Is morality intuitive?

Ethics
21

Interesting, I’ve not read that, but the title is close to my thinking. I’m very pessimistic about out-of-control systems and overly complex institutions that people produce because our psychology does not function well within such operations. At the core, I’m an optimist about people; I think all people begin with an innocence of good morals (except if there’s a mental disorder or psychopathy, etc.) which, if not handled with care, gets lost in the same way as people grow up and lose their curiosity, replacing it with society’s imposed requirements on the individual, or out of the necessary responsibility within negative conditions in order to survive.

To become a moral person, one must avoid a surrender to the conditions of the world. The balance to function in the world and keep your morality in check is what moral philosophy should focus on, rather than trying to define some descriptive answer to what morality is.

In my view, we are distracted by the destructive and negative aspects of the world, and it obscures our ability to recognize or remember the fundamental moral intuition everyone has. We get entangled in the question of what morality is without recognizing how the complexity of the world assaults that intuition the first chance it gets.

Yes, and the post-apocalyptic conditions people think about come more from post-war fiction which conflated the indoctrinated conditions of Nazi Germany with the natural state of humanity as immoral.

Many experiments that tried to focus on some natural destructive tendency in humans failed, while those which formed complex conditions for the participants to follow, succeeded. Which points not so much to just authority causing a surrender to individual moral agency, but also complexity in itself causing an individual to lose their moral intuition.

Yes, and this is how we get entangled in complexities. Moral intuition is a direct biological feedback based in empathy. But if the conditions, natural or manufactured, produce a situation that requires some logical thinking for us to reach an answer for how to behave and act, we no longer act with intuition, but by logic, and logical thinking is easily skewed by biases and fallacies in our thinking. And the conclusions we make can override empathy or hijack empathy into a biased form towards just the in-group.

If the logical thinking is either done in error by the self or by being convinced of external facts which we do not fact-check, then we attempt to level with the complexity of the situation, thus using so much of our brain power that there’s no room for listening to our intuitions.

This is what I mean by stories and narratives in history easily overriding intuitions. It’s what indoctrinates, programs, and reshapes our sense of reality. Our whole society is just one large and extremely complex story that we are taught when we grow up, hence, societies that have come far in addressing morality and listening to the fundamental intuitions and producing a story that respects it, usually produce better places to live.

But since the complexity of our story is so extreme, we are unable to find a final conclusion in moral philosophy; because it is fundamentally impossible to combine the intuition with the totality of civilization’s complexity.

The only thing we can do is to attempt an act of honesty to our moral intuition. That we are aware of it and, in a moment of complex chaos, we take a moment and return to the intuition for guidance.

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22

I think the OP is maybe assuming objective morals?

In reality people disagree about what is moral, and our sense of morals can change over time.

I see it more like this:

Our sense of morality is ultimately derived from social instincts.
On top of that, society has done a good job in:

  1. Building on top of those simple instincts into a more complex series of ethics. Things that the vast majority of people believe help the vast majority of people (this isn’t always a good thing, e.g. sexual morality laws, but the trajectory tends to be good)

  2. Setting up an environment where the psychopaths or sociopaths among us are largely contained and work as productive members of society. Because, nature being what it is, some people are going to feel far less instinctive empathy than others, and some are going to be incapable of it entirely.

So that’s my lens for seeing moral intuition. So I’d say most – but sadly not all – people have a strong moral sense of something like rape being wrong, due to having empathy and society educating us about the harm it causes. And then, as we go to less harmful acts, the proportion of people to which those acts will seem self-evidently good or bad will go down.

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23

I’m not sure … the reason for this thread is to provide different angles on how morality is derived. It may be objective and imperative such as murder is immoral. It may be circumstancial, murder is ok in self defence.

List a thing of current immoral things. Do you think they will be moral in say 50,100 years time ?

Homosexuality at one point was considered immoral and unacceptable by society at that time. This changed as tolerance grew to other forms of sexual expression.

The change in status for homosexuality is an exception though as if I’m not mistaken it was even practised in Ancient Greece. So in effect it’s only immoral according to the sensibilities of the society in which it operated.

though there may be laws that permit murder in some cultures universally speaking murder in a sufficiently progressive society is almost always wrong (unless as I stated earlier used in self defence)

24

Well we can’t say “objective and imperative in most cases”. If it’s not true in all cases then it means it is relative (circumstantial).

