from "The Moral Mind" by Henry Haslam

Haslam, Henry. 2005. The Moral Mind. Charlottesville, VA: Societas Imprint Academic, Philosophy Documentation Center.

8 - For most of history, it would have been taken for granted that morality was important and that the word 'ought' had meaning. Great thinkers have considered what was good and bad behaviour, and may volumes have been written on the subject. However, for a large part of the twentieth century, much of what had previously been taken for granted was questioned. New philosophical approaches, combined with the decline of religious belief, left many people confused about ehe value and validity of moral sentiments. Many decent, honest, caring people became uncomfortable with the idea of moral scruple, fearful that such scruples may not be intellectually defensible, and yet equally uncomfortable with a world view that has no place for the moral dimension.
[. . .] Tolerance, understanding and compassion are, of course, also moral virtues, and, as Mary Midgley (1991) points out, many of the objections to the practice of making moral judgements are, in fact, moral objections. However, the word 'morality' was apt to be associated with rigid codes of the past which many people wanted to overthrow anyway.

11 - The fundamental weakness of the relativist argument is the same as that of the emotivist argument: that people think that their moral sentiments are more than just personal opinions or a reflection of social customs and shared attitudes. [. . .]
Could we be mistaken in our sense that objective morality exists? Certainly, people can be deluded in their beliefs, and we often are, but our delusions are generally personal to ourselves, and there is generally evidence, visible to ourselves or to other people, that we are deluded. In contrast, the belief that our moral values relate to something outside ourselves is common to everyone who possesses a moral sense, and there is no evidence that can persuade us to doubt it.
In fact, it has been seriously suggested that a belief in an objective morality is just that: a collective illusion, put together by our genes in order to make us function better (Ruse and Wilson, 1986). The idea that a collective illusion could be created by evolutionary processes is curious, and does seem to invite criticism:

(1) Howard Taylor (2004) and Philip Rolnick (2004) point out that if the delusion is good for us, it must be bad that Ruse and Wilson have disillusioned us. [. . .]

13 - [. . .] their assumption that moral thinking and moral behaviour are favoured by natural selection is not supported by the evidence (see pages 34-36 and 81-88), and this undermines their reasoning and their conclusion.

(3) If it was our genes that caused the illusion, was it their genes that led Ruse and Wilson to tell the world that morality was an illusion? Mikael Stenmark (2001) points out that, [. . .] if they want us to believe their results, they have to tell us that they were motivated not by fitness but by the objective search for truth and understanding -- in other words that scientific enquiry is an exception to their evolutionary theory (this theme is discussed at some length by O'Hear, 1997).

If the case for saying that objective morality is an illusion is dismissed, Occam's Razor1 would lead us to favour the existence of an objective morality that we cannot explain, in preference to a delusion of an objective morality that we cannot explain. It is reasonable to conclude, on present evidence, that object moral values do exist.

21 - Since humans are moral beings, moral considerations have a part to play in the economic decisions that we make [. . .]
For much of the twentieth century. however, economics generally ignored the role of moral considerations in human economic behaviour -- a remarkable omission. 'Can the people whom economics studies really ... stick exclusively to the rudimentary hard-headedness attributed to them by modern economics?' asks Nobel Prize winner Amartya Sen (1987). He goes on to draw attention to 'the contrast between the self-consciously "non-ethical" character of modern economices and the historical evolution of modern economics largely as an offshoot of ethics. Not only was the so-called "father of modern economics". Adam Smith, a Professor of Moral Philosophy at the University of Glasgow ... but the subject of economics was for a long time seen as something like a branch of ethics.'

29 - The existence of highly moral non-believers and of morally bad deed performed by people who claim to have a religious faith supports the view that religious faith and moral sense are different entities (two different dimensions, perhaps), and I consider that it is valid to examine the one without the other, as in this book. We should recognise, however, that for many people the two are inseparable [. . .]

For believers, their moral principles are closely bound up with their religious faith, but a great deal of moral thinking today is divorced from religious belief and it is widely acknowledged, by believers and non-believers alike, that we need to establish some kind of moral consensus that is not founded on religion.

36 - Both theory and observation support the view set out on the preceding pages, recognising the role of natural selection in weeding out the worst, but also allowing other processes to play their part in shaping evolution. In every edition of The Origin of Species Darwin himself clearly stated his belief that natural selection was not the only process involved in evolution, and in the 1872 (and last) edition he expressed his displeasure at the way that his views had been misrepresented by those who stated that he attributed the modification of species exclusively to natural selection. When we consider the strength of Darwin's advocacy of natural selection we might not be surpirsed that he should have been misunderstood in this way, but he himself saw it as a serious misrepresentation of his views. Natural selection is an extremely important process, but there are other things going on as well. This applies most of all to humans and their behaviour.

37 - The existence of a moral sense does not lead automatically to morally good behavior. When there are choices to be made, the result is not a foregone conclusion. This means that, where morality and moral choices exist, temptation and wrongdoing are there as well. We have the potential for conflict between our natural emotions and impulses and our understanding of right and wrong. The idea of temptation seldom gets a mention in modern discussions of the human personality, but it is central to any concept of morality, a necessary and integral part of what it is to be a moral being. If there is temptation, there is no morality, for if everybody automatically does what is right on every occasion there is no moral choice. [. . .]

