Morality

Morality is a pretty large topic with much significance to humanity but there is little consensus as to why we have morals, their origin, or ways of defining them. They are also of significance to me in particular as they are of great importance in designing a utopia. I am however starting to come to the realisation of the circular logic behind my usage of morality in social engineering.

“Justice is certainly approved of for no other reason, than because it has a tendency to the public good: And the public good is indifferent to us, except so far as sympathy interests us in it.” - David Hume

Emotions evolved in some species to preserve the self interest in individual living entities. Some of these species that found it best to operate in groups either for mating, hunting, protection etc evolved the emotional capacity for sympathy. There are two mechanisms to explain this, the first is simply from the advantages society or teamwork can confer to the individual therefore making sympathy yet another emotion that facilitates self interest. The second is based on the concept of the selfish gene whereby species will share a vast number of the same genetic material and thus it is in the interests of the genes rather than the individuals to do what is best for others, the more closely related the better.

I see no reason why sympathy has to be from either one of these ideas and suspect it is likely a composite of both, varying from species to species for which predominates. The self interest of an individual is present to facilitate the proliferation of genes any way so the selfish gene is a precursor to self interest. Whether humans feel sympathy so that they can function best in a group or to allow the group best to function is a moot point as both are derived from the fight to preserve genetic material. The fact that sympathy can aid both of these ends only suggests that it will be more strongly favoured by evolution in social animals capable of experiencing it.

As an example of which form of interest predominates in various species I would suggest that ants must be very much founded on the notion of the selfish gene where as humans seem much more concerned about the self rather than the genes. I am not suggesting ants feel emotion and act upon sympathy when performing altruistic duties for the colony. I suspect their evolution path split so long ago from humans that the emotions that guide us in our actions and the hormones that instruct ants are near indistinguishable. Humans evolved the capacity to reason and thus allow emotions to take a back seat and act as advice instead of direct instruction. In both cases however the various stimulus for action evolved to proliferate the genes.

Morality is concerned with human behaviour and so I shall be speaking about sympathy in humans.

Sympathy or empathy is the human link to the preservation of our genetic material as a species rather than an individual. It also facilitates the smooth operation of society which aids both the species and the individual. Morality is the result of the sympathetic emotional responses people have towards others when put into context of the operations of society. This implies it requires those persons to be sensible of the operation of society and how it may confer advantage. This further implies that morality is determined not only by each individuals interpretation of society, other people and themselves but also on the structure and operation of the society in which they reside. Morality is as much a human construct as is civilisation yet remains palpable due to the emotional links it has with empathy or sympathy. As such it feels as if morality should be an actual thing because we do not just know of it like we do with rules or laws but we experience them too as if they were implicitly present. The notion that morality has been somehow predetermined is an illusion, all be it a helpful one. Even the idea that morality is a separate thing unto itself is an illusion which results more from the fact we use a single word to define a whole group of derived feelings. Particularly as those derivations rely on so many intangible factors.

Morality is shorthand for the feelings we experience regarding the good or bad of actions in regards to society and others. As they are our feelings they are specific to the individual and depend on their perceptions of the world. As we have reason we can still chose to act either immorally or morally but this does not guarantee others will perceive our actions in the same way. Mostly morality is aligned within a society due to the interaction and custom of the peoples. This means people tend to act on the accepted morality of the society as they have learnt it in addition to feeling it. It does not always mean people agree with the accepted morality of the society, but it certainly has that tendency. As actions are more relevant than feelings it does not matter what people think provided they act morally according to the social norm. I am not saying a person that believes murder is acceptable is morally good provided they commit no murders, simply that this is all society desires morality to achieve. As the morals of people depend on the society I would suggest that any philosophising as to the morality of belief rather than action is outside the scope of the concept of morality.

The common ground between different societies is human emotion. While different societies allow emotions to be applied in various contexts the basic stimulus for generating emotions is fundamentally the same. A variety of optimal survival and proliferation conditions afford pleasure which leads to other positive emotions. Complex political style interactions will differ the most in how they trigger emotional responses in societies but the most fundamental emotions linked to human needs are pretty constant throughout humanity.

To conclude, morality is a word we have to describe where we use our sympathetic capacity in assessing the emotional response of a hypothetical person within a given situation in a specific social condition. To put in simpler terms, when you see something happen to someone in which another intended that outcome and you would not like that to happen to you it is likely that you deem the persons intent to be immoral. The extend of the immorality you levy on the event will be directly linked to how repulsed you are by it. As we exist in society we naturally bypass the process of putting an event into that particular context and as such morality seems to be something perceivable such as heat or acceleration.

The problem with using an idea of morality in the design of any society means you are entirely biased by the society in which you exist in. Morality is defined by the society and not the other way around. The only two factors one needs to consider when tinkering with the workings of a society are the effects those changes will have in the optimising of running that society and the emotional responses of the people to those changes outside the context of morality or custom. The former is reasonably easy to measure as it is basically just the efficiency and speed of all processes in society. The hardest things to measure in this regard are things like the efficacy of the education system as statistics do not paint a complete picture nor afford the best incentives. Gauging the public feeling of changes can be tricky, let alone assigning values to them, but to do so with disregard to present custom and moral belief is really quite hard. It is “permissible” to make a change that will be poorly received by the public provided it improves to operation of society and would not be objectionable to the emotions of people assuming none or different moralities. This is not to suggest that this is always good however as the ends may not justify the means. Making changes that will cause an up cry for minor enhancements to society are simply not worth it. Any changes therefore must not only be gradual where they concern the operation of society so as to not cause disruption, but also in terms of public feeling towards them so as to retain sufficient support for them.

Ultimately our present morals and customs are pretty irrelevant in defining a utopia, however they are highly relevant when we start to consider a path towards that utopia. For a rule or system to be sensible in a utopia it only needs to demonstrate how it will improve the operation of society and promote basic positive emotions. For a rule or system to become sensible in reality we require both of the previous elements in addition to ensuring that the present moral compass will be minimally offset. The quest to find the absolute morality lies at the end of the quest for utopia or the optimal society. This cannot be an absolute however as it depends on many non-social factors such as the laws of physics, the available resources, the stage of human evolution and so forth. If each set of these and other varying conditions can have an optimal society then each can also have an absolute morality. This still means there are infinite possible kinds of morality but does at least give us direction for what to aim for in both attaining better morals and better society.