David Hume: "The Rules Of Morality Are Not The Conclusions Of Our Reason"
Hi! Notwithstanding the title of this might seem so that the present discussion is fundamentally concerned to morality or ethics, it is, however, about how institutions are constituted through history and how they evolve; since what I propose here is to consider institutions, and so morality while and institution (and it is mainly considered an informal institution, D. North would say, and that is not free of criticism, indeed), I think it is not appropriate to set it to ethics category. So, I decided to set it to General Philosophy one. I hope it is a good choice. Now to my main point here:
I've first seen this quote a time ago watching a lecture by professor Hayek. Briefly, he seems to state that morality is, at last, an emerged social institution, not a result of a human design, but a result of non-intentional consequences of human action. It means that the evolution of societies is somehow similar in principles to biological evolutionary theories, which is guided by some sort of natural selection. Those societies that came up to developed emerged but bad institutions just have failed, resting to our time those that, we could say, were approved in the test of time and adapted to general circumstances. Thus, the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason. What do you think? Is this evolutionary approach reasonable to the studies of social sciences?
Forgive me for any possible typo.
Thank you!
I've first seen this quote a time ago watching a lecture by professor Hayek. Briefly, he seems to state that morality is, at last, an emerged social institution, not a result of a human design, but a result of non-intentional consequences of human action. It means that the evolution of societies is somehow similar in principles to biological evolutionary theories, which is guided by some sort of natural selection. Those societies that came up to developed emerged but bad institutions just have failed, resting to our time those that, we could say, were approved in the test of time and adapted to general circumstances. Thus, the rules of morality are not the conclusions of our reason. What do you think? Is this evolutionary approach reasonable to the studies of social sciences?
Forgive me for any possible typo.
Thank you!
Comments (62)
I think it differs from social Darwinism in the extent that this social phenomena, which I just described, is neither concerned to the individuals itself nor to a particular nation or commonwealth, much less to a certain race. What it states is essentially a theory of the process that lead us to this state of affairs in which all societies currently are.
For instance, take an institution as the State, or family, or language structure (take Chomsky's theory) etc; or any institution that exists, similarly to the respect of particular circumstances, commonly or in the majority of all societies.
What I stated about natural selection was just an analogy and does not belongs to the original discussion, although regarding to the fact that it is well known as an evolutionary approach indeed.
The idea was just that there are long standing and, I believe, unresolved and unresolvable criticisms of any social evolutionary theory because of the disanalogy of biological facts with social "facts". The former are capable of discrete definition and identification. The latter, I think cannot be discretely determinable. On the contrary, almost all social concepts, including all concepts of social institutions, are subject to a range of contested interpretations. Further, even if people could agree at some high level of generality about what the relevant concepts of given social institutions are, they will always disagree about how those concepts apply or should apply in actual practice. This makes analyzing or even talking about social phenomena on a strictly scientific basis impossible. This is because all social institutions are essentially normative, whereas scientific facts are not.
I understand. Do you think that the difficult to deal with social sciences rests ultimately on a epistemological problem?
I would ask then whether do you agree that social phenomena would have so high level of complexity and difficulty regarding to duly acquisition and justification of its knowledge so that it would require a even more complex mind to understand it? As if a complex system could not be so by which it could understand itself.
And last, how do you think it should be the right methodology concerned to social phenomena?
Further, since statistical methods are already in frequent use by social scientists, I wouldn't think you'd need a more complex mind to deal with them. Our present minds should work just fine since we're only trying to understand behavior that arises from minds of similar complexity.
If social Darwinism or evolutionary ethics do not fit in with the norms of ethics or morality it would seem far more sensible and rational to presume that it is the norms of ethics and morality that are in error than the evolutionary social theory.
The primary reason for this is that evolution is based on a solid foundation whereas normative ethics is not.
Example:
When faced with famine, a warlike society may look at their neighbour's land and conclude it should rightfully be theirs. So the societies go to war and the warlike society wins. To justify their actions they may say that they committed no evil, because they were faced with famine. They changed their interpretation of morality according to their situation. However, this doesn't change the fact that they violated two universal rules of good and evil: "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's assets". Two very sensible rules, regardless of whether you are a Christian (I am not).
