J31 - Morality as a Rational, Social Phenomenon

A topic like morality is one which cannot be done justice in a single journal, or a single essay, or a single thesis, or even a single book. Indeed, it is a subject which many of the great minds in our history have dedicated their lives to studying and discussing. My student, Alex Gugie, has himself written over 75,000 words on the subject this year, and I would encourage any reader to visit his website and read his thoughts on the matter. Having exerted no small amount of influence on his project, I can say that I endorse much of what he says there. However, I feel that I must comment, extensively, on morality myself, as it connects so many of the topics in EMC2 this year, and is, in fact, a critically important aspect of being human. And, as always, I have a somewhat unique perspective on the issue, in light of my wider theory of being human. 

With a topic as vast as this, I’m uncertain where I should begin. Therefore, I’ll quite arbitrarily start by examining the idea that human morality is a product of evolution. Charles Darwin, the father of the theory of evolution, was a proponent of the idea that morality was a byproduct of evolution, and that our ability to be moral creatures was what really separated us from our closest evolutionary relatives. There is much support for this idea, that morality has evolved. Indeed, we can justify many of the behaviors that we label as moral as behavior which would have aided in our struggle for survival throughout our species’ history, and we see many of these same behaviors in other animals, too. Altruism, doing good for others, is not a trait unique to human beings; many creatures exchange favors with each other. And there is an evolutionary advantage to doing good for others: for one thing, it can be good to be owed a favor, and for another it can be a sign of your own fitness that you’re capable of helping another. Similarly, evolution can explain why human beings, and other creatures, are more concerned with the fate of their close kin than with strangers, since close kin are more likely to carry the acting individual’s genes, and therefore their survival will more likely lead to the survival of those genes. Indeed, there are many ways in which altruistic and “moral” behavior would have been an evolutionary advantage throughout our history. Finally, there are many altruistic and “moral” behaviors that appear among all human cultures, seemingly unexplained. The Trolley Problem in philosophy, for example, is often seen as being easily answered, but ethicists have debated for generations the question of why that natural answer is or is not the right one. On the basis of the existence of these instinctual, advantageous behaviors, many modern theorists, Alex among them, therefore believe that evolution has made us moral.

There is much to be said, however, against that conclusion. The whole argument, the application of the evidence in support of the premise, is abysmally weak. First, it assumes, without justification, what behavior is moral. To say that humans are naturally moral because we are naturally altruistic is to beg the question of whether altruistic behavior is truly moral. It is true that altruism is generally regarded as moral behavior in our society. Why this is so, however, requires an explicated and defendable theory of morality by which to label altruistic behavior as moral. It may be that these theorists believe that evolution has designed us to instinctively know what is moral, and indeed has designed us to be moral, and therefore we can know that altruism is good and moral because, after all, evolution has driven us to be moral and to act altruistically. But surely the circularity in this argument is apparent; to escape it, one is reduced to saying that we act how we act, and that nature itself has stamped natural human behavior with the label of “moral.” Just because most people choose the same course of action when confronted with the Trolley Problem does not mean that their response is the correct or moral one.

But this theory is even more problematic because there are many behaviors which we consider to be moral which are not natural to us, and many behaviors that come naturally to us which we believe would be immoral. Doing “the right thing” often requires an internal struggle against our natural impulses. As Diderot said, “There is no moral precept that does not have something inconvenient about it.” So even if some moral behaviors are made easier by our evolution-shaped biology, we cannot attribute our entire conception of morality to evolution. Indeed, if evolution had truly made us moral, if how we acted naturally was how we should act morally, then there would be no need to consider the problem of morality, or for all those great thinkers mentioned above to dedicate their lives to the problem. In fact, that we’ve had all of these thinkers, and that each of us personally attempt to solve these problems, and that we all often come to different answers, is evidence that morality is not a product of evolution, but of the human mind. If we were all naturally moral, as human beings, there would be no need for debate over which behaviors were moral, even if perhaps we didn’t always want to conform to them. 

[I am aware of the literature speaking to the evolution of culture and its influence on morality. Given the forum here, I will not address it properly, but meme theory is just as, if not more, susceptible to my criticisms, especially my last.]

