Moral Evolution

“Moral goodness is what gives each of us the sense that we are worthy human beings. We seek it in our friends and mates, nurture it in our children, advance it in our politics and justify it with our religions,” explains Steven Pinker in an article titled The Moral Instinct published in the New York Times magazine. Many psychologists spend their entire careers studying moral behavior’s causes, influences and results. Many theories have formed concerning morality. The fact that our judgments of good and bad derive from our initial emotional reactions to an idea or action is widely accepted. When a person romantically kisses their sibling, society views them as morally unjust. You initially react with disgust and deem the action immoral and shameful. Disgust stems from the gut reaction and rationalization follows. Today, society believes some actions reproachable that were previously widely accepted, such as slavery, sexism, and animal abuse. Many scientists believe emotional responses control right and wrong; however, an article in Nature science journal, titled How Do Morals Change?, argues that gut reactions alone cannot explain how our morals have evolved over time. Paul Bloom, author of the Nature article, argues that the morality theory concerning gut reactions and not according to principles is erroneous; it completely rejects reason. He theorizes that morals change over time because individuals contemplate ideas about rights, the minority treatment, and other vital issues, and use them to produce stories to deliberately persuade the public to join their cause. Works like “Uncle Tom’s Cabin” and its influence on the abolition of slavery support the concept, but I cannot accept that monumental changes in widely accepted practices happen as a result of one or two people publicizing the cause. I believe the author’s psychological theory explaining changing morals to be because it lacks regard for human sympathies, cultural education, and the progression of scientific research as means of morphing popularly accepted ideas.

How Do Morals Change? questions why recent decades have increased charitable donations to “long distance charities,” or charities where the donator has no connection to the gift recipient. The American Red Cross website states 15 million people each year in the United States donate blood. This number represents people that generously contribute their own blood to complete strangers with no compensation. How Do Morals Change? notes giving blood to be a fairly modern procedure and that using solely emotional reactions, you cannot explain why a person would do such a favor for someone they will never meet. I believe medical research caused long-distance charities like blood donations to begin; science proved blood transfusions possible and practical as treatment for various ailments. Afterwards, millions of unrecognized people have donated because they recognize the scientific achievement and connect it with a personal experience. When someone has personally experienced a problem or disease or know someone that has, they tend to feel empathetic for the cause. People give charitably to strangers because they believe that they understand how that person feels and can help the situation by giving something of themselves or donating money. The notion of empathy in addition to advanced public knowledge explains why someone would freely give their own money, time, or blood to a stranger without any material compensation. In this example, giving to charity was not previously viewed as immoral, rather the concept that giving to charity supports good morals occurs because the cause was invented and the donors experienced sympathy.

As briefly introduced above regarding blood donations, progressing scientific knowledge shapes the way people feel about moral subjects. In the excerpt above from the Nature article, the author states that abusing animals for entertainment evolved from deliberate persuasion. Considering that the public did not believe animals were capable of feeling pain or suffering until as little as twenty years ago, it seems improbable to say that older decades felt emotionally obligated at all concerning animals. It is unfair to say that the deliberation of any human concerning the morality of animal abuse caused a revolution; however, scientific research caused humans to change their actions to comply with their emotions regarding purposeful animal mistreatment. Scientific research applies to other beliefs as well. If we revisit the issue of slavery, we can note that in the 18th century, many settlements believed that people of other “races” were genetically different than they. Though this belief is obviously invalid, it explains how the idea of one human enslaving another arose as science revealed that all colors and genders of people are genetically and fundamentally equal. Generally speaking, science leads moral evolution. When science proves that animals feel pain, people feel hurt at the idea of inflicting pain on another being. When science proves that all people are equal, slavery disgusts people because the person enslaved could just as easily be them. Research sets the stage for numerous other alterations in moral beliefs and will continue to do so as scientific theories morph based on the most modern research.

“Contemporary readers of Nature, for example, have different beliefs about the rights of women, racial minorities and homosexuals compared with readers in the late 1800s, and different intuitions about the morality of practices such as slavery, child labour and the abuse of animals for public entertainment. Rational deliberation and debate have played a large part in this development,” the author of the Nature article expands on his thesis. Though this statement lacks tangible explanation and support, I feel confident stating that the author omitted cultural education as a key factor regarding altered beliefs about women and minority treatment. Saying that previously it was morally acceptable to mistreat women or a certain race and today we believe the opposite must be biased. The concept of gender and race today are very different than they were in the 1800s. Race was not materialized until many years after slavery began; therefore, slavery was not based on race and physical appearance as it is today. Rather, slavery was a culturally acceptable practice because it existed to maximize the survival of the society. PBS explains, “Throughout human history, societies have enslaved others due to conquest, war or debt, but not based on physical difference.” These enslaving societies’ members did not contemplate whether or not mistreating others was morally sound, nor did they experience a gut reaction that persuaded them for or against slavery; for the purpose of survival, historical societies taught their members from birth that they were superior and that the way to survive was through war. Feelings concerning child labor are also comparable. In and around the 1800s, everyone that was capable of performing manual labor did so in order to profit the family unit. Children were born with the knowledge that it was their duty to work and contribute to the family that raised them. Today, we think of child labor as morally unjust because it is forceful, often dangerous, and usually unnecessary; however, in the original days of child labor the conditions were completely different. Facts lend toward the belief that no one contemplated whether or not children working was an ethical issue and then suddenly it went from moral to immoral. The process of changing a group’s feelings regarding a practice is gradual and affected by many different factors such as the environment of work, the need for survival, and modernization. Saying that morality is universal and that a universal moral code encompasses the whole earth is unrealistic given that, historically, each population has developed a code of conduct that best promotes its survival.

Inevitably our moral compass evolves; it has changed drastically since time began and continues to transform to keep up with our modernizing world. Though I understand the author’s argument that more than an emotional reaction is required to fuel a worldwide moral revolution, his theory is defective because he declines to attribute any moral change to non-psychological factors. The empathetic feelings humans feel in relation to one another as a result of intermingling with different social groups compel many to act in a morally righteous manner toward those with common experiences. In addition to discovering common virtues, moral education received during childhood shapes morals. Scientific advancement shifts moral causes the most, perhaps. Since morality is such an intertwined concept, a workable theory must include every possible factor that has a known influence on feelings regarding a topic.