So no, morality is not a social construct and it does not evolve. Only our interpretation of it changes, which means we vary the degree to which we are wrong about the nature of good and evil and the nature of our own deeds.
How do you support this conclusion? Where do your 2 universal rules come from? As a species we have an amazing propensity for killing, we are the best on the planet at it. Jealousy also seems to be a powerful, natural emotion felt by all.
Morality and the concept of good and evil only seem to emerge as a social response. Moral considerations to one's family are the most simple. When applied to the tribe it gets a little more complicated, however the basics are the same because the tribe is the family extended. Once different tribes cohabit, far more complex rules are needed. The more advanced the society becomes the more technical the rules need to be.
It is true that "Thou shalt not kill" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's assets" are probably the first and most important rules we develop however that does not make them universal.
You disagreed with the statement that all killing is wrong.
So when is killing not wrong?
Killing is not wrong when it is done to maintain a moral order. I like the Aztec game plan. You screw up, you become a slave. You screw up again, you are sold to someone else. You screw up a third time you become a sacrifice to the gods.
However, we know the Aztecs failed. Using your neighbors to sacrifice to the gods leads to enemies and that makes their survival need the destruction of your civilization. But is it possible they may have done better if they had assimilated their neighbors, and limited their sacrifices to the few who violated the moral code?
"Morality and the concept of good and evil only seem to emerge as a social response. Moral considerations to one's family are the most simple."
:gasp: That is what I thought until enduring a bad marriage for 21 years. In the recent past it was pretty easy for a man to have a wife for life, because females didn't have many options other than to be supported by a man. Especially not if they had children. That seems to have lead to a lot of miserable marriages and we are still struggling with an adjustment to our changed reality. It is really nice to see fathers in the park with their children today. Now was not common 40 years ago.
It is said, we punish people so others will fear the punishment and avoid the wrong. By the way, I think the present judgment is terrible, but for the sake of argument, other points of view need to be brought up so I will be that contrary voice in a discussion that is important to me. I was once headed for being a probation officer, but after researching this choice, I realized I am opposed to what we call criminal justice in the US the correction institutions that have been created.
Maybe, I wasn't making any claims about either evolution or morality being in error, only that the attempt to find an analogy b/w the theory of biological evolution and the development (if there is any) of morality is going to fail because the types of phenomena they deal with are decidedly different. Evolution deals with biological facts, whereas morality deals with norms. The only error is trying to extent theories designed to explain phenomena in one set to the other. It doesn't follow from the inability to make that analogy that there are, therefore, no possible grounds for finding epistemic or other kinds of justifications for moral norms. It's only that the attempt to explain moral institutions via evolution doesn't seem like it's going to be useful.
Quoting A Seagull
I'm not sure why you would assume this. As noted, they're entirely different kinds of phenomena, so the "bases" for each are also going to be entirely different. Perhaps you have an argument for privileging one over the other, though. If that's the case, what is it?
Are you speaking of a society where women can be stoned to death as it is explained in the Christian Bible, and was commonly practiced throughout the ancient world, where Jesus steps in and says only those without sin should throw the stone? That would be a very radical idea for people who fear the punishment of God because this God destroyed entire cities when He was displeased with people. In fact, He almost destroyed all life on the land of the earth with a flood because humans had displeased him.
How about defending the family's honor by killing daughters who might seek the company of men? Such acts are strong in maintaining social order and we can call this maintaining moral order and hold the notion that is about pleasing a god, not about men ruling. Pleasing the god is essential because this is a jealous, revengeful, punishing and fearsome god. Terrible things will happen if this god is displeased and that is a matter of reasoning for those who believe their holy book is the word, God, right?
This is where we need to make a distinction. Do you think that it is okay to kill in self-defense, or do you think you're allowed to defend yourself and the attacker's death may be an unintentional side-effect? The latter is a very reasonable stance, and I would say in such an instance we are hardly talking about killing in its intended context. With the former I cannot agree, since I do not believe that if you can overpower your assailant, you should then kill him because you can. If you overpower your assailant and you then kill him out of spite, vengeance, dominance, pride, you're committing a wrongful act that cannot be justified.