Finally, the theory that evolution has shaped us into moral creatures rests upon a fundamental misunderstanding of evolution. Evolution is a process, a passive process. It has no agency. It cannot shape us, make us, design us, mold us, push us, do anything to us. Evolution just happens. The confusion here is understandable, as the language used to teach evolution, and indeed to talk about the process generally, suggests its agency. The most fit creatures are “selected,” we are told, to pass on their genes and shape the next generation of the species. The phrase “natural selection” suggests that nature is selecting some advantageous trait for the species to possess. But, like the market, nature has no agency of its own. It does not select anything. Evolution, in a nutshell, is what happens when the individual members of the species who are not sufficiently adapted to their environment die before they reproduce. That’s all. Every single living organism is engaged in an epic struggle, from the moment of its birth, to survive the conditions of its environment. Some of them do not survive, and their genes do not get passed on to the next generation. The fittest do survive, and thus pass on their genes. This process repeats itself endlessly, and the process as a whole, when looked at in retrospect a couple hundred million years down the road, reveals a seemingly systematic series of changes in a species, which we call evolution. 

There are two important aspects to understand about this more realistic presentation of the theory of evolution. First, the trait being passed on must precede the passing on. That is, nature must have something to select. The fittest survive because they already have the trait which is advantageous in their environment. They may have gained this trait from their ancestors, but their ancestors had to acquire the trait (through mutation or specialized expression of certain genes) before it could be passed on. Therefore, evolution has not made us anything, has not truly chosen any trait for us to have. All that happened is that some creature had some trait, and this trait got passed on. Morality, therefore, even if it is evolutionary, could not have been produced by the evolutionary process. And since morality proper is a uniquely human phenomenon, and humans act with purpose, there must have been a reason for humans to begin acting morally before natural selection could find the moral members of the species to be the fittest for the environment. The idea of morality, therefore, is not a product of evolution, and therefore evolution did not make us moral. Morality had to be invented before it could be passed on. Second, there should be no conflation between traits which aided in our survival in certain environments and traits which are good and moral. In fact, there’s no guarantee that a certain trait we possess is even advantageous; perhaps the members of the species which possessed the trait were independently fittest and this other trait just happened to be passed along. Furthermore, we should not fall prey to the Whig theory of history and presume that every evolutionary change has been an improvement. We are always just trying to survive in our environment. No one acts a certain way because they believe that the action is “evolutionary advantageous.” No, people act as they do because they believe that the action will help them survive. This means that a species isn’t building towards something greater. The species that exist today are no better or worse than the species that existed millions of years ago. We’re all just trying to survive in, or adapt to, the environment we currently find ourselves in. And that environment could change, gradually or rapidly, and the fittest members of a species could suddenly lose that status. 

So evolution did not make us what we are. The fact that our ancestors managed to survive their environments and reproduced is what resulted in us being like they were. But there is nothing inherently good about that; it just is. We are what we are because our ancestors were what they were. That doesn’t make any of us moral. So, I reject the proposition that morality is somehow an evolutionary concept. 

As mentioned above, morality had to exist before it could be passed on. And, also mentioned above, morality is unique to human beings. But what is it that makes man different? Ah, yes. Reason. Man is the rational animal. Morality, therefore, must be a product of reason, and therefore discernible through reasoning. [I will admit that evolution has left us moral, but only insofar as evolution has left us rational.]

