Topics Ethics

Question Are we born with morality, a distinct human sense of right and wrong, or is our morality merely a product of our environment?

Accepted:
September 3, 2007

Comments

It's easy to be concerned that, whichever answer this question gets, that will somehow serve to undermine morality itself. If, on the one hand, our moral sense is one with which we're born, then it's, in effect, genetic, and our gut reaction to human suffering can be written off as a consequence of the evolutionary value of protecting the herd. But if, on the other hand, our moral sense is a product of our environment, then it looks wholly non-objective: Jones, who grew up in a wealthy New York family, might have a completely different moral sense than does Wang, who grew up in poverty in central China, and there's nothing to choose between them. It's just a matter of their different environments.

What's really distressing, frankly, is that one actually hears this kind of concern expressed by the otherwise intelligent scientists---psychologists, mostly---who are working on this very question. But the danger isn't real. The sense that there is a danger here is due to a failure to distinguish our moral sense from moral law itself. Sorry, my terminology isn't very good. But my point is this: It's one thing to ask why it's wrong to kill, or why human suffering is bad; it's another thing to ask why we think it's wrong to kill, or why we think human suffering is bad, and to what extent we have the views we do because of genetic and environmental factors. But answers to questions about why we think what we do do not obviously imply anything about answers to questions about what, in fact, is right and wrong. If we're all more or less born with certain moral views, then, well, I guess we should hope we're born with the right ones. If not, then maybe we all need some re-training. And if we're not all born with certain moral views, then, presumably, we get them from the people around us, and our moral sense is largely a product of our environment. But it doesn't remotely begin to follow that there's no right and wrong about what's right and wrong. Rather, if there are objective moral laws, then, if it's nurture not nature, we need to be especially careful that children be raised with the right moral education.

The really important point here is that there's nothing specific to morality here. Replace the word "moral" with the word "mathematical", and nothing important changes.

So, the question at issue here is an empirical one: Is our moral sense something that is part of our genetic endowment as human beings? or is it a product of our environment? Perhaps a better question would be: To what extent is our moral sense part of our genetic endowment? I prefer to put it that way because it seems to me likley that at least part of our moral sense is part of our genetic endowment---so much else is---and so the interesting question is really just how much. And, as I've indicated, there is a lot of work being done on this question now. But I'm a philosopher, not a psychologist, so I'm not really in a very good position to evaluate it.

Question Are we born with morality, a distinct human sense of right and wrong, or is our morality merely a product of our environment? Accepted:September 3, 2007

Question Are we born with morality, a distinct human sense of right and wrong, or is our morality merely a product of our environment?

Accepted:
September 3, 2007