A Simple Theory of Morality

The average person operates on the assumption that the moral sphere is somehow quite separate from the ordinary concerns to which we apply the language of “right” and “wrong”.

We speak of the right way to cook rice and the wrong way to carve a roast, the right way to kick a football and the wrong way to throw a baseball, or of the right time of year to pick blackberries and the wrong time of year to plant sunflowers, and so on. We find these everyday uses of terms like “right” and “wrong” useful to refer to things that are correct or incorrect, reasonably efficient or not very efficient, best proven practices or not likely to produce desirable results.

We use the concepts of right and wrong hundreds or even thousands of times each day to guide our most pedestrian acts, including the literally pedestrian acts of where to place one’s feet when walking, or whether to jaywalk or cross the street at the intersection.

And yet when we apply concepts of right and wrong to questions like when to speak the truth and when to lie, when to steal and when to show generosity, when to offer peace and when to quell with violence, we seem unconsciously to enter another realm, the realm of morality, which is apparently immune to the logic of efficiency, effectiveness, and best practices.

This split, the dividing line, is reflected in moral philosophy unquestioningly. One apparently does not decide moral questions on the basis of what works best – works best for what? Instead we consult the oracles, we ask the Gods for guidance, we attempt to define oughts, and universals, and the greatest good for the greatest number – we search for a morality gene!

Why can’t moral decision-making be as simple as the other daily decisions we make in our waking lives? Is it a matter of weight?

A common argument from religious moralists is that there is no scientific basis for morality. Theologians typically contend that Darwin and evolutionists see no point in existence, see it as just an accident of evolution, and see therefore no underlying principle and no rock on which morality can be built.

Unfortunately there are some prominent evolutionists who agree with them – Dawkins being the prime example.

But of course humanity does have a point, and does operate according to very visible and very profound principles, as does every species on earth. The point of life, as I have argued in an earlier post, is to persist. What living creature is not motivated by the desire to persist and not to perish? What species is not motivated by desire to reproduce and therefore to create the conditions for its genetic materials, the very blueprint of its existence, to persist through the generations?

The over-riding principle of existence is persistence. This is the rock of ages upon which the strong foundations of morality can be built.

In real terms, this principle guides our every action – we seek to persist as individuals as well as to persist as a species. Tellingly, those acts which are interpreted as supporting and advancing the long-term persistence, survival, and flourishing of the human species are those that are regarded by our culture as moral.

A maxim for a scientific theory of morality would therefore be: to act everywhere and always in the best long-term interests of humanity.

Intelligent Design

In my last post I argued that there *is* intention and intelligence in the universe. If that is true, wouldn’t that make the case for “intelligent design”?

The theory of “intelligent design” is a recent form of an old argument for the existence of God. If there is evidence of intelligence in the universe, says this argument, this is proof enough that its source is an intelligent being.

The theory incorporates a related theory, the Teleological Argument, which argues that if there is design, there must be a designer. If there is evidence of a purpose to life, this is proof that its source is an intelligent being, since there is no purpose without intelligence, and no intelligence without purpose.

These arguments recognize the evidence of intelligence and intention in the universe, and ascribe these to a Supreme Being, supernatural by definition. But both these arguments presuppose that evolution by natural selection is an unintelligent, purposeless process, senseless and aimless, random and without logic. Unfortunately, many evolutionary theorists accept this argument, in what one suspects is a gut reaction against theories of supernatural intervention. Overeager to deny the existence of an intelligent designer, they deny the existence of intelligence and design.

But my argument is that intelligence and intention are quite compatible with the theories of evolution and natural selection. The mainspring of intention is the inbred motivation of all species to persist through time. The intelligence of the universe is embodied in each of them and displayed through the learning and ingenuity of their genetic material.

This understanding breaks down the division in traditional monotheism between the Creator and His creations, and places humanity, intelligence, and intention squarely in the natural world. As the ancient Hindu wisdom states, “Thou art that” (Tat Tvam Asi in the Sanskrit) – you are inseparable from the ultimate reality, you are part of it and it is part of you.

