From the Theory of Moral Sentiments. Adam Smith presents his theory of the socio-psychological origins of morality:
(1) We are by our psychological nature naturally sympathetic with the fortunes and misfortunes of others:
Let us suppose that the great empire of China, with all its myriads of inhabitants, was suddenly swallowed up by an earthquake, and let us consider how a man of humanity in Europe, who had no sort of connexion with that part of the world, would be affected upon receiving intelligence of this dreadful calamity. He would, I imagine, first of all, express very strongly his sorrow for the misfortune of that unhappy people, he would make many melancholy reflections upon the precariousness of human life, and the vanity of all the labours of man, which could thus be annihilated in a moment. He would too, perhaps, if he was a man of speculation, enter into many reasonings concerning the effects which this disaster might produce upon the commerce of Europe, and the trade and business of the world in general.
(2) But this psychological propensity to sympathy is weak--much weaker than our concern with our own life, bodily integrity, and comfort:
And when all this fine philosophy was over, when all these humane sentiments had been once fairly expressed, he would pursue his business or his pleasure, take his repose or his diversion, with the same ease and tranquillity, as if no such accident had happened. The most frivolous disaster which could befal himself would occasion a more real disturbance. If he was to lose his little finger to-morrow, he would not sleep to-night; but, provided he never saw them, he will snore with the most profound security over the ruin of a hundred millions of his brethren, and the destruction of that immense multitude seems plainly an object less interesting to him, than this paltry misfortune of his own.
(3) Nevertheless, only a psychopath would destroy China to save his little finger:
To prevent, therefore, this paltry misfortune to himself, would a man of humanity be willing to sacrifice the lives of a hundred millions of his brethren, provided he had never seen them? Human nature startles with horror at the thought, and the world, in its greatest depravity and corruption, never produced such a villain as could be capable of entertaining it. But what makes this difference? When our passive feelings are almost always so sordid and so selfish, how comes it that our active principles should often be so generous and so noble? When we are always so much more deeply affected by whatever concerns ourselves, than by whatever concerns other men; what is it which prompts the generous, upon all occasions, and the mean upon many, to sacrifice their own interests to the greater interests of others? It is not the soft power of humanity, it is not that feeble spark of benevolence which Nature has lighted up in the human heart, that is thus capable of counteracting the strongest impulses of self-love.
(4) Why, then, do we act morally? Because the spark of benevolence has been fanned into a great fire by our upbringing: we have been trained--educated--to love the idea that we are noble:
Posted by DeLong at June 9, 2004 01:28 PM | TrackBack | | Other weblogs commenting on this postIt is a stronger power, a more forcible motive, which exerts itself upon such occasions. It is reason, principle, conscience, the inhabitant of the breast, the man within, the great judge and arbiter of our conduct. It is he who, whenever we are about to act so as to affect the happiness of others, calls to us, with a voice capable of astonishing the most presumptuous of our passions, that we are but one of the multitude, in no respect better than any other in it; and that when we prefer ourselves so shamefully and so blindly to others, we become the proper objects of resentment, abhorrence, and execration. It is from him only that we learn the real littleness of ourselves, and of whatever relates to ourselves, and the natural misrepresentations of self-love can be corrected only by the eye of this impartial spectator. It is he who shows us the propriety of generosity and the deformity of injustice; the propriety of resigning the greatest interests of our own, for the yet greater interests of others, and the deformity of doing the smallest injury to another, in order to obtain the greatest benefit to ourselves.
It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters.
Deus X Chromosome (?:
-----------------------------
Monkeys Smarter Than University Professors?
Capuchin umbrage suggests sense of fairness extends beyond humans.
18 September 2003
JOHN WHITFIELD
Monkeys strike for equal pay. They down tools if they see another monkey get a bigger reward for doing the same job, US researchers have found1.
The experiments show that notions of justice extend beyond humans, says Sarah Brosnan of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. This is probably an innate ability that evolved in our primate ancestor, she believes: "You need a sense of fairness to live in large, complex groups..."
http://www.infosystems.eku.edu/LOY/htm/Monkeys%20Smarter%20Than%20University%20Professors.htm
Posted by: Mike on June 9, 2004 02:01 PMGenerally true to my mind, but a bit optimistic:
For many folks, the only thing keeping them in line is not a grand, ethereal notion of nobility but rather fear and obedience. Fear of the consequences of violating the rules of behavior that are handed down to you - both the rules of God and the rules of government. From this initial lesson, some people also internalize blind obedience: obedience for its own sake, even if the failure to obey is divorced from a punishment (ex., stopping at a red light at 3 am with no other cars around).
Posted by: Cheney's Third Nipple on June 9, 2004 02:38 PMMorality suspiciously seems designed to make us act in our own interest, help those who could return the favour later, help members of your own group/tribe/family while ignoring strangers on the street and those far away.
"The Moral Animal" by Robert Wright goes into detail on morality and it's possible evolutionary origins.
