Morality is a Logical Consequence of Evolution, not Creation

There is a lot of discussion on this site and elsewhere about Good and Evil, whether or not morality is absolute and could only be determined by an all-powerful creator. I hope to make a logical argument that morality (i.e. our understanding of good v bad / right v wrong) is a logical product of Evolution and not Creation.One thing that is often not considered in these discussions is: what do we actually mean when we talk about right and wrong, or good and bad? (I’ll leave the term evil aside for the moment.) Generally speaking, something described as right/good is considered to be beneficial; whereas something described as wrong/bad is considered to be harmful. To whom or what it is beneficial or harmful will of course vary from situation to situation, and may be disputed. But what cannot be disputed is that there is an emotional response to our consideration as to whether something is right or wrong, good or bad. Morality is not a dispassionate issue. We instinctively apply a different set of emotions towards good things than we do towards bad things.Beneficial things that make us feel happy, safe, healthy, etc we label as right/good, and harmful things that make us feel unhappy, frightened, ill etc we label to be wrong/bad. There is an obvious reason for this.The emotions that we feel towards good and bad things are an entirely logical consequence of evolution. In the same way as we fear a lion, or recoil from heat, our emotional reaction is a control of our behaviour that aids our survival. If we did not feel negative emotions such as anger or fear towards certain types of behaviour that are harmful to us, we would never have survived as a species. Our emotions drive us away from bad (harmful) behaviour and towards good (beneficial) behaviour.As humans are a social species that benefits from cooperation between individuals, when we consider whether something is good or bad, we are more often than not considering whether it is beneficial or harmful to a group or society as a whole, rather than simply to the immediate selfish concerns of an individual.This means that it is meaningless to say that a god (or anyone for that matter) has defined x as right/good and y is wrong/bad without any reason. If there is no reason why x is good and y is bad, then the words good and bad have no meaning. x and y would be totally interchangeable and there would be no emotional attachment to the consequences of something being good or bad.There is no such thing as absolute evil or an entity called evil. Like good and bad, the word evil invokes an emotional response. Simply put, evil means very bad. We all have the understanding that something that is evil is very harmful. But, again, something can only be considered very harmful if there is a reason for considering it is in some way very harmful. The word evil is meaningless otherwise.Morality is not something that any entity could cook up and then inject into us. Even if we consider that it is good or right to do something because it is God’s will, we are still considering the consequences of what that means. Is it beneficial to follow God’s will or is it harmful? That’s why people get so worked up about it. If it is neither beneficial nor harmful to follow God’s will, then what does it matter? Good or bad would both be viewed with equally cool indifference.So, even if there were a creator, he couldn’t have invented the concept of good and bad. He may well use the concept to his own ends (e.g. by convincing us that we should do this or that because it is beneficial to do so). But then you have to consider why a creator would want to convince us that it is beneficial to behave in a certain way — and why he created us in the first place. The only reasonable conclusion is because it is beneficial in some way! That would seem to imply that there could be no such thing as a perfect, all-powerful creator; for why would it need to manipulate things to its advantage?

