Moral Minds

In reading this book, I felt the discomfort a number of my auditors have with GSQ, when they complained of the too technical nature of the presentation. Mea culpa. After a reasonable start, I spent three months struggling through the book During that time, my review grade sank to its eventual B-, the minimum acceptable grade in graduate seminars. I considered giving the fellow a C+. But, my grade is not based on my difficulties in learning the subject matter presented; rather, I think Prof. Hauser failed to prove the thesis of his subtitle, 'How Nature designed our universal sense of right and wrong.' He did provide some glimmering of the evolutionary basis of our behavior. He did discuss how our behavior is similar to that of other primates, monkeys, birds, etc. As one who definitely believes a version of neo-Darwinian Evolution, I took Hauser's presentation as confirming evidence. But, he did not prove to me that we have an innate (built-in) sense of right or wrong, much less that it is universal. He did not fulfill my expectation (inspired by the title) of finding an ethical theory.

Hauser is a professor at Harvard in exactly the subjects he writes about. The book seems to be written as dictation or seminar lectures; i.e., I understand the style as that of the eminent professor preparing class notes for an upper division class or graduate seminar in his subject. There is a huge body of research work implicit in his comments, which makes many of his examples and references comprehensible only to fellow practitioners and their understudies. For example, I do not consider myself unread in some of the areas Prof. Hauser considers, but I am not familiar with child development or psychology. Thus, I have to accept his expert word, since I don't have the time (years) to acquire sufficient knowledge to judge his methods and conclusions. What bothers me is a suspicion that his is only one possible interpretation of the work cited, not what is generally agreed. The reason for my uneasiness is simply that intellectual wars have been fought over psychological and behavioral theories for over a century. I wasn't aware that a winner had emerged.

Now, I am sure Prof. Hauser will object that his studies are about behavior we usually call moral and, further, that morality is all about behavior. I agree up to a point: moral judgements are represented in the behavior of moral agents. But it is not the behavior itself that is moral or immoral; rather, it is the connection of behavior to voluntary choice that is the hallmark of morality. Prof. Hauser's book is about involuntary choice, so his definition of the subject, ethics, must not be the same as mine.

Prof. Hauser sets himself the task of proving that moral behavior is conditioned or programmed by our biology. The first part of his contention involves the examination of behavior he alleges is moral. He sets up situations most people agree involve moral judgement. The second part of his claim  is that those judgements are innate in human brains. The center and major part of the book is about those innate judgements. Hauser's discussion ranges through human childhood development, monkey and primate behavior and experiments with various other animals, even birds. The discussion reflects Hauser's expert knowledge of human and animal behavior.

From the beginning, Hauser is fascinated with moral choice under conflict: i.e., choices made among conflicting purposes or on conflicting principles or values. This orientation is set out in the first few pages of the book in the apocryphal story of Sophie's choice. What are our duties? How do we explain feelings of guilt?  Hauser starts his explanation of morality with "Reasoning and emotion play some role in our moral behavior, but neither can do complete justice to the process leading up to moral judgement." (p. 11) He then introduces "   the idea that we are equipped with a moral faculty -- an organ of the mind that carries a universal grammar of action." (p. 11) In connection with this last claim, it is important to read Footnote 10 which states that moral philosophy has been transformed into an empirical science by the work of "Joshua Greene, Joshua Knobe, and Shaun Nichols." (p. 428) Until now, I was unaware of this new direction in ethics. I am also unfamiliar with of all of those names. (A search of amazon.com shows Shaun Nichols has several books in print, such as Sentimental Rules: On the Natural Foundations of Judgement. Joshua Greene is a Harvard professor of psychology. Joshua Knobe is a professor of philosophy at Chapel Hill, University of North Carolina.)

Since Prof. Hauser seems to support the "Rawlsian creature" model of morality, his outline, "ANATOMY OF THE RAWLSIAN CREATURE'S MORAL FACULTY" (pp. 55-54) is central to understanding this book. Even when it seems otherwise, this book is a defense of the ten claims made in that outline. What stands out are these claims:

"1 The moral faculty consists of a set of principles that guide our moral judgements but do not strictly determine how we act. ...