And your example of homosexuality also highlights this.
How do you square this with your thoughts on moral intuition? Someone living in a country where gay sex carries a death penalty might well say the people of his/her country have great moral intuition – because they agree with that person that gay sex is a great evil.

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25

Gay sex being forbidden does not necessarily come from intuition, but mostly dogma religion etc.

Deviant sexual preferences such as bestaility have nothing to do with moral intuition but satisfying a certain sexual need. Wrong ? I cannot cast judgement here yet have to agree with the law as it violates certain animal rights. If the animal enjoys it then that’s a different matter altogether.

In regards to men and homosexuality then whatever transactions occur between them are a matter of private interest and frankly none of my business. Again I cannot cast judgement here despite what my intuition may tell me. Some people can’t help who they are attracted to so my intuition and judgment are quite irrelevant.

A certain level of respect and tolerance must be granted to those with a different lifestyle to ours.

26

Intuitionistic morality is annihilated in the details of specific cases, I fear. Perhaps a line should be drawn between the common and the uncommon with intuition applying only to the common. That seems Greek enough to me.

27

Then it’s a matter of constant reevaluation. Sometimes moral decisions can be blurry and ambiguous yet one can feel obliged to act either way - yes - no or remain impartial.

Take shoplifting for example - whilst it is universally condemned even in law and the 10 commandments thou shalt not steal the circumstances such as hunger and lack of financial resource forces one’s hand.

This is wrong still but forgivable.

28

We’re getting our wires crossed. Whether an immoral act is wrong is a separate issue from how the immoral act is judged, which was my interest. Intuition is an epistemic source and should be reliable for common tasks fairly universally is my point. Gayness or shoplifting aren’t common occurrences for most; instead, non-intuitive contemplation is required regarding their rightness.

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29

Is that true?.

Most people are unhappy if their partner dies. We can say its true in most cases. The fact that its not true in all cases doesn’t make it relative. We understand the biology that underpins it.

30

And they would likely disagree with you on that. They would say it is in the book and it is immoral.

The thing is, I get it: I believed in objective morals for many years (and as a correction btw, I said upthread that objective morals are not situational, and what I meant was absolute morals).
It seems obvious and common-sense. After all, even criminals usually acknowledge the wrongness of what they’ve done but make some kind of excuse for it.

But people genuinely do disagree about many moral things, especially when we look across time, and so our “intuition” has to point in all kinds of directions that look like culture. Plus we could ask how evolution arrived at this “correct” morality and how we access it to tell us the “right” answer to things like the trolley problem.

31

You’ve assumed something about morality that isn’t a given.

What if I were to tell you that I have the moral intuition that eating animals is immoral?

Would you agree with me? Or would you say that my moral intuition is wrong because eating animals is not immoral? But then what’s the difference between one’s moral intuition being wrong and one not having a moral intuition?

Perhaps everyone has a moral intuition and it’s just that each person intuits different things, like with vegetarianism, abortion, and blasphemy?

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32

I would answer that intuitions can be reevaluated by circumstance. If you were in a situation where your normal vegetarian diet was not easily met then you’d reevaluate your moral stance on eating meat if eating meat was your only chance of survival.

In the extreme case whereby you’d reject meat because you don’t want to betray your intuitions then starvation or death would likely be the result.

This is acceptable, as the extreme consequence of constant reevaluation of morals could lead one to cannibalism and this has happened in history as recently as the gold rush. Donner and Reed Wagon Train Incident - California National Historic Trail (U.S. National Park Service)

If one has no moral intuition then it’s the same as intuition being wrong.

Intuitions are inbuilt morality functions which are innate. I may be wrong on this but if I find evidence to the contrary I’m willing to change my position.

Intuition can be improved by learning, socialising and education especially the instilling of empathy which sometimes requires some prior suffering.

33

Evolution does not provide us a definitions or rules that govern morality.. It selects behaviours that make us more fit for the environment including the social environment. It is these behaviours that constitute the “intuitive” basis for morality.

There isn’t a correct morality. There is only evolved behaviours that benefit people and shape our institutions.

Were we a race of giant prey mantis with greater intelligence we would have a differenf morality. Not least because female prey mantis eat the males after sex. I m pretty sure that’s not part of our moral intuitions. However, if I was a giant Prey Mantis I might see it as the height of good manners.

There is no right answer to the trolley problem. Thats why its called a problem. There are however some fairly common intuitions that people have about the problem.

That seems very unlikely. What however is very likely is that people learn to interpret their intuitions in different ways

34

Have you ever been to Japan? The movie ‘Lost in Translation’ would seem to offer a different take from yours.

