Morality without a net: A
reply to Pinker’s avoidance of nihilism
Marc Krellenstein,
November 19, 2006
Abstract
Steven Pinker observes that an evolutionary
basis for morality invites nihilism because of the nature of evolutionary
adaptation, which happens by chance and persists because of its survival value.
Pinker thinks nihilism can be avoided because moral behavior may have evolved in
conformance with an objective morality grounded in the logic and benefits of
reciprocal, cooperative behavior. Even if there isn’t an objective morality,
Pinker argues that our moral sense is “real for us” and can’t simply be
dismissed. But the logic of reciprocal obligation – the difficulty in arguing
that someone has an obligation towards you
without your being similarly obliged -- only applies if we already
accept someone having an obligation to do something rather than just finding it
desirable. The net benefits of cooperation also do not imply obligations. While
morality is still “real for us,” this too falls short of the objective
grounding of morality needed to refute nihilism. We can have morality, but we
are on our own in defending it.
We seem to possess an innate moral sense – some understanding of right
and wrong and the inclination to judge certain acts accordingly. We have widely
shared intuitions about the rightness and wrongness of specific acts. Our
pleasure at doing the right thing or being in the right is often intensely
experienced; it may be one of the fundamental human pleasures and motivations
(perhaps along with sensual and intellectual pleasures). Right and wrong also
seem for many to be a matter of fundamental, objective truth(s), even if we can’t
always see or agree on those truths and even if their source (Platonic realism?
divine commandment? the rational discovery of what benefits us?) is a matter of
contention or mystery.
Steven Pinker (2002, 2003; Wright, 2002) and others (e.g., Wright, 1994;
Katz, 2000) have argued persuasively for the evolutionary basis of our moral
sense – the gradual, if accidental, development of moral responses and
reasoning that provided net survival benefits and so persisted as human
characteristics. Moral judgment and reasoning may just be one of our innate
mental faculties, even if many of the specifics are subject to variation and
change.
But an evolved morality is a morality that arose by chance. Pinker recognizes
that this invites nihilism, the belief that there are no real or objective
truths of morality. On this account of morality’s origins, any innate moral
reasoning or truths are just a set of intuitions and behaviors that we’ve
stumbled upon (e.g., an inclination to sympathize with and help others) that
provide certain benefits. These intuitions and behaviors can be further shaped
or extended by a particular society and by individual choice, but their source
remains the non-fundamental ones of genetic accident, culture and personal
choice.
Pinker himself does not hold a traditional nihilist viewpoint and offers
two arguments for avoiding nihilism. The first is that even if our moral sense
evolved through chance adaptations, these adaptations proved useful because
they were in conformance with an objectively real morality. This would be
similar to the evolution of our 3D perception: although occurring by accident,
it was the better fit to reality that gave that adaptation its survival
advantage. The world really is 3D; that is what 3D vision hit upon and why we
have it today.
Pinker’s second argument for avoiding nihilism is that even if morality
is not objectively real, it is still “as real for us as if it were … written
into the cosmos” (2002, p. 193). Our pleasure at experiencing a sunset may also
be the result of contingent evolution, but it is no less real for that.
But both of Pinker’s arguments are flawed. Taking them in turn:
(1) Pinker believes that the objectively real morality for which we have
evolved is based on a reciprocal point of view regarding treating other people,
a view embodied in the golden rule, the categorical imperative and similar
moral precepts. While there is evidence for an evolutionary basis to such
reciprocal thinking, the argument for defeating nihilism hinges on the
assertion that this reciprocity-based morality is objectively real. To
demonstrate that, Pinker argues that this is the only possible morality, that
its truth has an intrinsic, objective character based on how people reason:
According to the
theory of moral realism, right and wrong exist, and have an inherent logic that
licenses some moral arguments and not others…. Given the goal of being better
off, certain conditions follow necessarily. No creature equipped with circuitry
to understand that it is immoral for you to hurt me could discover anything but
that it is immoral for me to hurt you. (Pinker, 2002, pp. 192-193)
No particular person can
argue that he occupies a privileged position in the universe whose well-being
can trump the well-being of anyone else simply because that’s a logically
untenable argument as soon as one enters into rational discourse at all.
