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ABRIDGED CHAPTERS:
HISTORY of
NATURALISTIC ETHICS
AN
INTRODUCTION TO NATURALISTIC ETHICS
PREMISES of NATURALISM
The major purpose of philosophy in an age of specialized scientific investigation is to act as a 'comprehensive' and 'cohesive' agent to discern an 'overview' from all the specialized fields of limited scope, and evaluate the 'implications' of their discoveries in terms of the 'human condition in general'. Such a comprehensive and coherent philosophical belief system is Naturalism, as ancient as the first Greek philosophers, and as modern as cutting edge science, it addresses all three major branches of human inquiry, metaphysics, epistemology, and ethics.
Naturalistic Ethics is of particular concern to free thinkers, as it is a method for evaluating morality using objective reasoning devoid of religious or authoritative dogma. This dissertation is only a summarized introduction that merely skims the surface of Naturalism and in particular Naturalistic Ethics. I hope that this summary will serve as an impetus for those reading it, to further research Naturalistic philosophy, because I believe it has the greatest potential as a valid approach for establishing correct conceptions and justified moral conduct.
CLEAR DEFINITIONS
First let's get a firm grasp on the ideas we're talking about via definitions of terms, the three major branches of human understanding are as follows:
-->Def. "-METAPHYSICS- n. The branch of philosophy that examines the nature of 'reality', including the relationship between mind and matter, substance and attribute, fact and value." American Heritage Dictionary
-->Def. "-EPISTEMOLOGY- n. The branch of philosophy that studies the nature of 'knowledge', its presuppositions and foundations, and its extent and validity." American Heritage Dictionary
-->Def. "-ETHICS- n. 1.a. A set of principles of 'right conduct'. b. A theory or a system of moral values. 2. The study of the general nature of morals and of the specific moral choices to be made by a person." American Heritage Dictionary
In short, metaphysics considers 'the nature of reality', epistemology considers 'how we come to know' reality, and ethics considers 'what we should do' about reality.
OVERVIEW of the PHILOSOPHICAL BELIEF SYSTEM of NATURALISM
Since Naturalistic Ethics is derived from the overall system of Naturalism we should take a moment to consider the principles it uses to address the three major branches of human understanding, which are summarized as follows:
-->Def. -NATURALISM (Metaphysics) - "A view that everything is composed of natural entities, (as opposed to supernatural), whose properties determine all the properties of all things, persons included, as well as abstractions like mathematics." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
-->Def. -NATURALISM (Epistemology) - "An approach that views acceptable methods of justification and explanation are continuous, in some sense, with those in science, and views the human subject as a natural phenomena, and uses empirical science to study epistemic activity." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
-->Def. -NATURALISM (Ethics) - "The view that ethical conclusions are derivable in non-ethical natural terms, from non-ethical premises, and that ethical properties are natural properties. Naturalism takes ethical knowledge to be empirical and accordingly models it on the paradigm of the natural sciences." Oxford & Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The reason Naturalism's ethics asserts that ethical conclusions derive from 'non-ethical' terms and premises, is because once one understands the nature of reality (metaphysics), and the nature of human perception in understanding that reality (epistemology), ethics follows logically from the relation of man's place in reality's order, without 'special' terms or premises for ethics. In other words, the definition of Naturalistic Ethics asserts that the principles of morality can be derived from objective reasoning, i.e. from the observation and explanation of 'facts' about the 'natural world' and humankind's place in it. Thus moral behavior is simply rational action.
All 'non-natural' ethical theories are based merely on: 1) subjective opinions, (i.e. 'personal' preferences); 2) unverifiable religious faith, (i.e. 'mystical revelations' in the form of commandments, papal decrees, rituals, and traditions); or 3) authoritative dogma, (i.e. 'government mandates' in the form of ordinances, prohibitions, and duties). Contrarily, Naturalistic Ethics is a form of Moral Realism, in which objectifying morality allows the principles to be reasoned to by 'anyone' through the consideration of 'empirical facts'. With Naturalistic Ethics there are no irreproachable mystics, nor authoritative dictators prescribing behavior, simply reasoned courses of action from evidential facts.
Just as in objectively oriented empirical science, which is the method naturalism uses to verify beliefs, naturalized ethics is subject to 'ongoing inquiry and verification', and is revised when warranted by new evidence, hence it is 'not dogmatic'. Natural ethics derive from what is consistently observable, i.e. empirical facts about natural order, and hence its prescriptions apparent to any individual who studies the facts concerning our human circumstance, and reasons to the correct procedural behaviors necessary to accomplish ends in accordance with human purpose.
Human purpose is intuited through the innate direction of human nature, for human nature consists of a set of inherent drives which 'necessarily' evolved as a guide toward fulfilling the 'needs' requisite for our success as a species. Our 'acquired understanding' of evolutionary principles allows us to 'augment' our comprehension of 'intuited' innate drives, by applying 'evidential reason' to verify and adapt their 'general' direction into 'specific' behaviors that fulfill our needs in the novel and/or artificial habitats of our modern circumstance. By correctly 'identifying innate drives', and the 'essential function they evolved to serve'; one can logically interpret how this functional relation applies to our modern circumstance, thereby practicing correct behavior by appropriately channeling and balancing our inherent motivational influences.
Since our innate drives represent the necessities of human existence, they are the constants we can use to calculate correct behavior when presented with the variables generated by mankind's historical development, which inevitably lead to novel habitats through the migration, technology, and social system particular to an era and culture. In other words, formulating the functional relation of our necessarily evolved instincts to the variables of a given situation, we can discern what particular behaviors are necessary for perpetuating our species from the many alternative courses of action available in contingent circumstances.
BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM
There are many methods for investigating and comprehending human nature, and many theories as to the specific morals Naturalized Ethics infer. The contemporary version of Ethical Naturalism I am presenting, is based on two essential premises derived from observed facts discerned by the natural sciences, the view called "Biological Naturalism" and the theory called "Evolutionary Ethics".
-->KEY CONCEPT - Both "Biological Naturalism" and "Evolutionary Ethics" derive from the view that biology is the most pertinent of the sciences for discerning correct human behavior, since "all things human are biological".
-->Def."-BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM- The view that mental phenomena such as consciousness and intentionality are natural biological phenomena on a par with growth, digestion, or photosynthesis. Biological naturalism is defined by two main theses: 1) all mental phenomena from pains, tickles, and itches to the most abstruse thoughts are caused by lower-level neurobiological processes in the brain, 2) mental phenomena are higher level features of the brain." Oxford Companion to Philosophy
NOTE: This view asserts that, 1) the mind is a biological phenomenon, with no immaterial spirits or special 'life forces' involved, i.e. mind is a process involving the same sort of physical and chemical principles that apply to any other occurrence in nature; and 2) all human motivation and thought is 'based' on innate predispositions evolved in the mental processing mechanisms of our species.
-->Def."-EVOLUTIONARY ETHICS- A body of theory which seeks to locate moral institutions within the main ideas of evolutionary biology. The general thesis is that we value things and persons in accordance with their capacity to sustain and maintain 'survival' in evolutionary terms." Oxford Companion to Philosophy
NOTE: From the tenet of 'Biological Naturalism' derives 'Evolutionary Ethics', for if we accept that the mind is a biological entity, 'evolved' like any other, we must accept that the human mind was 'generated by', and 'subject to', the natural selection process; which results in biomechanisms inherently structured solely by their ability to enhance the survival of a species. Therefore all ethics derived from our mental processes, are predicated on survival as a species, thus for the human species the objective basis for all moral theories is:
-->KEY CONCEPT OF THIS THESIS: - That which facilitates the survival of our species defines 'good'; and conversely, that which deters from the survival of our species defines 'bad'.
HISTORY of NATURAL ETHICS
PRELIMINARY NOTES ON TERMINOLOGY AND MEANING
The philological study of the origins of word-concepts in relation to cultural meaning is a major concern of philosophy, as linguistics is paramount to the construction, comprehension, and communication of all ideas. Our understanding of the world is greatly influenced by the cultural implications affecting the consensual meanings of the words we use to assemble and convey concepts with. The meaning of a word is defined by many other words, thus any concept represented by a word is affected by an interdependence on the meanings of all the words associated with it, which in turn is interdependent on many other word-concepts, and so on. The multi-layered interdependence of semantic systems is made even more abstruse by the fluctuations in the common experiences and beliefs intrinsic to various cultures and eras, affecting variations in conceptualization and consequentially the consensual meanings associated with the words symbolizing these concepts.
Languages evolve from centuries of interaction and melding of archaic peoples, each with a relatively distinct conceptual model of reality with correspondingly distinct semantic system used to denote these paradigms. Thus semantics is a dynamic system of continuously changing societal consensus regarding the meaning and use of word symbols, which results in a rather confusing hodgepodge of word-concepts accumulated and reconfigured by coincidence, rather than a well planned logical system. As a result, many of the terms contained in foreign and/or archaic literature intend to convey the specific meaning associated with these words within the peculiar context of the culture and/or era of the writer.
The typical meanings our culture associates with words, can vary greatly from those of writers in foreign societies and/or archaic times, which can cause great confusion about what they intended to say. To facilitate correct interpretation of the cultural and archaic usage of words, into the contextual meaning appropriate to our era, some of the quotes used herein, contain philological translations in parentheses.
Below is a supplemental list of words and phrases, frequently used in this thesis, with (contextually speaking, often but not necessarily) essentially synonymous meaning, to further aid in translation between cultural, archaic, (and field specific 'subculture' jargon) contexts:
GETTING A HANDLE ON THE NATURALISTIC VIEW
The following quotes and excerpts exemplify and clarify the principles of the Naturalistic Ethics, give its historical development, and allude to how trans-culturally and trans-historically its tenets have been derived, thus evidencing naturalistic beliefs are consilient with the human condition, human understanding, and human nature.
NOTE: This is by no means a thorough historical account of Naturalism's influence on human understanding, for a vast multitude of scientists and philosophers incorporate naturalistic tenets in their beliefs. This sketchy historical etiology merely touches on some of most famous proponents of naturalistic ethics, and a few of the major transitions from its implicit to explicit description.
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THALES -(Thales, Greece, 580 B.C.),
"Western philosophy is considered generally to have begun in ancient Greece as speculation about the underlying nature of the physical world. In its earliest form it was indistinguishable from natural science. The first philosopher of historical record was Thales ... who was interested in astronomical, physical, and meteorological phenomena, and his scientific investigations led him to speculate that all natural phenomena are different forms of one fundamental substance." 'Western Philosophy' Microsoft Encarta 98 Encyclopedia
NOTE: Thales didn't divide his conception of the world into natural and supernatural realms, as our culturally prevalent Cartesian dualism model of reality does. Thales' theories were physicalistic and monistic, and his conclusion that the world consists of one fundamental substance coincides with modern science's concept of mass/energy.
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CONFUCIUS -(Confucius, China, c. 551-479 B.C.),
"For Confucius as for Taoists, the 'Way' or 'Tao', is basically the path taken by natural events. For Confucius, everything 'thrives according to nature'. Confucius thought the principle of the 'Mean' provides a standard measure for all things. Human behavior should (ethics) avoid extremes and seek moderation ... when things function in accordance with this principle of the Mean, they stand in a 'relationship of natural dependence', i.e. the principle requires reciprocal cooperation between people and between people and nature." from 'Philosophy: The Power of Ideas' by Brook Moore & Kenneth Bruder
NOTE: Even though China and Greece were isolated from each other at the time, their oldest recorded philosophers reached the same conclusion, of a single universal natural realm. Also notice how Confucius's conception of the 'mean between extremes' corresponds to Plato's theory of 'ideal forms' derived from the same principle, and used as the basis of classical art; it also correlates to Hegel's dialectic principle of thesis and antithesis, (the extremes), leading to a more correct synthesis, (the mean). The concept of the 'mean' as a measure of correct behavior correlates to naturalistic ethics because it is a normative system that looks to the statistical apex of the bell curve of behavior patterns to derive what is natural (innate) behavior. The "reciprocity between people and nature" corresponds to modern concept of ecological awareness. -----------------------------------------------------------------------
THE STOICS -(Stoicism, prevalent philosophy in Greece and Rome, c. 300 B.C. through 200 A.D),
"The Stoic's ethical teaching is based upon two principles already developed in their physics; first, that the universe is governed by absolute law, which admits of no exceptions; and second, that the essential nature of humans is reason. Both are summed up in the famous Stoic maxim, "Live according to nature." Stoics claimed there is nothing in the world with any independent existence: all is bound together by an unalterable chain of causation. The agreement of human action with the law of nature, of the human will with natural order (logos), or life according to nature, is Virtue, the chief 'good' and highest end in life. Stoic virtue, then, is the life according to reason. Morality is simply rational action. It is the universal reason which is to govern our lives, not the caprice and self-will of the individual. The wise man consciously subordinates his life to the life of the whole universe, and recognizes himself as a cog in the great machine." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/stoicism.htm The University of Georgia's 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'
NOTE: The Stoics conceived of a physical universe being a continuum of cause and effect, this parallels the physicalistic and deterministic views of modern science. They also saw reason as something inborn to our human nature, not a divine intervention suppressing our animal nature, this correlates to the view of modern evolutionary psychology. The Stoic view of the universe as a great machine correlates to the mechanistic view of modern physics and the functionalistic view of modern cognitive science.
Also note the complete consilience between the ethics of the Stoic's maxim "live according to nature" and Confucius's culturally independent view that "everything thrives according to nature", as well as the Stoic "agreement of human action with the law of nature", and the Tao "reciprocal cooperation between people and nature".
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ARISTOTLE -(Aristotle Greece c. 384-322 B.C.)
"According to Ethical Naturalism, moral judgments are really judgments of fact about the natural world. Aristotle, who was the first great ethical naturalist, believed that good for us is defined by our natural objective." from 'Philosophy: The Power of Ideas' by Brook Moore & Kenneth Bruder
"As suggested by Aristotle, we discover what is 'good' by looking at our purpose as humans. An inspection of our purpose, then, informs us that we are to: perpetuate the species, (evolutionary ethics); preserve our lives (survival instinct); live in society, (social animal instinct); and worship Logos, (live according to nature)." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/natlaw.htm The University of Georgia's 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'
NOTE: Aristotle, is credited with founding 'empirical' scientific method, that being the method of gaining knowledge through careful 'observation' of nature rather than through revelations of blind faith, or 'solely' through mental reasoning without observation as in Rationalism. Empiricism is the method used by modern science.
His assertions of what 'good' is, i.e. our ethical standard of right conduct, is identical to the Evolutionary Ethics theory based on the 'perpetuation of the species', through personal and social group survival. 'Worshipping Logos' means to know and revere natural order. Logos is an amazing Greek concept, meaning both ordering principle and human comprehension of this order, it encompasses the entire interaction of environment with mind. 'Logos' is the word 'logic' is derived from, and the origin of the suffix '-logy' which we attach to most any field of inquiry and explanation, (ex. psycho-logy, anthropo-logy, geo-logy, techno-logy, ect.).
Logos is the derivation of the religious term 'The Word', which is the interpretation given it by the theologians that deciphered the original Greek texts that comprise much of the Old Testament. "The Word" refers to 'words' which represent our mental conceptualizations 'informing' us of natural order. Logos interprets literally as 'word', 'reason', 'ordering principle', and 'God'.