35

I think the cause of most social violence is that people already rely way too much on ‘moral intuition’. Ken Gergen writes:

We commonly suppose that suffering is caused by people whose conscience is flawed or who pursue their aims without regard for the consequences to others. From a relational standpoint, we may entertain the opposite hypothesis: in important respects we suffer from a plenitude of good.

How so? If relationships-linguistic coordination–are the source of meaning, then they are the source as well of our presumptions about good and evil. Rudimentary understandings of right versus wrong are essential to sustaining patterns of coordination. Deviations from accepted patterns constitute a threat. When we have developed harmonious ways of relating-of speaking and acting–we place a value on this way of life.

Whatever encroaches upon, undermines, or destroys this way of life becomes an evil. It is not surprising, then, that the term ethics is derived from the Greek ethos, the customs of the people; or that the term morality draws on the Latin root mos or mores, thus affiliating morality with custom. Is and ought walk hand in hand.

36

Well, I don’t think its evidence that human character is solely determined by their material culture but others can decide for themselves whether that’s plausible.

It also leaves open the question of what produces culture. I have suggested gene culture co-evolution as the most likely answer.

The film itself, I found a little slow although the main actors were both capable.

37

I’m not sure if you’re agreeing with me or are unclear on the meaning of scare quotes.

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38

It is both. Ethical evaluation require “intuition” because they aren’t computable. That is why machines are incapable of them. So ultimately we have to consult our own conscience. However, it does not follow that nothing needs to be taught, because morally acceptable behaviour does not come naturally to us. Humans naturally learn culture – in our natural state this is the culture of our tribe, and these days it is much more complicated (more advanced in some ways, but also more problematic). We need somebody to explain to us why certain things are wrong or right, but ultimately the goal is not to just “train” people to behave in morally acceptable ways, but to help them to understand why certain things are right or wrong…even if they ultimately have to consult their own conscience.

Slavery is a good example. For most of human history it was simply considered normal: people typically ended up as slaves because they were bankrupt, or taken prisoner in war, and slavery was seen as a better alternative to the only other one available, which was death. Human cultures had to learn, sometimes the hard way, why this is wrong and why it had to end. Now it does not seem normal at all.

39

Thanks Geoff

Its not quite clear what this means. Saying morally acceptable behaviour needs to be trained is different from morally acceptable behaviour doesn’t come naturally to us. I appreciate that this may just me being pedantic but what is the reverse. Moral behaviour is unnatural or supernatural. I would say all morality is natural but some is learnt.

Is the why important. Does it matter why you love your wife and family. Is this not sentiment.

Clearly there are “why” questions but are these essential to morality. Didn’t morality exist a long time before we understood why?

When children in primary school ask why they shouldn’t bite other children. Is the why question helpful?

What is my complaint? It sounds as though you believe in external authority. In which case, be clearer “I don’t think morals are intuitive because they are revealed by reason or given to us by god or decided by society”

I will still complain, of course, but it will be clearer what we disagree about.

40

It is the most important part of human culture, and it doesn’t come naturally to us because our natural state is that of tribal hunter-gatherers, and the world we actually live in is very different from that. The capacity to behave in a morally acceptable manner is therefore both partly an innate ability (humans naturally understand what moral judgements are, in a way that we cannot train machines to replicate), but partly also a complex cultural “patch” to try to respond appropriately to life in the modern world.

If you read this article then it will become much clearer what I mean by this: The Biological Growth Imperative | Two-Phase Cosmology

Didn’t moraliy exist a long time before we understood why?

I don’t think so, no. I think morality and the capacity to think about “why” questions arose as part of the same process. This is partly biological – the finishing touches to human evolution. But it is also cultural, and really only kicked in ancient Greece. The Romans then largely stopped asking “why” questions and didn’t take morality very seriously either – they were focused on the “how” questions of large-scale civilisation. Christianity was a reaction to the inadequacy of that way of organising a society.

When children in primary school ask why they shouldn’t bite other children. Is the why question helpful?

Yes. If a child does not know why they shouldn’t bite, then the question is essential.

It sounds as though you believe in external authority.

I believe in the importance of cultural standards. I am not a theist, but I nevertheless recognise that Christianity transformed Western civilisation in ways that we now take for granted. I believe laws are necessary, even though I don’t agree with some of them. I am not an anarchist. Again, the linked article really explains what I mean.