NY Times: The Moral Instinct
Illustration by Adrian Tomin
By STEVEN PINKER
Published: January 13, 2008
Which of the following people would you say is the most admirable: Mother Teresa, Bill Gates or Norman Borlaug? And which do you think is the least admirable? For most people, it’s an easy question. Mother Teresa, famous for ministering to the poor in Calcutta, has been beatified by the Vatican, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize and ranked in an American poll as the most admired person of the 20th century. Bill Gates, infamous for giving us the Microsoft dancing paper clip and the blue screen of death, has been decapitated in effigy in “I Hate Gates” Web sites and hit with a pie in the face. As for Norman Borlaug . . . who the heck is Norman Borlaug?
Yet a deeper look might lead you to rethink your answers. Borlaug, father of the “Green Revolution” that used agricultural science to reduce world hunger, has been credited with saving a billion lives, more than anyone else in history. Gates, in deciding what to do with his fortune, crunched the numbers and determined that he could alleviate the most misery by fighting everyday scourges in the developing world like malaria, diarrhea and parasites. Mother Teresa, for her part, extolled the virtue of suffering and ran her well-financed missions accordingly: their sick patrons were offered plenty of prayer but harsh conditions, few analgesics and dangerously primitive medical care.
It’s not hard to see why the moral reputations of this trio should be so out of line with the good they have done. Mother Teresa was the very embodiment of saintliness: white-clad, sad-eyed, ascetic and often photographed with the wretched of the earth. Gates is a nerd’s nerd and the world’s richest man, as likely to enter heaven as the proverbial camel squeezing through the needle’s eye. And Borlaug, now 93, is an agronomist who has spent his life in labs and nonprofits, seldom walking onto the media stage, and hence into our consciousness, at all.
I doubt these examples will persuade anyone to favor Bill Gates over Mother Teresa for sainthood. But they show that our heads can be turned by an aura of sanctity, distracting us from a more objective reckoning of the actions that make people suffer or flourish. It seems we may all be vulnerable to moral illusions the ethical equivalent of the bending lines that trick the eye on cereal boxes and in psychology textbooks. Illusions are a favorite tool of perception scientists for exposing the workings of the five senses, and of philosophers for shaking people out of the naïve belief that our minds give us a transparent window onto the world (since if our eyes can be fooled by an illusion, why should we trust them at other times?). Today, a new field is using illusions to unmask a sixth sense, the moral sense. Moral intuitions are being drawn out of people in the lab, on Web sites and in brain scanners, and are being explained with tools from game theory, neuroscience and evolutionary biology.
Steven Pinker is the Johnstone Family Professor of Psychology at Harvard University and the author of “The Language Instinct” and “The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window Into Human Nature.”
Continue reading @ The New York Times
JY: Educational read. Debunked and supported some of my arguments in Morality in the Animal Kingdom.
Interesting article. I recently commented on another of Pinker’s article (from Time magazine) on my own blog. I entitled the post “Stephen Pinker and the Morality of a Meat Machine”.
I have one major problem (among several lesser problems) with Pinker’s reasoning. I do not see how he thinks explaining the physiological constitution of a human being gives any basis for morality at all. This is category error. As David Hume pointed out: “IS does not imply OUGHT”. In other words, you cannot derive imperative moral dictates (ought) from an understanding of declarative physical information (is). Just because I know another human being can suffer as myself (biology) does not explain why I should care (ethics).
Besides, Pinker is guilty of a common logical error known as the genetic fallacy. The genetic fallacy asserts that it is illogical to discredit an idea by pointing to its origins. Even if Pinker is right in stating that evolutionary psychology can explain human moral intuitions (a claim which I have serious doubts about), this does not in any way destroy the concept of moral realism.
That’s my two cents anyways :-). Great blog!
Hey, Tks for dropping by. I believe Pinker was trying to say that morality is a mechanism for human survival. At the same time, universal moral principles exist but are valued differently by different cultures. I do agree that it’s mostly a theory bordering on philosophy than science.
Hope to see you again. 
[...] Pinker Is At It Again Posted by Josh under Uncategorized I recently discovered via this post on another blog that Stephen Pinker (popular, Led Zeppelinish hair-styled, psychology prof. from [...]
U know what these mother theresas and father bishops came INDIA only to spread their religion in the name of social service.
let me give u an example of their gr8 service.
http://www.crusadewatch.org/index.php?option=com_ponygallery&Itemid=50&func=viewcategory&catid=5
Chakradhar
http://www.chakradhar.net
Try reading Pinker in conjunction with Richard Dawkin, for instance, “the Selfish Gene”
Good idea. Now to find some time.
I tend to believe that genetics do determine moral instincts. And morality is mostly a biological survival mechanism.
Even by PETA standards, this is asinine:
Sheriff’s officials were astounded Thursday by a letter requesting the man accused of murdering his girlfriend and possibly participating in cannibalism be placed on a vegetarian diet to keep him from being “involved in any senseless killing” while incarcerated.
The letter was faxed to the Smith County Sheriff’s Jail from the national headquarters of the People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals Thursday morning.
“You have to be kidding me, right?” was his initial reaction to the news of the letter asking the jail to feed Christopher Lee McCuin, 25, a special vegetarian diet and no meat.
http://www.tylerpaper.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=2008801110310&7
Ha ha ha. Where do you find these gems. Cannibalism, another big question. Is it immoral?
Here`s one more from PETA that ahem may be termed ass-inine, the one where they ask Arafat that he not use donkeys for suicide bombing missions:
http://www.peta.org/feat/arafat/
The “aura of sanctity” ascibed to Mother Theresa can’t something to fault her over with. She, e.g., did certainly deserve the Nobel Prize more than an African tree woman Wangar. What took that Swedish institute so long to acknowledge her? She was, at least, harmless and non political.
Bill Gates may be rich but note that he’s isn’t embroiled in sex scandals and the like.
The Norman Borlaugs will do their own things away from the limelight without caring for recognition.
Re Gates, perhaps being a major advertiser helps?
Incidentally, a peta, in Buddhist cosmology, is an ugly pot belly goblin like creature!
Three other essays are worth your time. In the online magazine Edge, Jonathan Haidt wrote “Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion,” an excellent summary of how we make ethical judgments. In the Chronicle of Higher Education, J. Bradford DeLong wrote “Creative Destruction’s Reconstruction” on why Joseph Schumpeter matters to the 21st century. In her essay, “The Abduction of Opera” in The City Journal, Heather MacDonald wonders why European directors now introduce mutilation, rape, masturbation and urination into lighthearted operas like “The Abduction from the Seraglio.” She argues that a resurgent adolescent culture has allowed directors there to wallow in all manner of self-indulgence.
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/12/28/opinion/28brooks.html?_r=1&oref=slogin
Ah, cannibalism. That would be a topic all by itself.
Humanity has truly been served by people from diverse field. We have no cause refusing them the salute they so much deserve. Our five senses can more than testify.
However, when all is said and done, the use of the sixth sense, which no doubt reaches deeper pops up acts which can never be quantify.
A long lasting and meaningful impact is 4ever printed in the heart.
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