Doop
Legend
*Read my entire post or don't bother replying*
The 18th century philosopher David Hume once said that "one cannot derive an ought from an is". In other words, he claimed that one cannot get a value from a fact.
Morality is simply the sum of a number of chemical reactions in our brains. These chemical reactions make us feel guilt when we hurt others ("sin"), and in general compel us to be kind to one another. Why are we compelled to act like this?
At first, altruism (empathy) seems counter-intuitive for an organism. How does being kind benefit oneself? If you read The Selfish Gene (not that you have to have read it if you are reading this thread), you know that genes control development and guide evolution, not the organism itself. So why do we act morally?
Consider this hypothetical scenario (far better examples can be read in The Selfish Gene):
Remember that the dead father wolf has just saved three offspring who each have half of his genetic information. If the father wolf had left his family to potentially die to the bear, the father wolf would have lost representation in the gene pool.
So why does a wolf care about his representation in a gene pool? Isn't he too stupid to even know what that means? He doesn't, and yes. Let's look at that scenario in a different light.
Assume the wolf never had the genetic impulse to defend his family. His offspring would be extremely likely to die to one cause or another, and the gene pool would therefore have less genes of non-altruism (sorry for the confusing phrasing. I was trying to say that there are now less genes that disregard empathy).
If you care about people who share your genes, you are literally passing on the impulse to care about people through your offspring.
But what about humans? We care about our families a lot, but we also care about people who aren't related to us. Why?
The scenario I gave about the wolves is just one where an individual's genes are more represented in the gene pool because of self-sacrifice, but there are tons more not involving families. Consider the benefits of pack mentality.
We know that humans were once a migrant species who needed to defend themselves against predators. We also know that humans hunted with large groups of people who were only vaguely genetically related to them.
If humans couldn't empathize with other humans who they weren't related to, and just killed or stole from non-related humans, they could obviously not reap the benefits of living in a pack, and would die a swift death living on their own.
So, humans who didn't feel moral obligations (chemically, in the brain) to get along with others would die and would have less of a representation in the gene pool. Gradually, humans became more and more moral. Of course, this is only one of a billion ways altruism helps organisms spread their genes.
Thus, "general morality" toward all humans was born in us, and our advanced brains can now see how morality systematically evolved in our species.
To conclude, morality does exist. But morality is just a set of chemical impulses that were needed for humans to survive. Morality is not "metaphysical", and if tommorow all moral organisms were wiped out in a meteor shower then the universe wouldn't "give a shit".
Is a bacteria (a living organism, remember) that results in a million human deaths "evil"? Is a playful lion cub that kills a rabbit "evil"? We are all compelled to be moral, but remember that chemicals are the drive, and nothing else.
Emotions often make us contradict plain facts so we don't lose our minds by rejecting common faith and principles. Pretend you are a cold hearted bastard like me for a minute and suspend all morals, they have no place in reality, outside our subjective minds.
The 18th century philosopher David Hume once said that "one cannot derive an ought from an is". In other words, he claimed that one cannot get a value from a fact.
Morality is simply the sum of a number of chemical reactions in our brains. These chemical reactions make us feel guilt when we hurt others ("sin"), and in general compel us to be kind to one another. Why are we compelled to act like this?
At first, altruism (empathy) seems counter-intuitive for an organism. How does being kind benefit oneself? If you read The Selfish Gene (not that you have to have read it if you are reading this thread), you know that genes control development and guide evolution, not the organism itself. So why do we act morally?
Consider this hypothetical scenario (far better examples can be read in The Selfish Gene):
Remember that the dead father wolf has just saved three offspring who each have half of his genetic information. If the father wolf had left his family to potentially die to the bear, the father wolf would have lost representation in the gene pool.
So why does a wolf care about his representation in a gene pool? Isn't he too stupid to even know what that means? He doesn't, and yes. Let's look at that scenario in a different light.
Assume the wolf never had the genetic impulse to defend his family. His offspring would be extremely likely to die to one cause or another, and the gene pool would therefore have less genes of non-altruism (sorry for the confusing phrasing. I was trying to say that there are now less genes that disregard empathy).
If you care about people who share your genes, you are literally passing on the impulse to care about people through your offspring.
But what about humans? We care about our families a lot, but we also care about people who aren't related to us. Why?
The scenario I gave about the wolves is just one where an individual's genes are more represented in the gene pool because of self-sacrifice, but there are tons more not involving families. Consider the benefits of pack mentality.
We know that humans were once a migrant species who needed to defend themselves against predators. We also know that humans hunted with large groups of people who were only vaguely genetically related to them.
If humans couldn't empathize with other humans who they weren't related to, and just killed or stole from non-related humans, they could obviously not reap the benefits of living in a pack, and would die a swift death living on their own.
So, humans who didn't feel moral obligations (chemically, in the brain) to get along with others would die and would have less of a representation in the gene pool. Gradually, humans became more and more moral. Of course, this is only one of a billion ways altruism helps organisms spread their genes.
Thus, "general morality" toward all humans was born in us, and our advanced brains can now see how morality systematically evolved in our species.
To conclude, morality does exist. But morality is just a set of chemical impulses that were needed for humans to survive. Morality is not "metaphysical", and if tommorow all moral organisms were wiped out in a meteor shower then the universe wouldn't "give a shit".
Is a bacteria (a living organism, remember) that results in a million human deaths "evil"? Is a playful lion cub that kills a rabbit "evil"? We are all compelled to be moral, but remember that chemicals are the drive, and nothing else.
Emotions often make us contradict plain facts so we don't lose our minds by rejecting common faith and principles. Pretend you are a cold hearted bastard like me for a minute and suspend all morals, they have no place in reality, outside our subjective minds.
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