Pervasive assumption among educated people that either such
differences don’t exist, or that they are too variable, complex or culturally
idiosyncratic to admit of general value judgements. The disparity between how we think about physical and
metal/societal health reveals a bizarre double standard. We are still struggling to awaken from cultural relativism.
It seems clear that ascending the slopes of the moral
landscape may sometimes require suffering. We must occasionally experience some
unpleasantness in order to avoid greater suffering or death. There will be
lessons to be learned from the reality of progress.
Because there are no easy remedies for social inequality,
the great masses of humanity are best kept sedated by pious delusions? This is
condescending, unimaginative and pessimistic. In addition, this pious
uncoupling of moral concern from the reality of human and animal suffering has caused
tremendous harm.
There may be different ways for individuals and communities
to thrive-many peaks on the moral landscape but moral view A is truer than
moral view B if A entails a more accurate understanding of the connections
between human thought/intentions/behaviour and human well-being. We can assert that there are people/ groups of people who
cause tremendous misery are misusing the term “morality”. We simply must stand
somewhere. It is safe to begin with the premise that it is good to avoid
behaving in such a way as to produce the worst possible misery for everyone. Best
solutions will not be zero-sum. Human
cooperation and its attendant moral emotions are fully compatible with
biological evolution ala Reciprocal altruism. Genuine altruism is a special
province of human beings.
Many claim that a scientific foundation for morality would
serve no purpose in any case. Science can in principle help us understand what
we should do and should want. Consciousness is the basis of human values and
morality is not an arbitrary starting point. Morality-based behaviour is borne
of unconscious processes that were shaped by natural selection. We can explain
why people tend to follow certain patterns of thought and behaviour in the name
of ‘morality’. We can think more clearly about the nature of moral truth and
determine which patterns of though and behaviour we should follow in the name
of ‘morality’. We can convince people who are committed to silly and harmful
patterns of thought and behaviour in the name of ‘morality’ to break those
commitments and to live better lives. Are there right and wrong answers to the
question of how to maximise well-being? We need to acquire a deep, consistent
and fully scientific understanding of the human mind. Neuroimaging has shown that fairness drives
reward-related activity in the brain while accepting unfair proposals requires
the regulation of negative emotion. The prefrontal cortex and temporal lobes
are involved in moral cognition. When damage to the MPFC occurs, the ability to
behave appropriately toward others tends to be disrupted. Patients suffering
for MPFC injuries find it easier to sacrifice the one for the many. Psychopathy
is a personality disorder and they do not experience a normal range of anxiety
and fear. Children at risk for psychopathy tend to view moral
dilemmas/questions as morally indistinguishable. If we adopt a more
naturalistic view, we are very unlikely to refer to their condition as ‘evil’. Belief was associated with greater activity in
the MPFC which links factual knowledge with relevant emotional emotional
associations. From the point of view of the brain, facts and moral views are
similar and therefore we cannot say that scientific and ethical judgments have
nothing in common. Every reasoning bias reveals something about the structure
of our minds.
There are quite a few failures of our moral reasoning:
1.
moral for our concern should increase with the
number of lives at stake but we grow more callous as the body count rises as “psychic
numbing” occurs. We care more when a face is put on the data. So one of the
great tasks of civilisation is to create cultural mechanisms that protect us
from the moment-to-moment failures of our ethical intuitions. We must build our
better selves into our laws, tax codes and institutions.
2.
We also have a preference for our intimates and
perhaps moral flourishing is best served by each of us being specially connected
to a subset of humanity. Communal experiments that ignore parents’ special
attachment to their own children do not seem to work very well.
3.
People tend to view sins of commission more
harshly than sins of omission.
4.
We tend to make moral decisions on the basis of
emotion and justify this with post-hoc reasoning.
5.
Our belief in free will arises from our moment
to moment ignorance of specific prior causes.
6.
Our tendency towards taking vengeance answers to
a common psychological need.
7.
People with more active D4 receptor and protein
stathmin take more risks and are more likely to believe in miracles and be sceptical
of science.
8.
We naturally are more risk-averse.
9.
Many of us unknowingly are “common sense
dualists”.
.
Many of us engage in “supersense”- a tendency to
infer hidden forces in the world working for good or for ill.
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