Posted by: Zack on June 9, 2004 02:42 PMSo why doesn't this apply to George W. Bush, and if he's our leader, can it really be said to apply to us as a nation?
Posted by: Dave of Maryland on June 9, 2004 04:56 PMI was thinking *exactly* about this passage the other day when trying to defend certain anti-war people from scurrilous charges that they "wanted America to fail" or were "not Anti-War, just on the other side"; The same difference between what people might feel emotionally and what they would actually do. Here was my defense:
There's one point I wish someone would make about these constant assertions by Michael Totten et al. (I single him out because he seems the most decent, and should know better) that some person or the other "wants America to lose" or is "not anti-war, just on the other side". "Wants America to lose" if you take that accusation seriously, as you should, does not just mean pessimistic assessments or strong criticism of the Iraq war. It means, to use Orwell's example, if this anti-war person knew Saddam's whereabouts, they would not call Gen Sanchez, they would instead call Al-Jazeera and wail "Saddam, be careful, they're after you!". Isn't that the actual meaning of accusing someone of "wanting America to lose"?
If these accusers really believe their political opponents "want America to lose", they're fools. If they know better but use such ugly rhetoric because it feels so good and succeeds in cowing and intimidating the more weak-minded of their political opponents, they're intellectual bullies. If they're merely lashing out in a thoughtless fashion. then they should apologize, forthwith.
Posted by: roublen vesseau on June 9, 2004 05:21 PMRead on, McBrad. You will also find in this great and somewhat difficult work a section on reasons why men naturally revere persons possessing wealth and power, or more generally, just plain wealth. Adam S. did not think this was a good thing, but he believed it to be a common thing.
Posted by: Knut Wickisell on June 9, 2004 05:53 PMPersonally, I'm sympathetic to the Augustinian notion that people are inherently vile, wicked scum. I'm less sympathetic to the similarly Augustinian notion that there's some supernatural hope for their redemption by believing that some nutcase who got nailed to a tree two millenia ago turned out to be the creator of the universe slummin' through the Earth.
Posted by: Julian Elson on June 9, 2004 08:44 PM
In fact the passage Knut refers to is the current epigraph, if that's the word, of Max Sawicky's blog.
Prof, another quote that needs to be rehabilitated, this one from Keynes:
"There is a respectable and influential body of opinion which? fulminates alike against devaluations and levies, on the ground that they infringe the untouchable sacredness of contract?. Yet such persons, by overlooking one of the greatest of all social principles, namely the fundamental distinction between the right of the individual to repudiate contract and the right of the State to control vested interest, are the worst enemies of what they seek to preserve. For nothing can preserve the integrity of contract between individuals except a discretionary authority in the State to revise what has beomc eintolerable. The powers of uninterrupted usury are great. If the accreations of vested interest were to grow without mitigation for many generations, half the population would be no better than slaves to the other half?. The absolutists of contract? are the real parents of revolution?"
Posted by: roublen vesseau on June 9, 2004 09:11 PMSee, this is why I generally don't bother to read the "classics". If your characterization of Smith's TMS is accurate, it has been completely superseded by modern behavioral science research. Reading a bit of evolutionary and social psychology (and some neuroscience and primatology and etc. etc.) gives a much more complete and accurate picture of the nature of human morality.
Such as, for one thing, that morality is *NOT* simply present but weaker than selfishness (like placing a sort of utility on the wellfare of others, but less than what one places on oneself). It's actually a complex set of context-dependent rules and drives that in some contexts are *MUCH* stronger than selfishness. For example, morality is especially related to intergroup conflict - the more important a group difference becomes, the more inclined people are to sacrifice for the ingroup, and generally the less caring toward and more distrustful of outgroups they become. Moral behavior is also heavily promoted by whatever one's ingroup sees as socially desirable. This is one reason people are often extremely willing to risk life and limb when they are members of a group struggling survival (for example soldiers in war), often considerably more risk-averse when it's just their skin on the line vs. their own personal goals... and are very UN-likely to risk doing something that they might think is right, but that their ingroup disapproves of.
Indeed the passage from Smith you cited is actively silly. Something happening on the other side of the world isn't automatically less important than one's personal life - it depends on what it is. In particular, threats to one's ingroup or actions by one's enemy have huge emotional impact even if they happen far away and don't impact one's personal life. Just look at American public reactions to September 11 (immediate horror and rage), the Holocaust (a fair amount of horror there), and the Rwandan genocide (yawn). Alliance systems are so thoroughly a part of our brains that far off events seemingly relevant to some group we're in - even an extremely broad 300 million strong group like the US population - can have a huge impact. Whereas events causing far more deaths but involving unrelated parties are about as ho-hum for most people as Smith describes.
And Smith is totally, utterly, completely wrong about morality being a matter of selfishness overcome by reason and principle. Morality is overwhelmingly emotion and instinct. Reason and principle are 80% rationalization of what we wanted to do anyway, 15% codification of the norms evolved in a particular culture, and at most 5% involving reason and principle actually being in the driver's seat of moral behavior.
