The limits of “moral naturalism”
Why be moral?
David Brooks’ column today discusses “moral naturalists,” who believe our moral faculties are an evolutionary and biological product born out of animals’ need to cooperate. This view is contrasted briefly with those who believe morality comes from God and those who believe we discern moral principles through reason and abstraction. Brooks writes:
One of the participants, Marc Hauser of Harvard, began his career studying primates, and for moral naturalists the story of our morality begins back in the evolutionary past. It begins with the way insects, rats and monkeys learned to cooperate.
By the time humans came around, evolution had forged a pretty firm foundation for a moral sense. Jonathan Haidt of the University of Virginia argues that this moral sense is like our sense of taste. We have natural receptors that help us pick up sweetness and saltiness. In the same way, we have natural receptors that help us recognize fairness and cruelty. Just as a few universal tastes can grow into many different cuisines, a few moral senses can grow into many different moral cultures.
While moral naturalism has much to offer, especially in regard to understanding and analyzing our moral intuitions, at the bottom, it fails to say anything about why morality is actually important. Okay, so morality is a natural, evolutionary product? So why should I be “moral” when it doesn’t help me? Is it any different than our biological desire for sweet and fatty food, an unthinking impulse that one can choose to indulge, or not?
Moral naturalism, by itself, cannot answer these worries, I believe. A reply about the importance of cooperation and human interests and fulfillment will appeal not to a biological tale, but rather to the religion or abstract reasoning from which moral naturalism is supposedly immune.
-Jake
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