"No wise fish would go anywhere without a porpoise. Why, if a fish came to ME, and told me he was going on a journey, I should say 'With what porpoise?'"
-The Mock Turtle. Alice in Wonderland.
Wednesday, June 23, 2010
Moral Intuition
Moral judgments are more intuition-based rather than reason-based, especially when there's a relevant, interdependent group involved that brings out the cooperative side of our evolutionary instinct. Kinship, not Kant, triumphs in the end.
I've never believed that moral judgments were reason-based. Some idiots have great morals while some intelligent people have none at all. In either case its unnecessary to have a "middle-man" (such as a religious text) to develop, use, or defend morals. People have always been notoriously willing to suspend moral arguments with people they like, know, or agree with (such as MLK who plagiarized a significant amount of his work and reportedly slept around) while holding others to the strictest of standards (such as "family values" hypocrisy).
Moral philosophy has always been bankrupt in this regard. This is also why moral arguments are often highly contentious and reach no conclusion; because when people argue over facts, they are either right or wrong, but when they argue over morals, it's possible for two people to feel two very different and contradicting things about the same issue. When things go wrong is when people assume that this feeling of rightness actually implies rightness (an attitude/feeling Stephen Colbert popularly refers to as "truthiness"), and can lead to disasters such as George W. Bush "thinking" with his gut or Sarah Palin claiming that God is on her side because it sure feels that way to her.
That brings me to my final point, which is where David Brooks gets it wrong: "It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning". This doesn't make any sense after the summary he's given of the study. Aside from his mistaken assumption (a commonly made one indeed) that atheists "have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason"--that would be philosophers (including moral philosophers ironically enough), not atheists who instead merely have evidence that rational thinking works better than faith--, the failure of reason to account for morals says nothing about reason itself. As he has summarized, morals are about what "feels right", not what "is right", which would fall under the category of reason. Reason (aside from the bankrupt moral philosophy he has just defenestrated) would never bother to pry into the world of feelings except to prove once again that people's feelings are often irrational, which is kind of true by definition.
Anyone thinking "What? Reason doesn't reach the conclusion that homosexuality is evil? Oh no, reason must be incomplete!" is entirely missing the point and getting things backwards.
I've never believed that moral judgments were reason-based. Some idiots have great morals while some intelligent people have none at all. In either case its unnecessary to have a "middle-man" (such as a religious text) to develop, use, or defend morals. People have always been notoriously willing to suspend moral arguments with people they like, know, or agree with (such as MLK who plagiarized a significant amount of his work and reportedly slept around) while holding others to the strictest of standards (such as "family values" hypocrisy).
ReplyDeleteMoral philosophy has always been bankrupt in this regard. This is also why moral arguments are often highly contentious and reach no conclusion; because when people argue over facts, they are either right or wrong, but when they argue over morals, it's possible for two people to feel two very different and contradicting things about the same issue. When things go wrong is when people assume that this feeling of rightness actually implies rightness (an attitude/feeling Stephen Colbert popularly refers to as "truthiness"), and can lead to disasters such as George W. Bush "thinking" with his gut or Sarah Palin claiming that God is on her side because it sure feels that way to her.
That brings me to my final point, which is where David Brooks gets it wrong: "It challenges the new atheists, who see themselves involved in a war of reason against faith and who have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason and in the purity of their own reasoning". This doesn't make any sense after the summary he's given of the study. Aside from his mistaken assumption (a commonly made one indeed) that atheists "have an unwarranted faith in the power of pure reason"--that would be philosophers (including moral philosophers ironically enough), not atheists who instead merely have evidence that rational thinking works better than faith--, the failure of reason to account for morals says nothing about reason itself. As he has summarized, morals are about what "feels right", not what "is right", which would fall under the category of reason. Reason (aside from the bankrupt moral philosophy he has just defenestrated) would never bother to pry into the world of feelings except to prove once again that people's feelings are often irrational, which is kind of true by definition.
Anyone thinking "What? Reason doesn't reach the conclusion that homosexuality is evil? Oh no, reason must be incomplete!" is entirely missing the point and getting things backwards.