If we are to live lives which are as complex socially as jet-planes are complex technologically, we need something more than the Ten Commandments. We cannot base our moral code upon arbitrary and capricious fiats reported to us by persons claiming to be privy to the intentions of the denizens of Sinai or Olympus.
Our ethics can be based neither upon fictions concerning the nature of humankind nor upon fake reports concerning the desires of the deities. Our ethics must be firmly planted in the soil of scientific self-knowledge. They must be improvable and adaptable. Plato showed long ago, in his dialogue Euthyphro, that we cannot depend upon the moral fiats of a deity. If something is good simply because a god has commanded it, anything could be considered good.
In our quest for the good, we can bypass the god and go to his source! Given, then, that gods a priori cannot be the source of ethical principles, we must seek such principles in the world in which we have evolved. We must find the sublime in the mundane. What precept might we adopt? Let us examine this principle. Suppose you lived a totally selfish life of immediate gratification of every desire.
Suppose that whenever someone else had something you wanted, you took it for yourself. Depending upon how outrageous your activity had been, you might very well lose your life in an orgy of neighborly revenge. The life of total but unenlightened self-interest might be exciting and pleasant as long as it lasts — but it is not likely to last long.
An enlightened strategy will be one which, when practiced over a long span of time, will generate ever greater amounts and varieties of pleasures and satisfactions. It is obvious that more is to be gained by cooperating with others than by acts of isolated egoism.
One man with a rock cannot kill a buffalo for dinner. But a group of men or women, with lots of rocks, can drive the beast off a cliff and — even after dividing the meat up among them — will still have more to eat than they would have had without cooperation. But cooperation is a two-way street. If you cooperate with several others to kill buffaloes, and each time they drive you away from the kill and eat it themselves, you will quickly take your services elsewhere, and you will leave the ingrates to stumble along without the Paleolithic equivalent of a fourth-for-bridge.
Cooperation implies reciprocity. Justice has its roots in the problem of determining fairness and reciprocity in cooperation. If I cooperate with you in tilling your field of corn, how much of the corn is due me at harvest time? When there is justice, cooperation operates at maximal efficiency, and the fruits of cooperation become ever more desirable. Thus, enlightened self-interest entails a desire for justice. With justice and with cooperation, we can have symphonies.
Let us bring this essay back to the point of our departure. Because we have the nervous systems of social animals, we are generally happier in the company of our fellow creatures than alone. Because we are emotionally suggestible, as we practice enlightened self-interest we usually will be wise to choose behaviors which will make others happy and willing to cooperate and accept us — for their happiness will reflect back upon us and intensify our own happiness.
On the other hand, actions which harm others and make them unhappy — even if they do not trigger overt retaliation which decreases our happiness — will create an emotional milieu which, because of our suggestibility, will make us less happy. Because our nervous systems are imprintable, we are able not only to fall in love at first sight, we are able to love objects and ideals as well as people, and we are able to love with variable intensities.
Like the gosling attracted to the toy train, we are pulled forward by the desire for love. A major aim of enlightened self-interest, surely, is to give and receive love, both sexual and nonsexual. As a general — though not absolute — rule, we must choose those behaviors which will be likely to bring us love and acceptance, and we must eschew those behaviors which will not.
Another aim of enlightened self-interest is to seek beauty in all its forms, to preserve and prolong its resonance between the world outside and that within. Beauty and love are but different facets of the same jewel: love is beautiful, and we love beauty. The experience of love and beauty, however, is a passive function of the mind.
How much greater is the joy which comes from creating beauty. When asked to justify why some cases are permissible and others forbidden, subjects are either clueless or offer explanations that can not account for the differences in play. Importantly, those with a religious background are as clueless or incoherent as atheists. These studies begin to provide empirical support for the idea that like other psychological faculties of the mind, including language and mathematics, we are endowed with a moral faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong, interacting in interesting ways with the local culture.
These intuitions reflect the outcome of millions of years in which our ancestors have lived as social mammals, and are part of our common inheritance, as much as our opposable thumbs are. These facts are incompatible with the story of divine creation. Our evolved intuitions do not necessarily give us the right or consistent answers to moral dilemmas. What was good for our ancestors may not be good for human beings as a whole today, let alone for our planet and all the other beings living on it.
But insights into the changing moral landscape [e. In this respect, it is important for us to be aware of the universal set of moral intuitions so that we can reflect on them and, if we choose, act contrary to them.
We can do this without blasphemy, because it is our own nature, not God, that is the source of our species morality. Hopefully, governments that equate morality with religion are listening. Web Surfer's Caveat: These are class notes, intended to comment on readings and amplify class discussion. They should be read as such. They are not intended for publication or general distribution. Yet most surveyed still clung to the illusion that they got their moral compass from what they think God believes is right and wrong.
Read more: Being a progressive Christian shouldn't be an oxymoron. So where do our morals come from, then, if not from religion? These cultural components are influenced by religion, to be sure.
Clearly, we all have morality. Festival of Social Science — Aberdeen, Aberdeenshire. Edition: Available editions United Kingdom. Become an author Sign up as a reader Sign in. Does your morality come from your religion? Not really. Jim Davies , Carleton University.
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