Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation

then it's about communication - unless you can tell me for sure that (for example) my dog doesn't actually understand how sad I feel about (say) my girlfriend breaking up with me, you can't know whether the dog is "empathic" or not.I agree that other animals don't apparently have as sophisticated a method of communication as us, nor do they seem to be as able to plan for the future and modify their surroundings, but if a dog, in his own doggy way, can say "oh leader-of-my-pack-who-feeds-me, I am sad because YOU are sad" (and I agree, it's going to be hard proving things either way, except that arguably dogs "know" when their owners are sad and comfort them, so there's *something* going on in there) then despite lacking a full understanding, I would say that the dog is still empathic.I don't think a dog can be told that his owner's friend's dog is having a mid-life crisis, no - does it have to go that far?

How much the dog may be thinking "I'm sad because you're sad" or how much it is just feeling sad as an instinctive reaction to your sadness, I honestly can't be sure. I don't know what experiments can or have been done to prove this. This is an interesting discussion, but just to make sure we keep on topic of morality being a logical consequence of evolution, please allow me to continue as follows.When I said in message 20 to slevesque that empathy comes from 2 areas, I should probably have said instead that morality essentially comes from 2 areas:1) Our instinctive emotional reaction.2) Our empathy (our cognitive conceptual ability to consider someone else’s state of mind).But these both interact with each other. Because we have emotions, we can conceive of others having the same emotions. And when we conceive of other’s emotions, it can in turn stimulate our own emotions.I think that the emotional reaction and the conceptual empathetic thinking are so closely linked to each other (at least in humans) that it requires careful consideration to understand and separate them. In any case, the result is that the combination of these 2 processes will help determine our behaviour in any situation.So, to get back to the subject of morality being a logical consequence of evolution, it is entirely logical within the theory of evolution and natural selection that our both our emotional response and our empathy towards others are a huge advantage to a socially cooperative species. They help drive us towards good behaviour that is advantageous to our survival, and they drive us away from bad behaviour that is harmful to our survival. As we benefit so well from cooperation, "good" behaviour is generally that which supports cooperation, and "bad" behaviour is generally the opposite.Hence the concept of morality.

In my quick perusal of the posts in this thread I didn't see this point made, my appologies if I missed it and am repeating.As far as the question about if empathy towards the elderly or malformed newborns have some advantage or not, it's important to remember that evolution does not guarantee always choosing the "best" adaptation. For example, it's possible that having a general empathy includes the elderly is slightly less fit than having one that doesn't, but at the same time either type is more fit than having no empathy. Evolution does not guarantee we end up with the "most fit" empathy.Plus, it could be that in one environment the first type of empathy is more fit, and in another environment the second is.

That's a good point. It can be the case that evolution follows the easiest path, or just the first path that opens up by chance. This is often given as a reason for the imperfect "design" of the human eye. It is considered likely that it evolved from an inferior eye by either an easier route or just the first route that opened up, rather than one which would have given a better "design".This gives another logical explanation as to why we (and other animals) can be apparently over-caring, or over-empathetic. It was easier to develop a function in the brain that leads to an over-empathetic character, rather than one which can precisely and coldly calculate the necessary feelings and emotions to apply to every situation. And that, as you say, is better than having no empathy at all.

ah, well there's where you are wrong. how could the eye "evolve"? it is an amazing thing. it sees things upside down, proccesses it, turns it right side up, and then sends the information to the brain. that is near impossible. the odds are phenomenal.that part of the reasoning is sound, but, wouldn't it be easier yet to have no emotions at all? emotions are VERY complex brain functions. i am an example of this. have you seen a heart wrenching movie? i can probably laugh through the whole thing. i have a heart of stone. maybe I am the next evolution of human beings. BOW TO ME!

Not on topic. The evolution of the eye can be discussed elsewhere. But no - the brain does all the processing. If you wear goggles that turn all images upside down within a few hours everything would look 'normal' since the brain would invert it again. Evolution notoriously does not result in 'easy' solutions. They are often overly complex with significant redundancy and a fair amount of waste.On the other hand - it could be no other way, so it is the easiest way. Most life doesn't have a nervous system so presumably has no emotion. So it seems an unusual specialism unique to a small subset of a small subset of life. It seems to have had a positive outcome for us Maybe - how many children have you had?abe: on that note: Welcome to EvCEdited by Modulous, : No reason given.

Hi hawkes nightmare, and welcome to the fray. By the change in frequency of hereditary traits in breeding populations from generation to generation, in an accumulative process.Asking this question is more a betrayal of a lack of imagination than anythiing else -- it is the logical fallacy of the argument from ignorance: this question has been answered so many times it rates as a PRATT

quote:

---

CB301: Eye complexity
This is the quintessential example of the argument from incredulity. The source making the claim usually quotes Darwin saying that the evolution of the eye seems "absurd in the highest degree". However, Darwin follows that statement with a three-and-a-half-page proposal of intermediate stages through which eyes might have evolved via gradual steps (Darwin 1872).