(Pinker, 2003)
Moral realism is the
philosophical position that there are some objective facts of morality that are
true or false in the same way that other claims are true or false, and that at
least some of them are true (Smith, 2000). The truth of moral realism would by
itself refute nihilism. The idea of reason or rationality licensing morality is
not really a consequence of moral realism, as Pinker’s words might suggest, but
one long-standing argument on behalf of it. This seems to be Pinker’s main
point: that morality is objective (and moral realism true) because of the
inescapable logic of reciprocal behavior.
This argument for moral realism has a long philosophical tradition but a
fundamental problem, which both Williams (1985) and Harman (Harman &
Thomson, 1996) have pointed out: Although we might judge another hurting us as
undesirable, that does not mean we must insist on their obligation not to hurt us. Even if we have evolved a moral sense
that gives rise to such a judgment the question at hand is whether that judgment
and the associated affective responses can be rooted in something other than
contingent evolution. To assume the legitimacy -- and not simply the desirability
-- of someone else’s obligation is to beg the question at hand. The nihilist (or
amoralist) does not in the first place accept the objective reality of
particular rights or obligations or a need to define them.
This is not to deny that reciprocity and impartiality are elements of
our moral sense, or that acceptance of another’s obligations, or submission to a
contract of rights and responsibilities, entails obligations for oneself. It’s
hard to argue that it’s acceptable to park illegally whenever it’s convenient while
rejecting the view that everyone should be able to do that. One may similarly
think one should not (without good reason) lie to or hurt another if one
wouldn’t accept that behavior by others. But choosing to accept or not accept
certain behaviors, as opposed to counting them as desirable or undesirable, is
to already grant the existence of an obligation regarding those behaviors. When
obligations are foundational to a community we may demand that others respect
them, and may feel, think and act as if they have an objective basis. But we
can’t ground that basis in logic everyone is compelled to observe by reason
alone.
Pinker (2002) also sees support for the rightness of reciprocal behavior
in the observation that “one is better off not shoving and not getting shoved
than shoving and getting shoved” (p. 187), i.e., in the actual benefits of
certain reciprocal behaviors. These benefits are presumably the very survival
benefits that led to the evolution of such behaviors given human goals and characteristics
and the fact that we live in groups. But specific individuals (or nation
states) may not accept obligations resulting from desired net benefits because
they reason differently, rationally believing, for example, that shoving and
sometimes being shoved may give them an overall advantage, or that they are or
are not likely to be shoved regardless of their behavior. The egoist, the
strongest or the already disadvantaged can reason this way without contradiction
(Harman discusses the case of those at a disadvantage in Harman & Thomson,
1996).
(Arguments justifying moral realism by something other than reason alone
continue but have done no better, though one sort of moral realism or another is
a common belief, e.g., the existence of objective values based on religious
beliefs. Much of the philosophical literature on this topic seems devoted to
simply trying out the idea that there could be objective moral facts or
intrinsic values. Such unobservable facts or values would be consistent with
our ordinary way of speaking and with certain seemingly unassailable beliefs,
e.g., that it is wrong to set a cat on fire, or to torture a baby. But the philosophical
oddness of viewing these beliefs as “facts” remains, and both the naturalness
and apparent unassailability of some beliefs are more simply, if less
appealingly, explained by a strong evolutionary grounding of our psychological
responses combined with the effects of cultural forces.)
(2) Pinker (2003) himself seems less than convinced with the arguments
for moral realism and open to the view that the apparent objectivity of our moral
judgments might be a useful illusion. Such apparent objectivity may have evolved
because it makes moral motivation more immediate and persistent. A pursuit for
justice for its own sake, for example, is a better deterrent than having to always
calculate and consider the benefit that might come from specific actions
against wrong-doers, a calculation that might also be gamed by those very
wrong-doers.
But Pinker (2002) has another argument for defeating nihilism. He
suggests that if the idea of objective moral truth is “too rich for your blood”
(p. 193), then morality is still “real for us” even if it is not objectively
real. Pinker says that “a moral sense is part of the standard equipment of the
human mind” (p. 193) and “it’s the only mind we’ve got and we have no choice
but to take its intuitions seriously” (p. 193). Our aesthetic pleasures may also
be the result of contingent evolution, but are no less real for that. Pinker believes
our moral and aesthetic reactions are as real as it gets.
However, strong intuitions and judgments experienced as inherently
correct do not refute nihilism. The nihilist view is, after all, an empirical position
about what is really or ultimately the case regarding value, regardless of what
we may feel or intuitively believe. It is just our understanding of some
ultimate grounding of value that is required, but still missing, to refute
nihilism.