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EPICURUS -(Epicurus, c. 341?-270 B.C.),
"Epicureanism, as Stoicism, is practical in its ends, proposing to find in reason and knowledge the secret of a happy life, and admitting abstruse learning only where it serves the ends of practical wisdom. Hence, logic (called by Epicurus 'kanonikon', or the doctrine of canons of truth) is made entirely subservient to physics, physics to ethics. In practical questions the feelings of pleasure and pain are the tests. Epicurus's physics, in which he follows essentially the materialistic system of Democritus, are intended to refer all phenomena to a natural cause, in order that a knowledge of nature may set men free from the bondage of disquieting superstitions." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm The University of Georgia's 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'
NOTE: Epicurus echoes the assertions of a material world and predicating belief and action on a pragmatic basis. Pragmatism is one of the philosophical theories of truth, which states:
-->Def. -PRAGMATIC Theory of Truth - Belief that a proposition is true when acting upon it yields satisfactory practical results. The pragmatic theory of truth promises, in the long term, a convergence of human opinions upon a stable body of empirical scientific propositions that have been shown to be successful in practice. The Philosophy Dictionary: http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/dy/index.htm
By proceeding on a notion, to test if its results in practice are those predicted by that notion, the belief is verified. This is the essence of scientific experimentation.
Epicurus's use of 'pleasure' as the test of correct behavior is a form of hedonism, paralleled in modern times by: Utilitarianism, which also uses 'happiness' as a premise for ethical behavior; and by, the psychology of innate drives, which has shown pleasure is the primary reinforcer of behavior, and pain the primary deterrer of behavior. Epicurean hedonism, Utilitarianism, and the psychology of inherent drives are encompassed by one of the several contextual definitions of Naturalism as follows:
-->Def. -NATURALISM- (intuitive feelings method) 5. Conduct or thought prompted by natural desires or instincts. The American Heritage Dictionary
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THOMAS AQUINAS -(St. Thomas Aquinas, France and Italy, c. 1224-1274 A.D.),
"For Aquinas, natural law is a special subset of the divine law which pertains to moral behavior, and is accessible to everyone through reason, including unbelievers." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/natlaw.htm The University of Georgia's 'Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy'
"Aquinas distinguished among kinds of law, ...'Natural Law' is eternal law as it applies to man on earth, it is the fundamental principles of morality, as apprehended by us in our conscience and practical reasoning. Natural law directs us to our natural goal. 'Human Law' is the laws of statutes of society that are derived from man's 'understanding' of Natural Law. A rule or decree of a ruler or government must answer to a higher authority, it must conform to Natural Law." from 'Philosophy: The Power of Ideas' by Brook Moore & Kenneth Bruder
NOTE: By the time the original Greek philosophical texts were recovered from the Saracens, during the Crusades, and brought back to Europe, Christian sociopolitical government was firmly entrenched. The Crusades were in response to the invasion of Europe by the Saracens on a "jihad", a holy war mandating the death of all those who didn't belong to their religious sect. Religious institutions were the only centers of learning during that era, and the people of Europe were fighting a war based on religious ideology; hence Aquinas was not only acculturated to, but politically duty-bound to, his society's religious views.
Acquinas interpreted the works of Aristotle, and had to walk a fine line when deciphering a materialistic philosophy based on reason, into terms acceptable to a culture founded in spiritualistic theology based on revelation, and governed by a church which fervidly enforced religious dogma. Acquinas so brilliantly accomplished this synthesis of antithetical views that he was not only Sainted, but his doctrines later became the official doctrines of the Roman Catholic Church; yet his preservation of the essence of naturalistic reasoning, contained in Aristotle's works, was effective enough to lead to the revitalization of reason over dogma which contributed greatly to the fruition of scientific inquiry engendered in the subsequent Renaissance and Enlightenment eras.
Acquinas reasserted that moral behavior can be discerned from naturalistic reasoning, even by "unbelievers" that accept no religious spiritualism. His assertion that "Natural Law is the eternal law", corresponds to the Stoics view that "all is bound together by an unalterable chain of causation"; as does his assertion that "laws of statutes of society are derived from man's understanding of Natural Law", correspond to the Stoic view that "The agreement of human action with the law of nature, of the human will with natural order, is Virtue".
Acquinas also asserted that political ethics must follow from natural law reasoning, not merely from the subjective views and/or self serving agendas of a ruler claiming divine right. This introduces the important principle that: 'The moral realism of 'objective' naturalistic ethics is the 'only' foundation from which human rights can be derived and asserted'.
Aquinas's approach can be found in one of the many contextual definitions of 'Naturalism' as follows:
-->Def. -NATURALISM- (theological method) 4. Theology. The doctrine that all religious truths are derived from nature and natural causes and not from revelation. The American Heritage Dictionary
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JOHN LOCKE -(John Locke, England, c. 1632-1704),
"Locke's contributions to political theory were of major and lasting significance, he is recognized as an articulate advocate of 'natural rights', religious freedom, and as a strong opponent of the divine right of kings. ...At the time of the American Revolution, Locke's political thought was well known to American political leaders and had become considerably incorporated in American popular political thought as well. It had a marked impact on the contents and wording of the Declaration of Independence, the Constitution, and the Bill of Rights. All Americans are directly or indirectly influenced by John Locke." from 'Philosophy: The Power of Ideas' by Brook Moore & Kenneth Bruder
NOTE: Locke's reaffirmation of Natural Rights, derived from naturalistic ethics, is the foundation of liberty, democracy, and civil rights in the modern world. Locke's, (as Aristotle's and Aquinas's), 'Natural Rights' derive from observing nature, discerning man's place in nature to define man's natural purpose, discerning how society serves this purpose, and then reasoning the most reciprocally beneficial functional relation between the individual and society.
Natural Rights involve four cornerstone principles that are rationally essential to forming secure, efficient, and progressive societies, these being:
1) The principle of 'liberty', which affords the flexibility necessary for citizens to reach their full potential by letting them gravitate toward the inherent abilities they are more adept at, and endeavors they are more highly motivated to accomplish, through following personal inclination; rather than being forced into the constraints of a caste system role.
2) The principle of 'democracy', government by the people leading to laws based on human nature through the inherent normative averaging effect of majority's will. By appealing to and eliciting the inherent social instincts of human nature, more effective and efficient social cooperation results, rather than the forced coercion of being subjugated to serve a monarch or aristocracy which is costly and anti-motivational.
3) The principle of 'civil rights' guarantees the most essential freedoms and protections under the law for all citizens, by holding such rights to be 'inalienable', so that they cannot be denied by any subsequent legislation of unscrupulous representatives, even if the public has been deceived into electing them.
4) The principle of 'private property' motivates persons by their, and their loved ones, being able to enjoy the prosperity of their own efforts; and even more importantly, affords the public tangible power. For all the idealistic words and intentions are meaningless without an effective means to actualize them. Power is a matter of having dominion over the resources necessary to actualize one's aspirations. If all property is held by the state, the power of the people is nullified, for no one can access the means to exercise their volitions without state permission, thus negating liberty and self-government.
Guided by such Naturalistic ethical principles of government has enabled the United States, in merely 200 years, to far exceed the standard of living, technological advancement, world influence, and individual freedom of nations that have existed for millennia which don't govern through Natural Rights.
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WILLARD VAN ORMAN QUINE -(Willard Van Orman Quine, United States, 1908-),
"American philosopher and logician, renowned for his advocacy of naturalism, physicalism, empiricism, and holism. Quine took his doctorate in philosophy at Harvard in 1932, and remained a professor of philosophy at Harvard until 1978. ... In 'Epistemology Naturalized' Quine's physicalism: i.e. the physical facts are all the facts, all changes in the world involving physical changes, ... supports naturalism by asserting the philosophical study of knowledge is a branch of natural science, drawing on psychology to explain how sensory stimulation gives rise to scientific beliefs. ... In 'Word and Object', Quine's most famous book, he argues in favor of physicalism as against phenomenalism and mind-body dualism." Oxford & Cambridge Dictionaries of Philosophy
NOTE: Quine's refutation of mind-body dualism, and his assertion that knowledge, (including ethical knowledge), is a physical phenomenon best discerned through the natural science, resonates all the tenets of naturalism and its ethics.
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CONCLUSIONS FROM NATURALISM'S HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT:
From diverse and separate cultures, starting with the recorded history of human understanding nearly 2600 years ago, and through our present day, naturalistic beliefs have endured in concept and prevailed in practice. Naturalistic views regarding ethics are a consistent thread through all the major belief systems of humanity throughout history. The essential tenets of Naturalistic Ethics are found throughout all the major religious beliefs of the East and West, and in worldwide Natural Science. These being:
1) The world is an ordered continuum of cause and effect governed by natural laws.
2) Humans are an integral aspect of, and thus subject to, this natural order.
3) Valid human knowledge derives from the cognition, and reasoned understanding, of the ordering principles of nature.
4) Ethical human behavior is guided by acting in accordance with our place in nature's order, our purpose.
The informed reason of logos; 'is deriving ought'.
NON-NATURAL ETHICS
DECONSTRUCTING ALTERNATIVE NON-NATURAL ETHICAL SYSTEMS
APHORISM 1
All non-natural ethical systems are based on merely subjective opinions, religious faith, or authoritative dogma. Naturalistic Ethics is the only reliable and comprehensive moral system, because it is the only system that uses reason applied to verifiable facts to discern morals. Without objective verification, a moral system has no substantive reliability in practice, and lends little confidence in any principles from which to resist immorality with conviction.
RELIGIOUS ETHICS
APHORISM 2
Religions are not comprehensive systems of human understanding, they address only ethics and subjectively derive morals intuitively. To be reliable, intuitions must be verified with reason, for without reasoning morals cannot be apprehended from an individual point of view, but must be accepted on blind faith. The potential for abuse of obscure intuitions, and dogmas of blind faith, make religion a spurious method for deriving correct behavior.
...................................................................
Enduring to this day as the majority's basis for ethics worldwide, are religious belief systems. Essentially religions are ethical doctrines establishing morals, because they do not address the two other major branches of human understanding, metaphysics and epistemology, in any substantive way.
Religious metaphysics basically claims only there is a god(s) that is everything and everywhere, that generates all phenomena in the world. This tenet concerning theological metaphysics sidesteps addressing the issue of the nature of reality, and merely amounts to saying "everything is as god wills it". This answers no metaphysical questions, and in fact theology states flat out that god is 'unknowable' to man, hence religion is NOT a metaphysical system.
Religious epistemology is similarly empty of any information concerning how we come to know things, for if god is 'unknowable' to man, the world is a 'mystery', requiring 'mystical' revelations of 'faith' to know anything, spontaneous insights devoid of observation, reason, or verification. Thus, religions answer no epistemic questions, hence, theology is NOT an epistemological system.
Therefore the only aspect of human understanding religion does address, is Ethics, the prescription of moral behavior. The only specific contents in religions are commandments, duties, and rituals, which are the behaviors any particular sect or prophet prescribes as correct. Hence, religions are simply moral 'doctrines', not complete philosophical systems.
The problem with religion, is that without 'objective' standards for moral behavior one is left with 'blind' adherence to what some arbitrarily designated prophet has said is right, 'subjectively' interpreted by those who claim to be holy men. With no means of objective evaluation or verification of church edicts by individuals in the general population, there is no accountability for the mandates of the denomination. The potential for the leaders of any institutionalized church to self-servingly abuse the unquestioned obedience of such a blind faith system is well known. Those who claimed to represent "God's Will" have initiated holy wars motivated by irrational zealotry, inquisitions attaining confessions of guilt from the arbitrarily accused using torture, and horrific sacrificial rituals to appease unseen gods, evidencing the unreliable nature of 'blind faith'.
NOTE: This brief summation of the failings of religious ethics is directed at the 'unreliability' of that system. As noted in the previous section on the 'History of Naturalism', many religious thinkers and writers have made positive contributions to ethical theory through intuitive insight. Though a naturalist, I regard many religious tenets to be the rudimentary cognition of intellect in grasping the 'innate social mores' of the human animal, thus making their application to unnaturally large civilizations possible. If one interprets religious parables as allegorical symbolism instead of factual history, there is much wisdom to gain from these ancient illustrative mythologies. But, the problem with mythologies is they are implicit and esoteric, leading to the ambiguity which makes them highly susceptible to the afore mentioned abuses. Religions served a valuable purpose in eras when we had little explicit knowledge of how nature works, and it still has a place in the backward societies of today; but in modern educated societies it is time to apply reason instead of faith in deriving more veritable, and thus more reliable, ethical systems.
THE PROBLEM of the MORAL VOID
When one has come to reject religious fundamentalism, and accept reason over dogma as the valid method for establishing moral beliefs, one has to consider the ramifications of such a drastic paradigm shift. A prominent rebuttal religionists use for supporting their position, and in contention to accepting scientific method as a valid view of the world, is their claim that scientific investigation cannot derive morality.
NON-THEISTIC ALTERNATIVES to NATURALISTIC ETHICS
DECONSTRUCTING THE NATURALISTIC FALLACY
APHORISM 3
G.E. Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' is itself a fallacy. The 'ought cannot be derived from is' assertion was a premature judgment, made in an era before natural science understood the physiological processes of the mind, and the functional relation of innate predispositions in eliciting correct behaviors per environmental circumstance. ...................................................................
Many people whether religious or rational in their approach to ethics, accept 'axiomatically' a proposition made by George E. Moore in his work 'Pricipia Ethica' (1903). Known as "the naturalistic fallacy", this proposition states basically "ought cannot be derived from is". This is a direct refutation of the foundation of Naturalistic Ethics.
The "ought cannot be derived from is" proposition is based on the idea that "good", (the premise of ought), is not a 'natural' property, i.e. it is unobservable in nature, and thus "good" is an indefinable concept and unexplainable in terms of natural science, (which discerns through observation what 'is'). Moore asserted the naturalistic fallacy based on problems with semantics, i.e. theories regarding meaning in language, not from problems based on ethics. Hence Moore used a tangent issue of 'semantics' to refute a theory that concerns 'ethics', thus his refutation of natural ethics is derived from an illogical 'straw man' argument.
-->Def. -The 'Straw Man' logical fallacy, -The author attacks an argument which is different from, and usually weaker than, the opposition's best argument.
The problem with rejecting both religious dogma AND natural science as valid means for establishing ethical principles, is that it leaves individuals and societies with no standard besides personal subjectivism, or worse subjective state agendas, as the means for establishing moral beliefs.
-->Def. -SUBJECTIVISM- n. 3. The theory that individual conscience is the only valid standard of moral judgment.
If personal subjectivism is the only basis for discerning moral behavior, ethics is reduced to- "if it feels good do it". If state agendas are the only standard for discerning moral behavior, ethics is reduced to- "do it or we'll punish you." The 'subjectivism' rendered by Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' assertion that good is indefinable, is evidenced by the rest of the content of 'Principia Ethica', where he imposes his personal preferences as those which represent moral behavior, without offering any means of objective verification.
The methods of verification used for discerning what is 'objectively' true in the philosophical system of Naturalism, are the same methods the natural sciences use. In 1903, when Moore declared that natural science could not derive the principles of ethics, evolutionary science was in its infancy, and the sciences of genetics, evolutionary psychology, ethology, psychobiology, and sociobiology were nonexistent. Moore lived in an age when mind was predominantly thought of as an immaterial entity, natural science hadn't discovered the now obvious physical nature of mental processes. In short, Moore made a premature judgment in asserting the naturalistic fallacy, by drawing a conclusion from inadequate premises based on a now 'outdated' frame of reference regarding human behavior.
Today the cognitive sciences have indeed made the properties of thought processes observable as natural facts. When Moore asserted the naturalistic fallacy, Sigmund Freud's 'rudimentary' psychological theories hadn't even gained acceptance, let alone the great advances in neurological science that didn't progress significantly until over 50 years later.