---

"Bring on the wall!" - Dale Winton

Hi slevesqueThanks for your response. Of course, my OP approaches the subject from a very specific angle, but you raise some interesting points. I realise this may well be the case and the door is open to the religious to express any alternative understanding of morality. This point is very interesting. I don't think it is exclusively a Christian moral system to help the old and the sick. It happens in most societies and, as you say, even Richard Dawkins has such impulses. However, I'm not sure that he always agrees with himself on this issue! He has said on several occasions in his books and TV programs that our empathy towards others, even towards those we don't personally know (such as the people currently suffering in Haiti) can be attributed to our origins. For most of human history, we have lived in small family groups or tribes, where we would rarely see anyone who was not a fairly close relative. Therefore, it was beneficial to the survival of our genes to do everything we could to help each other. So beneficial was cooperation to our survival, and particularly to the survival of our genes, I suppose you could say that we have almost over-shot ourselves in this respect. A good example of this is the love and care that we show towards other animals, so strong is our empathy towards others.I think from an evolutionary point of view in our hunter-gatherer days it must have been such an advantage to do everything we possibly could to help the old and the sick. They must still have served a useful function or at least it was worth the effort if they had the potential to do so. The emotions we feel towards them, the overwhelming urge we have to help people, is a strong indication of that. I saw Richard Dawkins interviewing someone about the placebo effect (sorry I can't remember the name) but they made the point about how quickly the human body can heal itself when it knows it is being looked after. When a body knows it is relatively safe and being cared for, that it will be kept warm, hydrated and fed, it can afford to divert all its resources to help the healing process. (This is just one example, and what I mean by it is that it has long been a survival advantage not just to be cared for, but to know that we will be cared for.)I don't agree that my definition of "beneficial" would mean we would be better off killing the old and the sick. For a start, it would mean acting against our overwhelming instincts, which would not be good for our own emotions. But I don't think we will lose those instincts even in the future. Do the sick and the old want to die? No, they have the same survival instincts as everyone else. So who would want to live in a Logan's Run society? How successful would such a society be compared to a more humane one?Edited by Jumped Up Chimpanzee, : Clarifying sentence at end of penultimate paragraph.

I agree. There comes a point where we are no use to anyone, including ourselves. I also share your disclaimer. I wonder if anyone thinks euthanasia is immoral.

Hi slevesque The empathy we have towards sick humans is only a part of our ability to put ourselves in the mind of another person. We also put ourselves in other people’s minds to anticipate their purpose, their motives, their emotions, their intended actions, etc. We do this all the time without even thinking about it. And we do this with animals too. Is that animal trying to hunt me? Is it trying to escape from me? Is it frightened? Is it angry? What will it do if I stand over here? Can I tempt it and trap it? Etc. It is clearly to our advantage to be able to put ourselves in the minds of both other humans and animals. Our empathy towards animals is not purely and simply a by-product of our care-driven empathy towards sick humans.Other animals will often show caring behaviour towards other species. In particular, mothers will show care towards infants from another species. It’s clear that the hormones that drive behaviour of many species are often so strong as to override regular behaviour. Clearly it must be an overall advantage to have a hormonal system that is sometimes overactive. It just seems logical that it is more of an advantage to have a belt and braces system that is maybe sometimes too caring, and therefore virtually guarantees that we always care for those who really matter to us, than to have a weaker system that would more often lead to a failure to care for those who matter. The same principle applies to the way we have so many health and safety procedures and rules today. The health and safety rules often seem to go so far as to be ridiculous, but the purpose is to try and eradicate all possible risks — to keep all dangers to an absolute minimum. (The principle is the same but, of course, there was no conscious purpose behind the evolution of our instincts.)Young children have an imagination and natural inclination to play games that will prepare them for adulthood. This includes playing with pretend babies (i.e. dolls). It’s reasonable to suppose that a child’s desire to have pets and care for them is just an extension of its very useful anthropomorphic attitude to inanimate baby substitutes. And an adult’s desire to have pets is an extension of its parental instincts — look at how many people decide to get dogs when their kids have grown up and left home. Again, it’s a result of an apparently over-active instinct, but one that ensured that they took good care of their kids. I will go as far as to suggest that an adult that feels a stronger than average urge to continue caring for something after its kids leave home had a stronger than average urge to care for them before they left. I.E. it is an advantage to have a tendency to be (apparently) over-caring. I disagree because you're not looking at the big picture and the overall advantage of cooperation. As I said, who would want to live in a Logan’s Run society? If you had the choice between living in a society where you knew you’d be well looked after when you became sick and old, or one where you’d be thrown on the scrap heap the moment you passed your physical peak, which society would you choose to live in? Which society would be the most successful then? In modern society, would you bother to pay your taxes and be a good all-round citizen if you knew the moment you hit 60 or 70 you’d be shot in the head? Would you even make as much effort to care for your children and grandchildren if you knew they wouldn’t reciprocate when you needed their help? But I think the main factor here is that for most of our history — and in many societies even today — life expectancy was less than 30 or 40 years old. Once you became sick you’d either recover fairly quickly or you’d die fairly quickly. That’s why it was worth the effort to try to help the sick, because if you succeeded you had another fit and able body, and if you failed the burden would have been relatively brief.There must be a massive advantage to the individual, at many levels, to know (either consciously or instinctively) that it is living in a relatively safe and caring society, because it can devote its energies and resources to other things than constantly worrying about its immediate survival. Just think how difficult life would be if every person you saw had to be considered a serious threat to your life, and how much easier it is that we can be fairly certain they will help us if we are in any difficulty. We couldn't possibly live in anything like the society that we do, and have 6+ billion people on the planet, without this huge advantage of cooperation.

