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Thursday, November 5, 2009

Are we born moral?

I feel that in order to understand this article more fully, one has to understand its purpose is to explore whether or not humans are moral naturally or through the influence of our culture and if that morality is a human only characteristic or if it is shared with the rest of the animal kingdom. The article then is only a series of arguments from different big name philosophers and biologists and such that seem to dispute each other in smaller and smaller aspects of what it means to be moral; for example, though Hauser believes morality is an unconscious process (found in all animals?), he argues that the "part of the moral faculty that is unique to humans is that which they use 'to create judgements of permissible, obligatory, and forbidden actions,'" which connects with the monotheistic views that morality is a set of guidelines in becoming an ideal citizen. Maybe that is how morality should be viewed: not all moral choices come from teachings from outside sources (intuition rather) but a large influence from the outside world solidifies that particular "system of morality" we obey, which varies from culture to culture.

1 comment:

  1. I think many of our culturally specific morality systems are both historically based and transferred through mechanisms of teaching, parenting, peer influence, etc. However the emotional and psychological bases for these systems are grounded in our biology. The capacity to empathize with others, the impulse to help that extends beyond the parenting or family ties, the universal understanding of fairness and cheating... these things are rooted in our biology, in the instincts and emotional potentials that we have as a social species. Just as we learned a great deal about our normal brain functions by examining the neurological pathologies in "Secrets of the Mind", I think we can get a better understanding of the "Nature" component of morality by looking at various psycho-social pathologies... do we think that psychopaths are strictly due to genes or environment?

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