"3. The principles are inaccessible to conscious awareness.  ...

"4. The principles operate on experiences that are independent of their sensory origins ...
 

"5. The principles of the universal moral grammar are innate. ...

"6. Acquiring the native moral system is fast and effortless, requiring little or no instruction. ..."

Quite frankly, I find most of those claims astounding and counter-intuitive. I think they either express an extreme form of  reductionism or an attempt by psychologists to kidnap ethics. I find claims 3, 5 and 6 particularly obnoxious and probably false.

His didactic use of the Humean, Kantian and Rawlsian "creatures" may be appropriate, but it is also misleading. Hume, Kant and Rawls were major ethicists, but Hauser's short summary of their philosophies is almost wrong. What Hauser learned from those ethical theories is represented in his cartoon caricatures, which are obviously classroom props. In other words, I think reading Hume, Kant and Rawls must have suggested to Hauser the brain mechanisms symbolized by the cartoons. Since I don't think Hauser's book is about ethics, I would have preferred labeling the cartoons without reference to philosophers. Hauser's various creatures are driven by emotion (Hume), rules (Kant), or both (Rawls), which correspond to events or processes occurring in brains. Hauser ignores a possible ontological difference between brain mechanisms or activity and moral decision making, which suggests he is advocating thorough-going reductionism. If that is Hauser's commitment, I refer him to Prof. Searle's criticisms. (cf. my review of MIND.) But, he denies that allegation.

Hauser relies far too much and too often on the Trolley Problem. This is a problem of decision making under conflict. A trolley car is racing out of control. If it continues on its present track, it will hit and kill five people. If it switches to another track, it will hit and kill one person. This problem is significant, because it is morally equivalent to the vaccination problem: while most people are immunized by vaccination, some vaccine recipients suffer illness, disability or even death. Hauser puts subjects in a position of control, forcing them to choose the outcome of complex situations. He emphasizes the result that people choose different outcomes in slightly different situations, which are otherwise statistically equivalent, because that shows which moral considerations apply. For example, it makes a difference whether the subject flips a switch which causes the trolley car to hit a person, or the subject pushes someone in front of the trolley car to stop it. (For unknown reasons, subjects are not asked to throw themselves under the trolley.) According to Hauser, people don't feel personally responsible when the machine does the dirty work under their direction, whereas they feel guilty about killing someone with their own hands. (Not asked: Do these different feelings result from adaptation, or a lack of it, to industrial society?)

While the Trolley Problem and its equivalents are interesting, and I agree they show something about how people make moral decisions, it is not at all clear they are decisive for ethical theories. Hauser and his colleagues test people in the psychology lab, but those tests ignore many possible conditions. How do the subjects know that flipping a switch will redirect the trolley? In one actual, horrible case, United Flight 93, the subjects decided to commit suicide rather than succumb in the terrorist's plan. Why is it people feel little guilt when the machine does it for them? What is the comparative moral value of those about to be slaughtered? Is there some other way to warn the victims? Why am I confined to flipping switches? In the real case, how does a subject know which switch does what? (The passengers on Flight 93 didn't learn how to fly.) I had many, many more questions as I read through these problems, none of which Hauser answered. The stylized problems of the psychology lab are significant only if they decide the crux of the matter, if they strip away the complexities of real worlds to lay bare their skeleton. When crucial questions are asked and answered, all the other questions are clarified and fall away. That is not what happened in my reading of Hauser's account: I just had more questions and became more dissatisfied as I plodded through the text.