Hi Meldinoor So am I! I sometimes wonder when I receive little response to a new thread whether it is because I made too good an opening argument or if it was so badly expressed nobody's interested.The thing that really interests me on this subject is the consideration for why we care about things we label as moral issues. As I said, it's an emotional issue. This is why I see morality as having its basis in natural selection, because our emotions drive us towards certain types of behaviour, and natural selection would logically ensure that it normally drives us to behaviour that is advantageous to our survival.I don't like to make the creationists arguments for them, but as I see it their idea of morality is that it comes purely from God's decisions, and to at least a large extent they admit to having no idea as to what God's reasons are for his decisions. I.E. God could say "x" is good, or he could say "x" is bad, and they would have no idea why? They just blindly follow orders. But the fact is they do care and show emotion about the things they consider moral issues, so the question is: if they don't understand why some things are good and some things are bad, why do they care? What does "good" and "bad" mean to them?

I can confirm this routine is in his book "When Will Jesus Bring The Pork Chops", which I read only last month.

Hi Slevesque I think our empathy comes from 2 areas. One is an instinctive sub-conscious part of our brain that, for example, reacts automatically to seeing someone else suffer, by making us feel sad. Sad is a "negative" emotion, so we are propelled to try and help the sufferer, so that we no longer feel sad. The other is our conscious cognitive mind that understands the concept that we are all the same, and when other people are suffering they are going through the same experience as we do when we suffer. And we are a lot more intelligent than pigs, crows or fish, which is a simple explanation for why we have this conscious ability and they probably don't. Psychopaths lack the functioning part of the brain that endows most of us with empathy. They do not necessarily lack other parts of the functioning brain, which explains why they can have exactly the same intelligence as us in all other respects. Exactly the same point that I made about the value of caring for the old and sick applies to the young and sick. More often than not, it is worth the effort to try and save a weak baby because the advantage of succeeding in saving it are so high, so our instincts are honed by natural selection to be (apparently) over-caring, because it is worth the effort. However, even in the case of a very sick or deformed baby, where your pragmatic conscious mind sees there is no realistic chance of it surviving, how do you turn off your instincts that drive you to care for it? I'm no expert in the chemical processes that drive our emotions and instinctual behaviour, but it would seem to be impossible for them to just get switched on and off according to the perceptions of our pragmatic cognitive minds. Even if that could happen, there would be a great danger if we suddenly lost our "caring" emotions in order to abandon a very sick child. A temporary loss of our empathetic and caring instincts could cause all kinds of dangerous behaviour towards others who are of great pragmatic value to us. So again, the point is that it is generally more useful to be (apparently) over-caring, than to live on an emotional edge between being caring and uncaring.

Hi greyseal I think we need to be careful about what we define as "empathy". Up til now I've been using the term fairly generally and possibly quite wrongly. I don't think our instinctive emotional response is true empathy. Feeling sad or distressed is a natural response many animals obviously have. But I think true empathy is having the ability to put yourself in someone else's mind and imagine what they are feeling (or not feeling in the case of a deceased loved one). It is conceptual, and maybe only humans have this ability. As I said in an earlier post, it doesn't just serve to help feel sympathy towards another, but it can be used for other reasons, such as to perceive what their purpose is.I'd be interested to hear if anyone can give specific examples of other animals demonstrating true empathy (i.e. having a real understanding of how another animal/person is feeling), rather than just making an instinctive emotional response to another's predicament.