It is possible to make a leap from the assertion that intelligence and intention are built into the universe to saying that the Supreme Being may not have human form, but may be just an amorphous guiding force, composed of the universe and all that’s in it. But how does that differ from the naturalist interpretation, that all there is is there in nature to be witnessed and experienced, and there is nothing supra-natural, nothing that is above and beyond nature?

Is this the meeting point of science and religion?

The Mainspring of Intention

Where does intention come from? Why do we know that some things have intentions while others do not?

In an earlier post, I noted that the earliest forms of life were unintentional by-products of chemical interactions under certain environmental conditions. When some elements (such as oxygen, hydrogen, carbon, nitrogen, etc.) come into contact with other elements, they will bind and form complex molecules and chemical compounds. No matter the urgency with which these elements are drawn to one another, they bind as a strictly unintentional by-product of their inherent properties.

I also noted the obvious, that those things that do not persist through time cease to exist. Turn this around, and we can say that those things that exist have the capacity to persist through time.

A living creature is the result of a series of reactions and interactions between groups of chemical compounds and the environment in which they find themselves. Through processes that are under active investigation and research and about which scientific understanding is growing daily, certain types of chemical compounds – amino acids, proteins, RNA, DNA, and other genetic materials developed the capacity to record the sequence of organic chemical reactions that result in a given life form.

We can therefore think of DNA and other genetic materials as a kind of technology for recording a pattern of reactions between chemical elements that result in a life form. This is why DNA is often referred to as the “blueprint of life”.

DNA allows life forms to reproduce – in effect, to make copies of themselves. But because copies are not always perfect, the development of DNA unleashed the grand experiment we call evolution. Over millions of years, an inestimable number of imperfect copies, mutations, and variations of RNA and DNA were produced, and for the most part vanished just as quickly as they arose.

But some of these genetic variations gave the creatures that carried them a greater ability to persist through time. Some of this genetic material recorded patterns that even in simple life forms we can begin to describe as “behaviours”. Some behaviours helped the creatures that displayed them to survive and reproduce. Other behaviours led to extinction.

Over a myriad of generations, our genetic material and our DNA “learned” what organic composition and what behaviours will allow a species of living creature to survive and to persist through time.

Genetic learning results in intention. Understand that this intentionality is hard-wired into the instincts of every living creature. Behaviours that help an individual and its species to flourish become the instinctual intentions of that species. Every creature from the simplest virus on up unconsciously or consciously intends to behave in such a way as to enable its species to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish.

We consider a behaviour to be intelligent insofar as it accomplishes its intentions and enables the creature exhibiting this behaviour to flourish.

Which brings us to a consideration of the concept of “Intelligent Design”. According to this theory, the universe and the creatures within it show signs of having been designed by an intelligent force, which is usually interpreted as an omniscient God. Various authors, among them Wayne Dyer, author of “The Power of Intention”, argue that God’s intention is immanent in every living creature.

If we understand the origin of intentionality as the intention to survive, to persist through time, and to flourish as an individual and as a species, then yes, we can say that there is intelligence and intention immanent in every living creature. But from this there is no logical necessity to impute the existence of a superior being, still less a personal God. The intelligence and intention inherent in the universe is a logically necessary result of the march of time.

This is the “logos” of which Heraclitus wrote as the fundamental organizing principle, the logic of the universe. This is that same Logos we read of in the bible: “In the beginning was the logos [usually translated from the Greek λóγος as “the word”], and the logos was with God and the logos was God.”

One of my goals for this blog is to map basic religious concepts to natural phenomena, to show that religious symbology is more than just fanciful mythology, but that is a pointer to and a metaphor for characteristics of the real world.

In the language of religion, the logos is the Holy Spirit. It is the immanence of God in nature. And Christ is “the logos made flesh”.