Despite feeling deceived because the book is not about ethics, at least not as I understand the subject, Hauser enlightened me with many keen observations. In his discussion of economic games (p. 77 ff), he quotes Nowak and Sigmund: "The fiction of a rational Homo economicus relentlessly optimizing material utility is giving way to 'bounded rational' decision-makers governed by instincts and emotions..." (Nowak, M.A., & Sigmund, K. (2000), "Enhanced: Shrewd investments", Science 288, 819. Per chance, [Science 8 December 2006:Vol. 314. no. 5805, pp. 1560 - 1563 DOI: 10.1126/science.1133755] contains a review by Martin A. Nowak, "Five Rules for the Evolution of Cooperation," as well as an overview by Robert Boyd, "The Puzzle of Human Sociality," [Science 8 December 2006: Vol. 314. no. 5805, pp. 1555 - 1556 DOI: 10.1126/science.1136841].) Apparently, there is a evolutionary role for altruism. H. sapiens need not act in the manner assumed by Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations.

In his section, "PUNISH OR PERISH," (p. 96 ff), Hauser has an interesting discussion of social norms, guilt and the unconscious. He claims these operate in social groups unconsciously and function as signals of group affinity. Social norms lead to punishment, because norms are ineffective without it; i.e., social discipline is applied with carrots and sticks. This is somehow associated with "strong reciprocity" (p. 99), but he concludes the section with "It is unclear whether strong reciprocity was the hunter-gatherer solution to the problem of free riders in small social groups, or whether it is a recent cognitive invention." But, if morality is innate, how could there be any "cognitive invention" of it? Or, are social norms not involved in morality? (If not, why discuss them in a book about morality?)
 

In the following pages, Hauser discusses fairness, which is involved with punishment. There are different forms and motives of punishment which reveal different concepts of fairness; e.g., there is deterrence and retribution. He notes that retribution is not much used in Bushman societies and that punishment is usually more severe in large societies. (p. 109) H. sapiens was originally found in small bands wandering about Africa. After millions years of evolution, it is only in the last five millennia that people have agglomerated themselves into cities. It is only in the last two or three millennia that there were any cities of more than a million people, and it is only in the last century that megapolises have become common. Since genetic evolution usually works on much longer time scales than human urbanization, Hauser's innate moral faculty must be unprepared to deal with the actual facts of modern human existence. Yet, we have created social norms (laws) and ethical principles to suit. Hauser does not explain how we manage to continue living together, if his thesis is correct. (But, what with all the abuses, brutal crimes and warfare, maybe we don't do so well at living together, after all.)

Hauser takes a crack at explaining the role of culture, not at all an easy problem:

"We do not expect universality across the board. Rather we expect something much more like linguistic variation: systematic differences between cultures, based on parametric settings." (p. 129)

He mentions a very large range of cultures, and analyses Honor Cultures exemplified by the American South. (p. 131 ff) As I understand his examples, cultures are the social software running on mental hardware (brains). Since Hauser claims there is an innate moral faculty, this faculty must be like a computer processor capable of running many different programs or a single program with many switch settings (which are equivalent descriptions of the software). Hauser mentions the Founder Effect (p. 136) in explaining the persistence of cultural traits which are no longer appropriate. This leads to a discussion of cultural controls, and the observation, "Breaking with authority is hard." (p. 140)

I found his examination of culture fascinating and useful, perhaps because I am in substantial agreement with the views presented. Culture is a very strong force in human affairs, but not totally determinative. There are "parameter settings" over which we have conscious control. Hauser comes back to this point of view in the Epilogue, where he emphasizes that his philosophy is not a form of determinism. This point is, unfortunately, obscured in much of the book, perhaps because he set out to show there is a moral faculty parallel to Chomsky's universal language.

This parallelism is taken up elsewhere in the book, particularly in the chapter, "Moral Organ." (p. 163 ff) He writes, "The analogy between language and morality provides a different and ... more informative way of looking at this age-old problem" [of morality - ed.]. To support his claims, he launches into a lengthy presentation of early childhood development. In particular, he believes the characteristics of early childhood development are universal. Further, since new borns and infants are not easily taught, their behavior must be innate, not acquired. Hauser's point is, of course, that the universal behavior demonstrated by human infants shows what underlies later developments. It is hard to deny that we build on our native abilities. But, if we are capable of voluntary choice, is what we adults call "morality" the same as our inheritance? This where culture plays a critical role.