The 'naturalistic fallacy' voids any means of ascertaining moral principles, and relegates ethics to an 'even less' reliable sort of subjectivism than religions do. At least religions have 'some' objectifying effect through being interpreted, revised, and pragmatically applied, by many theologians and the general populace trans-historically, lending a greater degree of consensus regarding the 'intuitions' of human morality than the individual 'intuitions' of one particular person or culture. Without at least the general consensus of world religions, the completely personal subjectivism that results from Moore's 'naturalistic fallacy' leads to moral relativism, which is a euphemism for ethical nihilism, since with no definition of 'good' it is impossible to objectively know any principles of correct behavior, which has even more potential for abuse than religious ethics.
-->Def.-"ETHICAL RELATIVISM- is the theory that there are no universally valid moral principles: all morals are valid to the conventions of culture or individual choice. ... It' motto is: Morality is in the eye of the beholder." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
One can see from this definition of 'ethical relativism', that is amounts to no ethics at all, anything goes. For if morals are validated by "individual" choice, then Charles Manson would be a morally valid person; if morals are validated by the "conventions of culture", then Nazi Germany would have been a morally valid culture.
QUOTES........................................................
-(Moore's useless non-ethics, the "Naturalistic Fallacy")-->"If I am asked 'What is good?' my answer is good is good, and that is the end of the matter. If I am asked 'How is good to be defined?' my answer is that it cannot be defined, and that is all I have to say about it." from 'Principia Ethica' by G.E. Moore (Thanks for the "Principles" George!?!?)
-(Semantic not ethical assertion)-->"Thus 'good' (to Moore) denotes a "unique simple object of thought" that is undefinable and unanalyzable. ...Even if good were a natural property, there would still be a (semantic) fallacy. Hence some have proposed calling it, the 'definist fallacy'-the fallacy of attempting to define 'good' by any means." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
-(Naturalistic fallacy not axiomatic)-->"G. E. Moore, in Principia Ethica, declared that the term 'good' stood for a simple, non-natural, indefinable quality, known by intuition, and that attempts to define it were inevitably fallacious. This somewhat obscure view has not generally prevailed, and philosophical inquiry into good continues." Oxford Companion to Philosophy
UTILITARIANISM
APHORISM 4
Utilitarianism defines good as 'that which generates most happiness for the most people'. Happiness is a subjective condition, and is thus elicited by different conditions for different people, lending no real consistency in the utilitarian definition of good. Happiness can only be evaluated 'after' behaviors that were taken to attain it, and therefore lends no prescriptive advice as to how it is to be attained.
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There have been several philosophical attempts to establish a non-religious basis for reasoned morality, most notably Utilitarianism. Utilitarianism basically states, "moral behavior is that which produces the most good for the most people". The problem with this approach is that without an objective definition of what "good" is, the doctrine has no meaning. Utilitarians do attempt to define what 'good' is, (all rejected by Moore), in their view that 'happiness', or similarly 'pleasure', is the standard of 'good'. The problem with this approach is that "happiness" and "pleasure" are subjective experiences.
There is some validity in using happiness or pleasure, (or even intuition), as a reinforcing 'guide or test' toward moral behavior as in Epicurean hedonism. But there are problems with making happiness the 'definitive standard' for 'good'.
First, 'happiness' is a subjective quality, and is thus elicited by different conditions for different people, lending no real consistency, nor objective standard in the utilitarian definition of good. Alcoholics are happy when they're drunk, psychopaths are happy when they're causing other people pain, and legal positivists are happy when the populace is completely subjugated; for the conditions that lead to happiness vary with personality, hence Utilitarianism lends no consistent explicit meaning to what 'good' actually is.
Secondly, 'happiness' can only be experienced 'after' the behaviors that have been taken to attain it, it is a 'side effect' experience from having achieved good, rather than what 'constitutes good' in itself; and therefore lends no 'prescriptive' guide as to how 'good' can be accomplished in novel situations, which is the whole point of developing ethical theories.
Thirdly, using 'happiness and/or pleasure' as the definitive essence of good, neglects the fact that many things that are not advantageous to our survival are 'pleasant' and make us 'happy'. State distribution of narcotics would elevate the 'pleasure and happiness' levels of most people, and therefore would be justified using the utilitarian standard of good; but obviously wouldn't result in actually achieving good.
A more objective and fundamental standard of good is necessary to prescribe behaviors that actually accomplish long range beneficial results. Since happiness and pleasure are subjective they are highly susceptible to personal prejudices, and since they are only side effects, one can achieve 'feeling' good even though one's actions haven't actually 'accomplished' anything useful toward realizing the goal one's actions were directed toward.
Every mature individual knows well that the 'needs' of survival take precedence over that which is 'pleasant'. We all do things every day that put survival needs before happiness, because we realize the simple truth that any and all future happiness depends on our needs being met first. The psychologist Abraham Maslow realized this when he constructed his theory of self-actualization, in which he states that drives which satisfy our biological necessities for survival comes 'first' in the hierarchy of psychological needs. Most people would rather not work for a living, yet most people do because they must attain income to meet their needs. Most people would rather not suffer through medical treatments when they're ill, but do so, because the need to 'survive' supersedes any 'displeasure' that must be endured to do so.
Survival as a species is prerequisite, to any 'happiness', 'pleasure', 'compassion', or 'nobleness' that can be attained, and hence is more fundamental in evaluating correct behavior. In fact, our most common existing standards of 'goodness' are 'already' measured by the degree to which behaviors facilitate our survival as a species. Such as the self sacrifice of giving ones life to save others, which we view as 'heroically' good, is an act that ensures the survival of the group one is benefiting, for one's group (or breeding population) is the social animal's evolutionary unit, not the individual. Conversely, self sacrifice that doesn't contribute to the survival benefit of others, which we view as 'suicidal', isn't considered good but rather tragically wasteful.
The very feeling of 'happiness' is generated by evolved centers in our minds that react to our 'needs being met', in other words, survival facilitating behavior is what generates the side effect feeling of 'happiness'. Thus the definitive standard for good is not happiness, good is defined in terms of group survival, with happiness merely being a secondary consequence. Things that make us happy, such as, a hearty meal, provides 'sustenance'; intercourse, 'continues the species'; security in wealth, ensures our future 'needs will be met'; and helping others, which promotes 'reciprocal social cooperation'; are all things that aid our group's survival, and therefore 'consequently' elicit responses from the pleasure centers of our minds, which evolved to reinforce behaviors that provide 'needs'.
'Producing the most pleasure and/or happiness for the most people', often results from good behavior, but as far as establishing a predictive or judicial ethical system it is useless. The backwards reasoning used in Utilitarianism is known to logic as the fallacy of 'Wrong Direction', i.e. it confuses an effect of good for the cause of good; and hence lends no prescriptive guidance for attaining good.
POSTMODERN ETHICAL RELATIVISM
APHORISM 5
Postmodernism is the latest term used to denote the view that humans have no means to attain objectively valid knowledge concerning reality in general, nor ethics in particular. The essentially identical tenets of Postmodernism, misapplications of Chaos Theory, Poststructuralism, Epistemological Relativism, Nihilism, Solipsism, and Acatalepsy; that refute knowledge is possible, are self contradictory, useless, defeatist, amoral, anti-philosophy, anti-science, and dangerous in their acceptance and misplaced reverence of ignorance. Postmodernism voids ethics altogether, asserting as Moore did, that good is just a subjective state of mind, which leads to ethical relativism, or more accurately denoted, moral nihilism. ......................................................................
-->Def.-"ETHICAL RELATIVISM- is the theory that there are no universally valid moral principles: all morals are valid to the conventions of culture or individual choice. ...There are two subtypes: 'Conventionalism', which holds that moral principles are valid relative to the conventions of a culture or society; and 'Subjectivism', which maintains that individual choices are what determines the validity of moral principles. Subjectivism's motto is, 'Morality lies in the eye of the beholder'." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
The current popular philosophical stance of nihilism, renamed Postmodernism, attempts to sidestep ethics altogether with its Postructuralist assertion that neither foundations of knowledge concerning reality, nor a consistent human nature, exist. Postmodernists assert that human's have no valid knowledge of reality nor any social instincts, therefore any ethical system is purely a construct of personal or cultural imagination, thereby making all behavior equivalent in moral validity, simply matters of individual taste or cultural convention, i.e. ethical relativism.
-->Def. -POSTMODERNISM- "Abandonment of Enlightenment confidence in the achievement objective human knowledge through reliance upon reason in pursuit of foundationalism, essentialism, and realism. In philosophy, postmodernists typically express grave doubt about the possibility of universal objective truth." The Philosophy Dictionary http://people.delphi.com/gkemerling/dy/index.htm
-->Def. -POSTSTRUCTURALISM- "The poststructural critique, denies that there are, in fact, structures which underlay the perception of sense data, organization of human behavior as well as which pattern social dynamics. A rejection of the idea that there are natural structures which predate human imagination and/or human activity. If such structures exist independently of human action, they permit one to infer objectively existing natural and/or social law." http://www.tryoung.com/Chaos
Moral relativism is the consequence of accepting Moore's "naturalistic fallacy" as true, for if good is indefinable and inexplicable in the objective terms of natural science, it is meaningless to base actions on anything but subjective or cultural preferences, hence moral relativism is a tautology of moral nihilism, i.e. the assertion that acquiring objectively valid moral knowledge is impossible. The problem with moral relativism's subjectivist version is that by considering all conduct equally valid and all value judgments merely imagined personal preference, one cannot make a distinction as to whether a psychopathic pedophile's torture, rape, and murder of children is any more or less 'right' than the actions of a researcher endeavoring to find a cure for cancer.
The subscribers to moral relativism's conventionalist version of ethics, use a variation of moral relativism by applying the concept to cultures instead of individual's. Though they still believe all moral assertions are just made up from collective cultural imagination, they assert that one should go along with their own culture's ethics merely out of a sense of fitting in with the crowd. This whimsical conventionalist's variation of moral relativism, indulging cultural norms with a "When in Rome do as the Romans do" attitude, hardly impels any basis for social reform, nor just laws. Nor does conventionalism grant any foundation for resisting legislation toward totalitarian government by those 'subjectively inclined' toward power lust who adhere to the authority/obedience system of 'legal positivism', i.e. the agendas of the state supersede the will of the populace. According to conventionalism there are no grounds to assert regimes such as Hitler's or Stalin's were immoral, since their totalitarian systems became the cultural norm of their nations.
Obviously their are serious ethical flaws with the conventionalist view. Blind adherence to authority is completely contrary to the tenets of freethinkers,
-->Def. "-FREETHINKER- One who has rejected authority and dogma, in favor of rational inquiry and speculation." American Heritage Dictionary
If we view ethical behavior as something people just made up, i.e. socially constructed, rather than derived from fundamental truths regarding human nature and humanity's relation to nature; and view the convenience of staying out of trouble as the most sensible way to deal with cultural impositions of arbitrary laws; all concepts of human rights are reduced to the status of myth. Conventionalism leaves any culturally accepted practice as moral; thus cultural norms such as headhunting and cannibalism, to assert status, common to cultures in Borneo; or sewing women's vaginas shut and amputating their clitoris's, to insure virginity and fidelity, common to cultures in the Middle East and Africa; would be considered perfectly moral practices if we believe this view.
QUOTES........................................................
-(Equivalence of postmodernism and nihilism)-->"Extreme skepticism, then, is linked to epistemological nihilism which denies the possibility of knowledge and truth; this form of nihilism is currently identified with postmodern antifoundationalism." Alan Pratt, Ph.D. Humanities Dept. Embry-Riddle University http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/nihilism.htm
-(Tyrannical propagandist's dream)-->"Carr concludes, If we accept that all perspectives are equally non-binding, then intellectual or moral arrogance will determine which perspective has precedence. The banalization of nihilism creates an environment where ideas can be imposed forcibly with little resistance, raw power alone determining intellectual and moral hierarchies." Alan Pratt, Ph.D. Humanities Dept. Embry-Riddle University http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/nihilism.htm
-"...a twist that must have brought a smile to the little god of irony. Where cultural relativism had been initiated to negate belief in hereditary behavioral differences among ethnic groups - undeniably an unproven and ideologically dangerous conception - it was then turned against the idea of a unified human nature grounded in heredity. A great conundrum of the human condition was created: If neither culture nor a hereditary human nature, what unites humanity?" from 'Consilience' Edward O. Wilson
OTHER ATTEMPTS AT FILLING THE MORAL VOID
APHORISM 6
The obscurity and confusion generated by the undefined and unprincipled post-religious and non-natural ethical systems, has led to a moral void which many attempt to fill with cinematic allegories, technologically returning to a system of ambiguous cultural mythology with similar fantastic scenarios and heroes.
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Friedrich Nietzsche predicted a time of moral void between religious myth being discredited, and before science developed enough to answer ethical questions, a time when nihilism would prevail; postmodernism and its consequent 'moral relativism' is that prediction realized. Nietzsche saw ancient Greek theater and the multi-media experience being introduced by his contemporary and friend Ricard Wagner as an intermediate medium to fill in the moral void through art inducing people toward higher goals; modern cinema is that prediction realized.
For many, modern cinema has become the stopgap media for conveying moral principles through allegory. Expanding on the multi-media 'experience' pioneered by Wagner, the cinema conveys the legends and myths of our culture in the storytelling traditions used by many pre-mass media technology societies from the Celts to the American Indians. The problem with cinema is that it is inexorable from the ulterior motive of profit, so that while many movies have endeavored toward the expression of moral truths ala 'fine art', most, especially in the corporate climate of the contemporary U.S., gear their presentations toward mass appeal by merely portraying fear and desire oriented sensationalism rather than resolving ethical problems with their story lines. More often than not, modern films supply only fantasy gratification for what is missing from most people's lives in modern culture's secure yet repressed routine, by exploiting depictions of impulsive sexuality and brutal dominance.
This 'cheap thrill' content often digresses cinematic themes from their potential of expressing allegorical moral depictions as in ancient Greek theater, and substitutes the relatively uninspiring equivalent of a carnival sideshow's. Cinema is a powerfully persuasive media, and as such is vulnerable to abuse in the form of propaganda. Rather than threaten consequences for politically incorrect behavior, propagandists direct behavior by creating a false depiction of a world where the behavior they wish to instill would be the logical course of action 'if' their designer illusion were real. Its interesting to note, that our technological society has manifested a sort of new mythology in the many science fiction themes prevalent in U.S. cinema. Unfortunately, most science fiction movies aren't well researched and often regress back to some form of subjectivism or spiritualism instead of a naturalistic view more representative of actual scientific developments.
-->Def. -NATURALISM- n. 1. Factual or realistic representation, especially: a. The practice of describing precisely the actual circumstances of human life in literature. b. The practice of reproducing subjects as precisely as possible in the visual arts.
QUOTES.....................................................
"The problem was the intellectual and cultural crisis Nietzsche later characterized in terms of the "death of God" and the advent of "nihilism". Traditional religious and metaphysical ways of thinking were on the wane, leaving a void that modern science could not fill, and endangering the health of civilization." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
"In 'The Birth of Tragedy' Nietzsche looked to the Greeks for clues and to Wagner for inspiration, believing that their art held the key to renewed human flourishing for a humanity bereft both of the consolations of religious faith and the confidence in reason and science as a substitute for it." Cambridge Dictionary of Philosophy
ANOTHER IMPEDIMENT TO CONNECTING BEHAVIOR TO BIOLOGY
APHORISM 6
A major factor impeding the recognition that human behavior derives from biologically physical cause and effect processes, is the understandable, yet irrational, emotional reaction of equating the concept of social Darwinism with its 'misapplication' during World War II which resulted in the holocaust tragedy.
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Further hindrance to developing a connection between the natural sciences and human behavioral ethics was the emotional reaction to the holocaust of World War II. For decades after the holocaust, anyone suggesting a causal link between human behavior and biology was compulsively and summarily discredited as having Nazi-like views. Yet neither of the alternative theories of cultural nor personal moral relativism, based on Moore's intuitive ethics, can provide any causal reasoning to assert that the holocaust was 'foundationally' immoral; since the Nazi 'culture' conventionally viewed genocide as morally correct, and individual Nazis 'subjectively' felt 'good' about what they were doing.
