(featured image: Hubble ESA/Flickr CC BY 2.0)
Is morality, literally, just a figment of our imagination?
Every parent will, sooner or later, experience clashes between their beliefs, and those of their children. The first such clash in my life happened when my father and I disagreed about the make of a particular car.
Throughout the 1950s, Auto Union – later to become Audi, but at the time also known as DKW – had been producing a sequence of very rounded, streamlined cars not unlike the VW beetle. These emitted a characteristic sound, typical for their two-stroke engine, which my four-year-old ears found quite funny. In the early sixties, the newest model, the DKW Junior, however, looked very different (but sounded the same), and my father disbelieved my adamant claim that it was, nonetheless, a DKW. It was not a profound conflict (certainly not compared to the one that would follow a decade later, concerning the length of my hair), but it was still a disagreement. More importantly, it was a disagreement that could be settled – and actually was shortly after, when, on a walk somewhere, we saw one parked up and could substantiate its identity. (My father kept a brave face, but I am not sure he ever really forgot that he lost that argument with me!)
When beliefs concern facts, conflicts can often be settled through simple observation and verifying which claim corresponds best to the observed facts. Often, but not always. Perhaps an extreme case is that of the Flat Earth beliefs. For most people, there is no doubt that our planet, like most large celestial bodies, is roughly spherical in shape, with plenty of factual evidence to support this claim. But some maintain a different belief (scientific or biblical) that the Earth is a flat disc, with the North Pole at its centre, and a wall of ice (Antarctica) at its edge. While my father accepted the evidence of the badge on the parked DKW Junior, staunch Flat-Earthers refuse to recognize the evidence that the Earth is a spheroid.
So, even beliefs concerning observable facts in the physical world can be contentious. Absolute scientific proof is often elusive. Theories and models are constructed that explain observations and predict outcomes, but it is generally impossible to prove that a theory is the only one that fits the present observations. Belief in a theory is then ultimately a matter of judgement of the credibility of the argumentation and the evidence presented, and the balance of probabilities.
In the immaterial world
But many of our beliefs are not concerned with the material world. We all have beliefs about what is right and wrong – what we call morality. And even though those are sometimes as strong as, if not stronger than, the belief that the earth is a spheroid, there is no objective basis for them. Where do these beliefs come from?
One interesting theory links morality with evolution. In contrast with the popular Moral Foundations Theory, which is – according to its co-originator Jonathan Haidt – ‘ad hoc’, Morality as Cooperation (MAC), developed by Oliver Scott Curry and colleagues, used the evolution of humans as a cooperative species as a starting point. It is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to a range of problems of cooperation that humans and their ancestors have been facing for 50 million years. Over that period, the best win-win solutions evolved into seven moral domains reflecting different kinds of cooperation, which Scott Curry summarizes thus:
(1) Kin selection explains why we feel a special duty of care for our families, and why we abhor incest. (2) Mutualism explains why we form groups and coalitions (there is strength and safety in numbers), and hence why we value unity, solidarity, and loyalty. (3) Social exchange explains why we trust others, reciprocate favours, feel gratitude and guilt, make amends, and forgive. And conflict resolution explains why we (4) engage in costly displays of prowess such as bravery and generosity, why we (5) express humility and defer to our superiors, why we (6) divide disputed resources fairly and equitably, and why we (7) respect others’ property and refrain from stealing.
This quite advanced mechanism for organizing stable groups of individuals could, however, only develop and take root thanks to the capacity of all living organisms to survive and pass on their genes to a next generation. This requires a fundamental capability to detect threats and taking action to avoid them, and to detect nutrition and taking action to obtain and consume it. In other words, to establish what is good and what is bad, what is right and what is wrong, and to pursue the former, and avoid the latter.
Many of our present moral beliefs can be traced back to one the seven domains of MAC, and are still serving us to benefit from cooperation. There are of course different ways to operationalize the rules in these domains and to resolve conflicts between them. That is why moral rules can differ in detail from one culture to the next, and indeed from one person to the next, even though they all ultimately serve cooperation.
Elusive objectivity
However, nothing stops us from repurposing the same mechanism of distinguishing right from wrong for developing or adopting beliefs, and develop rules and social norms, that do not directly stimulate or facilitate cooperation between individuals, but establish a group identity that binds a tribe together and helps to differentiate it from other tribes. Think of religious and secular rituals and obligations (attending religious services on a particular day of the week, celebrating a national holiday), or shared ideologies (socialism, free markets), and even arbitrary beliefs (animal rights, dietary choice, fashion).
The moral rules that directly support cooperation can be argued to have some objective validity, since they evolved and persisted. Yet there is no reason to believe that the present set is the only possible way in which this could have happened, as the diversity in moral frameworks across cultures already illustrates. The more arbitrary social norms, however, lack any objectivity. The only thing that holds such beliefs together is the consensus among the believers.
Nonetheless, we often feel very strongly about what we believe is right and wrong, whether it is that we should not steal each other’s stuff, or whether we should not eat meat. What’s more, we tend to believe that our beliefs are the right ones and the others wrong, or at least that ours are superior to those of others. When we see people simultaneously sharing some of our rules while violating others, we see cognitive dissonance – they must surely come up with some twisted motivated reasoning not to share all of our rules! But perhaps the cognitive dissonance is all ours. We believe that our moral beliefs are the only right ones and apply universally. We seek to resolve the fact that not everyone shares them by concluding that they must be wrong – rather than acknowledging that our beliefs hold no special status, and are as arbitrary as theirs.
We believe (and have reasonable evidence to back this belief) that the laws of physics – which Mr Scott, the Chief Engineer on Star Trek’s Enterprise famously declared cannot be changed – apply across the known universe. We can say no such thing about our moral rules. The universe is amoral, and cannot give us the moral certainty of universal truths that we crave. We are on our own, and we have to work out the answers out for ourselves, and accept there is no single right answer.
Koenfucius 