The survival of a society is an interesting point, but again hard to defend. I used such an example in my first post, in which a warlike society facing famine chose to go to war against another society. Clearly this cannot be justified, because why should one's misery be reason to impose even more misery on another?
If you're talking about a society defending itself against aggression, we are back to the point that was made about self-defense. In such a situation the society should defend itself, and people may die as an unintended side-effect of their defense, but it would be wrong if a society would then overpower their enemy and exterminate them.
The issue of killing as punishment has been addressed in my reaction to Athena, but to recap: Two wrongs can under no circumstances produce a right. Any goal such a killing may have; terror, revenge, utility, are clearly no moral grounds for such an act.
No one really follows the literal translations of the bible anymore, at least not the educated. Religious fanatics are a problem everywhere.
I am not so sure we want to get too far from nature when making moral judgments? As I understand, a moral it is a matter of cause and effect.
I would like to see our morals based on what a child needs to have a good life as an adult. Violating our human nature may not be a good choice, and our industrial society has violated human nature with obviously negative results. In the past, we may not have had better choices but technology has changed our choices and our future may be far different and could be better for our human nature than our past. That makes a better understanding of our human nature even more important to our moral decisions.
With self defense, the person would be dead either way if you intended to kill them or if it was by accident so the loss is the same. What about accidental killing in general? The only way to judge the morality of the agent that kills is by judging his response to it. If he feels remorse or not.
Someone who takes the life of another with no remorse is probably what we could class as 'evil'.
:grin: I hope I am not too much of a pain in the ass to all of you. I agree there are extremists everywhere and that secular education has radically changed our reasoning. Personally, I believe there are problems with religious reasoning. However, the title of this thread is
"The Rules Of Morality Are Not The Conclusions Of Our Reason"
My point is- our awareness of the rules is about our reasoning. We may have a good base for reasoning or a bad base for reasoning, We may have good higher order thinking skills or we may not. But how we come to moral decisions is a matter of reasoning. :lol: it might be as poor reasoning "because the Bible says so" but I think we do rationalize our understanding of morality. However, up to age 8 we learn without making judgments or having much discretion in what we accept as truths, and we tend to go through life proving ourselves right, and avoiding questioning if what know is right or wrong and that would make Hume's statement correct.
"I think the one of the main aspects of this discussion is also how moral values happen to be what they are, how they are created and by whom."
You are right. :cheer:
Self-defense is a strange case, however causing someone's death as an unintended result of self-defense hardly constitutes killing. The same goes for the accidental killing of a person. For something to be a crime, there must be mens rea, an intention (or the knowledge that one's neglect may cause harm to others), and I suggest we view the morality of killing a person in a similar fashion. So causing a death as the result of an unfortunate accident or as an unintended side-effect of self-defense is not evil.
Also doesn't your last sentence support the view that killing is wrong? After all, why should someone feel remorse for an act wasn't wrong?
Alas, we have wandered enough. So let me restate my question:
Would you agree that if the entire world took the rules "Thou shalt not kill (except for when it is an unintended side-effect of self-defense)" and "Thou shalt not covet thy neighbour's assets" to heart and would follow them devoutly, the world would be a better place?
I don't think that evolution and morality are so very distinct. Evolution, as you say, deals with biology, but those biological organisms often live in communities. Morals are then the guidelines for behaviour among the individuals for maximising the harmony of the community.
In this way the foundations of morality lie in evolution.
That might be the point.
But also what David Hume says is that morality is not consciously and rationally developed; and it is even more evident when you remember that Hume was a radical skeptic.
It seems to me that you and @Tzeentch might benefit from distinguishing b/w "murder" and "killing". Presumably all murder is immoral, but that isn't going to be the case for killing, unless maybe you have a radically pacifist moral theory. Where "murder" is going to be defined as something like "the intentional killing of another without justification."
But what do you say?
Now quit beating around the bush and answer my question.
Would it have been evil to kill Hitler in 1938? How about Osama Bin Laden in 1999? How about terminally ill people suffering terrible pain that want to die? Why should a pesron not be allowed to take their own life? Are you only talking about the killing of other humans? Is it evil to kill fish? etc etc.