• photosensitive cell
• aggregates of pigment cells without a nerve
• an optic nerve surrounded by pigment cells and covered by translucent skin
• pigment cells forming a small depression
• pigment cells forming a deeper depression
• the skin over the depression taking a lens shape
• muscles allowing the lens to adjust

All of these steps are known to be viable because all exist in animals living today. The increments between these steps are slight and may be broken down into even smaller increments. Natural selection should, under many circumstances, favor the increments. Since eyes do not fossilize well, we do not know that the development of the eye followed exactly that path, but we certainly cannot claim that no path exists.

​

Evidence for one step in the evolution of the vertebrate eye comes from comparative anatomy and genetics. The vertebrate βγ-crystallin genes, which code for several proteins crucial for the lens, are very similar to the Ciona βγ-crystallin gene. Ciona is an urochordate, a distant relative of vertebrates. Ciona's single βγ-crystallin gene is expressed in its otolith, a pigmented sister cell of the light-sensing ocellus. The origin of the lens appears to be based on co-optation of previously existing elements in a lensless system.

​

Nilsson and Pelger (1994) calculated that if each step were a 1 percent change, the evolution of the eye would take 1,829 steps, which could happen in 364,000 generations.

---

Note that there are many different kinds of eyes, from bugs to octopus to mammal, each showing independent evolution due to the differences involved in how the eyes operate. The logical fallacy of assumed knowledge of the possibilities, coupled with a blatantly false assertion, a straw man that is in fact unlikely because it is wrong.The image is turned over by the brain and the brain does all the processing. This was proven in the 1900's iirc, by a scientist making glasses that inverted the image so that his eye retina would see the pattern right side up. As a result the perceived images were up-side-down. After two weeks of wearing these glasses, the image turned over so that the scientist saw the images right-side-up. When he removed the glasses it took another two weeks for the original processing to be restored.enjoy.

---

I haven't forgotten this subject People I'll come back to put more fuel in it when I have the time. (Besides I'm still ruminating all of it) Is this true ?? Because I so have to find myself goggles like those and try it.

It was demonstrated in a science education film shown us in the late 1960's. The film was produced by the Moody Institute, so you might want to check with them for leads.I seem to recall that they used prisms to invert the incoming image and that the original experiments were conducted on young chickens.

Here's some pictures of poor Dr. Moon doing stuff with the glasses on.
Popular Mechanics - Google Books

Since it's been a bit more than 40 years since I last saw that film, I completely forgot about him piloting a private plane. My father was a member of a local private pilots' association and took me to one of their meetings. At that meeting, they showed a Moody Institute film about sense perception while piloting aircraft at night. The main message I remember was that you must trust your instruments, because you cannot always trust your own senses (example was of a pilot flying at night who ended up flying upside-down thinking that the city lights below him were actually the stars above him). Plus, it exhibited an experiment that demonstrated that motion sickness results when our sensory inputs conflict with each other: specifically, when the subject was spin blindfolded, he did not experience any dizziness, but when he was stopped and the blindfold was removed, WHOA!Interestingly, the Moody Institute had a religious slant to it. Each of their films I saw (there was another one that examined the workings of the heart) ended with a religious statement. However, that was the only religious content or orientation of any of their films (as far as I can recall -- since I had become an atheist half a decade earlier and was more sensitive to inappropriate religious incursions, I'm sure that I would have noticed). And even then, as I recall, that statement at most referenced learning about the world that God had created, though I seem to recall that that single religious statement didn't always seem to apply to the film.If my memory serves me right, then the Moody Institute's approach was one that creationists might be able to learn from. Don't corrupt the science to fit your theology, but rather just do the science honestly.

