Evolution and morality
Posted on January 21, 2008
Filed Under All, Taking Faith, Context |
“The human moral sense turns out to be an organ of considerable complexity, with quirks that reflect its evolutionary history and its neurobiological foundations.” writes Stephen Pinker in the January 13 NYT Magazine. Pinker, one of the leading lights in the controversial field of evolutionary psychology, believes that morality, like some other human behavioral traits, is a product of evolution.
This will likely raise hackles among the anti-evolution crowd: to suggest that ‘their’ morality is somehow the product of evolution should just wrinkle their noses, at the very least.
Pinker’s article is well reasoned, however, and provides a set of thought experiments and something called ‘Trolleyology’ (if a runaway trolley were heading for XYZ, and you were at a switch…) - exercises that help demonstrate that morality is not based on some sort of rational calculus, but is, rather, demonstrably innate.
Morality is like the kin altruism noted in Richard Dawkins’ book The Selfish Gene. Groups that stick together and play by a set of moral principals, tend to do better than groups that don’t. But morality, at first take, can mask underlying issues that might prove to be more rational, and ultimately, more moral choices. Fascinating stuff: likely to stir up a hornet’s nest out there in Huckabee land…
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Evolution is the evolution of evolution of evolution of evolution…