Morality: Cui Bono? Part 2

A few months ago I wrote the first of a promised multi-part essay on morality. Today's post represents Part 2 in the series. Morality is a complex subject about which many of us have strong feelings. We feel deeply in our bones that certain courses of action are simply "the right thing to do." For example, if we see a small, crying child who is apparently lost at the mall, we feel that helping the child is the right thing to do. Conversely, we feel that some things are "just wrong." Laughing at or teasing the lost child strike us as cruelly wrong.

While most of us share the same feelings about right and wrong, I suggested in Part 1 on this topic that this does not mean that we really understand how morality functions in everyday life. A common misunderstanding, in my view, is that moral behavior is the opposite of selfish behavior. It does often seem like "doing the right thing" involves sacrificing our own interests in order to help someone else. (In our example, we are taking time from our own pursuits to help the lost child in the mall.) But what I have suggested before and would like to continue to develop is the idea that moral thoughts, feelings, and behaviors often advance our own interests as well as benefitting others. And in some cases, moral behaviors may even advance our own interests at the expense of the interests of others. The question to ask, as I indicated in Part 1, in order to understand morality, is cui bono? Who benefits?

In this particular essay, I want to explore the idea that a particular kind of moral behavior-talking or writing about what is right or wrong-can advance our own interests by controlling the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of other people. I'll begin with a trivial and obvious example: parents teaching their children about what the parents believe is right and wrong. Not that parents have to teach their kids everything about right or wrong; children are born with a sensitivity to the welfare of others. My three-year-old granddaughter spontaneously worries when my one-year-old grandson is upset and asks, "What is wrong with my little brother?" And she will try to comfort him by patting him or hugging him. But ten minutes later she will grab a toy that she wants away from him, which triggers corrective action from my son or daughter-in-law. Parents are 50% genetically related to all of their biological children and therefore attempt to develop a sense of right and wrong in which they do not exploit each other.

In the adult world, we continue to have discussions with each other about what is right and what is wrong. In philosophical forums, these discussions can be very complex, technical, and sophisticated. We can also see high-level discussions among professionals in the fields of medical ethics and business ethics (c'mon, don't snicker about the last one; business ethics is not necessarily an oxymoron.) If you have ever tried to follow these serious discussions, you might get the impression that these moral intellectuals are striving for the right answer to a moral dilemma in the same way that mathematicians are striving for the right answer to a mathematical problem like Fermat's Last Theorem, or the way that scientists are striving for the right answer to an empirical problem such as whether there has ever been life on Mars.

Despite apparent similarities between discussions of what is "right" in ethics and what is "right" in mathematics or science, I think that what we claim is morally right is nothing at all like what is mathematically or scientifically right, correct, or true. So called "moral truths" are not truths at all, but are expressions of emotional conviction. And when we argue about what we feel is morally right, we are not trying to instruct others about what is true or factual; we are trying to persuade others to behave the way we want them to. Just like we try to get our kids to behave the way we want them to. Ethical discussions are all about trying to win the hearts and minds of others so that they behave in ways that suit our own needs, whether or not it suits everyone's needs. In fact, because sometimes there are irresolvable differences of interests, some ethical discussions will inevitably promote the interests of some over the interests of others.

Before I continue, consider the following question. Because I am writing about morality, does that mean that I am trying to get you to think, feel, and behave in ways that suit me? Yes, that would have to be the case, or I would be contradicting my own argument. So what am I up to? Simply this: If you've always believed in moral truths and never thought that moral discussions are about trying to influence other people, I am indeed attempting to get you to reconsider those beliefs. But I don't have enough space here for my full argument, so I do not expect to change many opinions. Even if I change your mind, I have no idea how your feelings or behaviors might change as a result. As a scientist who has studied the evolution of personality and morality for most of my life, my main interest is in explaining people's moral thoughts, feelings, and behavior rather than trying to convince people what is truly good or right. I don't see anything as "truly" moral; I am, rather, interested in why people try to convince each other of what is actually morally right, when nothing is actually, absolutely right. My current hypothesis is that it sounds more convincing to say something is a moral truth rather than "this is the way I feel."

What inspired me to get back to the topic of morality was a presentation I saw at the recent meeting of the NorthEastern Evolutionary Psychology Society (NEEPS) conference in Binghamton, New York. The always provocative Kilian Garvey, with colleague Marissa Rosenthal, presented a poster titled "An Emotional and Cognitive Exploration of Morality: A Test of the Savanna‐IQ Interaction Hypothesis." In a nutshell, their presentation presented data that they interpreted as suggesting that the moral intuitions of political conservatives are evolutionarily more primitive than the moral intuitions of political liberals. (The Savanna-IQ Interaction Hypothesis also suggests that liberals are more intelligent than conservatives and atheists are more intelligent than theists.) I am not going to argue about the data presented by Rosenthal and Kilian, but I have to wonder. Given morality researcher Jonathan Haidt's recent charge of a liberal bias among psychologists, what are we to make of presentations from psychologists who argue that liberals are smarter and more morally advanced than conservatives?