Hi slevesqueI’m pleased to hear you are giving this subject further consideration and look forward to hearing more of your thoughts.I’ve just had another thought on the issue of why we may appear to be more caring towards each other than might be deemed necessary under natural selection.I recall a conversation Richard Dawkins had with someone (I'm fairly sure it was Stephen Pinker) where they discussed the issue of physical pain. They asked: why has evolution ensured that we really suffer so much physical pain? For example, if we get too close to a fire and burn ourselves, why can’t we just have a sort of warning light flash in our heads to tell us to move away from the fire? Why is it necessary to suffer such excruciating pain, and often for long after we have moved away from the danger? At first glance it may seem like the pain we suffer is overkill as a warning mechanism.The logical answer to this is that if we only had a benign warning, we would not be so scared of getting ourselves into danger in the first place. If you knew that if you were to do really serious damage to your body (such as stick your hand in a fire) you would only suffer a mild sensation, or a very brief flash of pain, you would be much more willing to take the risk. Therefore, it is an overall advantage to suffer real pain, more than might appear necessary, in order to ensure that we do our best to avoid danger in the first place and increase our chances of survival. The pain has to be really real.A similar logical argument can be applied to other feelings and emotions, such as love and caring, and why we suffer emotional pain. If we knew that the moment a close relative or friend died that we would only feel a brief instant of pain, that it wouldn’t go on to hurt us for months, years, maybe a whole lifetime afterwards, would we take such care of each other? I think if we are honest with ourselves, one of the main reasons we take care of each other is because we instinctively fear the pain it will cause us if we don’t. Again, we benefit hugely from cooperating with each other, so the fear of suffering at losing a close friend or relative drives us to look after each other and so is an advantage in ensuring our survival.It is necessary for us to feel really distressed if a loved one becomes ill or dies because otherwise the care that we showed towards them when they were fit and healthy would not be real. I think that with humans, who have the ability to objectively consider their emotions in a way that probably no other animal can, it is especially important that our emotions are so real and long lasting. At times, our emotions must override our objective reasoning capabilities. Otherwise, if the moment someone became seriously ill or died we suddenly no longer showed any care for them, we would be consciously aware of this phenomenon and would question whether our original care was genuine or, dare I say, even necessary. This could lead to a breakdown in trust and cooperation. So I think this is a further logical explanation for why we care for the sick, the old and even for other animals. It is necessary that our moral caring attitudes are very real and very deeply rooted in us; we’re too smart for our moral attitudes to be superficial and ephemeral, because we’d soon see behind the faade if they were.I'm aware, of course, that I am sort of peering behind that faade right now, but it is testament to how deeply rooted my emotions and moral attitudes are that it makes absolutely no difference to how I would react to anyone who needed my help.

I agree with everything you've mentioned about evolutionary development of our emotions and empathy.I would just like to make a minor point that sometimes gets lost with all the historical devlopment explanations.The stuff your talking about... evolutionary reasons for emotions and empathy and such... I think it was the main focal point (almost instinctual) in our ancestors... sometime around 50,000 to maybe even 100,000 years ago. Maybe even further back than that... whenever it was that our brain started getting larger and first developing these "instincts". (I'm horrible with dates and time-frames).Ever since then... ever since intelligence starting taking a larger and larger role... I think we have began to develop an additional level of morality that does not necessarily have to rely on those evolutionary reasons. That is, our intelligence allows us to choose to go against our instincts if we so desire. In the same way that I can choose to stop eating, I can also choose to take care of the sick for some other reason than the ones initially pushed through evolutionary instincts (or even not to take care of the sick at all).My point is to strongly agree with everything you've stated as the historical development of our morals but not necessarily as the current motivation for our morals. Although some certainly may continue to use (some even by choice) those same historical, evolutionary instincts as their moral compass.I agree that our emotions and empathy, even our intelligence, comes from evolution. I just want to make sure that saying "here is the evolutionary development and reasoning behind everything" doesn't get taken as "therefore, this is the reason why we all really do these things". Because it's not, it is only the reason why we're all capable of doing these things.Minor point, likely trivial, but I wanted to post so nyah, nyah Edited by Stile, : The new post is so wildly different and changed from the previous that I should probably be charged with fraud. Does anyong actually read these reasons? Heh... what a nice off-topic trap-question...

Hi StileI was getting worried about you...I thought you'd join in this discussion a bit earlier. I'm not 100% sure if I understand exactly what you mean.Can you give an example of a particular moral action that would support what you're saying?

Me too. Work's been busy. Which is a good thing, I suppose. Any moral action would do.Let's take Taking Care of The Sick.Evolutionary reasoning - Everything you've been saying so far (things like it helps our society and they can help take care of the young, and all that other stuff too).But, this isn't "why we all really do these things". That is, I'm sure this is why we all started doing these things... during the evolutionary development of our intelligence. And I'm also sure that many people still do these things for these very reasons. But it's not necessary.I can take care of the sick because I want to get paid for it, or because it makes me feel happy, or because I want to rub-elbows with them so they might put me in their will so I'll get some inheritance.Evolution is why I'm capable of making these decisions. But the reason behind why I do it doesn't have to be driven by our past evolutionary development.My main, but minor, point is this: An example a bit more on topic:
(Going back to your first post where beneficial = right/good and harmful = wrong/bad).We feel morally obligated to not kill each other because of the wrong/bad feelings and harm it will cause.However, I do not necessarily have to refrain from killing for these reasons. I can choose to refrain from killing out of fear from God destroying my mortal soul.It's very possible for me to choose to ignore the evolutionary reasoning of morality (even though it is a part of my human development) and use my intelligence (also given to me by evolution) to create my own reasoning.At the base level... I agree it all comes down to evolution at some point. After all, humans evolved. But, when we get into morality we start to get into higher-level things like intelligence and decision making and motivations. The reasonings from these higher areas are not necessarily forced to coincide with their base level evolutionary origins.I also like to point out that I do not find evolutionary reasons for a moral system to be "the best" or "the most righteous" kind of moral system. I think it's better than a fear-based system, but I still think it's below a system focused on doing good "just for the sake of doing good".Some religions -> "fear" based morality system
Evolution -> "species survival" based morality system
Best (includes some other religions) -> "want to help others as much as possible" based morality system