The Origin of the Moral Sense

1
The Origin of the Moral Sense
Charles Darwin (1809-1882)
2
MAN AND MORALITY

• For Darwin, the most important thing that
  distinguishes man from the lower animals is
  morality.
• When we are moral we regulate our behavior
  according to moral principles. Other animals do
  not do this.
• We use moral principles to evaluate certain
  behavior of others and certain of our own
  behavior. Other animals do not do this.
• Darwin calls the moral sense the most noble
  characteristic of all of the attributes of man.

3
ANIMALS AND MORALITY

• Darwin thinks that the study of the lower animals
  may better enable us to understand human
  morality.
• According to Darwin, any animal whatever,
  endowed with well-marked social instincts . . .
  would inevitably acquire a moral sense or
  conscience, as soon as its intellectual powers
  had become as well, or nearly as well developed,
  as in man.

4
ANIMALS AND GROUPS

• Animals have social instincts that lead them to
  take pleasure in the company of other animals of
  its kind.
• More particularly, they do not seek the company
  of all other animals of the same species, but
  other animals of the same species with whom they
  associate.
• They feel a certain amount of sympathy for
  these animals, and perform various services for
  them.

5
ANIMALS AND MEMORY

• Darwin says that the social instinct in higher
  animals that are sufficiently intelligent to have
  such an instinct would be enduring and always
  present.
• Darwin says that once an animals mind or brain
  was sufficiently well-developed it would recall
  past actions and motives that pertained to its
  various instincts, including social instincts.
• Darwin says that a stronger instinct may
  overpower the social instinct, but it would be
  recalled that the social instinct had yielded to
  some other instinct. This in turn could result
  in feelings of dissatisfaction or even misery,
  that would indicate having a conscience.

6
LANGUAGE AND SYMPATHY

• The acquisition of language by an animal would
  allow the wishes of the community to be
  expressed, and how each member of the social
  group was expected to act for the public good
  could be communicated.
• Guides to action could then be expressed in
  language.
• Darwin our regard for the approbation and
  disapprobation of our fellows depends on
  sympathy.
• For Darwin, sympathy forms an essential part of
  the social instinct, and is indeed its
  foundation-stone.

7
SOCIAL INSTINCT AND HABIT

• Darwin says that habit would be an important part
  of a species development of morality since the
  social instinct, together with sympathy is, like
  any other instinct, greatly strengthened by
  habit.
• Habit would condition the species to be obedient
  to the wishes and judgment of the community.

8
DIFFERENT MORALITIES

• Recall that Darwin thinks that any species of
  sufficient intelligence would develop a moral
  sense.
• However, he does not maintain that they would
  necessarily acquire the same moral sense as
  ours.
• They may acquire a sense of right and wrong
  without thereby having our sense of right and
  wrong, or behaving the same way that we think
  that people ought to behave.

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CHARACTERISTICS OF SOCIAL ANIMALS

• Darwin says that animals of many kinds are
  social, and that social animals mutually defend
  one another.
• He says that some animals have some qualities,
  including love and sympathy, that are connected
  with the social instinct that, when they appear
  in us we call moral.
• He thinks that dogs have something very like a
  conscience.
• He maintains that social animals must in some
  degree be faithful to one another for both
  attack and defense.
• And animals that follow a leader must in some
  degree be obedient.

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SOCIETIES

• Darwin says that animals are not first social and
  then decide to live together because they are
  social, but they understand that they would
  benefit from living together, and that is why
  they are social.
• And he thinks that the pleasure that social
  animals get from societies is an extension of
  the parental or filial affections, which come
  from a long childhood, and that is due to natural
  selection.
• Beings that were very social would escape
  various dangers through the protection that a
  society can provide, and their genes would be
  passed on.

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MAN IS A SOCIAL BEING I

• As social beings we dislike solitude and seek the
  company of people beyond our own families.
• As social, Darwin thinks that we inherit a
  tendency to be faithful to our friends, to be
  obedient to leaders, and to join others in
  defending members of our society.
• This faithfulness and obedience results in some
  degree of self-command.

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MAN IS A SOCIAL BEING II

• Although man as a social animal is guided by
  instincts to aid members of the same community,
  we are also guided in part by love and sympathy,
  as each is assisted by some amount of reason
  and experience.
• Instinctive sympathy, for Darwin, leads man to
  value the approval of others.
• And people are influenced by the wishes,
  approbation, and blame of his fellow-men, as
  expressed in their gestures and language.