Then starting around the mid 1960's great advances in the sciences of genetics, ethology, and the cognitive sciences began to illuminate a more rational view of human behavior in relation to biology. With books like "The Territorial Imperative" by Robert Ardrey, "The Naked Ape" by Desmond Morris, and "On Human Nature" by Edward O. Wilson, public awareness of our evolutionary heritage and its affect on behavior in modern society gained acceptance.
PHYSICALITY of MIND
BIOLOGICAL NATURALISM
APHORISM 1
HUMANS AND THEIR MINDS ARE MATERIAL ENTITIES
On the scale of our human world, material bodies interact in a consistent way. The relational consistencies of material interactions are what we call 'order', which we comprehend as 'natural laws', discerned and described by the overlapping and interdependent natural sciences of physics, chemistry, and biology.
Human beings, and their minds, are material, physical, entities; thus all that is human is formed, sustained, and driven by 'natural laws', including our ethics. Human beings are 'biomechanisms', whose physiological functions are explicable in terms of standard natural science. To refute this is to regress toward immaterial supernaturalism.
???QUESTION: 1) Does the human mind derive from any special constituents outside of natural physical influences?
RELINQUISHING DUALISTIC ILLUSIONS
The last vestige of immaterial supernaturalism, even for many scientifically educated people, is the mind. All aspects of bodily function, other than mind, are well enough understood to be accepted as physical in nature by all but the superstitiously inclined. Mind, like most 'mysterious' phenomena, tends to be classified as being 'mystical', i.e. supernatural, immaterial, or spiritual, seen as deriving from forces beyond the natural world, i.e. outside of causality. It is a rather arrogant tendency of people to assume that anything they don't understand must derive from beyond the natural world. Many automatically assume that - "If I don't know how something can be understood in natural terms, it must be something supernatural." Those asserting supernaturalism use a meaningless excuse for understanding, to slothfully quell the anxiety generated by that which is unknown by rationalizing ones lack of understanding with a catchall empty description, instead of accepting their inadequate comprehension and making an effort toward further inquiry.
Countless phenomena were once believed to derive from supernatural forces, yet when mankind acquired cause and effect understanding of these phenomena, we've readily accepted that they are physical and natural. From this consistent trend of demystification in the history of human comprehension comes the overwhelming inference that all unknowns will eventually be found to have natural physical causes. Previous beliefs regarding the physiological vehicle of the assumed 'supernatural life force' have been: the 'breath' (spiritus is Latin for breath), the 'heart' and/or 'blood' (from Old English bloedsian, meaning to consecrate, as still practiced in the Catholic ritual of consuming the blood of Christ), the 'liver' (liver meaning literally that which gives life), and the 'pineal gland' which Descartes envisioned as the receiver of information from a separate immaterial realm. We now comprehend the cause and effect functions these structures contribute to the 'life process', and thus they have been 'demystified' allowing our minds to conceptually 'grasp' their properties as deriving from material and physical causes, i.e. 'natural' causes.
Mind is no exception to the process of demystification through understanding. Psychology initiated the demystification of mind in the late 1800's, by carefully observing and correlating the products of mind, revealing consistencies between our basic emotionally experienced motives and the various behaviors they elicited. Progessive advances in cellular biology, microsurgery, biochemistry, and other investigative techniques have carried the process of comprehending of mind to higher levels of explicit cause and effect understanding of its more fundamental material mechanisms. The modern science of neuroanatomy has identified the structures in the brain responsible for the processing of all five senses, organ regulation, voluntary motor control, memory, learning, emotion, and reason. Biochemistry has discerned many of the molecular mechanisms of mind by identifying a multitude of neuroactive agents, and their respective functions regarding the integration of brain/body biofeedback, the reciprocal interplay between various specialized centers of the brain, and the regulation of emotive and conscious states. At present all the 'basic' aspects of how the mind works are known, and are explicable through standard physics, chemistry, and biology. Facilitated by the knowledge already acquired has greatly accelerated our advancement toward comprehending all the specifics of how neurological mechanisms interact to cause the processes of mind, and its physical nature is being thoroughly revealed.
The misconception of the dualistic notion of 'material' and 'immaterial' influences in the world, derives from a false distinction between structure and function. That is to say, we perceive the structure of a mechanism as distinct from the process a mechanism accomplishes. We falsely separate what something 'is' from what something 'does', expressed in the correlative grammatical distinction between 'nouns' and 'verbs'. Structural matter we perceive as solid and permanently tangible, we can 'grasp' these things, literally and figuratively, as 'material'; but when material bodies transfer energy from one to another, it is unseen except by its effect on the perceptible objects and these exchanges are ephemerally transient, hence 'force' seems 'immaterial' by contrast. Yet the transfer of energy between material systems is standard physics and hence are 'physical', for modern physics has discovered that matter and energy are the same 'stuff' merely being in different states of homeostasis. All our technological devices involve the exchange of energy between structural parts to accomplish their functions, yet few people claim an automobile of computer possess supernatural powers; while many, even scientifically well educated people, still cling to the idea that these same sorts of forces somehow transcend the physical laws of cause and effect when applied to the processes of the mind. The only reason so many believe the forces involved in technological mechanisms are natural physics, while concurrently believing the forces involved in mind are supernatural, is the comparative lack of popular understanding regarding mind mechanisms.
There is no sentient, intentional 'prime mover', ordaining the laws of physics, nor magic forces from supernatural realms, the 'order' in the world derives from the intrinsic properties of mass/energy. Mind 'is' what the nervous system 'does', and like any complex machine, mind's actions can seem remote from its material structure. Those not learned in mechanics may find the actions of an automobile just as mystical as the brain's, and similarly often seem to attribute spiritual intentionality to that machine when it won’t start and they resort to futilely pleading with it to comply with their wishes, as if it were aware of their desires. Most of us accept that an automobile is physical in nature, and don’t question this based on the fact that its functional process of 'transporting' us seems remote from the description of its 'structural' working parts found in service manuals. Yet we question the physicality of mind because the experience of thought seems remote from the inadequate understanding most people have of neurophysiology.
The evidence that mind is physical, is that physical things like, structural injury of the nervous system, neurosurgery, and psychophamaceutical drugs, can profoundly alter it. If the mind were immaterial it would not be greatly affected by these physical alterations of the nervous system. Though all of the basic physical mechanisms of mind are understood, many still hold on to supernatural notions of mind just because all of the specifics of it are not yet complete. But none of the physical sciences have absolute knowledge in their fields, even less complex bodily organs like the heart are not 'completely' understood, or all heart disease could be easily cured. At one time our lack of understanding led us to believe the heart was the vessel of a supernatural 'life force'. Should we continue this presumption just because all the details of the heart aren't 'completely' understood? Or should we continue inquiry along the lines of the overwhelming inference evidenced by all the discoveries regarding the heart mechanism so far, that inference being, - 'what we have yet to know about the heart will be found by looking for natural physical causes'? Omniscience is not an option for finite human beings, any knowledge we have derives from probabilities supported by the weight of evidence, and the weight of evidence supports the physicality of mind.
The explicit knowledge of mind as a natural phenomenon is demonstrable in the cognitive sciences of: psychology, neurology, and psychobiology, and this knowledge has proven to have found effective application, in the practices of: psychiatry, neurosurgery, and psychopharmacology. A vast weight of evidence derived from these sciences clearly proves that the mind is physical, describable in structure and function in standard physiological terms, a thoroughly natural phenomenon. Human beings are material, physical entities; and as such we are subject to the same cause and effect ordering as all matter. Hence all that is human is determined by natural laws.
QUOTES....................................................................
"The idea of mind as distinct from the brain, composed not of ordinary matter but of some other, special kind of stuff, is dualism, and it is deservedly in disrepute today. The prevailing wisdom, variously expressed and argued for, is materialism: there is only one sort of stuff, namely matter the physical stuff of physics, chemistry, and physiology, and the mind is a physical phenomenon." from 'Consciousness Explained' 1991, by Daniel Dennett, Ph.D. in Cognitive Science
"In short, the mind is the brain. According to the materialists, we can (in principle!) account for every mental phenomenon using the same physical principles, laws, and raw materials that suffice to explain radioactivity, continental drift, photosynthesis, reproduction, nutrition, and growth." from 'Consciousness Explained' 1991, by Daniel Dennett, Ph.D. in Cognitive Science
"Virtually all contemporary scientists and philosophers expert on the subject agree that the mind, which comprises consciousness and rational process, is the brain at work. They have rejected the mind/brain dualism of Rene Descartes, who in 'Meditationes' concluded that "by the divine power the mind can exist without the body"." from "Consilience", by Edward O. Wilson, Ph.D. Biology, Harvard Univ. 1998
"All of human psychology is said to be explained by a single, omnipotent cause: a large brain, culture, language, socialization, learning, complexity, self-organization, neural-network dynamics. I want to convince you that our minds are not animated by some godly vapor or single wonder principle." from 'How the Mind Works" by Steven Pinker, Ph.D. Prof. of Psychology
"Looking at the visual system dispenses with the idea of the homunculus or a little man inside the brain which does the consciousness work. It is an empirical fact that there is not an homunculus in the brain, and even if there were we would still have to go through the same investigation of the homunculus' consciousness, and so on ad infinitum." Daniel Dennett http://www.merlin.com.au/brain_proj/physiol.htm
"Epicurus's physics, in which he follows essentially the materialistic system of Democritus, are intended to refer all phenomena to a natural cause, in order that a knowledge of nature may set men free from the bondage of disquieting superstitions." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
"Recently, the use of radioactive or fluorescent tracers that are drawn into nerve-cell chemistry and carried throughout the protoplasm, and techniques of micro-electrode neurophysiology, have brought a new vitality to studies of brain growth. The brain is seen to lay the foundations of even the higher psychological processes before birth. Such discoveries prove that brain growth is inseparable from mental growth. Notions of how consciousness, will, and human understanding came about can never be the same." from 'Brain Development', The Oxford Companion to the Mind
OVERCOMING FALSE DISTINCTIONS GENERATED BY THE MISUSE OF WORDS
Many object to being referred to as a biomechanism, that is because of the 'frame of reference' we evaluate the word 'mechanism' with. Our common experience and use of the term mechanism, applies to machines which are grossly more simple than ourselves, and hence it seems degrading to be compared with such devices.
One of the major stumbling blocks to correct conception is the misapplication of language, this is why philosophy has been predominantly occupied since about 1900 with the problems of semantics, or the use of words to convey accurate meaning. Using words with conceptual parameters that are too narrow creates false distinctions, i.e. the implication that different words signify different meaning when they actually signify synonymous meanings.
A case of how false distinctions between words generate and perpetuate misconceptions, is exemplified by the following incident regarding the long held false distinction between the 'immaterial soul' which was viewed as the animating principle of life and the 'material body' which was viewed as merely the container for this supposed life force. This notion of material and immaterial dualism was challenged by the discovery of DNA. Linus Pauling, who was one of the major contributors to the discovery of DNA, was asked by a reporter if his research diminished the value of life, Pauling responded: "Science does not seek to degrade life by describing it as material, but rather to elevate our appreciation of the material world to include life."
In the broadest sense a 'machine' is simply this:
-->Def. "-MACHINE- 1.a. A device consisting of fixed and moving parts that modifies mechanical energy and transmits it in a more useful form. American Heritage Dictionary
The sense biology uses the word 'machine' is this:
-->Def. "-MACHINE- 4. An intricate natural system or organism, such as the human body." American Heritage Dictionary
The related word 'mechanism' applies to the cognitive sciences in the biological and psychological sense, as these:
-->Def. "-MECHANISM- 5. Biology. The involuntary and consistent response of an organism to a given stimulus. 6. Psychology. A usually unconscious mental and emotional pattern that dominates behavior in a given situation or environment." American Heritage Dictionary
These definitions constitute the definitions that apply to the view of 'Biological Naturalism', and correlate to the subject matter studied in biopsychology and evolutionary psychology. These two fields, and the many specialized fields they encompass and draw from, discern the facts about how the human mind works, through discovering what the natural mechanisms of mind are, and why human nature evolved as it did. These facts provide the premises used for reasoning the theory of Naturalistic Ethics. For once one ascertains what the mind consists of, how its mechanisms work, and how it evolved in relation to the requirements of what the environment necessitated mind to do, (the "is's" of metaphysics), it logically follows as to 'why the mind evolved'. 'Why the mind evolved' logically derives from 'what the mind must do'. 'What the mind must do', is the mind's teleological purpose, which also describes the foundation of natural ethics 'what the mind ought to do'.
QUOTES (WORD USAGE)............................................................
"The 'Idols of the Market-place' are the most troublesome of all, these (false) idols that have crept into the understanding through the alliance of words and names. For while men believe their reason governs words, in fact, words turn back and reflect their power upon the understanding, and so render philosophy and science sophistical and inactive." from 'Novum Organum', by Sir Francis Bacon
QUOTES (MIND MECHANISM COMPLEXITY)............................................................
"There are about @ 30 billion neurons in the human brain and each has about as many as 10,000 contacts with other neurons. The number of synapses (connections) in the human brain is about 10 to the 15th power. ...
"The neurons of one human cerebral cortex would reach over 250,000 miles if placed end to end. The complexity of this organ is obviously enormous! ...
"Neurotransmitters are chemicals which are released into the synaptic space whenever a neuron conducts an action potential to the axon terminals. There are perhaps 100 or so different neurotransmitter varieties in the brain. ...
"Each neuron of the brain (@ 30 billion) can be in only one of two states (resting or acting), the number of functionally different brain configurations would be 2 raised to the 10 to the 11th power; according to Carl Sagan this is a number greater than the number of elementary particles (protons and electrons) in the universe." California State U. Chico http://www.csuchico.edu/psy/BioPsych/neurotransmission.html
NATURAL DESIGN
FUNCTIONAL RELATION BETWEEN SPECIES & HABITAT
APHORISM 2
ALL SPECIES TRAITS ARE PREDICATED ON SURVIVAL AS A SPECIES
Species can only come into existence, and remain in existence, through organisms evolving traits facilitating their kind's perpetuation. Organisms evolve through selection of natural genetic variations that result in altering their structural and biochemical mechanisms. When such alterations effectively operate to convert environmental input into survival facilitating output, that variety's kind is thus perpetuated, they continue to 'exist' as a species; conversely, those organisms that don't possess this functional relation with their habitat 'perish', becoming 'extinct'.
Therefore, since humans have come into existence, and continue to exist, our entire design, (i.e. the structural configuration of our species generated by the natural laws acting in our ecosystem); and our place in that ecosystem, (i.e. the end fulfilled by our organism's design); is predicated on our 'survival as a species'.
???QUESTION: 2) If one accepts that humans are an evolved animal species like any other, does it necessarily follow that for any and all of our behaviors to be correct, i.e. moral, they must be predicated on the evolutionary principle of survival of our species?
NATURALISTIC VIEW OF "OUGHT FROM IS"
Let's review the tenets of Naturalism in general from which its ethics derive that 'survival as a species' is the inevitable standard for moral behavior. This will also clarify how ethics derives from using non-ethical natural terms and premises making ethical properties objective facts, i.e. natural properties.
In more colloquial and less philosophically technical terms...
The first tenet, Naturalism's view of reality, is that all things in the world, including humans and their minds, are physical, material things with ordered causal relations between all things, a continuum of consistent cause and effect relations between objects, the same model of reality held by the natural sciences.
The second tenet, Naturalism's view of how knowledge is acquired, is that all human thought is a consequence of physiological biochemistry and structure, interacting in a causal and functional relation with our environment.
