Are we born with a sense of morality?

[amirm]

While these psychologists have interesting videos, they, like many types of researchers, often make conclusions that have nothing to do with their observations or experimental results.

So is the peer review process for publication in their industry (e.g. Psychological Science, Nature, Cognition, etc) is low enough that they won't catch experimenter bias as you proposed there?

 

[GaryProtein]

YES. That is unfortunately the case with many publications. They all have some bias. Researchers are under pressure to publish. By the time most researchers get to the level of primary author, they have sufficient clout and connections to get published almost regardless of the quality of their papers. Studies in psychology or other soft sciences are much more suspect than the hard sciences B,C,P,M which have hard numerical data.

 

[Keith_W]

YES. That is unfortunately the case with many publications. Researchers are under pressure to publish. By the time most researchers get to the level of primary author, they have sufficient clout and connections to get published almost regardless of the quality of their papers. Studies in psychology or other soft sciences are much more suspect than the hard sciences B,C,P,M which have hard numerical data.

I will back Gary up on this and share a little story Many years ago, when I was a medical student, I was given a Psychiatry journal article to read and discuss for our tutorial group. The paper was about the prevalence of depression in cancer patients. They found 1500 patients in a cancer registry and rang them all up and asked if they wanted to take part in a screening questionnaire to test if they have depression. About 700 said agreed to participate. Then if the screening questionnaire showed a high likelihood of depression, they were invited to come in for a formal interview to look for depression. About 300 were invited, of which 200 showed up. In this 200, they diagnosed depression in about 120 (i.e. 60%).

The conclusion for the study was - "we found a very high prevalence of depression in patients with cancer (i.e 20% of everybody screened), three times higher than the general population. We recommend more resources directed towards treating depression in patients with cancer."

So, what's the problem with this paper? What about the 800 people who declined to participate in the telephone screening? They were using as the denominator, the 700 who agreed to be screened. Any chance that this 700 might be self-selecting? Did the paper even mention that as a source of bias in the study? I went on to savage the paper and accuse the author of bad scholarship when I received a sharp kick to my shin from my girlfriend. I failed to read the name of the author of the paper ... who was the Professor sitting at the foot of the table, fixing me with a dirty glare!

I somehow scraped a pass for psychiatry despite that!

I agree - all papers in the soft sciences should be read very carefully to see how good the evidence is.

 

[GaryProtein]

Keith, that story is precious.

 

[amirm]

Thanks guys. Good to know.

 

[Mosin]

"Everything good is the transmutation of something evil; every god has a devil for a father."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

Great topic. I'm taking action on the over/under for when this thread goes into "lockdown"

...over the cliff. BEEP, BEEP cries the roadrunner as Wylie E. Coyote plunges towards the rocks.

I see that the education and enlightened experiences of two members has triggered a sense of good vs. evil in the room!




So, the curious case of Win attempting to argue with Dr. Keith and the even more formidable Friedrich Nietzsche has begun. I'm reminded of the Chinese curse, "May your life be interesting."

More than happy to entertain you, Win Perhaps we could start by defining what is "good" and what is "evil", before we go on to argue whether such things are inherent or not. For example, do you believe in an absolute morality, or do you believe that morality is derived?

It is absolute, but it is not to be confused within the confines of the semantics of language. As an example, the words "savagery" and "brutality" should not by necessity be associated with evil because some things, like those words, are perspective dependent. Still, there is an absolute good, and there is absolute evil. Neither are learned; they are distinct entities unto themselves.

 

[GaryProtein]

"Everything good is the transmutation of something evil; every god has a devil for a father."
-Friedrich Nietzsche

I have always liked Neitzsche. (I mean that in earnest.)

 

[Keith_W]

Still, there is an absolute good, and there is absolute evil. Neither are learned; they are distinct entities unto themselves.

Now we are getting somewhere What is the source of absolute good and absolute evil? Many people would say "God". I don't have a problem if you say this, as long as this doesn't turn into a debate about the existence of God, which is a completely separate debate altogether (and probably banned under WBF's TOS). Using your framework of absolute good and evil, how is it possible to judge certain acts - say, homosexuality or abortion - to be good or evil?

 

[Mosin]

I have always liked Neitzsche. (I mean that in earnest.)

I like a lot of what he said, but whenever I read him, I am reminded of Ludwig Wittgenstein who believed that language trips people up. In Neitzsche's case, I believe he fell down by buying into his own words more than his true instincts at times. In other words, the guy became so embedded in his own persona that it threw him off course. If you deal with the infinite too much, you can lose touch with the finite, and that's what he did...at least I think so.

Now we are getting somewhere What is the source of absolute good and absolute evil?...

If a thing is an entity, and it is absolute, does it need a source?