Human beings have many natural wants and impulses, and these emotions can be unpredictable and uncontrollable. Some of them can be described as good; some are, by any standards, bad; and many of them are morally neutral. To those who ask whether human nature is fundamentally good or fundamentally bad, the answer is that we are both. Human nature is full of opposites. We are competitive and cooperative, aggressive and peaceable, conformist and autonomous and selfish as well as altruistic (Talbot, 2005). We are all a mixture. The human mind is not a computer (Tallis, 2004). [. . .] In all kinds of ways, from anxiety and depression to simple forgetfulness and lack of concentration, the mind takes us down roads that we would rather not travel and it fails to give us the emotions, the will power and the rationality that we would wish to have at our command. There is therefore no reason for surprise that we should find our minds leading us away from what we know to be morally right. In other words, temptation is a natural part of the

38 - human personality. Everybody experiences it, to a greater or lesser extent, and it is not always successfully resisted. We have moral ideals, and we know that we fail to live up to them. This knowledge is central to the human predicament, and leads us to explore the great religious themes of forgiveness, judgement and redemption. [. . .]

Not every moral action results from a struggle against temptation, however. Not every moral decision involves a stark choice between good and evil. Much of moral thinking involves weighing up two or more courses of action, all of which we think are 'good'.

Two people ask us to do something for them. We would like to oblige them both and our moral sense tells us that we should, but time only permits us to agree to one of the requests. Which do we do? Questions of temptation, sin and evil do not arise here, but we do have to make a moral decision. The choice may be dictated by a moral principle (family first, for example) or by a morally based consideration of the consequences.

45 - The basic human economy is an example of cooperation. At its heart lie mutuality of reciprocity. It is a system based on division of labour, free trade and market forces [. . .] At its best, such a free-market economy works to everyone's benefit. Customers, providers, employers and employees only receive what they require if they also deliver their part of the bargain, and this ensures that the principles of fair dealing are upheld. [. . .]
When we make a purchase, for example, or take a job we are furthering our own interests -- but we are also furthering the interests of the other party to the deal. Simple self-interest thus lies at the heart of the free market. It is the driving force behind it, but, as Amartya Sen (1999) points out, the success of the capitalist economy is also dependent on 'powerful systems of values and norms. Indeed to see capitalism as nothing other than a system based on a conglomeration of greedy behaviour is to underestimate vastly the

46 - ethics of capitalism, which has richly contributed to its redoubtable achievements.'
Sen goes on to say that the weakness of capitalist ethics lies, in part, in its failure to deal with the issues of economic inequality and environmental protection. A free market exists to benefit those who freely put something into it, and thus has nothing to offer, directly, to the destitute, if they have no bargaining power and nothing to contribute in return, nor to the environment or posterity. However, it has the flexibility to adapt to what its contributors/consumers ask of it.
A concern about economic inequality is a moral concern, and it can readily be integrated into a thriving free-market economy. The richer we are, the more we pay in taxes. We can make charitable donations with the wealth generated by a successful economy. Many of our individual choices in the free market may be based on moral considerations. We may decide to buy fairly traded food, to benefit people in poorer countries, for example, or we may buy locally grown food, to benefit local producers. We may choose a job because of the opportunities it gives us to help other people. The economy and society in general are greatly helped by people who do voluntary work, or in some other way contribure more to society than they are paid for: there is a strong link between the amount of voluntary work in a community and the level of life satisfaction (study by Essex University; Daily Telegraph, 21 September 2004). [. . .]
At its best, then, free-market capitalism is a sound basis for an economy. At its worst, however, it can enable the strong to impose their own terms on the weak, and the latter have no choice but to accept: this is where a modern government may intervene and regulate the economy.
Cooperation in modern human societies and modern economies goes far beyond the cooperative hunting parties of other animals. Our inherited instincts for cooperation may be sufficient to make the free market work in small communities, but in larger communities, where people don't all know each other, these instincts need the support of intelligent, moral thinking. We depend on other people, many of whom we do not know personally, and we count on them to carry out their functions in the way that we expect. We have

47 - to trust one another, and trust is a moral issue. The widespread denial of the moral dimension during the twentieth century (see Chapter 2, particularly, page 21) may be patly responsible for recent failures in the capitalist economy. Adam Smith, the 'father of modern economics', recognised the importance of the moral dimension in economics, but we have sometimes lost sight of this in recent years. The view that the sole responsibility of company managers is to their shareholders, for example, can lead to disaster if we do not also recognise the importance of satisfied customers, a motivated workforce and the respect of the community. Robert McGarvey (2005) writes that 'during the 1990s deception and fraud had in some sense become established norms in the upper echelons of corporate America. In the interests of maintaining a free and liberal economy perhaps we should be re-examining some of these "customs".' He goes on to call for a review of the ethical foundation of free-market capitalism.

95 - If we are to attain a morality of consensus, it is essential that we should recognise both the subjective nature of our own moral sense and the reality of obective morality. Our moral convictions, however strongly held, are our own and we should be willing to challenge them. However, they are pointers towards objective moral values, and it is this search for objective values that unites us all.