Reason, which is man’s great tool in his struggle against scarcity, allows man to always act purposefully, in what he believes to be his best interests. If reason has generated a system of morality, therefore, it seems sensible to conclude that the purpose of morality is to aid man is his quest to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity, to always act purposefully to attain what he believes to be in his best interests. As we have discussed in a great many journals, man’s faculty of reason is fully developed only in society. Additionally, it is society which has allowed man to do as much as he has in reshaping the world to fit his own image. Man, therefore, is a social creature just as much as he is a rational animal. They are one and the same. Therefore, the existence of society, which enables each individual man to fully develop his great tool of reason and also gives rise to an extensive division of labor which results in increased productivity for all, is in man’s best interests. It is society which has allowed man to not just survive, but to conquer nature and transform the world. However, as discussed in my journal on Society and Ideology, society is a rational phenomenon but not a designed one. Just like individuals don’t act as they do because they want evolution to pick their genes, individuals don’t act as they do because they want to sustain society. The concepts of evolutionary heritage and human society are just two big and alien for them to enter regularly into the calculus of acting man’s decision-making. Ignorance of the long-term consequences of one’s individual actions on the social fabric can lead men to inadvertently damage society by disregarding seemingly meaningless social norms. To combat this, I explained, society gives rise to other institutions, beyond the basic market economy at its foundation, to encourage social life. Law, education, and family all develop alongside society and serve to strengthen and sustain the social structure of humanity. Morality, I contend, is one of these institutions. It is an idea of how people should act, and it exists as a formal discipline so that human actions can be considered in light of their long-term consequences on the social structure and judged as either good or bad. By going through this process academically, general principles can be distilled which serve as a basic check on the behavior of individuals living in society. These individuals may not understand exactly why they should refrain from killing and stealing and lying, having not personally followed the long chains of reasoning behind the prohibition, but they know that the prohibited actions are “immoral,” and that they should seek to be moral. Therefore, they align their actions with the interests of society. 

Moral action, therefore, is action which sustains society. Immoral action is action which endangers society. Note that I am not necessarily talking about actions affecting other people. We certainly associate the idea of morality with our relationships with other people, but this is a result of the social nature of morality, not necessarily because morality is about other people. Moral action may be action that hurts other people, so long as it helps sustain society. Closing a factory, for example, is seen by many as an immoral action, as it suddenly thrusts a great number of workers into joblessness. But if the factory was suffering severe losses, this indicates that the factory’s operation was diverting resources that were more needed in other lines of production, and this factory’s closure means that society is better serving its purpose of maximizing wealth for all. The pursuit of profit, therefore, which is a hallmark of a capitalist society and is ruthlessly condemned by the critics of capitalism, is actually a moral principle which furthers the development and flourishing of human society. 

Society is what sets us apart from other creatures. Yes, reason sets us apart, but we are rational because we are social. What has allowed us to advance and create as no other species in the history of the world is our ability to cooperate with one another in a complex division of labor. Indeed, in his book A Natural History of Morality, Michael Tomasello says that while the great apes are about as intelligent as homo sapiens in physical tasks, they are vastly behind us when it comes to social tasks. That is, chimpanzees can build tools and understand language and mimic behavior and remember which cup hides food, but they do not cooperate with each other to solve tasks like humans do. This is what distinguishes human beings, our social nature, our "social intelligence." Tomasello actually says that the idea of “social intelligence” is something of an understatement, that we are actually “ultra social” and tend to cooperate with each other even on tasks where cooperation is unnecessary. This is because, Tomasello explains, we have come to think of ourselves as members of a larger group working towards one task, a phenomenon he terms “shared intentionality.” This shared intentionality, this sense that we belong to a group, a society, is the true cognitive difference between us and apes, he says.

I bring up Tomasello’s book because he raises a very interesting point in it. He compared the cognitive abilities of apes to the cognitive ability of children in a great many studies as he developed his understanding of the differences between homo sapiens and our closest relatives. In one of the chapters, he notes that the idea of morality is often broken down into two parts: the idea of sympathy, or concern for others, and fairness, or a concern that people get what they deserve. Tomasello notes that chimps have sympathy for each other, but that they lack a concern for fairness. And then, almost as a side note, he says that in these experiments, when the children worked together to obtain food, they would split the food evenly between them, but if the children were randomly given different amounts of food, they generally did not spread the food evenly between them. It seems that the experiments suggest that children believe it is fair to share a reward when they worked together to obtain it, but only in that context of collaboration. If a child did not contribute to the acquisition of the reward, then he or she did not deserve to share in it. I think this throw-away observation is extremely significant because it suggests that morality is directly tied to the idea of cooperation (implying shared effort in the completion of a task). Morality involves considerations of fairness, not just the arousal of sympathies.