...Using your framework of absolute good and evil, how is it possible to judge certain acts - say, homosexuality or abortion - to be good or evil?

I would say the litmus test for this is whether either of those acts limit or prohibit the creativity or free thought, or exercise thereof, of another person. If the litmus paper turns red, the act is evil.




Keith,
In order to save time, I think you should know that you are not dealing with a Catholic, Jew, Muslim or Baptist here. Nor, are you dealing with an avowed atheist.

 

[GaryProtein]

Let's try this:

Regarding absolute good and evil, assume you had survived a plane crash in the Andes in the dead of winter, and one person was disruptive, destructive, and not working towards the survival of the group, making him a liability for maintaining the well being of the other survivors, would killing him be the moral thing to do?

Would that be murder or would the killing be more like slaughtering an animal for food?


Let's keep god completely out of this. No god, no spirit, no religion, no heaven, no hell.


I have always felt being moral was living life according to John Lennon's "Imagine."

 

[jazdoc]

A few observations regarding this thread...

1) I just read the book "Thinking Fast and Slow" and struck by how the child lab experiments dovetail with the author's observations.
2) Just watching the video, I am very concerned that the babies could be influenced by subtle cues from the adults (when available)...
3) Richard Dawkins and the other atheists would argue that this is a result of adaptive evolutionary biology whilst others would argue that good and evil and true rights pre-exist time (and are not man made inventions). This is offers interesting insights for how one approaches life.

 

[Mosin]

...This is offers interesting insights for how one approaches life.

Indeed it does.

...Richard Dawkins and the other atheists would argue that this is a result of adaptive evolutionary biology whilst others would argue that good and evil and true rights pre-exist time (and are not man made inventions)...

That begs some questions...

Which approach has the greater resolve?
Which supports lines that cannot be crossed?
Neither?
Both?

(Don't worry, Keith. I can multitask.)

 

[Keith_W]

If a thing is an entity, and it is absolute, does it need a source?

If you are going to say that such a thing as absolute morality exists, then it needs to be grounded in something. You are either a deontologist or a theist. Given that you have said that you are not religious, one would guess that you are a deontologist?

I would say the litmus test for this is whether either of those acts limit or prohibit the creativity or free thought, or exercise thereof, of another person. If the litmus paper turns red, the act is evil.

What if I opened a can of worms and told you that free will is an illusion? There are actually scientific grounds for saying this. Toxoplasma is a parasite found in the feces of cats. If a mouse were to ingest this parasite, it would infect the brain and cause the mouse to behave differently. It would actually seek cats. The cat would kill and eat the mouse, and the life cycle of Toxoplasma would continue.

In a similar way, Cordyceps (watch the video, highly recommended) is a fungus that invades the brain of insects. Insects then climb up the highest leaf they find, bite down on the leaf, and die. The fungus then germinates and sprouts out of the insect's body, where it can go on to infect other insects.

There are a number of brain infections (encephalitis) in humans that cause change in behaviour. For example, HIV and Herpes encephalitis causes psychosis and depression and is usually mistakenly referred to psychiatrists when what they really need is a lumbar puncture and some antivirals.

But there are more subtle cases as well, which do not involve infection. Suppose I were to introduce you to an individual who was rather disinhibited. He tends to say or act out the first thing that enters his mind with seemingly no thought for the social consequences. If he were to see an attractive woman, he would unzip his pants and show her his erect penis; or worse, rape her. He likes little boys and has a tendency to hang outside the school and try to entice them into his car with sweets, where he would drive them to a remote location and have his way with them.

You would think such a sociopathic individual is a menace to society, and as an evil individual he should be punished? Suppose I were to then tell you that he has had a brain injury that damaged his orbitofrontal cortex, and prior to this injury he was a responsible and loving father, who held a steady job as an accountant. Would you think differently of this individual now? Suppose he has not had a brain injury, but his personality suddenly changed after a brief illness in which the doctors found nothing wrong. After he is executed for a rape-murder, his brain is preserved for science. 100 years later, new medical technology discovered that he had some kind of viral encephalitis which caused his behaviour to change. What would you think then?

There are even less dramatic examples. Human behaviour has been documented to change depending on the physiological state of your body. Do you think you can resist that fried chicken? Not if you are in a leptin deprivation state. Are you aggressive and have a tendency to beat people up? Perhaps your testosterone levels might be high. We are, in fact, prisoner to our hormones and multiple other influences that are yet to be documented. Or perhaps it might be fair to say, we are a product of our neurochemistry.

jazdoc I have met and spoken to Richard Dawkins a couple of times and he expressly does not believe that we should base our morals on evolutionary biology. Rather, he agrees with Peter Singer and Sam Harris about a secular (i.e man-made) basis of morality. In fact, Sam Harris talks about scientific morality. A little too much to type on a forum post - if you are interested, read his book.