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MAN IS A SOCIAL BEING III

• Some of our better actions are due to our social
  instinct, according to Darwin, but he thinks that
  our actions are in a higher degree determined by
  the expressed wishes and judgment of his
  fellow-men, and unfortunately very often by his
  own strong selfish desires.
• Darwin thinks though that selfishness can be
  overcome as love, sympathy, and self-command are
  strengthened by habit and assisted by reasoning.
• When that happens a person might declare I will
  not in my own person violate the dignity of
  humanity.

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MY CONFESSION
Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910)
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TOLSTOYS DESPAIR

• In later life Tolstoy found himself depressed
  with life and did not know how to live or what to
  do.
• At the same time he realized that the most
  significant thing for him was his own death.
• And he failed to find meaning in any aspect of
  his life, including his writing and his
  celebrity.

Tolstoys Grave
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THE VANITY OF LIFE

• Tolstoy thought that my life is a stupid, mean
  trick played on me by somebody. (Schopenhauer
  said man ought not to have existed.)
• Tolstoy thought that there was nothing in life
  and never would be.
• Things that formerly satisfied Tolstoy, such as
  his family and his writing, no longer satisfied
  him or were capable of preventing him from seeing
  that life simply ended in death, and that that
  alone was the truth about life.

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LIFE IS MEANINGLESS

• Tolstoy was wealthy and famous, but wealth and
  fame did not satisfy him.
• They did not make life meaningful.
• He had lost the belief that life had some sense -
  sense through family and art, for instance - and
  now thought that life was meaningless and
  terrible.

Tolstoys House and Dining Room
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SCIENCE AND MEANING

• If Tolstoy could not find any meaning in life
  where he formerly found it - and could not just
  live without thinking about lifes meaning - then
  perhaps he could find the meaning of life in
  science.
• But he found that science considers the nature of
  the universe, and not the meaning of life.
• So he found that he could get no answers here
  that he was not willing simply to give himself.

Niels Bohr (1885-1962)
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PHILOSOPHY AND MEANING

• Tolstoy also found no help from speculative
  knowledge or philosophy.
• This is because philosophy only seemed to say
  that human life was an incomprehensible part of a
  larger, perhaps infinite, whole that itself was
  incomprehensible.
• So philosophy does not answer the question of
  lifes meaning, according to Tolstoy.

The Long Room, Trinity College Library, Dublin
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IRRATIONAL KNOWLEDGE AND MEANING

• If reason could not give the meaning of life
  either through science or philosophy, what was
  left?
• Tolstoy looked to the common man and his lack of
  a rational attitude towards human existence.
• The average man had faith - what Tolstoy called
  irrational knowledge.

Peasants in a Russian Village
Russian Peasant Girl with Bread
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MEANING AND CHRISTIANITY

• Specifically, the average person had faith in
  God, and more specifically in Christianity.
• Reason seemed to show that life was an evil and
  men knew it. Schopenhauer.
• From faith it followed that, in order to
  understand life, I must renounce reason.

St. Petersburg, St. Isaacs Cathedral
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REASON, FAITH, AND MEANING

• For Tolstoy, only reason seems to demand meaning.
• But if we look to reason we reach Schopenhauers
  conclusion about the pointlessness of life.
• The answer to the meaning of life, for Tolstoy,
  lies in faith Christian faith.
• And it is irrational faith, rather than rational
  knowledge that makes it possible to live.
• Rational knowledge makes life meaningless.
• Irrational faith alone makes meaningful living
  possible.

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FAITH AND MEANING

• Tolstoy Faith gives to the finite existence of
  man the sense of the infinite - a sense which is
  not destroyed by suffering and death.
• In faith alone then can we find the meaning and
  possibility of life.
• For Tolstoy, faith is the power of life.
• Faith is the knowledge of the meaning of human
  life, in consequence of which man does not
  destroy himself but lives.
• Without faith one cannot live, and if man
  lives he believes in something.

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IS FAITH THE SOURCE OF MEANING?

• Tolstoys thinking that faith alone is the source
  of the meaning of life can be, and would be,
  challenged by many philosophers and other
  thinkers.
• Many thinkers would insist that a large number of
  people live quite contently without faith in God
  - or anything else - and without believing in
  something beyond life on earth.