I am trying to show you the danger of your argument and how all arguments following such sweeping statements that cannot be backed up will lead you into trouble.
In short I DO NOT AGREE WITH YOUR PREMISES.
You continue to dodge my question, by trying to find exceptions to a rule that any sane person can agree would create a better world if followed. In this case I'd say the exceptions underline the rule. If you were honest, you would acknowledge this.
Instead, you continue arguing semantics and it's getting rather dull. I'm not going to argue with you for the sake of arguing. I've made my stance clear, and it should by now be clear that all the contrived exceptions you're coming up with are completely missing the point of my argument.
Quoting Jamesk
Thanks for your concern; can we now please get on with the topic of discussion?
I already gave you my opinion that your argument is not as complete as you say it is and that I do not agree with it so your claim that I am dodging the question is unfounded. When you say that following these rules would lead to a better world, you need to define exactly what you mean by better. Better for who? Better in what way etc If you cannot clarify these matters in depth then you are merely stating your own opinion.
You made a premise and I showed you where there are exceptions and contradictions in it. You need to clarify your point to make me understand what you are trying to prove.
Well, killings during war are kind of a separate issue since it gets you into questions of just war theory. The basic idea being that if you accept killing in self-defense is not murder and morally acceptable, then a killing during a war being fought for strictly defensive grounds seems to be pretty analogous. The separate question then because what counts as a purely defensive or justifiably waged war. Surely some are. Similarly - and this is admittedly much more tenuous - one could argue that w/re to capital punishment that (1) it is a preventive form of self-defense for society at large or, alternatively, (2) that the capitally convicted criminal effectively willed their own death by violating laws for which that was the punishment. As such, it is more like suicide than murder. I think this is essentially what Kant would say about any kind of suffering that was the result of punishment. In any event, given (1), the argument would go further that given the preventive value to society generally, although the killing of the criminal is intentional on the part of the state, it is nevertheless justified and so, therefore, not murder. Personally, though, I agree with you the state should not be in the business of executions, mainly because any criminal justice system is going to be an inherently unreliable mechanism of accurate, objective judgment.
I am afraid it wasn't very clear what question you were raising, and so unfortunately the discussion has been derailed into the perennial argument about universal morality.
Anyway, as best as I can tell, you are proposing that Hume's dictum can be vindicated if a naturalistic account of the origins of morality is true. Is this more-or-less what you are saying?
First, note that Hume, not having the benefit (?) of later developments in evolutionary psychology and social science, brought his own arguments to bear. What do you think of those?
Second, let's look at the title dictum: "The Rules Of Morality Are Not The Conclusions Of Our Reason." I think it is evident that it is not exactly true. When we don't have an instant moral clarity on some question, we often apply reason. However, it may be argued that when we trace our moral reasoning to its termini, we will always find some other moral rules there, which are themselves not based on reason.
One way to argue in favor of that position is to say that in point of fact, foundational moral principles are not chosen by each person through rational deliberation. To that end, one might try to show that moral values invariably come about non-rationally: either they emerge from our natural inclinations (moral instincts), or they are inculcated through upbringing, religious indoctrination, authority, social pressure, etc.
How does a particular historical account of the emergence of morality bear on this? That is not very clear. It seems to me that you would first need to establish the proximate causes of our moral judgements along the lines that I suggested above. Once that is done, you could further develop an account of those causes: evolution of moral instincts, social dynamics resulting in the emergence of social norms, etc., but all that seems to be surplus to requirements. You could counterfactually suppose that our moral principles are instilled in us by God, for example - and that would serve the argument just as well, because that too would be an instance of a non-rational origination of morality.
Another way to argue for the thesis is to follow Hume in saying that as a matter of principle, it could not be otherwise. Reason, says Hume, does not motivate action (reason can tell you how best to achieve your goal, but it does not supply goals). "Reason is the slave of the passions." You cannot get from an is - facts, observations - to an ought - moral judgements - though reason. Therefore, only normative beliefs and inclinations can be the source of our moral judgements.