The third tenet, Naturalism's view of moral behavior, is that ethical properties are empirically observable natural properties, such that right conduct is 'necessarily' predicated on behaviors serving the biological purpose of survival for an organism's species.
-->KEY CONCEPT - The reason 'survival as a species' is an 'objective logical necessity' for the behavior of a species to be right conduct, (moral), is that extinct species have 'no behavior', and hence cease to be moral agents. This is a completely objective statement because it asserts an observable necessity devoid of subjective considerations, the principle applies to all life forms. No moral agent = No morality
-->Def. -NECESSARY - 1. Absolutely essential, indispensable. 2. Needed to achieve a certain result or effect; requisite. 3.a. Unavoidably determined by prior conditions or circumstances; inevitable. b. Logically inevitable.
LOGICAL NECESSITY AND CORRECT CONDUCT
Effectively executing a procedure to accomplish any goal requires: comprehension of the existing state of affairs, and acting in accordance with the cause and effect steps necessary to convert the existing state to the intended state. Comprehending and acting in accord with the natural laws of cause and effect relations, is necessary for 'rational action'; in other words 'is derives ought'.
A simple example: If ones goal is to get from New York to Chicago, there are many alternative rational actions to do so; i.e. one can fly an airplane, one can take a bus, one can drive their car, and for someone physically fit, with enough time, even a bicycle or walking could traverse that distance. Similarly one could take many different routes, some shorter, some longer. But all these alternatives involve acting in accord with natural laws, (what is), to accomplish this goal, (what ought), because we, as any physical object, are subject to natural laws. One's will is not unconstrained due to being outside of physical causality. The person who merely wills traveling via telekinesis, (what isn't), does not get to his destination, no matter how vehement his volition, or passionately righteous his motivation is for doing so. Similarly, if one chose a route, say the long way around the globe, that wasn't appropriate for the physical capabilities of their mode of transportaion, such as trying to drive a car or ride a bike across the ocean, they would fail to attain their goal because such things aren't consistent with the natural laws. This is exactly why 'ought' DOES derive from 'is'.
Considering a more fundamentally ethical matter, such as the reason for traveling to Chicago, one has to consider the validity of purpose motivating ones behavior. If one were going to Chicago to assist in an environmental cleanup of a toxic waste dump, we would most likely all agree that was a 'good' motive. If one were going to Chicago to dump mercury containing waste products in that city's water reservoir, we would most likely all agree that was a 'bad' motive. This would be an intuitively self-evident judgement to most people. But is their any objective standard from which one could assert that this 'intuited' judgment is 'in fact' the correct one? Why would endangering 1000's of people by poisoning a resource they depend on be intuitively self-evident as bad?
-->KEY CONCEPT - The very biological process that evolved us and thus generated every aspect of our being, including the innate behavioral predispositions guiding our conduct, was directed by 'natural selection' which is predicated on preserving traits that perpetuate a species, therefore all our inherent motives are predicated on 'preserving our kind'.
FUNCTIONAL RELATION BETWEEN HABITAT & SPECIES
Considering the natural laws that evolved the ethical sense of right and wrong conduct inherent to human nature; our entire design, i.e. the structural configuration of our species generated by the ecosystem; and our purpose, i.e. the goal fulfilled by our organism's design; is predicated on 'survive as a species'. This is a necessary truth, as species only come into existence, and remain in existence, through evolving survival facilitating traits. Therefore any existing species is a success story which has survived eons, only through its organism being structured to function as an integral part of its habitat; for when a species ceases to be an integral constituent of an ecological system, extinction results and that species exists no more. Therefore most fundamental behaviors that must be practiced by any species are ones that result in the perpetuation of that species.
From these premises one realizes correct behaviors for a species, or ought, is derived from a functional relationship between organism and environment, or is's. Reconsidering the invalidity of Moor's 'naturalistic fallacy' which defines "is" as an observable natural fact: All existing species, including man, are "is's", all the needs of man are "is's", the habitats from which man derives his needs are "is's", and to survive as a species man must behave, "ought" to behave, in a way that attains his needs from his habitat by comprehending and acting in accord with natural cause and effect processes that achieve this, which are also "is's"; hence man's 'oughts' derive from what 'is'.
KEY CONCEPT--> Refuting the 'naturalistic fallacy', "good" is definable as a natural fact: "That which facilitates the survival of a species defines 'good', and conversely that which deters from the survival of a species defines 'bad', (evolutionary ethics)."
As the Stoics and Taoists first asserted, and resonant throughout history, even in religious eras, is the teleological concept of man as integral part of an ordered universe, derived from this order, living in this order, dependent on this order, and thus the determinant of what makes actions right or wrong is whether they succeed in 'maintaining' mankind in this order. Our continued survival as a species is dependent on correct perceptions and conceptions eliciting correct responses to avoid detrimental changes in ourselves, our societies, and our environment that would threaten sustaining our biological needs. In other words, one must "live according to nature" or one will cease to live, one must behave in accordance with the causal order of natural laws to attain the desired effect, practicing rational action to perpetuate the survival of our kind.
SPECIES-SPECIFIC APPLICATION OF OBJECTIVE ETHICAL PRINCIPLES
Though the objective standard for right behavior is the biological necessity to perpetuate the species, and hence universal for all living things; it's contextual application by any particular species, is 'species-specific'. Such that, for humans the practice of moral behavior pertains to actions that facilitate the 'survival of the human species' specifically. From a tiger's perspective eating a human is good, but from a human's perspective it certainly is bad.
Another contextual aspect in applying the objective standard of good, which causes much confusion, and contributes to belief in the misconception of ethical relativism, is that even within a specific species, 'group dynamics' have evolved two distinct sets of innate moral behavior. The operative evolutionary unit for social animals is not the individual, nor is it the entire species, but rather the breeding population, or in human terms the societal group. Thus, social animals have evolved innate morality that is group oriented. This does not negate the objective definitive meaning of 'good' being 'the survival of a species', because the 'survival of a social species' is facilitated by, and dependent on, 'group dynamics'.
All social animals divide into distinct groups within a species for the purpose of securing, through territorial possession, the resources any particular group needs to survive. Those within the group innately cooperate, those outside the group are innately excluded, as other groups are 'competitors' for resources. This does not make ethical behavior relativistically subjective, for these dual innate moral codes are universally applicable to any and every group, and objectively necessary.
Let's extrapolate on our earlier 'traveling to Chicago' example, adding that the reason their water reservoir was the site where our 'bad-guy' was dumping mercury sludge was because he was a fundamentalist Muslim on a Jihad mission to save the people of Islam from damnation. This would seem to violate the overall 'survival of the species' predicate for behavior. But when one qualifies this 'survival predicate' on the contingent factor of social animal 'group dynamics' one realizes, as spuriously as the reasoning which elicited his motive is, that his motive is still predicated on his perception that he is intending to help his own group survive.
So, ammending our objective principle of what necessarily defines 'good' behavior in the most general terms, to fit the more species-specific context of social animals like humans:
-->KEY CONCEPT - The very biological process that evolved us and thus generated every aspect of our being, including the innate behavioral predispositions guiding our conduct, was directed by 'natural selection' which is predicated on preserving traits that perpetuate a species, therefore all our inherent motives are predicated on 'preserving our kind'. Additionally, for social animals, like humans, whose perpetuation is dependent on their social group, all right conduct is predicated on 'preservation of ones social group'.
Just because group dynamics is objectively necessary, and is an inherent part of our nature, does not make its application correct without considering the same constraints of natural order which determine the efficacy of any action. Group dynamics must be applied in a way that preserves the functional purpose of the drive, which is to preserve ones group. This purpose is defeated by 'unsound reasoning' inappropriately evoking out-group aggression in a 'counterproductive' way.
Our Chicago bad-guy's misconceptions about the mandates of supernatural beings is obvious; but a more pertinent misconception is his failure to ascertain, and factor in, the reaction from the infidel out-group. The infedel group's drive to protect their own will likewise elicited, resulting in out-group aggression against the Islam group because the menace his actions represent. This unsound reasoning which would lead to the great detriment of the Chicago bad-guy's group, despite his intentions, is an important principle I will address later. By the way, this is the same sort of group dynamic, natural fact, moral mistake the Nazi regime made when it proceeded to violate other nation's sovereignity, creating a menace to the out-groups which allied to protect their own, which resulted in great detriment to the German people.
This distinction between in-group and out-group moral codes, and the objective necessities of cooperation and competition that evolved them, would take another entire dissertation. I mention it here, in brief, because it is a major reason people tend to misconceive morality as purely subjective. For instance, many think of murder and killing in war as being the same behavior, which seems to make human morality regarding taking another human life subjectively inconsistent instead of innately motivated; but in considering the objective evolutionary necessities that inevitably led to group dynamic mechanisms, one can see that murder is taking an in-group life, whereas killing in war is taking an out-group life.
For now, these four explanatory quotes will have to suffice:
QUOTES.....................................................
"We can hear in the song of birds the point and counterpoint of survival and of all social behavior: cooperation and competition. In order to survive, all animals must keep the two themes in harmony." Peter Marler, Ph.D. Cambridge
"For an axiom of biology states that no two groups with the same ecological requirements can continue to coexist in the same habitat; eventually one must eliminate the other through competition." M. Philip Kahl, Ph.D. in Zoology from the University of Georgia
"Human nature has a dual constitution; to hate as well as to love are parts of it; and conscience may enforce hate as a duty just as it enforces the duty of love. The conscience of a soldier is his duty to save and protect his own people and equally to destroy their enemies. Conscience serves both codes of group behavior." from 'Essays on Human Evolution' by Sir Arthur Keith, Anthropologist
The Amity-Enmity Complex - "The amity which an animal expresses for others of it's own kind will be equal to the sum of the forces of emnity and hazard which are arrayed against it." from 'The Territorial Imperative', by Robert Ardrey, Anthropoligist University of Chicago
THE PROFUNDITY OF SURVIVAL vs. DARWIN PHOBIA
'Survival as a species' is a greatly underestimated concept regarding its application in ethics. All the behaviors involved in civilized moral conduct are 'based' on survival as a species, and in application survival as a group. Civilizations result from the human social animal mechanisms that insure group survival through cooperative behavior.
The phobic response to Social Darwinism's, (Evolutionary Ethics'), view that survival is the basis of morality, is that 'survival' seems a rather mundane, gross, and even cruel animalistic premise upon which to found all the 'higher' aspirations of man. The phrase "survival of the fittest" brings to mind imagery of "World Wrestling Federation gladiatorial combat", or "a lion killing a gazelle"; in the Darwin-Phobic view these impressions seemingly cannot be a basis for human morality. Those who find 'survival' a mundane, gross, or cruel concept on which to found human ethical principles, derive this distaste from an oversimplified view of how profound 'survival as a species' is. What they're misunderstanding is that 'fitness' isn't merely about body building or combat skills, it's about ALL things that enable organisms to 'fit' into their habitat.
Fitness concerns the full range of human activity, not just soldiering and hunting. The fitness of parents is found in the 'compassionate care' of their children, the fitness of spouses is found in their 'devotion' to each other, the fitness of judges is found in their 'fairness' toward those accused, the fitness of leaders is found in their 'service' to their people, the fitness of scientists is found in their objective 'reasoning'. All these noble attributes of a moral being: compassion, devotion, fairness, service, and reason; are essentially attributes for behaving effectively to accomplish practical ends; ends that facilitate the survival of that beings group, by fulfilling each person's contextual role in contributing to their society's perpetuation.
Parent's compassion ensures their children's 'health', 'safety', and 'successful development'; spouse's devotion ensures the family will remain intact to provide their offspring's 'needs'; a judge's evenhanded fairness ensures equal 'protection' under the law for all citizens, instilling group 'allegiance'; a leader's service ensures 'unified direction' and 'cooperation' within his group; a scientist's objective reasoning ensures 'accurate conceptions' from which to 'act effectively'. Further examples of moral endeavors being predicated on survival: Medical Science, to 'maintain life'; Agriculture, to provide 'sustenance'; Fine Art, to 'communicate' and 'inspire' correct conception and social ideals; Education, to 'teach practical skills'; Law, to insure 'reciprocal benefit' between society's members.
-->KEY CONCEPT - All endeavors considered morally good, noble, and worthy, are behaviors that promote cooperative group effort to provide group member's 'needs', all such needs being predicated on effectively perpetuating the 'survival of the species'.
Civilization is made possible by persons who contribute to societal 'needs', therefore such contributions are seen as serving 'moral' purposes. The attachment to a larger social group is for the very 'practical' and 'rational' purpose of facilitating the survival of that group and its constituents. Individuals in a social group have a better chance of 'surviving' through cooperative effort. Humans are innately social animals, therefore their evolutionary unit is the social group. For social animals the group is a 'survival' strategy. The individual serves the group so that the group will serve the individual, hence there is no moral dilemma between serving one's group and serving one's self.
QUOTES......................................
"The Standard Social Science Model turns the intuitively obvious sequence of causation upside down; i.e. 'Human minds do not create culture but are themselves the product of culture'. This reasoning is based on the slighting or outright denial of a biologically based human nature. Academic sociologists have remained clustered near the nonbiological end of the culture studies spectrum. Many are, in Lee Ellis's expression, 'biophobic'-fearful of biology and determined to avoid it." Edward O. Wilson 'Consilience'
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PRAGMATIC ADVANTAGE OF TEACHING MORALS NATURALISTICALLY
Appeals to reason are more convincingly persuasive and motivationally enduring than are demands from authority. The ethical approach of 'rational action' voiced by Naturalistic Ethics is thus a more effective means of instilling social morality in the minds of individuals than religious commandments or legislative mandates.
Consider how much more persuasive the appeals to reason in naturalistic ethics are for instilling socially moral behavior in the young and mislead, than are the fear of damnation used by religion's, or the coercive threats of imprisonment used by governments, or the whimsically convenient attitude of "just go with the flow and fit in" of conventionalist relativism. Much psychological dissonance could be alleviated in the morally immature, or impaired, by educating them to the fact that cooperation with society is not dictated by some unseen spirit's commandment, government mandated duty, or self denying conventionalism; but is the logical and natural survival strategy of social animals, that the individual serves the group so that the group will serve the individual.
The wonders, comforts, and security of modern life would not be possible if everyone stood alone. No single person could perform all the tasks necessary to gather and assemble from raw materials: a grocery store, a modern house, an automobile, a computer, or a TV set; thus we cooperate essentially out of self interest. There is no conflict of interest, nor moral dilemma, in this prescription for cooperating with your own society, for to serve your own community is to serve yourself.
QUOTES..........................................................
"Kant's ethical teaching stated in his 'Critique of Pure Reason' as the freedom of self-government, the freedom to obey consciously the laws of the universe as revealed by reason." Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia -----------------------------------------------------------------------------
MIND MECHANISM
APHORISM 3
ALL HUMAN THOUGHT IS MOTIVATED BY INNATE DRIVES
The human brain, through which our ethics are evaluated, is a biological organ evolved like any other. The brain in its most fundamental description, is an input to output processing 'machine', 'programmed' by natural selection. Thus, mind is an evolved 'biomechanism', which converts 'sensory input' into survival facilitating 'behavioral output'.
When genetically determined variations in 'behavior patterns' facilitate a species survival, they are selected for; when such innate behavioral variations are detrimental to a species survival, they are selected out. Thus, all innate behaviors of a species are a consequence of a functional relationship between the particular habitat which induced their evolution, and the particular physiological mental processing mechanisms thus evolved.
Humans, as all animals, have a set of inherent behavior patterns, our species-specific 'ethos' known as "human nature", determined by natural selection, resident in our instincts, innately conveyed through genetics, and fine tuned by imprinting, and prepared learning.
???QUESTION: 3) Are humans subject to instincts as all other animals; and if they are, to what extent do innate predispositions affect our thought processes?