Now, what generates society among human beings and not among lesser species? And what do I mean by society? Because the great apes and other species of humans throughout history have had families and bands and tribes that they lived in. But I’m talking about a more extensive society, one based on trade, rather than kinship. What leads to the development of society is the higher productivity of the division of labor, and the ability to recognize this fact. This recognition of the benefits of the division of labor, this is unique to homo sapiens and it is what has allowed us to create a society where no other species has. Many creatures engage in the swapping of favors and understand reciprocity (“scratch my back now and I’ll scratch yours later”). But to simultaneous swap two different objects for each other is a uniquely human phenomenon. And this idea of trade leads to the idea of specialization, which is the realization of the division of labor and its concomitant benefits in terms of productivity. 

Exchange is the fundamental social relation, and the market is the foundation of society. Again, society exists because it is man’s tool in his quest to survive and thrive in the world of scarcity in which he lives. Recognition of the benefits of society makes society possible. As Mises has said, “The greater productivity of work under the division of labor is a unifying influence. It leads men to regard each other as comrades in a joint struggle for welfare, rather than as competitors in a struggle for existence. It makes friends out of enemies, peace out of war, society out of individuals.” Peace. The idea of working together to create more for everyone, rather than fighting each other to get more for yourself, is the heart of society. Recognition of the higher productivity of the division of labor leads to the idea of peaceful cooperation, and this peaceful cooperation gives rise to human society with all its glory. This idea of peace is what allowed individual bands of homo sapiens to work together and build something greater. No other ape, and no other species of human, ever developed a society that extended beyond their family or core group. And this is because no other group of apes or other species of human could interact peacefully with other groups. And this is because none of these other groups could recognize the benefit of working with others. As Matt Ridley remarks in The Rational Optimist, “Famously, no other species of ape can encounter strangers without trying to kill them, and the instinct still lurks in the human breast. But by 82,000 years ago, human beings had overcome this problem sufficiently to be able to pass Nassarius shells hand to hand 125 miles inland. This is in striking contrast to the Neanderthals, whose stone tools were virtually always made from raw material available within an hour’s walk of where the tool was used.” Neanderthals were bigger than us, stronger than us, and probably had bigger brains than us. But the idea of trade was foreign to them, and without trade they were doomed to economic, technological, and cultural stagnation.

Society defines human beings. It allows us to be fully human, and it allows as to transform the world into a version that suits us better. Human action tends naturally towards the creation of society, in that we can recognize the benefits of the division of labor. However, the maintenance and growth of society is no sure thing, product of human will and action as it is, and therefore there needs to be guidelines for how a member of society should act within one, such that the society can be maintained and grow. These guidelines are what we call moral truths, or moral codes, and moral action is action which is conformity with these codes. I will not attempt to elucidate what a proper moral code would fully look like here, for that is not the purpose of this journal. But I do want to set forth two fundamental principles that must be embodied by such a code. First, the moral code must embody the peace principle. Society exists because men can cooperate with one another, and men can cooperate with one another only where there is a level of peace among them and one can trust that they will not be killed or otherwise harmed by his association with others. Almost all moral codes do hold relatively fast to this idea of peace among men. Again, morality is recognized as a social, or relational, concept. Many moral codes, therefore, include prohibitions against murder, theft, adultery, rape, lying, etc. These are all aggressive actions that disturb the peace and therefore lead to the decline of society. But there is a second principle that often goes missed in moral codes, and that is the market principle. In fact, even many of the greatest champions of the market economy have felt the need to make more philosophical appeals to justify their insistence that anti-market behavior is coincidentally immoral (see, for example, Rothbard's The Ethics of Liberty). But the truth is radically simple: society exists because of the higher productivity of the division of labor. If the benefits of the division of labor cannot be realized because of interference with the market system, then there is no reason for society to continue existing, as burdensome as it is for the individual, and therefore it will disintegrate. Therefore, hindering the operation of the market economy may be viewed as immoral behavior, as it tends to lead to the destruction of society.

