Pinker, the Storyteller
Many evolutionary psychologists, including Steven Pinker, professor at Harvard, claim that our minds at birth are not a blank slate, and further, that evolution has endowed humans with a "moral instinct". In other words, we have evolved an instinct to act often from motives beyond narrow self-interest, and to make value judgments like right/wrong, just/unjust, etc.
This seems reasonable to me. We appear to be a complex mix of nature and nurture. But what is the relationship between our evolutionary programming and our everyday morality? Can a science of the moral instinct explain human morality? Or does the realm of culture and experience muddy up the waters too much?
First of all, it is worth noting that the moral instinct, like other instincts, is only a driving force; it is amoral by itself—just as our instinct for power is distinct from power itself, instinct for storytelling distinct from stories, instinct for sex distinct from sex. Morality comes into play when value is assigned to an act or idea, for e.g., robbing a rich landlord and calling it just, or declaring torture wrong. Our moral instinct, quite unbidden, simply drives us to weigh the impact of an act on others and assign to it a value. (Anthropological data suggests that, in addition to this moral instinct, certain aspects of our morality may also be universal and could be innate.)
Let's compare the moral instinct with another human instinct, say, hunger. When hunger kicks in, it wants to be assuaged. How it is assuaged generally varies by taste—snakes and strawberries could both satisfy, since both are nutritious, chewable, etc. Likewise, the moral instinct can be "assuaged" in multiple ways, a fact evident across space and time in the range of human moralities, which nevertheless share some common ground and bounds. The idea that a science of the moral instinct (or "moral sense") can explain human morality—perhaps even become the basis of a "scientific morality"—seems to me about as persuasive as the idea that a science of hunger can explain "taste". We can learn many facts about hunger, but can they explain the many "tastes" around the world (likewise for the musical instinct)? This simple distinction is often ignored, including, it seems to me, by Pinker, who believes that "much of what makes you you resides in your genome." *















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