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THE FINITE AND THE INFINITE

• For Tolstoy, if man understands the limitations
  of the finite it is because he believes in the
  infinite.
• The simple folk who had faith showed Tolstoy a
  knowledge of the meaning of life and how to live
  that he did not have before.
• Mans life was given meaning by his relation to
  the infinite - God.
• And the answer to how a person is supposed to
  live is according to Gods law.

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PAST AND FUTURE

• Tolstoy thinks that the result of each persons
  life will not be what he leaves behind, but in
  what is ahead for him in terms of infinite reward
  or punishment.
• According to him, the meaning of life cannot be
  destroyed by death since there will be infinite
  union with God after death.

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FAITH AND REASON

• The faith that gave meaning to the life of
  peasants differed greatly from the reason of
  intellectuals - reason that seemed to make life
  meaningless.
• To get rid of his despair, Tolstoy decided to
  side with the ignorant bliss that followed from
  the faith of the peasants.

The Long Room, Trinity College Library, Dublin
Peasants in a Russian Village
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A FREE MANS WORSHIP
Bertrand Russell (1872-1970)
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MAN AND NATURE I

• For Russell, man is a logically accidental
  product of purely natural forces.
• He thinks that there is no life after death.
• Indeed, just as each person is destined to die,
  so, he points out is the universe.

The Milky Way Galaxy
30
MAN, NATURE, AND PHILOSOPHY

• Wisdom, meaning, and maturity, for Russell,
  require that we recognize the truth about
  ourselves and the universe that is suggested by
  science.
• No philosophy which rejects them these
  scientific truths can hope to stand.
• Only within the scaffolding of these truths
  about ourselves and the universe, only on the
  firm foundation of unyielding despair, can the
  souls habitation henceforth be safely built.

Milky Way Galaxy Center Sagittarius
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MAN AND NATURE II

• Nature omnipotent but blind produced man, who,
  although subject to the power of nature, is
  gifted with sight, with knowledge of good and
  evil and with judgement.

African Savannah
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MAN AND NATURE III

• In spite of death . . . man is yet free, during
  his brief years, to examine, to criticize, to
  know, and in imagination to create.
• To him alone as far as we know this freedom
  belongs and in this lies his superiority to the
  resistless forces that control his outward life.

J. M. W. Turner, Rain, Steam and Speed, 1844
33
PRIMITIVE MAN AND POWER

• Russell says that primitive man felt impotent
  before the powers of nature. As a result he
  worshipped gods to which power was attributed
  without asking if they deserved to be worshipped.
• This resulted in a pathetic and very terrible
  history of cruelty and torture, of degradation
  and human sacrifice, that endured in the hope
  of placating the jealous gods.
• Since the independence of ideals in primitive
  man is not yet acknowledged, power may be freely
  worshipped and receive an unlimited respect,
  despite its wanton inhumane infliction of pain.

34
MORALITY, POWER, AND THE IDEAL I

• Russell as morality grows bolder, the claim of
  the ideal begins to be felt and worship, if it
  is not to cease, must be given to gods of another
  kind than those created by the savage.
• For Russell, naked power is not worthy of worship
  whether in the form of primitive man, any
  modern religion that prizes power, or those who
  base their morality upon the struggle for
  survival, maintaining that the survivors are
  necessarily the fittest.

35
MORALITY, POWER, AND THE IDEAL II

• Russell others, not content with an answer so
  repugnant to the moral sense, namely, basing
  morality on power and the survival of the
  fittest will adopt the position which we have
  become accustomed to regard as specially
  religious, maintaining that, in some hidden
  manner, the world of fact is harmonious with the
  world of ideals.
• Thus man created God, all-powerful and all-good,
  the mystic unity of what is and what should be.

36
MAN, MORALITY, AND POWER I

• A problem here, according to Russell, is that
  the world of fact . . . is not good and, in
  submitting our judgement to it, there is an
  element of slavishness from which our thoughts
  must be purged.
• Russell thinks that in all things it is well to
  exalt the dignity of man, by freeing him as far
  as possible from nonhuman power.
• This would include the nonhuman power attributed
  to God by theism.

