The New York Times Magazine has a long and interesting article today about the moral life of babies. The story’s main thesis, after establishing evidence for a rudimentary infant morality–such as babies preferring “good guy” puppets, I can’t do the evidence justice in a blog entry–is to refute suggestions–which are treated respectfully–that human morality is evidence for a divinity, as opposed to purposeless evolution. But that matter is of no consequence to us here at SHS.
For our purposes here, regardless of the why and how of it, this research illustrates how human beings are by inherent nature, moral beings. This moral capacity is intrinsic to our very existence, and is one of the primary characteristics that distinguish us from–and elevate us above–all other known forms of life.
Babies were once thought to be so many sociopaths. From the article by Yale psychologist Paul Bloom:
Why would anyone even entertain the thought of babies as moral beings? From Sigmund Freud to Jean Piaget to Lawrence Kohlberg, psychologists have long argued that we begin life as amoral animals. One important task of society, particularly of parents, is to turn babies into civilized beings — social creatures who can experience empathy, guilt and shame; who can override selfish impulses in the name of higher principles; and who will respond with outrage to unfairness and injustice. Many parents and educators would endorse a view of infants and toddlers close to that of a recent Onion headline: “New Study Reveals Most Children Unrepentant Sociopaths.” If children enter the world already equipped with moral notions, why is it that we have to work so hard to humanize them?
A growing body of evidence, though, suggests that humans do have a rudimentary moral sense from the very start of life. With the help of well-designed experiments, you can see glimmers of moral thought, moral judgment and moral feeling even in the first year of life. Some sense of good and evil seems to be bred in the bone. Which is not to say that parents are wrong to concern themselves with moral development or that their interactions with their children are a waste of time. Socialization is critically important. But this is not because babies and young children lack a sense of right and wrong; it’s because the sense of right and wrong that they naturally possess diverges in important ways from what we adults would want it to be.
The authors note that every society develops a morality:
...people everywhere have some sense of right and wrong. You won’t find a society where people don’t have some notion of fairness, don’t put some value on loyalty and kindness, don’t distinguish between acts of cruelty and innocent mistakes, don’t categorize people as nasty or nice…
The morality of contemporary humans really does outstrip what evolution could possibly have endowed us with; moral actions are often of a sort that have no plausible relation to our reproductive success and don’t appear to be accidental byproducts of evolved adaptations. Many of us care about strangers in faraway lands, sometimes to the extent that we give up resources that could be used for our friends and family; many of us care about the fates of nonhuman animals, so much so that we deprive ourselves of pleasures like rib-eye steak and veal scaloppine. We possess abstract moral notions of equality and freedom for all; we see racism and sexism as evil; we reject slavery and genocide; we try to love our enemies. Of course, our actions typically fall short, often far short, of our moral principles, but these principles do shape, in a substantial way, the world that we live in.
The reason is that humans–and humans alone–develop and live moral lives–is that the capacity is inbuilt within us (again, by whatever mechanisms or causes), without which we couldn’t be any more taught moral reasoning or ethical imperatives than can animals (my emphasis):
Babies possess certain moral foundations — the capacity and willingness to judge the actions of others, some sense of justice, gut responses to altruism and nastiness. Regardless of how smart we are, if we didn’t start with this basic apparatus, we would be nothing more than amoral agents, ruthlessly driven to pursue our self-interest. But our capacities as babies are sharply limited. It is the insights of rational individuals that make a truly universal and unselfish morality something that our species can aspire to.
Interesting that he thinks unselfish morality is the highest morality. But I digress. Bloom could have added, that developing such a morality is an unapproachable goal for other species in the known universe. Yes indeed: Humans are exceptional! What I don’t understand is the energy and raw emotionalism invested into denying that truth.
May 10th, 2010 | 12:00 am
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May 10th, 2010 | 3:22 am
Wait up, how do gorillas or chimps perform on these same tests that human infants have been tested with?
It would seem that this is a key part of the evidence for your ‘human exceptionalism’ hypothesis.
May 10th, 2010 | 3:39 am
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May 10th, 2010 | 8:19 am
As you say, it must be difficult to do justice to a long article in a blog post.