Knowledge and Experience

I’ve argued in an earlier post that knowledge is information that has a use-value. The importance of truth to knowledge is whether that knowledge is reasonably reliable – in which case it can be described as true.

What is the source of knowledge?

Traditionally, there are several sources:

• Authority
• Revelation
• Intuition
• Personal experience
• Inductive reasoning
• Deductive reasoning
• Instinct
• Science

Knowledge by Authority

Authority is knowledge passed down from an individual or institution. This sort of knowledge is best used as a sort of rule of thumb for decision-making in areas in which the decision-maker has no direct experience or other heuristics to draw upon.

The problem with authority as a source of knowledge is that it may be unreliable. Authorities have their own agendas to promote, and may not always have based their own authority upon solid ground.

The most reliable authorities have based their knowledge on their own experience or the experience of the institutions they represent. There is nothing wrong with respecting authority if that authority is deserved, especially if that authority has provided valuable and reliable knowledge in the past.

We could not possibly be expected to know the law, medicine, physics, plumbing, or any other area of expertise without extensive training and personal experience. Therefore it is reasonable to respect an opinion in these areas from an accredited practitioner as a guide to correct action.

It goes without saying, however, that some forms of authority cloak vested interests, and may therefore be valid only insofar as they support those interests. Religious authority, corporate authority, or political authority are especially suspect, since they may offer only partial truths while ignoring most of what might undermine their agenda.

My point here is only that knowledge by authority is based on experience – not personal experience, but the experience of the authority themselves.

Knowledge by Revelation

One common meaning of revelation is truth “revealed” by the divine. Typically this truth is revealed to an individual.

There is no doubt that an individual can achieve a truth through a sudden epiphany or blinding insight. Whether this insight is valid remains to be proven in practice, and whether or not it is of divine origin may never be provable.

Revelation is an intensely subjective experience and almost by definition is neither repeatable nor verifiable. This makes it a rather unreliable guide to action and a weak base of knowledge.

Knowledge by Intuition

Intuition is often regarded as “gut sense”, an insight gained on a non-intellectual level for which there appears to be no rational justification. But as Malcolm Gladwell’s book Blink made clear, intuition is in fact a very rapid calculation made on an unconscious level, but based on genuine observation and often very sound mental and emotional reasoning.

One may feel as if one knows something by intuition alone, based on nothing more than a vague “feeling”, but dig a little deeper and intuition proves itself to be a device for rapid pattern recognition at a pace faster than can the mind can follow.

All pattern recognition is based on past experience of that pattern. If we take Jeff Hawkins’ work On Intelligence, all intelligence is not more than the ability to predict based on pattern recognition. In other words, all intelligence is based on experience.

Knowledge by Personal Experience

Knowledge by personal experience is obviously valid if it works for you. But it goes without saying that just because something works for you doesn’t mean it will work for others, and just because it works for you doesn’t mean that it is the best way to do things. Knowledge by personal experience is most valuable if confirmed by the experience of others.

Knowledge by Inductive or Deductive Reasoning

Inductive reasoning is the process of generalizing based on specifics. For example, every duck I have ever seen can swim; I can therefore induce that all ducks can swim. Deductive reasoning moves from the general to the specific. For example, I know that all beetles are insects and therefore by definition they have six legs. Therefore I can assume that all beetles in Uruguay have six legs, even though I have never been to Uruguay.

Both types of knowledge are obviously based on experience.

Knowledge by Instinct

Instinct is not typically seen as a form of knowledge, but as I have argued in an earlier post, what we call instinct is the summary of the experience of the previous generations of our species, as recorded in our genetic materials.

Knowledge by Science

Science is knowledge obtained through the scientific method. The scientific method is nothing more than the systematic and thorough testing of a hypothesis through experience.

The word “experiment” shares the same root as the word “experience” – the Latin “ex”, meaning “out of”, and “peritus”, meaning “testing”. Experience is knowledge gained through repeated trial.

