Of morality, and other frothy matters

[muckefuck]

Spurred by my response to 0595 earlier in the day, I got into an interesting discussion on the nature of morality with monshu. At least, I hope it was interesting for him. He sounded a tad exasperated at times, but maybe just because he was a little tired--or I was a little too argumentative. At no point, though, did he say, "I've had enough of this discussion". Given the life he's had, he's probably had, if not the exact same discussion, then one rather similar to it several times before, so just the fact that he's willing to have it again with me is encouraging.

I wonder where my moral thinking comes from. I tend to think that most attempts to rationalise one's personal morality are doomed to failure since, at the end of the day, most people go with what feels right no matter what the moral philosophy they subscribe to says. But whence this feeling? Is it just the internalisation of the moral code that was instilled in me as a child, with a few revisions due to the insights of my college days and my adult experiences?

Today at work, a co-worker asked me, "Are you a Catholic?" and, after just a moment's hesitation, I answered, "Yes." In some ways, that was a totally misleading answer. I really meant, "Yes, for the purposes of answering whatever question you're going to ask me, which is probably about Catholic doctrine or practice." Ironically, I've done more reading about Catholic theology and church history since I apostatised. I can talk about the Church's view on various issues at least as compentently as most practicing Catholics I know.

I can't help but wonder how much of my morality is inherited relatively unchanged from Catholicism. Tonight, I was questioning to what extent my entire approach to examining moral philosophy is conditioned by growing up in a predominately Christian society with a Western philosophical inheritance. All so much wankery. Regardless of what shaped my moral sense, it seems fairly well-formed at this point and I'll continue to make decisions based on it whether they fit into a system I can intellectualise or not.

Comments

[grahamwest.livejournal.com]

I saw the aforementioned conversation. It was interesting. The key is the word 'system'. Morality is actually a subsystem in one sense. Everyone has a conceptual model of the world and running simulations on this model is how they score the nodes of the decision tree of their current thoughts. Since causing a negative reaction in other people often has undesirable consequences, actions that will do so score lower. Morality is one way of considering this relationship. Other aspects of this model (the complete system) represent other aspects of personality. Killing someone causes people to want to lock you up, hence it is usually a low-scoring choice. Self-interest ultimately drives our choices and thus we will generally not choose a lower scoring action in the face of more suitable alternatives.

We build the underlying model from our experiences. If you grow up in an environment where infidelity is strongly associated with adverse consequences that will be incorporated into the model and self-interest will attempt to keep you faithful. If circumstances change strongly enough the model will change to match, and you won't care about being faithful.

All of this implies that our morality is shaped from collceted tacit knowledge and as such doesn't necessarily have any overarching logic or rationale. In fact most people's morality is conflicted in one way or another; that is to say that part of their conceptual model exhibits chaotic behaviour and very similar potential actions will produce drastically varying scores.

At least, that's how I think game theory pertains to cognition. I may be very wrong.

[muckefuck.livejournal.com]

Very interesting--and useful. I'll have to think more about the areas where the model breaks down. Not just the areas you mention, where there's chaotic behaviour in the consequences, but cases where the negative consequences of clinging to ideology actually serve to reinforce the ideology. The Economist recently reported on a study of religious behaviour that showed that those religions which demand sacrifices of their worshippers do better overall than those which are more easy-going. I can think of common cases where the demands of religious morality have negative consequences--e.g. alienating friends and co-workers with dogmatic rigidity--and yet this doesn't seem to dim its appeal.

[0595.livejournal.com]

That's a great theory.