posted
I was curious if anyone on the forum had read anything about ideas regarding moral competition. I've been kicking around this idea for quite some time about how differing morality could have developed through competition in similar structural environments. In a nutshell its a combination of Darwinian Competition with morality and ethics in the sense that for the most part only successful morals would continue to exist. So for this reason the majority of our morals and ethics are ones derived from this process.
Not only this, but this moral competition manifests itself into almost all violence and conflict in the world. That is that even wars are the creation of a moral competition. This is rather evident in wars that are fueled by nationalist fervor and religion, but even in ones motivated by economic factors. As in many ways our handling of scarcity and choice are moral decisions, not so much purely economic ones.
Was curious if anyone has written about this in particular. I know there is a branch of ethics that is combined with evolutionary thought, in that the development of morality was a physical evolution that helped us adapt to our environment. However, that is not what I'm putting forward. Anyhow, kind of curious as if someone has written on the subject I would love to read it.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
What you are talking about sounds like it could tie in to game theory. There is a lot of game theory involved in how people make moral choices, especially depending on their culture and what the social consequences of their actions are.
Posts: 3950 | Registered: Mar 2006
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Isn't this essentially memetics? Ideas are subject to a form of natural selection, and morals are just ideas.
But that would mean successful morals would be those that have the traits to propagate, not necessarily the ones that we should follow.
Posts: 76 | Registered: Aug 2009
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What would you consider to be competing moralities?
I wonder about the development of morality along with religion. It seems that the standards for morality of some religions decrease with time...that is, corruption increases, driving some to lead a wave of reformation. If the reformation is a simply competing morality, there must be a change in the environment that contributes to it. Is there evidence of this in our cultural history as a species? Is this degradation into corruption a sign that humankind, unless constantly self-aware, is naturally 'bad'?
Posts: 47 | Registered: Mar 2010
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posted
Jenos, that is the idea behind moral competition. That is that in a sense those morals that end up propagating the most end up becoming the morals that we feel we should follow. That and if the concept of morality is nothing more than an idea then you end up being cast into moral relativism, which only takes a few moments to bombard with internal contradictions. Of course morality could be nothing but a mess of contradictions, but I'm more on a path to attempt and disprove that ( or at least a different look at). That and if I'm correct Dawkins actually thought that memes were somehow genetically part of us and transmitted from person to person. That is certainly not what I'm trying to state. The concept is that moral systems with a propensity of success in certain avenues will simply spread, until those morals either becoming self destructive due to a change in environment, the moral system mutates to meet the new challenges, or a better moral system replaces it.
What I find interesting is that some moral systems are built for the short-run, that is they can be very successful over a short period with built in flaws that insure its fall in the long-term. August, that would be my initial thoughts on religions or any moral system ( especially any "objective" moral system ) that fails like that. That and I wouldn't say that they were "bad" simply unsuccessful in maintaining their own ethical standard due to some flaw in their moral system. I can say that murder is immoral, but if other structures in my moral system push people to murder then my system is corrupt. Not only this, but if for some reason murder was important to my society's success or failure then my system not addressing the issue coherently and successfully would give a cause for revolution etc.
August, I would also say that any system of differing morality competes. The problem of course is that we tend to think there must always be a winner in any competition, one side crushing the other. In real life this isn't the case. The wolf is not inherently superior for being able to catch and eat the deer, it is simply a predator. The fact is that when there are real moral differences between groups it tends to devolve into violence, or at the very least one group attempting to press its morality onto the other.
Take for instance violence against women. We consider it a moral fact, at least I do, that violence against women is wrong. We do this to the point that we press this clear ( for us ) moral choice onto all of the cultures that we have any kind of power on. It creates antagonism between groups. I've been with the military in a number of places and if you get caught beating your wife by US forces you have a really good chance of getting it good yourself as well. The problem of course is who is "really" right. I would say that the "right" morality would be the one that wins the competition. The one that obviously adds to the success of a society, works within the existing moral system ( that is it does not seriously contradict anything else within the moral system ), and to a point simply sits well with people. Part of the idea about moral competition is that they aren't necessarily always conscious choices, there is something that drives many people to try and do the "right" thing.
Posts: 1753 | Registered: May 2001
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posted
I feel like this would be a more interesting discussion if you brought in a specific moral dilemma, or a moral principal of a particular culture so that we could all analyze it form different perspectives - you can bring your perspective and we can try and knock it down for you.
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