An experiment is an attempt to create or recreate a certain type of experience through systematic observation and analysis. The purpose of the scientific method is to discover or confirm a repeatable and verifiable outcome of a set of identifiable conditions.

The scientific method, therefore can be regarded as nothing more than the systematic confirmation of experience.

Intentionality

Just finished an excellent book called The Botany of Desire, by Michael Pollan.

The book discusses the history of man’s relationship with four plant species: the potato, the tulip, the apple, and marijuana. But it uses this history to make some important points about evolution and co-evolution, natural and artificial selection, and even to bring in a few interesting points about a philosophical buzzword, intentionality.

Intentionality is the quality of thought sometimes referred to as its “aboutness”. Thought is always “about” something. What it is about is referred to as the intentional object.

Perhaps the most famous thought experiment in psychology and philosophy is John Searle’s Chinese Room experiment, intended to show that computers cannot show true artificial intelligence, because whatever they do, they don’t truly understand what it is they’re doing. Even if we were capable of creating a computer that could read Chinese and translate it perfectly to English, we could never argue that the computer had any real intelligence, because it never actually understands Chinese.

The thrust of the argument is that the mind is not a computer, and that intelligence is more than just the ability to follow coded instructions.

I think Searle is both right and wrong, and this is why the argument over the Chinese Room experiment has such life. I think the human brain and indeed the entire natural world operates much as a computer does, although a computer is at this stage of its development reflecting that reality only in a very primitive way.

But where Searle gets it right is in reminding us that no matter how sophisticated the computer, it never really *gets* it, because it’s missing one ingredient; intentionality.

So what is intentionality? I think Searle would agree that when human beings cultivated the apple and other agricultural products to their current form, they demonstrated intentionality. Certainly they proceeded with intention, and armed themselves with belief and desire.

But Pollan’s book makes the interesting point, not new, that the apple, the potato, the tulip, and narcotics and medicinal plants such as marijuana, have themselves contributed to the making of the human species as it walks the earth today. Can we say that they proceeded with intentionality? Obviously the individual apple or grape on the vine does not contain enough brain power to make decisions or hold beliefs, but as a species-being, does the capital-A Apple species proceed with anything we might describe as intentionality?

Now let’s throw another perspective into the mix – Wayne Dyer, and his book and audio series, "The Power of Intention".

Dyer is a well-known speaker on public broadcasting networks in the U.S. He seems to be a self-help speaker of a liberal bent (liberal in the American sense of politically centrist but socially aware) and is tolerable to listen to, even though he will drift into semi-religious mysticism from time to time – “The Power of Intention” being a prime example.

Dyer argues that everything in the world is filled with “intention” – a word he leaves sufficiently ambiguous to be interpreted as either God’s will, or perhaps just the feeling many folks have that “everything happens for a reason.”

But one does get the feeling listening to Dyer that he is onto something, if he only had the words to express it properly. And what I think he is on to is this poorly understood force that causes the apple to do what it does, and the human being to do what *it* does with the apple.

Whether one calls it “intention” or “intentionality”, there is a motive force behind life that just is missing from an inorganic piece of machinery like a computer. A human being is alive with intention, and intention, whether conscious or unconscious, is what defines it as being alive. This is perhaps why Sartre considered intentionality to be just another word for consciousness.

Which brings me back to the wellspring of life, as touched upon in an earlier post – all life is motivated by the intention to persist through time, and all activity is ultimately traceable to this eternal spring.

By this definition, we can agree with Dyer that all organisms, all matter, all things known and knowable, are imbued with intention and intentionality.

One of the things that distinguishes humanity as a species is that it is not only intentional, it is aware of and in a process of ongoing discovery of its own intentionality – and indeed that of the universe we live in.

Do animals have souls?

I’m reading a book by Douglas Hofstadter called “I am a Strange Loop.” The book shows a lot of promise and I can use some of the concepts in the book as a jumping-off point for discussion.