INSTINCT
All animal behavior, even adaptive learning, is 'motivated' by innate predispositions known as instincts, imprinting, and prepared learning. Life forms are complex biochemical mechanisms that must maintain their structural integrity to survive. Innate behaviors are essential as organisms must be born with basic survival skills or they would perish, thus they have inevitably evolved.
The fact that non-human animals survive despite no conceptual knowledge of nutrition, what may cause injury to it's physiology, or complex communicative language symbols; is evidence of innate instinctual behavior. The fact that prehistoric humans survived before conceptualization of these behaviors proves that we also possess innate instincts. There is no qualitative distinction between subhuman and human animal life, only a quantitative difference. Humans are just as subject to instinct as any other animal.
The evolved functions of the instincts of all living things are based on survival and perpetuation of the species, the necessary prerequisites for the continued existence of species. All our thought, and even what commands our attention, is directed by innate drives. The emotive experience of our innate drives is the basic referent on which all abstractions are founded. Innate emotional referents order the experience of random sensations, in accord with the natural selection process which ordered the random mutations along the necessary survival predicate which allowed them to come into existence.
I am not arguing that species aren't different than one and other, but that they are all motivated by sets of basic instincts. Since humans are an animal species, we are likewise subject to our species-specific set of basic instincts. Life forms have some universal needs, yet the strategies for attaining these needs differ in the context of the niche organismic structural variations evolved to fill. Some life form instinct's functions are universal, such as reproductive or food seeking drives, but the specific evolved strategies for successfully reproducing or attaining a particular diet are specific to the species involved in accord with the habitats that evolved them. Humans, as all animals, are biochemical machines; we have "human nature" behavior patterns determined by natural selection an resident in our instincts, innately conveyed through genetics. Humans have a species-specific nature determined by our particular necessities for survival, and expressed through evolved instincts that serve this purpose.
The capacity for reasoned intelligence evolved for the same pragmatic purpose, to survive. Reason is subsequent to, and dependent on, innate instinctual behavior patterns. All sensory input is processed and filtered through the primitive brainstem and midbrain regions BEFORE reaching the cerebral cortex which is responsible for abstract reasoning. Reason evolved to augment the direction of the innate drives which elicit it, NOT as a separate process devoid of necessary purpose.
In higher animals the expression of any genetic predisposition is dependent on sensing environmental changes that elicit them. Reason is an evolved capacity which carries the processing of inherent drives further, such that reason is only a subsequent part of innate sensory processing, for fine tuning modification of behavior, not separate from these innate motivators. The capacity to modify innate responses toward more accurate behavior through prepared learning is known as 'open instinct'; where basic motivational evaluative referencing of sensory input is innately fixed in accordance with the organism's needs through evolved instinct, then subsequently further referenced to the associations formed from previous interaction (experience) with the environment to improve behavioral efficacy.
OPEN & CLOSED INSTINCT
Humans are motivated by instinct, but with "open instinct". The distinction between open and closed instincts is: 'closed instincts', (which most people are familiar with and refer to as all instinct), have both fixed motive and behavior, 'open instincts' has fixed motives but the behavior can be modified by learned associations. All human behavior is motivated by instinct, genetically evolved inherent programming; the only things learned, are modifications of behavior that provide alternative ways to satiate these innate drives.
Learning may modify the behavior used to answer an instinctual motive, but the behavior is still motivated by innate drives; and the behavior must fulfill the aim of the innate drives to be remembered and continued. The human capacity for associative learning is great, hence behaviors that fulfill instinctual drives may be greatly sublimated and abstracted. Such convoluted associative connections may seem remote from the innate drives initiating the thought process causing a learned behavior, but the compulsion and desired end of such behavior is still innate.
Learning is not 'creating' knowledge, it is 'recording' sensory relations of natural cause and effect relations. Subsequent introspection on remembered associations in the brain can further distill consistencies of sensory experience into concepts of causal principles, that is creativity. But the 'creative' process is still constructed from, the experiential antecedents of sensory information one has already attained, being 'synthesized' through ones inherent capacity for analog processing. It should also be noted that the mind mechanisms are entirely interactive, and continue development throughout ones experiential life, such that genetics determines the 'potential' for analog processing, while environmental circumstances cumulatively determine the degree to which that potential is actualized.
Reason may channel innate direction, but not ignore it. One instinct can only be countered by another instinct, since reasoning is not separate from its innate motivation, it cannot independently "overcome" that which is innate. Reason can only channel mental direction through the tempering effects of counterbalancing the innate drives motivating the processing. The tempering of an innate drive can only be countered by another drive that is hierarchically more requisite than the tempered one. Example: We have an instinct to protect our possessions, (territorialism), this instinct can be tempered by counterbalancing it with our more requisite instinct to survive, such as surrendering or possessions when our life is threatened with a gun.
Evolution is an cumulatively additive process, within the constructs of our brains are the remnants of the innate predispositions of all our genetic predecessors. All our sense data and thought processes are affected by the hard wired fundamental referents left by the organisms we evolved from. The human nervous system's structural design is physiologically analogous to the cumulative evolutionary processes which formed it.
Progressing from individual receptor cells, to ganglions, to the spine, and upward through the brain stem, midbrain, and cortex; there are correlative remnants from all our predecessors, from eukaryote, to fish, to reptile, to mammals. Electroshock and insulin shock treatments that stop brain activity when recovering "wakes up" from the brain stem, to the "higher regions. Patients will show a progression of reflex responses from fish, to chimp, to human on full recovery. In embryological development, a fetus goes through the evolutionary process in microcosm, from single celled creature to human being. Embryological development progresses through pre-human procedural and structural stages, such as amoeba-like cellular migration, fish-like gills, and monkey-like tail.
All sensory information is conveyed to the brain through the primitive brain stem and midbrain, hence all mental activity is FIRST referenced to, and filtered by, species-specific innate predisposition’s, which give the basis direction for all thought. There is an instinct motivating the basis of all human endeavors. All our supposedly reasoned "higher" moral laws are nothing more, (or less), than the expression of the same evolved social instincts that make wolves hunt in packs or fish swim in schools!
Some of the major instinctual directives observable in humans, (and some human manifestations of them), are the innate drives:
Humans, as all animals, have a set of inherent behavior patterns, our species-specific ethos known as "human nature", determined by natural selection, resident in our instincts, innately conveyed through genetics, and fine tuned by imprinting, and prepared learning.
QUOTES............................................................
"Man is a talking animal. Man's brain has qualitatively little to distinguish it from the brains of his close cousins, the gorilla and the chimpanzee." ‘MAN AND ANIMAL’ Dr. Leonard Carmichael, Ph.D. from Harvard
"Ranging through communities of bee and elephant, ant and whale, we perceive a unity of behavioral patterns. We recognize many traits that we share with our non-human companions in the living world: social bonds, maternal care, aggression, submission, and ownership of territory; even, alas, deception and greed." ‘MAN AND ANIMAL’ Leonard Carmichael, Ph.D. Harvard
"Today the work of ethologists clearly shows that man is united with all animals. From ethology we get extremely useful ideas about the unlearned behavior of human infants and the psychological attitudes of adult men and women." ‘MAN AND ANIMAL’ Dr. Leonard Carmichael, Ph.D. from Harvard
"Etholoy has touched many a facet of the central problem of instinct. The one to engage us at this moment is the reality of inherited, genetically determined behavior based on open as well as closed programs." Robert Ardrey, Naturalist
"Medical science assumes that physiological studies of rats, dogs, and monkeys can be translated into human terms. Our bodies share with many other mammals the same basic design, from cells to vital organs. Every major part of the human brain, for example, is represented in the brains of cats and dogs." ‘THE DRIVE TO SURVIVE’ Peter Marler, Ph.D. Cambridge
"The notion of physical kinship between man and animals seems readily acceptable, but we are tempted to think that any psychological parallels are remote and irrelevant. Animals and man have much more in common than we realize. Studies of animal societies to gain knowledge of the human condition is as relevant in the psychological realm as in the physiological." from ‘THE DRIVE TO SURVIVE’, by Peter Marler, Ph.D. Cambridge
"Sole dependence upon learning can be hazardous; an animal that has to learn every source of danger is likely to be dead before the process is complete. Konrad Lorenz proposed this "innate schoolmarm" as a necessary prerequisite for adaptive learning." from ‘THE DRIVE TO SURVIVE’, by Peter Marler, Ph.D. Cambridge
"Ethology is as new as the Atomic Age; this new science's broad themes reveal how animal societies work, how animals communicate, how they fit into their environments, how they court, mate, and raise their young, and how they learn." from ‘MAN AND ANIMAL’, by Leonard Carmichael, Ph.D. Harvard
"Ethology is a new science, pioneered by Austria's Konrad Lorenz and Holland's Niko Tinbergen. It’s major concern is with the precise study of innate behavior patterns in animals. Ethology is most certainly revealing universal patterns of behavior and may someday uncover, by most objective means, an ethos in the nature of all living beings." from 'The Territorial Imperative', by Robert Ardrey, Naturalist
"In the 1920's we rejected instinct and the demands of the past as of any great relevance to human behavior and turned to the conditioned reflex called experience for all final answers as to why men are the way they are. Our premature conclusions concerning animal instinct had been drawn from the termitary, the beehive, and the anthill. Not until the following decade would biology's focus shift to the vertebrate." from 'The Territorial Imperative', by Robert Ardrey, Naturalist
"In general American psychologists pursue their studies of learning almost as if instinct did not exist, while on the Continent ethology observes the behavior patterns of animals in the wild. Molecular biology brings suggestions that both learning and instinct, like the genetic code itself, may be based on the molecule within the cell." from 'The Territorial Imperative', by Robert Ardrey, Naturalist
"It is no help to the student of man, that psychology has renamed the open instinct, a form of innate behavior exhibited by man and all higher animals, and has euphemistically termed it a drive. A drive is an instinct under a new name. Flung out at the front door, the old instincts are allowed in at the back after assuming an alias and a slight disguise." Cyril Burt Prof. of Psychology
"Innate behavior can be quite elaborate. One can visualize chains of reflexes in which the response to one stimulus will itself serve as the stimulus for a second response, which will then in turn serve as the stimulus for a third response, and the like." Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
"Such chains of reflexes give rise to instinctive behavior. Instincts are complicated patterns of responses that share the properties of the reflexes out of which they are built." Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
"Instinct is USUALLY viewed as a behavior pattern that is fixed from birth, that cannot be modified, that is present in all members of a designated species." Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
"Continuity is taken for granted in structural development, where processes sweep past the moment of birth without a pause. Why should this not be true of behavioral development, too?" Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
INNATE MORALITY
APHORISM 4
THE FUNCTIONS INNATE BEHAVIORS EVOLVED TO SERVE ARE OUR BEST GUIDE TO CORRECT CONDUCT
Innate motivators are our time tested inherent guides channeling our behaviors towards the needs of perpetuating our species, and as such are our best guide toward correct behavior. In objective terms adaptive behavior is moral behavior, and maladaptive behavior is immoral behavior.
Since innate motivations derive, (i.e. evolve), from ‘object’ interaction alone (i.e. interaction between organism and habitat), are not dependent on ‘experience’ (i.e. are inherent not acquired), are ‘universal’ (i.e. present in our entire species, not opinions from personal subjectivism), and ‘necessary’ and for survival per entire species, (naturally selected by millions of years of 'field testing'); the 'functions they represent' are the closest thing to ‘a priori’ moral principles from which we can deduce behaviors promoting the continued existence of our species.
???QUESTION: 4) Should we trust in the innate predispositions of our human nature, or is human nature fundamentally corrupt, (as asserted by the 'original sin' concept), necessitating its suppression and/or elimination?
BIOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY vs. THEOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY
Biological teleology is a fundamental concept used in discerning evolutionary theories, including Naturalism's Evolutionary Ethics which we will use to answer our philosophical question, so let's consider its premises and validity.
-->Def. "-TELEOLOGY- n. 1. The study of design or purpose in natural phenomena. 2. The use of ultimate purpose or design as a means of explaining natural phenomena. 3. Purposeful development, as in nature or history, toward a final end." American Heritage Dictionary
The historical development and common application of the word teleology may cause some confusion here, so let me clarify that the word is being applied in the biological sense, not the theological sense. A basic difference between the view of natural science and religion, and reflected in the different senses they apply to the word-concept teleology, is that natural science views the universe as 'ordered' whereas religion views the universe as 'intended'. The intentional view of the universe derives from the fundamentalist's tenet advocating cessation of inquiry, which left the conceptualization of the forces of nature in the subjectively intuitive state of personification through psychological projection of our anthropomorphic properties onto the world at large.
Biological teleology makes no reference to an 'intentional' creator, for nature is non-sentient, non-conscious, and non-volitional; it refers to natural 'order' or 'causality', it discerns the consistent patterns of phenomena that generate living things. Sentient organisms thus derived are the purposeful agents, their intention being to survive. To personify the universe by giving it the human quality of volition is subjective psychological projection rather than objective metaphysical reality. Reality simply is, to ask what is the purpose of the universe, implies it has volition. Only living beings have purpose, because only living things need to sense and react 'intentionally' to sustain their existence.
The biological teleology of any species, including humans, is discerned by a method of 'reverse engineering', i.e. working out the explanations from 'effect to cause' rather than 'cause to effect'. This is necessary because we cannot directly observe the 'cause to effect' relations of human evolutionary processes, because they took millions of years. In biological teleology one analyzes the structure and function of features of the 'final end', (i.e. species); evaluates these features usefulness in relation to the 'ultimate purpose', (i.e. survival of that species); and deduces from what is known about the 'design' of the ecosystem they are part of, (i.e. consistent cause and effect relations in that system), their evolutionary history and development.
The comparative cross referencing of many sciences contribute to this 'reverse engineering' process. Some of the major fields compiling this data base are: comparative anatomy, ethology, zoology, archeology, paleontology, anthropology, evolutionary psychology, geology, ecology, and genetics. Regarding Naturalistic Ethics one endeavors to use biological teleology to discern: 1) what is innate to human nature, and 2) what survival functions these innate predispositions serve, and 3) how these functions translate into modern circumstances.
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-->Def. "-BIOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY- Teleological explanations attempt to account for things and features by appeals to their contribution to optimal states, or the normal functioning, or the attainment of goals, of wholes or the system they belong to.
Teleological explanations which do not presuppose that what is to be explained is the work of an intelligent agent are to be found in biology. The justification typically involves two components: 1) an analysis of the function of the item to be explained, and 2) an etiological account.
In natural selection explanations, etiological accounts appeal to 1) genetic transmission mechanisms by which features are passed from one generation to the next, and 2) selection mechanisms (ex. environmental pressures) because of which organisms with the feature to be explained have a better chance to reproduce than organisms which lack it." Oxford Companion to Philosophy
THE CONSILIENCE OF EXPLICIT EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY'S BIOLOGICAL TELEOLOGY AND IMPLICIT RELIGIOUS TELEOLOGY
Using the evolutionary process, so fundamental for understanding any biological mechanism, Evolutionary Psychology describes the historical development of evolutionary processes forming mind mechanisms through the natural laws at work in an ecosystem. Mind mechanisms result from the interaction between subject (the mental 'processes' of a species), and object (the habitat's 'structure' generating the species' 'structure'), so evolutionary psychology addresses the very essence of epistemological inquiry, i.e. what is the origin and validity of the correlation between subject knowledge and object actuality.