Any rational person could agree that if people followed the rules 'Thou shalt not kill' and 'Thou shalt not covet thy neighbours assets' the world would be much better off. One may have one or two caveats, like 'but what about self-defense or euthanasia?', but for the other 99.9% of killing we can agree it would be best if it simply stopped. The same goes for jealousy and envy.
This is a rational argument based on reason and it is simply undeniable. It is truth. Morality is based on fundamental truths of human existence.
It takes a special kind of debater to call a sensible statement like "the world would be better without people killing each other" an 'irrational and unsupported opinion'. Asking for clarification on the word 'better' in this context is yet another attempt to shift the argument. It's indicative of the way you've been twisting and turning every which way in order to disagree on something that should be common sense, and it reeks of intellectual dishonesty.
I can think of no other reason a person would have this amount of difficulty answering such a general question. A question which could have simply been answered with "No." or "Yes, but...", I might add.
What an overly simplistic and naive way to think...
Tell that to the down trodden poor folk who suffer at the hands of the richest in their communities...
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But is morality a product of reason or emotion?
There is no Reason without emotion. That is Hume's fatal flaw. He is not alone.
Hume doesn't deny the existence of reason only that it plays a back seat role in our moral decisions. Emotion is not reason.
The fact is that civilizations throughout the ages have attempted to formulate rules that when followed would create a more unified world. The Ten Commandments are an example of such a ruleset. The Egyptian Negative Confession is another. Clearly there is some merit to these rules, no matter how much one wishes to deny it.
The degree to which these rules are right is truth. That is objective morality based on reason.
Morality is fundamentally a sense - ingrained into the organism by evolution in a tribal social context. It's promoted as an evolutionary advantage - to the individual within the tribe, and to the tribal group overall.
Society is effectively, the joining together of hunter-gatherer tribal groups, and that wasn't easy. The obstacle is inherent to the social hierarchy of hunter-gatherer tribes - ruled by an alpha male with one or two lieutenants, monopolizing food and mating opportunities within the tribe. Thus, any two such tribes would have great difficulty joining together to form a society, because any disagreement would immediately split the society into its tribal parts.
This obstacle was overcome with an explicit moral code - justified with reference to God. So, I'd have to disagree with Hayeck to some extent; not because morality is not fundamentally an evolutionary quality, but in that, in a state of nature morality is a sense of morality located within individuals and the tribal structure, whereas in multi-tribal society, morality is an expression - an explicit moral code, objective with respect to the individual.
So, unless one believes God inscribed the tablets Moses carried down the mountain - for example, those codes were thought about and designed by human beings - as the basis of societal institutions. However well designed in the first instance, they inevitably become anachronistic over time, and persist as institutional morality - often in quite painful contradiction to attitudes that develop as a result of experience - understood in terms of the innate moral sense, and communicated inter-subjectively.
An example of this is how mass immigration and Islamic terrorism has promoted a far right resurgence in Europe, in contradiction of anti-racist values, made explicit in democratic institutions. Another is increasingly tolerant social attitudes to homosexuality, against hostile values made explicit in religious texts. It's the difference between morality as an innate sense, and morality as an explicit expression of societal values.
So you think it would be impossible for rational creatures, whether human or not, to agree to a system of moral codes? Part of the question being whether it's possible some rational beings don't necessarily come about as a result of evolutionary forces or go through tribalism in the course of their social development. If it's possible there are such beings, then would they be prevented from having a moral system based on how you've conceived it here? Is that the best way to frame a concept of morality, such that it necessarily excludes some agents who intuition might suggest seem to be capable of acting morally?
I have explored the idea of a Nietzschian - amoral species, and cannot imagine that species could progress very far beyond a state of nature. Putting aside the infinite diversity of nature, think upon the difference between a creature that cares for its young, and one that lays eggs and walks away. The amoral species is an egg layer who walks away. It doesn't care for its young, it doesn't form a society, doesn't develop technology - so it doesn't progress beyond a state of nature.
Caring for the young is necessary to the developmental process - inherent to higher intelligence. The more complex the creature, the longer the dependency upon the mother and the tribe. This requires a self-sacrificial moral behavior in adults - broadly called altruism. The developmental potential of an organism that must be hardwired to survive from the moment the egg cracks open is quite limited.