Also from Dr. Bloom’s piece:
“There seems to be something evolutionarily ancient to this empathetic response. If you want to cause a rat distress, you can expose it to the screams of other rats. Human babies, notably, cry more to the cries of other babies than to tape recordings of their own crying, suggesting that they are responding to their awareness of someone else’s pain, not merely to a certain pitch of sound. Babies also seem to want to assuage the pain of others: once they have enough physical competence (starting at about 1 year old), they soothe others in distress by stroking and touching or by handing over a bottle or toy. There are individual differences, to be sure, in the intensity of response: some babies are great soothers; others don’t care as much. But the basic impulse seems common to all. (Some other primates behave similarly: the primatologist Frans de Waal reports that chimpanzees “will approach a victim of attack, put an arm around her and gently pat her back or groom her.” Monkeys, on the other hand, tend to shun victims of aggression.)”
and
“A few years ago, in his book “What’s So Great About Christianity,” the social and cultural critic Dinesh D’Souza revived this argument (Jeffery: evolutionary vs “God” as source of inherent morality). He conceded that evolution can explain our niceness in instances like kindness to kin, where the niceness has a clear genetic payoff, but he drew the line at “high altruism,” acts of entirely disinterested kindness. For D’Souza, “there is no Darwinian rationale” for why you would give up your seat for an old lady on a bus, an act of nice-guyness that does nothing for your genes. And what about those who donate blood to strangers or sacrifice their lives for a worthy cause? D’Souza reasoned that these stirrings of conscience are best explained not by evolution or psychology but by “the voice of God within our souls.”
The evolutionary psychologist has a quick response to this: To say that a biological trait evolves for a purpose doesn’t mean that it always functions, in the here and now, for that purpose. Sexual arousal, for instance, presumably evolved because of its connection to making babies; but of course we can get aroused in all sorts of situations in which baby-making just isn’t an option — for instance, while looking at pornography. Similarly, our impulse to help others has likely evolved because of the reproductive benefit that it gives us in certain contexts — and it’s not a problem for this argument that some acts of niceness that people perform don’t provide this sort of benefit. (And for what it’s worth, giving up a bus seat for an old lady, although the motives might be psychologically pure, turns out to be a coldbloodedly smart move from a Darwinian standpoint, an easy way to show off yourself as an attractively good person.)”
and finally,
“The morality we start off with is primitive, not merely in the obvious sense that it’s incomplete, but in the deeper sense that when individuals and societies aspire toward an enlightened morality — one in which all beings capable of reason and suffering are on an equal footing, where all people are equal — they are fighting with what children have from the get-go.”
The data described in the article does nothing to support the hypothesis of “human exceptionalism”, as babies largely display the same kinds of empathy and morality as chimpanzees. In fact, the article refutes your arguments.
The larger question of how humans evolved such a rich tradition of apparently unselfish altruism extending across cultural boundaries is not addressed and is, to my mind, the crux of your argument. The morality of our cultures DOES seem exceptional yet you persist in supporting the concept with irrelevant data.
May 10th, 2010 | 9:07 am
I have always been fascinated by the neural capacity that gives humans the framework for morality. It seems to me that other species *do* have something similar, and within each kind of animal there can be more or less of a moral sense; for example the way that dogs (usually those attached to good owners) have a sense of whether someone is good or not.
But I am also curious how much of that is instinctual, rather than a framework for abstract thinking; it would be understandable that a dog could sense physical aspects of an evil person such as body chemistry or level of potential violence. Children watching a story with puppets: are they responding to the history of (puppet) harm they witness in front of them? Or are they using neural structures already in place for generalizing to moral abstracts?
Yeesh this wasn’t the comment I meant to write–I was thinking more along the lines of animals as moral beings- but the babies here are starting to call. (If this is too garbled, feel free not to post it, lol, Wesley!)