In passing, I did not understand Hauser's explication of "expectations." (p. 166 ff)  This is the critical connection between in-born abilities and later behavior. Essentially, Hauser is presenting a theory of learning. What he tries to show is that there are certain built-in principles which are used in distinguishing  what is alive and what is not, what is rational and what is not. These principles are used in making conscious choices, but he doesn't get into explaining consciousness. I found this section very unsatisfactory, perhaps because it presents findings widely appreciated among professional cognitive scientists, but not by the community at large. This is the section in which he uses the most diagrams. This section probably inspired the use of the moral creatures. There is no doubt this is a very difficult  and specialized piece of knowledge that Hauser is bringing to bear on the morality, but I feel it doesn't succeed. I think this very central part of the book must be at the top of the rewrite list for the second edition.

There is a provocative discussion of prejudice (p. 212 ff) which puzzled me. If our moral mechanism is innate, how do we overcome prejudice? If the principles underlying our moral judgements are not accessible (p. 214), are we doomed to treat out-groups badly? I found Hauser's views very disturbing, as they support the notion that we cannot help being vicious beasts. What, then, of the struggle against Nazism? Stalinism? I wondered whether Nietzsche was right which, for me, is a very black thought. I found myself resisting this line of thinking: perhaps Hauser has confused morality with social mores. But, no, he goes on to discuss "CLOCKWORK ORANGE" (p. 219), psychopaths and conventional morality (p. 235). I think this portion of the book has to be read very carefully, and probably merits yet another book. Once again, it is the intersection of culture and morality that is problematical.

The book is heavy going until, at last, he discusses Richard Dawkins The Selfish Gene. Here we have this curious thought: "... Dawkins ends the book with a sentence that should have provided comfort but instead has left me puzzled for almost twenty-five years: "We, alone on earth, can rebel against the tyranny of the selfish replicators."" (p. 359) Having discussed such things as mind reading, serotonin, aggression, empathy, reciprocity, the Golden Rule and a potpourri of other tangential subjects, at last Hauser discovers voluntary choice! It is the fact that we make choices that puzzles him. Does this lead to a serious examination of voluntary choice? No. Instead he launches into a discussion of altruism. Given my predispositions, this is a fatal flaw in the book.

Prof. Hauser ameliorates his views in the Epilogue, which I recommend reading before the rest of the book; certainly before getting into the stuff about the innate moral faculty. The Epilogue puts the hard core science into an acceptable perspective.

I have to thank Prof. Hauser for putting me through the mill for three months. I learned a thing or five. I was reminded that those in or near Harvard are a clubby bunch, a fact I learned growing up near Boston. But, just as I abandoned Boston and Harvard at an early age, in favor of San Francisco and Berkeley on an opposite coast, I have to reject Hauser's basic philosophical ideas. Having wondered about the relationship of biology to ethics for more than 40 years, struggling through this book left me firmly committed to the following propositions:

1. Following Kant, I hold that Ethics is the theoretical subject from which moral maxims are derived. Morality is the application of ethical princples.

2. The core of morality is voluntary choice. Without voluntary choice, not just any kind of choice, there can be no morality.

3. Voluntary choice presupposes a self-conscious agent. That is, the notion of voluntary choice is inseparable from the notion of an agent aware of the alternatives and who is responsible for any eventual acts. An unconscious agent is not moral.

4. The foregoing implies that ethical principles, or at least their consequences in the form of moral maxims, are accessible to moral agents.

5. Because ethical behavior requires an application of ethical principles - that is, moral judgement involves knowing voluntary choice - it is learned, not innate. This is true, even if ethical behavior is founded on, or guided by, biological predispositions.

Prof. Hauser's book is a useful guide to the evolutionary and developmental factors that may influence moral judgement. But physical cause is not the same thing as ethical principle or moral judgement, although I agree it is a necessary correlative. Prof. Dawkins' remark is an appropriate starting point for ethical theories.