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MAN, MORALITY, AND POWER II

• When we have realized that power including
  nonhuman power is largely bad, that man, with
  his knowledge of good and evil, is but a helpless
  atom in a world which has no such knowledge, the
  choice is again presented to us Shall we worship
  force, or shall we worship goodness?
• Shall our God exist and be evil, or shall he be
  recognized as the creation of our own
  conscience?
• For Russell, The answer to this question is very
  momentous and affects profoundly our whole
  morality.

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MAN, MORALITY, AND POWER III

• For Russell, The worship of force . . .
  Nietzsche is the result of failure to maintain
  our own ideals against a hostile universe.
• Russell thinks that we should preserve our
  respect for truth, for beauty, for the ideal of
  perfection which life does not permit us to
  attain.
• And he thinks that we should do this even though
  none of these things meet with the approval of
  the unconscious universe.

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MAN, MORALITY, AND POWER IV

• Russell thinks that power is bad, and that human
  freedom lies in rejecting power and cultivating a
  love of the good.
• For Russell, if we are going to create a God,
  then we should create a good God rather than
  merely a God of power, so that we worship
  goodness rather than power.
• For Russell, we should respect only the heaven
  which inspires the insight of our best moments.

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THOUGHT AND REALITY I

• As physical, embodied beings we are subject to
  the forces of nature and the laws of science.
• But in thought we are free free from our fellow
  men, free from the petty planet on which our
  bodies impotently crawl, free even, while we
  live, from the tyranny of death.
• Let us learn, then, that energy of faith which
  enables us to live constantly in the vision of
  the good and let us descend, in action, into the
  world of fact, with that vision always before us.

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THOUGHT AND REALITY II

• For Russell, thought is liberating and of great
  importance to humanity.
• From the freedom of our thoughts springs the
  whole world of art and philosophy, and the vision
  of beauty by which, at last, we half reconquer
  the reluctant world.
• But the vision of beauty is possible only to
  unfettered contemplation, to thoughts not
  weighted by the load of eager wishes and thus
  freedom comes only to those who no longer ask of
  life that it shall yield them any of those
  personal goods that are subject to the mutations
  of time.

42
WHAT DOES A FREE PERSON WORSHIP? I

• Worship is extravagant respect or admiration for,
  or devotion to, an object of esteem.
• For Russell, the free person is the one who
  questions received beliefs, common opinions, and
  investigates and reflects on the nature of
  reality in an honest way, while both recognizing
  that his or her opinions might be wrong, and that
  things may not in fact be the way that he or she
  would like them to be.

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WHAT DOES A FREE PERSON WORSHIP? II

• According to Russell, the free person worships
  reason, honesty, and goodness and all that can
  profitably result from them.
• We look to the best that life has to offer in
  the realm of imagination, in music, in
  architecture, in the untroubled kingdom of
  reason, and in the golden sunset magic of lyrics,
  where beauty shines and glows, remote from the
  touch of sorrow, remote from the fear of change,
  remote from the failures and disenchantments of
  the world of fact.
• In the contemplation of these things the vision
  of heaven on earth will shape itself in our
  hearts.

44
LOVE, KNOWLEDGE, AND PITY

• Russell Three passions, simple but
  overwhelmingly strong, have governed my life the
  longing for love, the search for knowledge, and
  the unbearable pity for the suffering of
  mankind.
• Love is important because it brings ecstasy . .
  relieves loneliness, and gives us a sense of the
  heaven imagined by saints and poets.
• Russell wanted to understand as much as possible,
  but admits that he ended up knowing only a
  little.
• Pity for mankind would always bring Russell back
  to the harsh reality of life from which love and
  knowledge could temporarily take him away.

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IS LIFE WORTH LIVING?

• Yes, according to Russell, at least for the free
  man, the free man who values love, knowledge, and
  pity, and who guides his or her life by the use
  of reason, and who pursues goodness.
• Russell This has been my life. I have found it
  worth living, and would gladly live it again if
  the chance were offered me.

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EXISTENTIALISM AND FREEDOM
Jean-Paul Sartre (1905-1980)
47
EXISTENCE PRECEDES ESSENCE

• Sartre says that, according to existentialism,
  existence precedes essence, and that
  subjectivity must be the starting point.
• The view that existence precedes essence is
  opposed to the view that man is created by God
  according to a certain concept of humanity, that
  each person is the product of creation by God
  according to a certain idea that he fulfills in
  being that kind of thing.
• According to the view that God creates man
  according to the concept of man, there is first
  the essence of man, and then the existence of
  man.
• But Sartre says that man has no essence prior to
  existence. Instead, everything begins for man at
  existence.

