Where Do We Get Our Morals From?

I am a huge fan of the biological model for humans. I actually spend my spare time imagining ways in which the smallest nuances of the human condition could have evolved gradually over time, it's a fascinating exercise & one that gives me a lovely warm fuzzy feeling of us all being in it together. There are some areas, however, where this imagining is more than an interesting diversion; the answer to the question of where we get our morals from is one that has the power to start & end wars.

I'm not talking here about cultural morals (e.g. no sex before marriage) although these are clearly related & important to the discussion. In my mind I categorise those as 'second level' morals - ones that are derived from the very fundamental laws of humanity. What I'm interested in is 10 commandment style laws that form the basis of everything we believe in & stand for, without which society could simply not hold together.

You can probably tell from the first paragraph which side of the fence I tend to come down on. I personally do not believe that religion or concious thought has given us anything more than superficial rules about how to live (in fact I believe there's a strong case to argue that religion is itself an evolved behaviour - but more on that another day!) Let me give a concrete example: murder.

Now most people in modern Britain believe that killing other people is wrong, but let's look at killing more closely. There are many instances in which we will accept the killing of another person; mental illness, intention, justification are just a few examples. I can't think of any example of a fundamental principle of right & wrong. In fact, I can't think of any one thing on which we all agree.

An interesting moral dilemma is the famous hypothetical question of the children on the railway line. At a fork in the track, five children are standing on the track with a train headed straight for them. On the other fork is one child. You have the power to divert the train to sacrifice the one for the many - so do you? According to research by Marc Hauser, most people will not actively kill one person for the sake of many others, in theory at least, but when I put this question to my step dad he immediately said that of course you should sacrifice one for five. He did, however, draw the line at the second scenario where you take the organs from a healthy but unwilling donor to save multiple people who need transplants.

Now whilst I have my own suspicions about where these moral decisions come from, I know for a fact that we do not agree on them. Whilst there may be general trends, they are just that, trends. The moral zeitgeist is changing daily & if we're not going to be swept away in a tide of subconscious gut reaction we need to ask ourselves what are our reasons for our personal beliefs about right & wrong, how can we justify our position? There are a few possible answers to this.

1. We need morals to hold society together. If we are going to live as a group we need certain rules to live by, even if some people do not agree with some of them.

2. In order to have our own personal freedom & in order to be happy in our lives we logically need to offer people the same chance.

3. It makes us feel good to be good

I'm sure there are more but those are the first 3 I could think of, but none of them really explain how I feel about moral behaviour apart from #2. Maybe I am a product of society, but 1 & 3 seem open to abuse to me. You only have to step back a couple of hundred years to see how they often meant something very different to people then. Personal freedom & happiness, however, is something perhaps we can all aspire to. Yesterday me & Al were discussing this exact problem & we came up with the motto; In everything you do, attempt to do the most good & the least harm as possible.

If there are no moral absolutes then there is no definitive answer. But I do believe it is our universal (moral?!) duty to think about & discuss these ideas, & not just glide through life not thinking & not caring about how our beliefs can affect the word around us.