhat in my opinion.