In short, I believe morality is inherent to intelligence, and that you can't have an amoral rational creature. However, there's a saying among biologists - 'evolution is smarter than you are.' And we have only the one example, of life on earth, and the one example of a rationally intelligent creature, homo sapiens, to work with. So, I suppose my question to you would be - what kind of rational agent to do imagine is excluded by this concept of morality?
Yeah, no, I totally agree that empirically we have no evidence that there are any rational beings in addition to humans, and would not insist there necessarily are any. However, my intuition is that given the shear scale of the universe even as we have discovered it so far, it is plausible to think that (it is possible) there are non-human beings - aliens, just to call a spade a spade - who exhibit and are capable of rational thought. If you agree, then would we have to assume that the only way they could possess morality is if they developed through biological evolutionary processes similar to those humans undergo? If we don't assume that, then it would seem morality could be untethered from biological development in some cases.
If you disagree that it is possible there are non-human rational being in the universe, I'm still curious whether you think a conventional form of morality is impossible. That is, suppose we do develop certain moral intuitions as the result of our evolution and develop rules related to those intuitions that form the framework of a moral system. If we agreed to change the rules so that they were no longer consistent with our intuitions but based on rational judgments instead (about what is best, most expedient, whatever), is it unfair to still call that new set of rules a moral system? If it's not unfair to say that, then how is that conventional system related to the supposed evolutionary developments of our moral psychology?
I think it safe to assume that life occurs anywhere it can occur - and in the universe there are other places it can occur. The obstacles to the development of intelligent life however, may be more than we imagine. And in addition, the obstacles to intelligent life persisting for any significant length of time may again be quite onerous. Homo sapiens may be very unusual creatures indeed!
Quoting Mentalusion
I imagine it's possible for biological organisms to invent intelligent machines that outlive their creators, and continue to develop. How else can one explain the Bootes void? That so, the question arises whether the machine intelligence would understand morality, but be essentially amoral - if they do not live, or die, or feel pain? Or, is morality and rationality ultimately reconcilable as some list of behavioral instructions? The literature would seem to say 'no' - because the is and the ought are fundamentally distinct realms. But while that may be true of intelligent machines, it's not true of human beings imbued with a moral sense by evolution.
Quoting Mentalusion
Very interesting and perceptive question to which I have definite answer. The short answer is that morality is a form of truth. The longer answer begins with imagining the structure of DNA forming in the primordial oceans. In its very structure, DNA had to be correct to the environment to survive and reproduce. It had to persist in relation to heat, light, various forms of radition, and the chemical composition of its environment. Further, it had to unzip down the middle to attract chemicals from the environment to reproduce. Thus, it's very structure is true to the reality of the environment. Jumping forward in time, consider how organisms have to be physiologically correct to reality to survive - most basically, internalizing energy and excreting waste, regulating temperature, and so on. Then consider animal behavior - how, for instance, a bird builds a nest before it lays eggs. It doesn't know and plan ahead. That behavior is ingrained by the function or die algorithm of evolution - i.e. those who were not correct to this aspect of reality are extinct.
In this context, we consider human evolution, and morality as a sense ingrained into the human organism by the necessity of tribal life - and we discover that morality is fundamentally a truth relation to reality. Thus, morality is a form of truth - where truth is a valid relation to reality, necessary to survival. Consequently, in answer to your question: insofar as those rational judgments were indeed rational, it wouldn't be changing anything; merely clarifying!
For example, it is a fact we do not acknowledge - that humankind is a single species, all occupying the same planet. Thus racial prejudice and xenophobia may be intuitive, but are an intuition based on a false conception of reality. If in order to be rational one accepts the facts into the calculus of moral reason, it makes no sense to be racist. It's morally wrong to the fact that humankind is a single species, all occupying the same planet.
This is where it gets interesting - because, consider the accused lying to the court, and assume his lies are believed. The calculus of moral reason inherent to the legal process works to an unjust end, because the information upon which the process functions is false. Even children understand this instinctively - that a false conception of reality perverts the calculus of moral reason, and they learn to lie quite early on as a natural part of the developmental process, to skew the world in their favor.