No, I don't call an instintive emotional response in humans "empathy". I had made that error in previous messages, but I thought I made it clear in my last post what the difference was.All animals, including humans, have an instinctive emotional response to certain stimulae. This may include, for example, sadness and distress at losing your own child. That is not the same as empathy.Empathy is having the ability to recognise that other beings have similar thoughts or emotions to us. It is understanding, for example, that someone else feels sad at losing their child in the same way as we would if we were to lose ours. In other words, empathy is not experiencing emotion, but understanding how another being is experiencing emotion.It is undoubtedly the case, however, that when we understand how and why others are feeling happy or sad, we may then have an emotional response ourselves to the knowledge of their emotion. For example, we can feel happy or sad just based on news that we hear about someone we don't even know, or even to a story we know is fictional. I.E. We are making an instinctive emotional response to a concept. I don't think any other animals can react to the concept of another being's emotional state. They can only react to direct stimulae such as the sight of another suffering or getting excited.Language must have played a big role in developing the ability within humans to grasp many concepts, including the ability to consider another's point of view or emotional state. As other animals don't have our extensive language skills, they don't have the ability to generate and convey concepts to each other.

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.

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.

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.

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?

Hi StileI'll respond in more detail to your points tomorrow (hopefully) because I think a lot of things need to be carefully considered and straightened out.

I think your comments raise some important issues; in particular, they highlight a trap we often fall into where we think of evolution as a process rather than a consequence. Maybe I haven’t been clear about my understanding of this in my previous messages. At no point in the past or present has any individual (unless they were a bit weird!) made any decisions for evolutionary reasons.There is no fundamental difference between the reasons why individuals make moral decisions today compared to the reasons of earlier homo sapiens 50,000, 100,000 or 200,000 years ago. Or even our earlier hominid ancestors. Or even our pre-hominid ape ancestors.You must not think in terms of our evolutionary past and now as if there were a cut-off somewhere along the line. There was never a point in the past where there was any sense that we were in the middle of evolution.For as far back as you wish to go, our ancestors generally made decisions in their immediate self-interest. However, ever since our ancestors became socially cooperative, that must necessitate that the decisions were also in the general interest of other individuals with whom we interacted. Individuals that did not act to the best of their self-interest - which would include the interest of others - would generally be at a disadvantage, less likely to survive to reproduce, etc. Hence we evolved as a species where individuals made decisions that were to the advantage of themselves and others.All the reasons you give in the above examples are beneficial and advantageous to your welfare and to the person you are caring for. I.E. they fit exactly with my position that good behaviour means beneficial behaviour, which means behaviour that is generally cooperative and therefore advantageous to your survival and your genes. Any of our ancestors would have made the same sort of decisions that you give — to get paid, to feel happy, etc (obviously equivalent decisions based on their personal circumstances). At no point did our ancestors think, I must do this because it will help with my species survival and our general evolutionary progress. They made the decisions they did due to their genetic makeup, which they mostly inherited, and in response to their environment (including culture, upbringing, etc). And we do exactly the same thing. As I said in one of my previous messages, our moral behaviour comes from 2 main areas:1) Our instinctive emotions and2) Our cognitive, conscious, reasoning minds,both of which, as you recognise, are a consequence of evolutionary development. Your moral decisions are a combination of your instincts and your reasoning. However, I doubt that we can make reasoned moral decisions without our instinctive feelings and emotions still being involved. Surely all the decisions we make are the ones that we consider to be the most beneficial in the given circumstances. All of our ancestors did the same thing. At no point did they make a decision for the sake of evolution, but the decisions they made would have affected their chances of survival and so the consequences helped to shape evolution. There is no such thing as an Evolution/Species Survival based morality system, for the reasons I give above. As I have already explained, having a desire to help others (as per your Best morality system) is generally advantageous to ourselves. It makes us valuable members of society. Of course, nobody can survive by being entirely self-less, so looking after others goes hand-in-hand with looking after ourselves, and we are of more use to others if we look after ourselves.I ask you to consider what you mean by doing good just for the sake of doing good. What do you mean by good? In my opening message I proposed that good behaviour means beneficial behaviour, which for humans means looking after ourselves and others. Essentially, there’s nothing more to it as far as I can see.