In fact it would be difficult for him to be more wrong, for he isn't making a claim unrelated to the truth, he's making a claim that is the opposite of the truth. Modern neuroscience has slaughtered the idea that morality is reason overcoming passion. Morality is fundamentally and overwhelmingly based on emotional responses - empathy, sympathy, emotional responses to social pressure, emotional attachments to groups, irrational retaliatory urges to ignore one's own self-interest in punishing immoral behavior, etc., etc. Remove some of the more critical moral emotions and you get a psychopath - someone who can understand moral behavior well enough to manipulate it, but has no urge to follow it themselves. Hoooo boy, is morality ever utterly unlike the "impartial spectator" that Smith describes. (Indeed, pretty much every major kind of human moral behavior has an obvious precursor in at least the primates - creatures with none of our culture and no more reasoning than a very small child, but with basically the same kind of emotional systems we have).
"It is not the love of our neighbour, it is not the love of mankind, which upon many occasions prompts us to the practice of those divine virtues. It is a stronger love, a more powerful affection, which generally takes place upon such occasions; the love of what is honourable and noble, of the grandeur, and dignity, and superiority of our own characters."
In response to this quote I would also like to point out that morality isn't a matter of affection or love. Actually it seems largely to be a matter of negative emotions - empathy with the suffering of others (which leads to the ability to learn to abhor causing it in people who haven't been shut off from the empathy system by anger or moral opprobrium), retaliatory anger at immoral behavior, embarassment and shame at bearing the brunt of social disapproval, guilt at the results of unintentional transgressions, and so on. Psychologically speaking, morality seems to be much more stick than carrot.
Hm... I haven't read Smith's Theory of Moral Sentiments (or the Wealth of Nations, for that matter), Ian, but I was under the impression that he was a moral emotivist. Reason plays a role in morality insofar as we can weigh our feelings for consistency, the facts of the world, etc: I wasn't under the impression that he thought that morality is derived from reason like Kant. Again, though, I haven't read him, but it just seemed (to me) that you're overemphasizing Smith's mention of reason a bit.
Posted by: Julian Elson on June 9, 2004 11:44 PMBDL:
"(4) Why, then, do we act morally? Because the spark of benevolence has been fanned into a great fire by our upbringing: we have been trained--educated--to love the idea that we are noble:"
In the passage that follows, I don't understand where the "by our upbringing: we have been trained--educated" idea comes from. AS says (more or less) we act well so we can still think well of ourselves, but he doesn't (here) delve into the origins of this motivation.
Posted by: Joe Mealyus on June 10, 2004 12:10 AMIM: "See, this is why I generally don't bother to read the "classics"."
IM "And Smith is totally, utterly, completely wrong about morality being a matter of selfishness overcome by reason and principle."
Since I didn't see where AS was arguing that "morality being a matter of selfishness overcome by reason and principle," I have to assume the policy extends even to excerpts.
Posted by: Joe Mealyus on June 10, 2004 12:17 AMJulian --
You remind me of Reinhold Niebuhr's comment that original sin -- "the Augustinian notion that people are inherently vile, wicked scum" -- is the only empirically verifiable Christian doctrine.
Posted by: slacktivist on June 10, 2004 12:19 PMBeing the bastard child of the received view in evolutionary psychology -- not neuroscience unless a handful of fmri and lesion studies makes it so -- Mr. Montgomerie's post is only a slightly exaggerated crib of the recent intellectual output of Steven Pinker without the measured discussion of leviathan, the expanding circle, the development of international law, etc. And even if it is fashionable to jibe Kant because of the role reason takes in e.g. his discussion of long distant merchants, we're doing it all over again today with game theory.
Posted by: Shai on June 11, 2004 03:37 AMThis excerpt from Adam Smith's "Theory of Moral Sentiment" is presumably the context for Dostoevsky's writing in "Notes from the Underground": "When they prove to you that in reality one drop of your own fat must be dearer to you than a hundred thousand of your fellow-creatures, and that this conclusion is the final
solution of all so-called virtues and duties and all such prejudices and fancies, then you have just to accept it, there is no help for it, for twice two is a law of mathematics. Just try refuting it."
Also connected to the excerpt from Smith, it's supposedly an anomaly in current rationality-presupposed economics that an individual would leave a tip in a restaurant he will not visit again.
Posted by: John on June 12, 2004 07:27 AMThank you, I just wanted to give a greeting and tell you I like your blog very much.
casinos choice
Posted by: casinos choice on July 2, 2004 11:15 AMDonec eris felix, multos numerabis amicos - As long as you are fortunate, you will have many friends (when you are successful, everyone wants to be your friend)
Age quod agis - Do what you do well, pay attention to what you are doing
Minime senuisti! - You haven't aged a bit!
Mens agitat molem - The mind moves the matter. (Vergil)
Non sibi sed suis - Not for one's self but for one's people
Mens sana in corpore sano - A sound mind in a sound body. (Juvenalis)