The biological problem with “true” morality is that as soon as any cheaters arise, they gain a reproductive advantage over the masses, and this cheating tendency might be passed on to further generations.

To prevent this, altruists must, at the very least be aware of the possibility of cheating, and be ready to thwart or punish cheaters. But then there’s the philosophical question: can you be a pure-hearted do-gooder and still be intensely aware of all the connivances that cheaters are likely to employ?

Wonderful post, clear and unambivalent. But I think some could argue that ALL morality is altruistic, and particularly religious morality. If morality is not concerned with rewards while altruism is concerned with deferred rewards, religious based morality is concerned with the biblical idea of deferred heavenly rewards.

We, and be ‘we’ i mean the entire discussion, (not ngong and me) keeps going around the nature of morality and the morality of nature. But the original point is can an atheist be moral and can a religion or portions thereof be considered immoral.

I personally think morality is a natural phenomenon stemming from altruism, in that social groups learn cooperation for the whole tribe to survive. In man’s worst experiment with altruism, war, the individual’s live is risked for the sake of the whole tribe or country. There is nothing innately religious about this sacrifice, and it assumes no god. While you can be infused with religious belief and go to war, you can just as well be an atheist and make the same choice. And remember, eric, this is for an ideal: the defence of nation, the service of forms of government, etc.. I know it is not necessarily altruistic for a government to go to war, but it is certainly true at the individual level.

Moving to your analogies: would a flying pig be a pig or a “pig-like” flying animal? I accept that others may define something differently or consider outcomes contrary to accepted understanding. I don’t know, however, if all such definitions and considerations are valid. I suppose that is the point of philosophy and science, in the intellectual and natural worlds, respectively. Mind you, I am not arguing with you, I am merely saying I don’t know how to supply a definitive or even an informed answer ( I am not a scientist, a philosopher, nor do I have any expertise in the relevant specialities).

I would certainly argue that altruistic behavior is necessary in a species which has evolved social cooperation as a survival strategy. Disease will only kill a portion of a population, regardless of how pernicious that disease is, and only a portion will get deadly bacterial infections. So no, it is not NECESSARY, but an altruistic society will work to develop cures.

I understand you arguments, Eric, but I think they are dangerously close to relativism, and if there’s one thing I find disingenuous, intellectually, it’s relativism. I do think, however, that we are all trying to find some common ground.

Part of my confusion with your arguments is this: why do you stop at biology? Do you intend to come up with a check list composed of scientific disciplines, and find interesting, abstract reasons as to why each one can’t be prescriptive? Or…do you really think any science can offer moral prescriptions, and you’ve just got to find the right discipline on the list? Personally, I think it’s a waste of time to try to squeeze the word “should” out of ANY scientific data.

Let me make the case against biological altruism easier: biological altruism always assumes deferred reward of some sort. But most folks believe that highly “moral” actions aren’t concerned with rewards. Therefore, biological altruism (not “biology”, per se) cannot subsume morality. How’s that?

However, I’ve yet to see evidence for morality that is “greater” than modest “biological altruism”. Just as evolution might predict, ordinary, real world, Biblical morality is hugely concerned with sexual behaviors, territory, etc. No surprise, really.

In fact, a good chunk of morality seems concerned with suppressing biological desires…there’s a whole other angle on the “morality can/can’t be grounded in biology” argument. (and it doesn’t invoke “altruism” at all!)

This might be acceptable in the world of abstract philosophy and theology, and it might even win you a debate, but I sincerely hope you don’t think you’re actually honing in on reality.

In the sentence that followed, I explained the lameness of your argument.

First, I’m not a Platonist, and I honestly cannot see how you could have inferred that from anything I’ve said, provided you understood it. Perhaps you confused my use of the possible worlds methodology with a platonic ontology; I don’t know.

Second, “that’s lame” is hardly a refutation.

Third, the possible worlds (or, as you called it, “alternative world”) approach to examining concepts is used quite frequently in philosophy to examine modality (which is precisely what I was looking at in my thought experiment). You don’t seem to be familiar with it, so perhaps you should check it out. There are critics of the approach, to be sure, but their criticisms are usually more substantive than “that’s lame.”

Your “alternative world” attempt to utterly disconnect the concepts is lame. It verges on contradiction…you might as well say “self-sacrifice is selfish” on another planet.

I enjoyed reading your response. When I said that the proposition, “Altruism is immoral” is not contradictory, I was speaking entirely about logic (hence my appeal to a possible world). There is no contradiction inherent in the notion of a flying pig, either, but we just happen to live in a world where pigs don’t fly. (It’s important not to confuse different kinds of possibility here: It may indeed be physically impossible for a pig to fly, given the laws of physics that obtain in our universe, but the notion is logically possible.) Now, it is contingently true that pigs don’t fly in our universe, just as it’s contingently true that altruism is often identified with morality. But the purpose of the thought experiment is to show that any biological or mechanistic explanation of altruistic behavior need not presuppose nor entail
the notion that altruism is moral. If this is so, then it follows that biological explanations of altruistic behavior cannot explain (prescriptive) morality, since they are consonant both with the notion that altruism is moral and the notion that altruism is immoral.

I’m not so sure altruism is necessary from an evolutionary point of view. The arguments get very messy and tricky here, and a lot is determined by how you define your terms. But I’ll just say that while I may be willing to admit that altruistic behavior which is selective may be beneficial, there is a difference between saying, “x is beneficial” on the one hand and “x is necessary” on the other. Antibiotics are certainly beneficial, but the fact that human beings managed to survive and multiply for roughly 200,000 years without them suggests that they are not necessary. And while a selective altruism (towards one’s family and group) may also be beneficial, it doesn’t follow that altruism towards others is (I know that sundry explanations of general altruism have been offered, but I’ve yet to find any persuasive), and this is what most of us mean when we speak about altruism (we don’t call a racist altruistic, no matter how selflessly he acts with respect to his family and what he considers to be members of his ‘”race”).