Posted: Oct 07, 2017 8:10 pm
romansh wrote:zoon wrote: But I don’t therefore refuse to talk about London buses as red?
I don't refuse too. I have no problem calling the bus red. It is one of those useful predispositions you talk of below.
But is useful to remember it is an illusion. And some times it is useful to remember that a colour is not what it appears to be.
Yes, it’s useful to have the scientific model available, and to be able to switch to it on the occasions when the common sense one fails.
romansh wrote:zoon wrote:Similarly, I think our evolved moral predispositions, or at least some of them, are very helpful in the way we actually run our lives ...
This is fine ... this is where cause and effect has caused your thoughts to be.
Is it useful? Well in that most people think in terms good and bad, and morality in general, yes; it is a useful concept to be familiar with. Is there an arrangement of atoms etc that we perceive as fundamentally good or bad or perhaps moral? This sounds strange to me. Whereas arrangement of atoms etc that we perceive as red seems reasonable.
Again is it useful? Quick easy decisions? What are the downsides? I suppose retribution is the big one?
I don't think the torch bearing mob cogitates and deliberates for any length of time. So by some definitions the concept of morality might itself result in a lack of free will.
You say above that retribution is the big downside of evolved moral predispositions, but I gather from your earlier posts that you are not opposed to legal, thought-through retribution as a way of controlling people’s behaviour? You appear to be equating evolved predispositions, to some extent, with animal-like, subhuman behaviour, as if they all led to knee-jerk instinctive responses or the actions of a baying crowd? I start rather with the assumption that all our behaviour evolved, both the predispositions and the general-purpose problem-solving which is a noticeable characteristic of our large evolved brains. The “rational” problem-solving enables us to choose between predispositions, but if we threw out all evolved predispositions on the grounds that they evolved, we would be left with no reason to do anything. Wanting to survive, to be happy, or to be part of a flourishing society, are all evolved desires. It’s possible that, all things considered, it would be a good idea to throw out all the specifically moral evolved desires, but to throw them out simply because they evolved would not be a good enough reason?
I do think that some evolved predispositions which might be called moral are distinctly dangerous in the modern world. In particular, the tendency to consider one’s own group as automatically superior to, or essentially different from, the others, becomes unsafe in a global society equipped with nuclear weapons. Like the evolved predisposition to eat sugar and fat when they are available, it was useful in the environment in which we evolved, but now needs to be kept fairly strictly in check if we are to achieve the goals which most of us consider more important: maintaining health (in the case of eating sugar and fat), or not starting race riots or World War 3 (in the case of ethnic prejudice).
At the same time, I think that other moral predispositions, such as the impulse to share the rewards of shared work equally, or to object if someone is being physically assaulted without reason, are very useful and, again within reason, to be encouraged. I also think that the central aspect of what we categorise as morality, the shared code of behaviour with measured, thought-through retribution for offenders, is itself an evolved social predisposition which human societies could hardly function without.
There’s a 2017/2018 book chapter here (I can't seem to link to the actual chapter, it's the link "Empathy is a moral force" on the page I've linked to), discussing this issue with regard to the human predisposition to empathise, to take another person’s view, to feel for them. Sometimes, this is regarded as a foundation for morality. Sometimes, it’s regarded as a noisy and disorganised evolved predisposition which leads us to forget about, or to be especially aggressive to, people with whom we do not empathise. The author of the paper, Jamil Zaki, suggests that empathy is useful for moral behaviour (perhaps even the essential baby not to be thrown out with the bathwater), and that it can be controlled to some extent (e.g. we can choose to empathise more widely), but that it is to be treated with some caution:
Jamil Zaki wrote:How could an emotional state that produces such misguided moral behavior ever be trusted? Critics of empathy suggest that morality can better serve the greater good if it is guided by utilitarian principles (i.e., doing the most good for the most people), as opposed to emotion. This viewpoint is important and clearly right in many cases. It is also incomplete, and risks discarding the baby with the proverbial well water.
Here I offer a counterpoint to recent criticisms of empathy, in two parts. First, I suggest that the limits of empathy are not stable, and instead reflect individuals’ motivation to connect with or avoid others’ experiences. These motives shift dynamically across situations, and strategies that increase empathic motivation can also reduce biases associated with empathy. Second, although utilitarian principles best guide the behavior of large groups, individuals who act morally “with feeling” are likely to be more committed to and fulfilled by their behaviors. Thus, to the extent that people can align their principles and affect, empathy can lend emotional meaning to moral actions.
Rather than either dismissing all evolved predispositions, or accepting them uncritically, I think this sort of detailed discussion and evaluation is the better approach?
romansh wrote:But if Cito were here, he would gladly point out arrangements of atoms etc being retributive, glad, logical, semantic, etc does not make too much sense either.
But in what sense are any of these atoms etc free?
This is where I start talking about Theory of Mind, the collection of evolved processes which our brains use to guess what is going on in another person’s brain. When we see other people, we don’t automatically see them as the complex mechanisms they are, but rather in terms of their goals, their feelings, their view of the world. At a basic level, these processes are wired in, and some are shared by non-human animals. For example, monkeys and many other animals have mirror neurones, which fire both when the animal has a goal such as to pick up a cup, but also fire when the animal sees someone else about to pick up a cup. Other people are indeed arrangements of atoms, but we’ve evolved to see them as “retributive, glad, logical, semantic, etc”. This way of seeing people may eventually be taken over by science, but so far we are very much better at predicting another person by the evolved processes of Theory of Mind than by using brain scans, so in many ways we still interact socially much as we did in the Stone Age. Free will, as I see it (in the useful, non-ultimate sense), is when we act without coercion or mental illness, and so can reasonably be held responsible for our actions; it's not freedom from causality, though it may cease to be useful if we ever understand ourselves better through science than through Theory of Mind.