48
CONCEPTS, ENTITIES, AND MAN I

• Some kinds of thing that exist are preceded by a
  concept according to Sartre - human artifacts,
  for example.
• Artifacts are constructed to fulfill a purpose,
  and so their existence as the kind of thing that
  they are follows first from the concept of that
  kind of thing.
• We are not like artifacts.

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CONCEPTS, ENTITIES, AND MAN II

• In order for someone to make an artifact, such as
  a paper cutter, he or she must have an idea of
  what a paper cutter is and what it is supposed to
  do.
• That is, the existence of the paper cutter is
  preceded by a concept of what it is and what it
  is supposed to do.
• This is not so in the case of man. There is no
  concept of man by which he is preceded.

50
ATHEISTIC EXISTENTIALISM

• Some people think of God as making man the way
  some people make paper cutters - that God has an
  idea of man and then works on the matter of
  nature to produce her.
• But for Sartre there is no God, or any other
  supernatural being, that is the cause of man.
• Thus there is no concept of human nature that
  precedes mans existence the way the concept of a
  paper cutter or the essence of a paper cutter
  precedes a particular paper cutter in the world.

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NO UNIVERSAL HUMAN ESSENCE I

• And for Sartre there is no universal concept man
  that makes man what he is even if there is no
  God.
• Thus, some philosophers have thought that, even
  if there is no God, there is still a concept of
  man that precedes the existence of any particular
  man or woman, and thus each person is an instance
  of the universal man. Plato

52
NO UNIVERSAL HUMAN ESSENCE II

• Thus every human being would have a particular
  number of the same qualities in virtue of being
  human - nothing is human that does not satisfy
  the prior concept of humanity.
• But Sartre says that man has no essence in this
  sense. There is no universal essence of man.
• Accordingly, there is no universal essence that
  precedes the individual existence of every man
  and woman who has ever lived or will live.

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EXISTENCE AND ACTIONS

• Existence precedes essence means that man first
  exists and then, after existing, defines himself
  by his actions.
• In this sense, we are each nothing at birth, and
  we spend our lives defining ourselves by the
  actions we choose to perform.
• Sartre There is no human nature because there
  is no God to conceive human nature.
• Since we do not come equipped at birth with a
  prior human nature we make ourselves what we are.

54
RESPONSIBILITY AND ACTIONS

• The responsibility for each individual making
  himself or herself what he or she will be rests
  with that person.
• Thus each of you have decided to partially define
  yourselves or determine what kind of person you
  are or want to be by taking a class in
  philosophy.
• And you determine who you are by doing or not
  doing everything else that you either decide or
  decide not to do.
• Man is only what he makes of himself. This is
  a central principle of existentialism.

55
MAN AND THE FUTURE

• Man firsts exists and then becomes what he makes
  of himself.
• Because man is only what he makes of himself, in
  making himself, man is directed towards the
  future.
• Man is directed towards the future because our
  goals can only be realized in the future.
• We conceive of a goal in the present, and we
  begin to act in the present, but what the act is
  meant to accomplish can only come after the act,
  and so can only be realized in the future.

56
MAN, PLANS, AND RESPONSIBILITY

• Man differs from inanimate objects like chairs
  and trees because he makes plans to make himself
  a certain way, a certain kind of person.
• Man will be what he will have planned to be.
• And if existence precedes essence, and man must
  make himself, then man is responsible for what he
  is.
• Existentialism makes man realize that he has no
  prior nature of which he is a copy, but is a
  being who makes himself.
• And in making himself, man is responsible for
  what he makes of himself.

57
SUBJECTIVITY

• Sartre uses the word subjectivity to mean that
  man makes himself as objects such as stones and
  stars cannot.
• Subjectivity means that an individual chooses and
  makes himself into the person he is.
• Subjectivity is a condition that man cannot
  transcend and it makes him what he is.
• Man cannot transcend subjectivity because man
  simply is subjectivity - man cannot escape the
  fact that he is responsible for making himself.