Of course, this begs the question of whether or not society should be preserved. I can imagine, for instance, presenting this argument to some socialist-type and receiving the response that a society that creates such injustices as capitalism shouldn’t exist anyway. And this is a fair enough point, I suppose. But there is no real alternative, as I’ve demonstrated here and elsewhere, notably my first SDA. Society is based on the market. No market, no society. And a life without society would lead not only to the decline of man’s rational faculties, but to a decline in living standards for all and death for most. Society can sustain the population it does at the living standard it does because of the higher productivity of the division of labor and the innovation generated by competition and trade within a market economy. Society gives us the resources we need to live the lives we want to live. That’s why we created it. Society enables us to attain so many more ends, ends that wouldn’t even be conceivable to isolated man, than we could attain without it. So, even though moral, social behavior doesn’t always seem to come naturally to us, and always seems to be an inconvenience, we all try our best to comply because we believe it is the right thing to do, for whatever reason works for us, but ultimately because this behavior, while requiring some short term sacrifices, ultimately serves to sustain the society which has generated so much wealth and pleasure and long-term benefits for us to enjoy. There is no real standard for saying that (capitalist) society is better than isolated struggle, except the idea that human life and welfare is a good thing. So living in a society, and living morally in a society, does involve sacrifice, and doesn’t result in utopia. But every choice between ends involves sacrifice, and the economic science is unmistakably clear that the ends secured by the existence of a prosperous society are vastly greater than the ends served by short-term, anti-social behavior to avoid the discomforts of living in society. Therefore, we should all strive to be moral. It’s not about sacrificing for the good of society. The choice before each of us is not a choice of doing what’s good for us or doing what’s good for others. The choice is always a choice of doing what we want to do now or of living the type of life we want to live tomorrow. And to avoid having to work through that cost-benefit analysis at every moment, we have developed principles, bolstered by whatever belief system proves most effective, to assist in making those decisions.

Given the length of this journal, I think it necessarily to briefly recap before concluding. The title of this journal is “Morality as a Rational, Social Phenomenon.” As I’ve shown here, what sets humans apart, what allows for the exercise of our reason and makes our fantastical lives possible, is the existence of human society. This society is based on the higher productivity of the division of labor and man’s recognition of this fact. Because man acts for himself, and not with an eye towards how his actions affect others or even always how his actions will affect himself in the long run, it is possible that even individuals who genuinely recognize the benefits of society and wish to continue enjoying them may act in ways which tend to hurt society (the structure, not the other people in it). Therefore, man’s reason, which created society, also creates moral codes for the members of society to follow, so that man can act without having to trace the consequences of his short-term actions on his long-term well-being and the well-being of others. Morality is therefore a rational phenomenon, and its raison d’etre is society. Isolated man has no need for a moral code; he may act as he pleases with no thought to the consequences beyond his view. This moral code, in order for it to serve its true function, must embody both the principle of peace and the principle of the market, for these are the foundational principles of society. Peaceful cooperation in man’s struggle to survive and thrive in a world of scarcity. It is important that individuals are moral because society provides individuals with incalculable benefits that would be denied to them in isolation.

It is critically important to recognize morality as a social and as a rational phenomenon. Otherwise, otherworldly ideologies are appealed to, or other methods and philosophies are devised to yield moral codes. If morality is merely a product of evolution, then it need not be critically examined and sought to be improved, as either evolution will see to its improvement, or it needs no improvement, or it’s not important. If morality is merely a product of God’s will, then it need not be critically examined and sought to be improved, as God is good and God knows all and God says act this way, so we should. It is the same for other sources of morality. But when morality is acknowledged as a product of human reason, and is recognized as meant to serve a specific purpose (encouraging social action), then it can be critically examined and subjected to revision and improvement. [An effective delivery system will still be required for delivering these moral truths to the masses.] And I think this is so important because the state of morality for many people in our society remains a vague, fuzzy conception. Most people believe that morality roughly overlaps with altruism, and that there are a few prohibited activities related to that altruism. But this instinctual grasping of morality is not enough, for it entirely misses, and indeed substitutes altruism for, what should be the central principles of a strong moral system. This misunderstanding of morality leads to widespread action which is not truly moral, and this action can have deleterious effects on society. We could call morality a concern for our fellow man, then, in addition to ourselves, because getting morality right is of the utmost importance for everyone. Nothing less than the fate of humanity is at stake.