May 10th, 2010 | 9:15 am
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May 10th, 2010 | 10:46 am
NEED we be always proving we’re better? Other primates also have a “moral” sense at the same level as human infants and toddlers. This is not a sign of “exceptionalism.” It is a sign that we evolved to work together cooperatively and honestly as a team because not to do so would have meant our extinction. This is not proof of “God’s” existence no lack of proof. I’d choose a piece of grass pushing itself up through hardened earth as more indicative of a Higher Power or Higher Principle, than the traits of human beings which, of course, can also be used to demonstrate the existence of an evil power underlying or over-arching the material world.
May 10th, 2010 | 11:08 am
Evidence of human exceptionalism? I don’t think so.
The NY Times article makes no such claim, but simply supports what I suggested earlier on this site when we were discussing AI: that is, the brain of a newborn or very young child is basically like a computer that contains a built-in (genetic) operating system, but has yet to receive applications programs (or “moral training,” if you will).
The Times article says as much:”One lesson from the study of artificial intelligence (and from cognitive science more generally) is that an empty head learns nothing: a system that is capable of rapidly absorbing information needs to have some pre-wired understanding of what to pay attention to and what generalizations to make.”
Lest you think this is unique to humans, it seems to be a quality of animal life in general, and most obviously in primates. What makes homo sapiens “unique” isn’t some fairy tale or theological principle; it’s a matter of quantity. Simply stated, we’re able to run mental circles around other species because our mental functions are driven by the biological equivalent of Cray systems, not Apple Is.
Unfortunately, in Wesley-world this difference has become a “distinction” that entitles humankind to have dominion over all other life forms without, any further attention to their cognitive abilities — which makes about as much “moral sense” as Cray owners dissing Apple I owners for their “inferiority.”
In my opinion, what makes human beings “exceptional,” at least in our own eyes, seems to be our impressive storage, retrieval and processing capacities.
May 10th, 2010 | 6:04 pm
Many commenters have reached the same conclusion: Humans may be exceptional, but the article you cite doesn’t support your hypothesis.
May 11th, 2010 | 12:22 am
So, do you think it would be alright for me to go out on a killing spree? People always treat me like crap. Why would killing people be any worse than me stomping on a bug?
May 11th, 2010 | 2:53 pm
These studies are interesting, and not suprising. In other words, there’s a plethera of empirical evidence that shows that, for example, human speech is largely innate. There’s also evidence indicating that we’re inclined toward logic and mathematics. Therefore, any evidence showing that babies are predisposed toward morality would be consistent with the notion that, many, if not most, human traits, have a genetic basis.
Of course, it’s easy to misinterpret evidence like this. As the neurologist Richard Restak has pointed out, there’s never been a gene without an environment. There’s considerable evidence as well that, upbringing, the way one is treated by peers, nutrition, and other environmental factors, play huge roles in the proper development of most, if not all human traits, and moral development is definately no exception.
One of the most important implications of these studies, especially how it relates to this post, is we can use or abuse these gifts.
Having the ability to moralize is not, I repeat, not an exclusive trait to human beings. At least some of the great apes, are capable of it, at least on a rudimentary level, and our knowledge of this, is based on experiments not unlike the one’s used on babies. but I do think that it’s fair to conclude that, only humans are capable of taking nascent moral notions, and reasoning from them, to a highly sophisticated level.
This great gift we have must be used responsibly. It must NEVER be used as an excuse to harm other animals. One of the worst arguments i’ve heard, used to justify harming other creatures is, “hey they wouldn’t think twice about killing you or me”. What this person is implying is, that, morality is merely “you help me, I’ll help you, and vice versa”, which has to be the most primitive form of moral reasoning around.
May 11th, 2010 | 6:58 pm
cc,
Going on a killing spree disrupts and destabilizes society. It’s hard to concentrate or relax or work or play if you’re afraid someone will kill you. You can do it if you want but society will track you down and lock you up for the rest of your days. Most modern cultures place high value on individuals. Bugs on the other hand are largely expendable.
Why do you equate our species with bugs?
May 21st, 2010 | 2:58 pm
[...] called the inscription on every human heart– here. Wesley Smith looks at human exceptionalism here. Categorized under: Moral Education, Natural Law, Virtue. Tagged with: Babies, Moral Life, [...]
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