In the case of aesthetic pleasures our inability to establish some
external reality does not much diminish our experience of them. Our interests
in aesthetic pleasures are primarily about the experiences themselves and what triggers
them. The foundational question of their objective reality is not paramount (though
some may intuit or believe in objective, abstract beauty).
The experience of our moral sense is equally real, but it is the
foundational question that is critical to nihilism. The nature of that moral
sense – its commanding character and the intuition that it must apply to all
people – makes the proper intellectual understanding of its foundations particularly
significant. If our moral sense or intuitions are in some way arbitrary then we
should not hold their intrinsic rightness as the reason we expect or decide to force
others to adhere to them. We can and will likely still choose to enforce moral
behaviors that affect us, but recognizing their ultimately arbitrary character may
lead to more realistic expectations and strategies for handling moral
conflicts. We should not, for example, expect others to adopt our views simply
because they are exposed to them and their inherent rightness, or are freed
from what we might consider to be impediments to embracing them.
Pinker also finds support for refuting nihilism in the belief that a
general moral sense is not only part of our innate psychology but can also not
be eliminated. This might be true; we may not be able to fully escape reacting
with judgments of right and wrong any more than we can escape judging things as
beautiful or ugly. But moral judgment being inescapable implies nothing about
whether there is objective value.
In fact, the very reciprocal nature of much of our moral thinking seems subject
to modification. From Nietzsche to the egoism of Ayn Rand’s objectivism there
have been views critical of reciprocal compassion or generosity, views that
have appealed to some as a welcome tonic to what they see as conventional
practices that too severely limit the individual’s freedom and creativity.
There are also the specific moral intuitions we have – exactly what will
count as right and wrong – that Pinker says we must take seriously. But it is just
such biologically-based tendencies that are not to be accepted at face value as
fixed, determinate of a specific individual’s behavior or desirable even if
they help explain behavioral patterns and suggest the difficulties of changing
them for many. Pinker himself repeatedly makes this point, arguing for the need
to curb innate tendencies such as those towards revenge or rape. Limitations on
such behaviors benefit us overall, even if not each individual each time, and
societies have commonly evolved restraints on such tendencies, reinforced others
and invented new behaviors that allow them to prosper. Intuitions have long
been regarded as a source of morality, but have equally long been regarded as fallible.
Our “naïve physics” may have similarly evolved to let us quickly make many
accurate decisions about moving and acting in the world. But we come to
recognize its limitations and resist its intuitions when other facts serve us
better. Rorty (2006) speculates that morality may be entirely learned (or
changeable?), but we needn’t go that far to accept his observation that, faced
with any putative cognitive limit on what desirable moral principles we can embrace
we would almost certainly choose to test that limit rather than accept it. The
key point is that moral intuitions, like most of our evolutionary psychological
heritage, are subject to modification to as yet unknown limits.
The reality of any inborn moral capacity or intuitions also seems
dependent on individual temperament. Affective responses to different kinds of
distress are variable, and these responses are an important if not yet fully
understood component of moral intuitions. Psychopaths, though rightly regarded as an
extreme, may represent only one end of a continuum of moral sensitivity. Differential sensitivity to moral situations further
limits moral intuitions as reliable indicators of behavior.
In summary, Pinker’s efforts to avoid nihilism do not succeed. The
argument that moral realism is a consequence of rationality has not worked. The
claim that, absent such objective reality, morality is the only reality we know
and a relatively fixed part of our nature may be largely true. However, this does
not avoid the nihilism that results from our correctly understanding that our
moral sense and strong affective moral responses are variable, modifiable to
some unknown extent and ultimately contingent human characteristics based on an
innate psychology together with the culture that shapes us and the choices we
make. The innate characteristics have likely evolved because of the overall benefit
they provide to humans living in this particular world. But that is not the
same as saying they are objective facts of nature, that they form obligations
that must be adhered to or that right and wrong have some transcendent,
ultimate grounding. That does not mean that moral practice and discussion are
unimportant or that we are not willing to live by, defend and enforce those
practices. But our beliefs and their defense cannot be grounded in more than
our individual and community determination to pursue certain goals and adhere
to certain norms of conduct. Accepting morality for what it is should make us better
able to understand and reckon with our own moral codes and those of others.
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