Discerning the cause and effect relation between subject and object, mind and matter, evolutionary psychology considers what the Greeks called 'Logos' which is the impression upon the mind of the universal order, informing us of the logical sequence of events regarding the great machine's natural laws. Logos is the same concept Christianity translated as 'the Word', and metaphorically described as God's ordination to man, which, through allegory, represents both natural ordering forces and its informing the mind. The same concept Taoism describes as 'the Way', being knowing and practicing 'the Path' taken by natural events. Regardless of the allegorical or cultural description, the principle remains the same, natural laws order the world, and the mind cognizing and directing behavior in accordance with that order will continue to be an integral part of it.
The ordering 'engineer' 'designing' all evolved biomechanistic innate drives is natural selection, thus all biomachine design and function culminates from trial and error selection of genetic variations, resultant from mutations, and/or reconfigurations of genetic code via mating. When genetically determined variations in behavior patterns facilitate a species survival they are selected for, when such behavioral variations are detrimental to a species survival they are selected out. Thus, all species behaviors are a consequence of a functional relationship between the particular habitat that induced their evolution, and the particular physiological mental processing structures thus evolved.
Through the cumulative layering of the innate predispositions as evolutionary processes acted through time, their fundamental direction of thought compelled by interacting with our environment, is the most reliable guide for behavior, including conceptualization, because they represent timeless cause and effect necessities for life. Our reasoning is part of this same process, not a divine first cause of separate and independent origin.
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"A type of moral realism is the theory of natural law, associated with Aquinas, Grotius, and Pufendorf. According to this view, morality is grounded in principles which are fixed in nature, particularly in natural purposes, and discernible through reason. All human laws are judged in reference to these." Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/m/m-realis.htm
"Impulse towards the good is a part of human nature, and on this is founded virtue; for Aristotle does not, with Plato, regard virtue as knowledge pure and simple, but as founded on nature, habit, and reason." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
INSTINCTUAL BALANCE AND MORALITY
Life forms are biomechanical systems, and as with all systems their sustainability and maintenance requires their being in a state of homeostasis. Biofeedback mechanisms for sustaining homeostasis are evident throughout our physiological system, and the nervous system is responsible for the vast majority of these mechanisms. The nervous system is the quintessential biofeedback regulating mechanism, it monitors all the organs of the body and integrates their functions so as to maintain homeostasis in the entire organismic system. It is also serves as the interface for adjusting physiology to environmental changes, for organisms are an integral part of their habitats and thus must also integrate with the environment to maintain systemic homeostasis.
Innate behavioral predispositions exist to adjust the organism's behavior toward sustaining its integral functional relation to the habitat, by monitoring for changes in that habitat and initiating biomechanical actions that compensate for those changes to reestablish systemic homeostasis. Being complex organisms, humans have a complex set of innate drives that require a delicately balanced interplay necessary to reciprocally integrate their various functions for ensuring all our complex needs are met. To due this innate drives exist in counterbalancing pairs, and multiple drives (and their reciprocal compliments) act on any complex behavior in accordance with the organism's hierarchy of needs.
NOTE: This section deals primarily with balancing reciprocal drives, for further explanation of the hierarchical nature of drives See: http://www.iserv.net/~merriman/pairbond.htm Section: DIFFICULTY OF DISCERNING THE PRIORITIZATION OF MULTIPLE INNATE DRIVES AND DIFFERENTIATING ACQUIRED BELIEFS ; which outlines the principle in relation to reproductive instincts.
The key to correct behavior (morality), is to maintain a balance in the holistic set of our evolved instincts. Mental health is accurately described as being 'emotionally well balanced', for emotions are the experience of our innate predispositions at work. The "holistic set of instincts" refers to the entire set of all the individual instincts collectively acting in unison and balance. Balance is crucial since instincts are arranged in opposing pairs, in effect creating a behavioral biofeedback. There are instincts that initiate and inhibit: feeding, mating, aggression, and all the subsets of these and other behaviors.
The neural biofeedback system is structurally represented by the exemplary sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, these two subdivisions of the autonomous nervous system control organ responses to various sensory queues, one speeds up heart rate the other slows it, one promotes digestion, the other inhibits it, and so on for all organs and glands.
Prudent life and living involves the concepts of temperance and balance, as our instinctual natures are dictated by opposing demeanors, a sort of mental biofeedback leading to psychological homeostasis. When an instinct is out of balance with the holistic set, i.e. obsessive or repressed, the imbalance can cause detrimental or perverse behavior. Our instinctual urges when acting in balance and in unison are the innate naive good that we all feel as our human nature. Left to their own devices in a natural habitat our instincts would temper our actions automatically.
The universality of certain behaviors being considered good or taboo can be seen in the consistencies between the cultural religions of the world. For religions are basically only ethical systems, their major tenets derive from our intuited sense of right and wrong behavior. It is when a single urge is abstracted to obsession or repression 'usually' by our intellect's influence through associative learning, that we act in 'unbalanced' ways counterproductive to our and societies overall well being. So it is our intellects that need to be kept in check, not our instincts.
NOTE: 'usually' qualifies the proposition because drive imbalances can also be congenital or due to structural damage from disease or injury, as well as from the more common learned associations.
A analogous example of a feedback system of mechanical regulation is the thermostat which controls a furnace. It consists of a 'sensor' which 'monitors changes in the environment's' temperature which 'initiates or terminates' the heating mechanisms in our homes. A thermostat sensor that is 'stuck' at a high or low setting will under heat or overheat the home, defeating its purpose of maintaining homeostasis, as is the case with obsessed or repressed instinct. Out of balance instincts lead to aberrant behaviors. Take the drive of 'aggression' which when balanced with the holistic set of drives serves to direct us toward protecting and asserting ourselves; but when out of balance: obsessing on aggression leads to sociopathic murder, and conversely, repressing aggression inhibits self assertion leading to neurotic passivity.
The solution to obsessive or repressed thinking is not to eliminate or deny these instincts, but rather to recognize them, and use reason to resolve the learned associations inappropriately eliciting the drive out of proportion with the holistic set. Putting a misconception back into perspective reintegrates it in respect to holistically satiate all our instincts. This is the process of using reason to resolve the misconceptions that are inappropriately eliciting innate predispositions impelling maladaptive behavior, is practiced when one introspects on feelings of anxiety, or in clinical practice the process facilitated by various techniques of psychoanalysis.
All the advances in human technology that afford us control of our environment were not made by "conquering" or "defying" nature, conversely they were made by reverent observation, acceptance, and acting in harmony with natural law.
Just as following the laws of mechanics has allowed mankind to construct machines that better our condition, so can applying the laws of human nature allow us to construct the most beneficial societies. All the advances in human rights were made by recognizing innate human nature, not by subverting or denying it.
The greatest challenge to humanity, with its great capacity through open instinct to modify innate behavior, and its largely artificial environment, is to not lose the essential evolved survival purpose of an instinct by modifying it too much.
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"The Stoics modified the harsh principle of Cynicism of complete suppression of the passions. Since this is impossible, and, if possible, could only lead to immovable inactivity, they admitted that the wise person might exhibit certain mild and rational emotions." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/s/stoicism.htm
"Of the particular virtues (of which there are as many as there are contingencies in life), each is the apprehension, by means of reason, of the proper mean between two extremes which are not virtues. Ex.- courage is the mean between cowardice and foolhardiness." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
"In physics, Plato adhered to the views of the Pythagoreans, making Nature a harmonic unity in multiplicity. His ethics are founded on the cognition of supreme Good. From the 3 parts of the "soul" cognitive, spirited, and appetitive, deriving the 3 virtues: Wisdom, Courage, and Temperance. What unites these virtues is the virtue of Justice, by which each part of the soul is confined to the performance of its proper function." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
"In ethics Epicurus conceived the highest good to be happiness, and happiness to be found in pleasure, to which the natural impulses of every being are directed. But the aim is not the pleasure of the moment, but the enduring condition of pleasure, which, in its essence, is freedom from the greatest of evils, pain." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
"Epicurus-Pleasures and pains are distinguished not merely in degree, but in kind. The renunciation of a pleasure or endurance of a pain is often a means to a greater pleasure; and since pleasures of sense are subordinate to the pleasures of the soul, the undisturbed peace of the soul is a higher good than the freedom of the body from pain." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
"Epicurus-Virtue is desirable not for itself, but for the sake of pleasure of soul, which it secures by freeing men from trouble and fear and moderating their passions and appetites. The cardinal virtue is wisdom, which is shown by true insight in calculation the consequences of our actions as regards pleasure or pain." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/g/greekphi.htm
ALTRUISM
The human tendency toward altruistic behavior has been used to refute the naturalistic concept that ethics derives from our innate predispositions. Persons who misconceive altruistic behavior as being an intellectual construct instead of an innate predisposition, disregard the natural fact that humans are innately social animals.
For social animals, the evolutionary unit is the group rather than the individual. Altruistic behavior results from the identification of self with an individual's attachment to the social group he is a member of, which evolved for the very practical purpose of facilitating survival. Individuals in a social group have a better chance of surviving through cooperative effort. The self glorifying attitude that the concepts of "altruism" and "benevolence" are intellectual inventions of a divinely immaterial human mind is delusional, they are actually manifestations of the completely innate predisposition toward group preservation, they are survival mechanisms based on the natural fact that cooperative effort insures the survival of the individuals involved in the group. The individual serves the group and the group serves the individual, it's an exchange not a sacrifice.
Since cooperative effort serves individual survival there is no moral dilemma between serving oneself or serving the group. When a troop of baboons are threatened by a predator, do the adult males run off to save themselves leaving the slower and weaker females and young to be eaten? No, the adult males put themselves between the danger and their troop, cooperatively acting several baboons become a more formidable force than the predator. The predator retreats and the individuals who participated in the coalition have gained survival for themselves and their progeny. This seemingly selfless act was not the result of rising above their instincts, but in direct response to them!
Many species besides man demonstrate this cooperative "benevolence", from musk oxen to ants, and the idea that benevolence is our invention is conceit. The sacred sense of altruism we humans egocentrically and arrogantly claim is our invention of free will, is the same principle that innately motivates wolves to form packs or bees to form hives.
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-->Def. "-IDENTIFICATION- Close association with others of like kind, e.g. identifying with a group." Ernest R. Hilgard and Richard C. Atkinson 'Introduction to Psychology'
"The basic evolutionary unit is not the individual, but the population of which he is a part. In biology a population is a reproductive community, within it individuals have a modest probability of meeting and mating. Where high improbability takes over, there lies the border of the population." Julian Huxley, London Zoological Society, 'Evolution: The Modern Synthesis'
"Members of the same species divide invisibly into breeding populations. Almost all species there are barriers called 'reproductive isolating mechanisms'. While in theory any two members of a species may mate and produce fertile offspring, in fact this does not happen." George Gaylord Simpson, Prof. of Life Sciences at Washington, Yale, and Columbia Universities, 'Major Features of Evolution'
"The philosopher Samuel Pufendorf argues that individual humans are vulnerable, and we must live in society to survive. Accordingly, God (nature), as our creator, wills (evolved) that we should be sociable, and this becomes the highest natural law. Our moral duties arise from this mandate and, in turn, these moral duties lead to civil and international laws." http://www.utm.edu/research/iep/n/natlaw.htm
CONDITIONED RESPONSE
APHORISM 5
NATURAL SELECTION ACTS ON LEARNED BEHAVIORS JUST AS IT DOES ON INNATE BEHAVIORS
Innate drives are reliable in guiding behavior toward fulfilling our human needs, but only in a 'general' intuitive sense. The ability to 'learn' evolved to form associations with the 'specific' stimuli that satiate innate drives, to fix in our minds the 'particulars' involved in fulfilling our inherent needs.
The same functional relation holds for all acquired behaviors, i.e. learned behaviors, as does for innate behaviors; such that, for all living things right, (good), 'learned' behavior is defined, necessarily, by what facilitates survival as a species. 'Form follows function.' Adaptive learning, (conditioning and reasoning), is always 'motivated' by innate predispositions.
Our ability to adapt behaviors using the capacities of memory, association, and the resultant 'learning', evolved to serve the same teleological purpose as our instincts. Reason enhances our innate motives by expanding the behavioral 'alternatives' available to satiate the needs they represent, in addition reason 'moderates' the interaction between innate drives to augment their balance and prioritize their expression.
Therefore reason evolved to 'augment' our innate drives, NOT to 'override' them.
???QUESTION: 5) Does the ability to learn and reason alter the functional premise for correct behavior, in other words, are their any learned or reasoned behaviors that one can consider 'morally good' that do NOT serve to perpetuate the species?
MIND'S TELEOLOGICAL PURPOSE AND REASON
The nervous system, and subsequently the large brained nervous system, evolved by the incremental development of traits that affording organisms the ability to sense the environment in an increasingly long range way. Simple microorganisms, such as bacteria, can only sense the chemistry of their immediate surroundings, whereas more complex organisms, such as humans and whales, through highly evolved sense organs like eyes, ears, and subsonic sonar receptors, can sense things miles and even 100's of miles away. The evolutionary operative is that organisms that develop the ability of sensing things BEFORE they are imminently proximal, allow these organisms to react BEFORE injury from hazard or deprivation.
The more awareness an organism has of its environment, the better its chances of survival, and the greater it is selected for. The necessity to be aware of ones environment to survive, evolved the innate predisposition of curiosity, i.e. to explore and investigate. In higher animals this developed further into the innate tendency to reason, i.e. to not only know what is proximally PRESENT in the environment, but to comprehend the cause and effect relations between objects to temporally PREDICT events.
If one doubts curiosity is an innate drive, just observe what any complex animal does, say a dog, when it is turned loose in an unfamiliar environment; it runs about investigating everything and getting its bearings, orienting itself to its new habitat to facilitate anticipatory action. Curiosity driven exploration, and the thus learned associations deriving reason, extended the predictive range of the senses to deal with novel environments and situations. While still motivated and directed by instinct, these adaptive abilities, afforded by the development of memory and association, are called 'open instincts'.
THE EVOLUTIONARY FUNCTION OF OPEN INSTINCTS
So far we have primarily considered 'innate' predispositions of behavior to support Evolutionary Ethics as the valid theory in Naturalizing morality. Many believe our ability to reason somehow negates the evolutionary principles regarding behavior, and thus we are, somehow, now free to create our own ethics regardless of biological necessities.
Persons who assert the notion that humans can freely create their own 'artificial' purposes, (oughts), unconstrained by 'naturally' evolved drives, are disregarding two important factors; 1) the ability to reason evolved from the same principles as any evolved trait and therefore in accordance with the same teleological purpose of survival, and 2) uncaused free will is an illusory conception resulting from 'false' precepts.
The major false notions that lead to the misconception of 'uncaused free will' are: A) the human mind is an autonomous first cause, B) free will is synonymous with will, C) free will is synonymous with choice, and C) free will is synonymous with liberty.
An adequate consideration of 'uncaused free will' would involve another entire seminar; let it suffice here to assert that to consider the mind a 'first cause' is to believe the human mind can generate something from nothing, which regresses to the religious notion that the human mind is not constrained by 'natural' cause and effect because it is 'supernatural'. Humans have 'will' and humans generate 'choices', but both processes are entirely physical and hence result from antecedent causes. Will and choice are therefore just as subject to natural laws as are innate behaviors.
Though learned behaviors can consist of very lengthily and convoluted associative chains, so as to seem remote from innate predispositions, they are still motivated and directed by the reinforcement of inherent drives. Any conditioning, (learned association), that modifies behavior must be continually reinforced by satiating innate drives. All information is conveyed to the brain through the primitive brain stem and midbrain, hence all mental activity is FIRST filtered by, and referenced to, innate predispositions, which are the motivators for all conscious attention and thought.
Humans are always 'motivated' by instinct, but with "open instinct". The distinction between open and closed instincts is, 'closed instincts' have BOTH 'innately fixed motive AND fixed behavior', open instincts have 'innately fixed motive' BUT 'modifiable behavior'. When such learned modifications facilitate survival they are 'adaptive', when they deter survival they are 'maladaptive'.