58
CHOOSING I

• Sartre says that in choosing the kind of person I
  want to be I choose the kind of person I want to
  be seen as.
• That is, I create an image of myself for all
  people.
• In being responsible for myself and how I want to
  be seen I am responsible for how all people see
  me.

59
CHOOSING II

• In addition, in choosing what I do I think that I
  am choosing correctly. In this sense I am
  choosing what I think is correct for everyone.
• I am creating an image of myself that is a
  correct image of man, and so in choosing what is
  good for myself I am choosing what I think is
  good and right for all.
• Thus I want my choice to be seen as valid for all
  humanity and in this way my choosing for myself
  involves everyone.

60
CHOOSING III

• In acting one should always ask himself What
  would happen if everyone acted this way? Would
  it be okay for everyone to act this way?
• For every man, everything happens as if all
  mankind had its eyes fixed on him and were
  guiding itself by what he does.
• And every man ought to say to himself, am I
  really the kind of man who has the right to act
  in such a way that humanity might guide itself by
  my actions?

61
ANGUISH

• That when I choose for myself I choose for
  humanity involves each person in what Sartre
  calls anguish or anxiety.
• Having to choose, not only for myself, but in
  such a way that I would choose for all humanity
  to act similarly in the same situation creates
  anguish for me.
• Choices involve anguish because in choosing we
  cannot escape a sense of total and deep
  responsibility.

62
CONCEALING ANGUISH

• For Sartre people who do not feel anxious from
  choosing are hiding their anxiety from
  themselves, they are fleeing from it.
• If I dont recognize that fundamental truth about
  myself and my choices then I am concealing that
  anguish from myself.

63
FORLORNNESS I

• Another existential concept in addition to
  anguish is forlornness.
• Forlornness 1. deserted, forsaken 2. wretched 3.
  nearly hopeless Heidegger - means that we have
  to face the consequences of what it means for
  humanity that God does not exist.
• That God does not exist is disturbing to the
  existentialist since it means that there can be
  no transcendent source of value.

64
FORLORNNESS II

• Since God does not exist, Sartre says that man
  cannot find any values to cling to which can be
  used to legitimize our conduct.
• And since existence precedes essence, we cant
  look within ourselves to a fixed and determined
  nature that would tell us right from wrong.
• Our forlornness comes from the fact that man is
  alone in the world with nothing to appeal to
  either within himself or beyond himself.

65
CONDEMNED TO BE FREE I

• For Sartre man is condemned to be free.
• Man is condemned to be free because he is free
  but did not create himself in that he did not
  bring himself into the world. At his birth, his
  entrance into the world was not his choice.
• But once he is in the world he cannot escape his
  freedom, and is responsible for everything he
  does.

66
CONDEMNED TO BE FREE II

• Man, with no support and no aid, is condemned
  every moment to invent man.
• And man has to invent himself because he has no
  prior essence.
• He first exists, is straddled with his freedom,
  and is responsible for making himself.

67
DESPAIR I

• A third existential concept for Sartre is
  despair.
• Despair means recognizing that when we want
  something we always have to deal with certain
  probabilities given the nature of the world.
• Despair means recognizing that we choose and act
  within a world, and the nature of the world
  determines what actions are possible.

68
CHOICE AND REALITY

• What I will is limited by possibilities and
  probabilities given the nature of reality and so
  my will to act a certain way should concern the
  probabilities of reality.
• A person chooses to wait for her friend who is
  arriving by train, which makes sense only if
  there are trains, and trains arriving where she
  is waiting within a certain time frame.
  Otherwise it would make no sense, no matter how
  much she would choose to have her friend arrive
  when she expects him.

69
DESPAIR II

• Sartre No god, no scheme can adapt the world
  and its possibilities to my will.
• Thus, as there is no God to whom I can appeal I
  can only choose for myself given the nature of
  reality.
• And so, that what we would choose for ourselves
  must concern the nature of reality is the cause
  of despair.
• I must choose and act only in accordance with the
  nature of the world that will make my action
  possible.

70
MAN MAKES HIMSELF

• Man has no choice but to make choices because of
  his freedom, and in making choices man makes
  himself.
• Because man is free, and there is no human nature
  to depend on, things will be as man will have
  decided they will be.
• Sartre puts this another way by saying that man
  is nothing else than his plan he exists only to
  the extent that he fulfills himself he is
  therefore nothing else than the collection of his
  acts.