Hofstadter has a chatty, informal style which I can forgive him for because his points are clearer for the use of it. But sometimes the reader feels as if personal information is getting in the way of the ideas…

In Chapter 1, Hofstadter explains some of his rationale for vegetarianism, and it’s worth exploring some of the points he makes. An important concept for Hofstadter is the “soul”, although he is unable (or at least unwilling) in the first chapter to provide a definition of what the soul is.

Citing the likeness between mammals and human beings, he considers it immoral to kill and eat higher forms of life. He contends that all mammals have souls, and then touches on the question of where to draw the line between higher forms of life and lower forms. Why is it OK to slap a mosquito, but not OK to kill a fellow human being?

The answer for Hofstadter is that there are higher and lower levels of “soul”, just as there are higher and lower levels of consciousness.

Let me return to a point I believe I made earlier in this blog series – in my view, humans beings can be seen as a sort of recording device. What we are recording is experience. What experience is is a record of the interaction between the being and reality, between the internal and the external world.

One way we can view “soul” therefore is as a record of experience. Some beings keep only a very short record of their experience – these would fall into Hofstadter’s category of creatures with small souls. Others keep a vast and extensive record, such as human beings.

Hofstadter specifically brings up the issue of the fetus as a creature with only a small soul, suggesting to me that whether he has consciously made the connection or not, Hofstadter is implying that the degree of soul a being possesses is a factor of the degree of experience it has recorded or is capable of recording.

I’ve made the point in earlier entries that our experience is recorded in our memories, but DNA and other genetic material is a form of very long-term memory, storing the experience of our millions of generations of ancestors. The only sense in which the soul is immortal is that the experience it records is capable of being transmitted to subsequent generations.

The animals, plants, and primitive life-forms that Hofstadter characterizes as being “small of soul” are those animals whose experience is recorded primarily in their DNA and genetic material. Animals such as human beings, dogs, and so on that he characterizes as being larger of soul are creatures whose individual life experiences form as large a part of their souls as the species-experience recorded in their DNA.

When we speak of the soul of a mosquito, we are referring to the semi-automatic behaviour patterns the species has learned over countless millions of generations. Animals such as mosquitoes show little individual deviation in behaviour and there is little evidence that they are capable of individual learning, or even that such learning would help them reproduce more efficiently.

When we speak of the soul of a human being, we are surely referring to the special life experiences that have shaped the consciousness of that person. When we speak of the soul of a city or the soul of a nation, we are speaking of the collective experience as recorded in the brains of the citizens of that city or nation. When we speak of the Soul of Humanity, we are referring more to the inherited learning and behaviour patterns of our species.

One of the goals of this blog is to discover plausible, rational definitions of religious metaphors, not in order to dismiss them but to decode them.

Prayer

As I discussed in my previous post, prayer is not for the benefit of the person being prayed for. Science has proven that prayer has no effect on the person being prayed for. Prayer is really for the benefit of the person doing the praying, and that’s why it persists. Prayer is a comfort, based on the illusion that in the face of this cold and pitiless universe, this vale of tears, one has some sort of recourse. One can plead for forgiveness, for redemption, for justice, would somebody give me a break here!

Interesting that the religious, who tend to argue that God is all-powerful and His motives are unknowable, should cultivate the belief that God can be swayed by fervent prayer, ideally by many people praying for the same outcome at the same time. Even more absurd, that God can be swayed by his Son tugging at his cape…

But to reiterate, one of my goals in this blog is to examine the human motivations for religious behaviours. I think we will find, as with prayer, that there’s a fairly sensible basis for every religious belief – although it’s rarely the one given by the religious themselves… And while religious beliefs appear to many to be quite irrational because they are driven by the emotions rather than the intellect, I think we’ll also find that emotion and instinct has its own rationale and its own intelligence.

I think we’ll also find that the power of religious myth is that it points to realities that science appears as yet to be only dimly aware of…