Keep in mind that 'open instincts' are not an ability that is solely human, any animal that can learn has the evolved capacity for open instinct. Even insects, such as bees, can modify their behavior adaptively. Bee 'scouts' communicate various food source locations, qualities, and quantities to the hive by 'modifying' the angle and frequency of undulations used in their 'sun dance'.
Behavior is modified by learned association between: sensing the 'satisfaction of a motive' in conjunction with 'whatever occurred immediately before that satiation'. Adaptive behavior is a great advantage, as it allows organisms to acquire survival facilitating responses to novel stimuli and in new habitats. Thus the most adaptive species, man, has succeeded in environments radically different than the habitat he evolved in. But behavior modified through association has a down side.
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"Ranging through communities of bee and elephant, ant and whale, we perceive a unity of behavioral patterns. We recognize many traits that we share with our non-human companions in the living world: social bonds, maternal care, aggression, submission, and ownership of territory; even, alas, deception and greed." ‘MAN AND ANIMAL’ Leonard Carmichael, Ph.D Harvard U.
"The notion of physical kinship between man and animals seems readily acceptable, but we are tempted to think that any psychological parallels are remote and irrelevant. Animals and man have much more in common than we realize. Studies of animal societies to gain knowledge of the human condition is as relevant in the psychological realm as in the physiological." ‘THE DRIVE TO SURVIVE’ Peter Marler, Ph.D Cambridge
ADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR: A DOUBLE EDGED SWORD
Innate drives are reliable in guiding behavior toward fulfilling our human needs, but only in a general intuitive sense. The ability to 'learn' evolved to form associations with specific stimuli that satiate innate drives, to fix in our minds the particulars involved in fulfilling our needs.
More complex organisms, with more complex needs, evolved progressively greater capacity for associative learning. But with the grater capacity for associative learning came the greater complexity of mental processing which is more susceptible to 'misperception'. Association is an automatic process based on 'coincidence', it is therefore subject to the logical fallacy of 'post hoc, ergo propter hoc', the Latin expression meaning 'after this, therefore because of this'. Unrelated events can also occur coincidentally, therefore behavior modified by association can become maladaptive through inaccurate perceptual assessments.
The process of psychological conditioning evidences how the automatic process of association can form misperceptions about whether events are actually, (or rather 'naturally', in the normative sense), related to each other. Watson, Pavlov, and Skinner, all demonstrated how repeatedly pairing a drive evoking stimulus, with an unrelated stimulus would form associations in most any sentient animal, and could induce whatever unnaturally or illogically absurd response to a stimulus they artificially designed, (the technique used by propagandist's).
The mechanism of association does have some built in safeguards, so that our correct perception of event relations has better than a 50/50 chance. We learn events relations by associating various sensations that occur in a temporal sequence, but such coincidental sensations per event must 'consistently' occur, or intensely affect pain/pleasure reactions. This repetition and/or intensity of event stimuli reinforces links formed by associative interneurons, forming connections between the set of sensory neural arrays involved in perceiving an event, and only then does the relation become fixed in memory. Conversely, when a relation fixed in memory is contradicted by sensing events inconsistent with that memory, associations gradually atrophy due to the lack of the innate reinforcer, in combination with the de-inforcer of the discomforting anxiety or 'cognitive dissonance' generated when an expectation of belief isn't realized; i.e. evidenced by perception.
So fixed memories (beliefs), and the behavior modifications induced by them, result from an averaging effect through the summation of: all the sensations temporally associated with the event, the intensity of the event's affect on innate drive satiation or deprivation, and the consistent repetition of that sequence of stimuli representing that event. Thus learned associations are often more reliable than not, but there is still room for misperception and resultant maladaptive behavior, especially in the very complex associative chains involved in human perception, AND greatly exacerbated in response to the many artificial stimuli generated by the habitats mankind has constructed.
A simple and extreme case will help illustrate this point. Phobias are an irrational fear of either something innocuous, or intense fear out of proportion to the amount of danger. A case study (Cameron and Margaret 1951), reported a man who was intensely afraid of red skies. ... ... After extensive analysis he recalled an early childhood trauma of a tenement fire in which he believed his mother was being burned to death. The stimulus of 'red' flames, paired with an intense innate aversion 'fear' response, elicited by the stimulus of a young child perceiving permanent loss of its mother, fixed a maladaptive association between red and fear for life.
Since most learning is not traumatic, the conditioned associations need repetition to become fixed, but the example demonstrates that coincidental learned associations are subject to forming misconceptions, that subsequently can lead to maladaptive behavior. Over a lifetime the cumulative affect of many little misconceptions can skew our frame of reference toward great degrees of irrationality. As engineer Scott, of the Star Trek series, once commented: "The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to plug it up."
In objective terms adaptive behavior is moral behavior, and maladaptive behavior is immoral behavior. Innate motivators are our time tested inherent guides channeling our modified behaviors towards the needs of perpetuating our species, and as such are our best guide, when rationally perceived, toward adaptive (moral) behavior.
KEY CONCEPT-->INNATE MOTIVES: Since innate motivations derive, (i.e. evolve), from ‘object’ interaction alone (i.e. interaction between organism and habitat structure), are not dependent on ‘experience’ (i.e. are inherent not acquired), and are ‘necessary’ and ‘universal’ for survival per entire species, (naturally selected by millions of years of 'field testing'); they represent the closest thing to ‘a priori’ moral premises in regards to continued existence of the species possessing them.
KEY CONCEPT-->LEARNED ASSOCIATIONS: Since learned associations are derived from ‘coincidental’ events that may, or may not, be actually related; and since their interpretation is ‘contingent’ on the frame of reference of the perceiver, which is limited by personal experience, (i.e. ‘subjective’), they are susceptible to forming misconceptions, and thus can lead to maladaptive (immoral) behavior.
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"Conditioning has to be reinforced, the reinforcement must be by an unconditioned stimulus that already elicits the specific response to be learned." Ernest Gardener M.D. 'Fundamentals of Neurology'
"Conditioned responses, once established, are not invariable. They may gradually disappear if continually elicited without periodic reinforcement by the unconditioned stimulus, or if associated with extraneous stimuli." Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
"A conditioned reflex can be established for any associated stimulus, even one that does not "make sense." Conditioning is not a logical process, it works only by association." Isaac Asimov 'The Human Brain'
REASONED VERIFICATION
APHORISM 6
LEARNED BEHAVIORS CAN LEAD TO MALADAPTIVE BEHAVIOR AND AS SUCH NEED TO BE JUSTIFIED WITH SOUND REASONING
Since learned associations automatically connect ‘coincidental events' that may, or may not, be actually related; and since an event's interpretation is ‘contingent’ on the frame of reference of the perceiver, which is limited by personal experience, (i.e. ‘subjective’), they are susceptible to forming 'misconceptions', and thus can lead to maladaptive (immoral) behavior.
Our capacity to form learned associations brought with it the mechanism to accomplish great good, but also to be mislead by misperceptions inducing ill conceived behavior. In our prehistoric 'social condition' and 'natural habitat' our instincts balanced themselves, as they were so direct in application there existed little chance of complicated associations leading to misconception. Non-human animal groups maintain social order not by reasoned law, but by intuitive instincts. Humans, as other social animals, feel intuitively what is right or wrong without reasoning. (naturally moral conduct).
Artificial societies and habitats can lose their functional relation to human nature, where inappropriate drives are evoked out of balance with our 'holistic' set of drives, i.e. an obsessive or repressed drive, and the resultant emotional imbalance can cause detrimental, or even perverse, maladaptive behavior, (artificially immoral conduct).
With the cumulative effect of culturally acquired knowledge and beliefs, modern thought processes involve very complex and convoluted associative chains, hence the final expression of an innately motivated urge is very remote from the drive that initiated it. Thus, the complex associations channeling an innate drive can skew the final behavior towards losing its functional relation to the 'need' the drive represents, resulting in that need not being met.
Over an individual lifetime, or especially a cultural era, the cumulative affect of many little misconceptions can skew our frame of reference toward great degrees of irrationality. As engineer Scott, of the Star Trek series, once commented: "The more complicated the plumbing, the easier it is to plug it up."
Reason is defined as the cause for an effect, as well as the mechanism for identifying these relations correctly. Reason evolved to sort the out merely coincidental associative connections, by testing their coherence with perceptions verified by consistent reoccurrence, in order to form accurate conceptions. This is why in the confusion of our modern artificial circumstance, generating sensory and emotional overload and skewing, sound reasoning is more essential than ever to sort out the particulars of applying intuitive motives 'accurately' to specific situations.
???QUESTION: 6) Do our unnaturally large population groups, the extensive government regulations for controlling such populations, and our technological urban habitats, cause behavioral problems due to these artificial conditions conflicting with human nature?
WHY ADAPTIVE LEARNING AND ARTIFICIAL CONDITIONS NECESSITATE REASONED ETHICS
In our prehistoric 'social condition' and 'natural habitat' our instincts automatically balanced themselves, as they were so direct in application there existed little chance of abstracted associations leading to misconception. In our natural conditions our human nature was directly in sync with the habitat that evolved it. Non-human animal groups maintain social order not by reasoned law, but by intuitive instinctual reactions. Humans, as other social animals, feel intuitively what is right or wrong without reasoning. Homo sapiens met their needs for 100's of 1000's of years in our natural habitat, using relatively little reasoning, and survived far longer than recorded history on predominantly innate predispositions.
But when human population growth generated communities much greater in size than the extended family bands of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, our innate moral intuitions alone, no longer sufficed. Man evolved to live in societies that were extended family clans of at most about 60 persons. In such clans all members knew all other members, and their was a family unity which made reciprocal cooperation natural through kinship, interdependence, and the impossibility of getting away with social transgressions that require anonymity.
When human societies became groups of thousands, most group members had no kinship ties, and many were complete strangers to one and other. Within this larger group smaller subgroups had distinct family bonds and special interest affiliations, thus 'out-group' morality became a factor 'within' the society making moral transgression possible through both divided loyalties and anonymity.
Exacerbating our unnaturally large societal populations are today's mostly artificial habitats, where unnatural stimuli activate inappropriate innate drives in an unbalanced way. Stimuli are shunted through very abstract and convoluted chains of association inducing misconceptions, which in turn elicit the wrong inherent drives, leading to maladaptive behavior.
Instincts cannot be denied or eliminated, attempts to do so through social conditioning only aggravate the situation by causing chronic mental conflicts between duty and impulse, which leads to the many mental disorders becoming progressively more prevalent as governments attempt to subvert human nature to fit state agendas, (ex. Stalinist Russia).
When one is deprived of a need, that need comes to dominate thought. A starving man obsesses on attaining food. The same holds for the innate drives evolved to guide us to fulfilling our needs, these drives impel our thoughts and when unsatiated come to dominate our thoughts obsessively leading to emotional imbalance. Conversely, when societal pressures suppress innate drives, many repress them at great mental effort, to cope with the conflict elicited by deprivation. This also results in emotional imbalance, and leads to the repressed drive being sublimated into perverted behaviors, such as compulsive disorders, or paranoia. By definition, and in effect, to subvert human nature is to act 'inhumanly'.
It is not our innate motives that are the problem, as I've already mentioned, they are our most reliable guide toward fulfilling our needs as humans. The problem to be solved is correcting our misconceptions of what human nature actually is, and interpreting and applying the essential evolved purpose of these drives in accordance with the new habitats they must deal with. Our understanding of the needs these drives represent has to be enhanced, not our basic nature; and our societies need to be constructed in accordance with these needs so that human law corresponds to human nature; and in doing so, social direction will also correspond to the natural laws which formed our innate predispositions, leading to more efficacious practices.
Hence the "ought" of choosing the adaptive behaviors over the maladaptive behaviors, is evaluated by the "is" of innate motive's that evolved to direct us toward attaining our needs, and the "is" of how they apply to novel or artificial environments. The tricky part is being able to recognize accurate conceptions from misconceptions, to thereby interpret the functional relation of innate motives to new habitats. Just as applying perfect logic to false premises will lead to false conclusions, likewise applying misperceptions induced by artificial stimuli will activate innate motivational drives out of balance with the holistic set, leading to obsessive or repressed responses, which can lead to maladaptive behavior.
This is why humans now need to augment their innate behavior with 'reason', to balance the holistic set of innate drives through rational temperance, and to sort out correct conception from misconception to distinguish adaptive moral behavior, from maladaptive (immoral) behavior.
All the advances in human technology that afford us control of our circumstances were not generated by "conquering" or "defying" nature, conversely they were made by reverent observation, acceptance, and acting in accordance with natural laws. Human inventions are not inspired by 'uncaused thought', they are motivated by an inherent need; and are not conceived by 'mystical revelations', they are the result of automatic associative cognition of natural cause and effect relations that are 'dis-covered'.
Likewise the greatest advances in human rights and standards of living have not derived from state regulation of human behavior, but by constructing free societies where human nature is allowed to be expressed with as little constraint as possible.
KEY CONCEPT--> The greatest challenge for modern humanity, in our largely artificial habitat, and with our great capacity through open instinct to modify innate behavior; is to not lose sight of the essential survival 'purposes' represented in our inherent motives, by misconceiving their appropriate expression in these artificial habitats. -------------------------------------------------------------------------
CONCLUSION: HOW TO APPLY EVOLUTIONARY PSYCHOLOGY TO NATURALISTIC ETHICS
To "live according to nature"; motivate with emotion, act with reason. Reason evolved to augment our innate drives, NOT to override them. The Naturalistic ethical approach strives to conceptually recognize, accept, and act according to reality's natural order, to maintain mankind's place in that order. Naturalists don't arrogantly presume humans have the power, nor the wisdom, to 'create' the law human conduct is subject to; rather that we should 'reverence' natural law as represented in our inherent human nature, by conceiving and acting in accordance with it.
INDIVIDUAL LEVEL KEY CONCEPT--> To apply the Naturalistic approach to Ethics one must, 1) discern which behavior patterns are innate and which are learned or acculturated, 2) discern the essential survival function of the evolved innate predispositions, and 3) interpret the appropriate expression of innate predispositions in modern, culturally and technologically generated artificial habitats using sound reason.
SOCIETAL LEVEL KEY CONCEPT--> Naturalistic Political Ethics advocates letting human nature structure society, the premise of liberty, (the normative averaging effect of government by the people in a free democracy); which is the antithesis of, 'Legal Positivism' which advocates authoritatively imposed subjugation of human nature to fit state agendas, the premise of totalitarianism, (the coercive conditioning of the people by social engineers serving the elite).
QUOTES..........................................................
"Reconsidering the idea that 'the law forbids men to do only what their instincts incline them to do', we might re-word it to the effect that 'the law forbids men to do only what the artificial conditions of civilization drive them to do'". Desmond Morris, 'The Human Zoo'
"Kant's ethical teaching stated in his 'Critique of Pure Reason' as the freedom of self-government, the freedom to obey consciously the laws of the universe as revealed by reason." Funk & Wagnalls Encyclopedia
"Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed." Sir Francis Bacon
In conclusion, it should also be said, that without application of the Naturalistic Ethics voiced by John Locke and incorporated into the United States Constitution and Bill of Rights, the liberty of thought necessary to pursue reason, would be impossible. For in societies 'without' an 'objective' system of ethics, based on Natural Rights, including the freedom of reasoned inquiry, persons are constrained by authoritative 'subjectivism' imposing constraints on the availability of information, behavior, and affiliation mandated by religious dogma or state agendas. In societies without Naturalistic principles guiding morality, (which have unfortunately predominated civilized human history), any person wishing to inquire about, or hold, beliefs not sanctioned by the subjective whims of the few holding positions of authority, are persecuted and prosecuted under charges of heresy or subversion.
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