“Objective” morality overturned by objective science

In this post, I regurgitate a number of things that have long bounced around in my mind-body continuum, but which I frame in the language of the admirable synthesis in Thomas Kazen's "Dirt and Disgust: Body and Morality in Biblical Purity Laws," in Baruch Schwartz et al., eds., Perspectives on Purity and Purification in the Bible (London: T & T Clark, 2008) 43-64. References to and discussion of Damasio, Darwin, and Teehan are based thereon, though I am familiar with Damasio and Darwin's thought apart from Kazen’s discussion.

We really need to reverse the Cartesian dictum, cogito ergo sum, I think, therefore I am. Antonio Damasio has done a great job of showing this. But really, he was beaten to the punch by the author of 1 John, who said (I paraphrase slightly): I love, therefore I know (1 John 4:7-8).

Damasio's research with patients with prefrontal damage points the way. Such patients are able to reason logically, but their damaged emotional capacity impairs their ability to make (so-called) rational decisions. They are able to endlessly enumerate advantages and disadvantages, but without emotions they did not know what to choose in the end (see Descartes' Error: Emotion, Reason and the Human Brain [New York: Grosset/Putnam, 1994] 44-51, 191-96).

The larger question: why exactly are emotions, ever-so-subjective feeeeelings, essential to moral decision-making? First of all, anyone well-read in evolutionary biology will know that the faux Darwinian notion of the selfish gene is a bunch of hooey. Already according to Darwin, the evolutionary development of morality has its roots in social instincts reinforced or modified by community opinion (The Descent of Man, 101-31 in the 1989 edition thereof).

The study of these things now occurs within the field of sociobiology, though I note with a smirk that sociobiologist E. O. Wilson comes across in the end as if he were just another semi-secularized soapbox preacher. He goes so far almost as to point out what charity work we ought to support. What a coincidence.

In line with observations by John Teehan ("Kantian Ethics after Darwin," Zygon 38 (2003) 49-60 [57]), I would put it this way: as humans evolved into an extraordinarily self-aware and social-minded species, emotional intelligence - as even Spock understood - was a necessary prerequisite to the development of social mores.

En-minded feelings, to coin a phrase, matter immensely in the realm of social mores. Not just the elementary ones behavioral scientists are inclined to study: anger, pain, hunger, and fear, which can be - but usually are not - mindless. Of greater importance: complex emotions, such as paranoia (projection), nostalgia, possessiveness (jealousy), the need for closure (retribution); at a still higher level: faith, hope, and love. And the greatest of these is love.

Amo ergo sum. I love, therefore I am. Amo ergo cogito. I love, therefore I process - morally.

In theory, the three "theological virtues" might be recast in non-religious terms. But, as a matter of observation, they have not been recast to a significant degree by atheists, but rather, adopted without attribution, or modified into something base in comparison (Nietzsche, Ayn Rand, pick your poison).

Comments

[Sam Norton]

I believe Bonaventure developed a systematic theology around the idea that you had to love something(/one) in order to know it(/them) properly. One day I'll do a proper study of that.

[JohnFH]

Sam,

I didn't know that. I would like to more about that theology.

[Bob MacDonald]

I asked my Love if I could write about morality and I got the reply 'no'. So I won't. I note that on Brian Small's blog he writes here about the appeal to morality as the means of supporting the perseverance of the saints (from George Peck 1835).

So without writing more on this, I want to comment on your Amo ergo sum. I would phrase it as 'I am loved therefore I am'. Amatus sum ergo sum.

1 John indicates that we love because he first loved us. What is primary is not my love nor my thought but God's love. Cogito and Amo both get the primary in the human as subject rather than in the Divine - even if it just a divine passive.

Cogito is useful - but as we know, Descartes' cartesian coordinates are much more 'complex' in 4 dimensions than 2 - and thought is (like love) after all, another function of time in time. (Not to mention that 10 dimensions seem required for current grand unified theories.) We have come some distance - but in terms of power - we have roughly 25 more orders of magnitude to penetrate - even by our own theories.

And as to knowledge - then we shall know as we are known is a promise worth considering. It is again that we are known not that we know. The power is not in us - as Psalm 139 makes clear - it is too high, I cannot attain it.