British scientific publication tells about the new book “Conscience. The origin of moral perception. " The author of the book claims that we "would not have moral attitudes on any issues if we were not social." The very fact that we have a conscience is related to how evolution has shaped our neurobiological characteristics for life in society.
What is our conscience, and where does it come from? In his well-written book Conscience. Conscience: The Origins of Moral Intuition Patricia Churchland argues that we “would not have moral attitudes on any issue if we were not social.”
The very fact that we have a conscience is related to how evolution has shaped our neurobiological characteristics for life in society. We judge what is right and what is wrong by using feelings that propel us in the right direction, and also resorting to judgments that turn those urges into actions. Such judgments usually reflect "some standard of the group to which the individual feels attached." This view of conscience as a neurobiological ability to assimilate social norms differs from purely philosophical assessments of how and why we distinguish right from wrong, good from evil.
There is an idea in evolutionary biology that (as championed by the theorist Bret Weinstein) that the capacity for moral debate has a social function, uniting groups regardless of the topics discussed and their abstract moral "correctness." Moreover, many of our moral codes, such as the belief that we should not betray friends and abandon children, are clearly influenced by natural selection, optimizing our ability to live in groups. Other rules, such as adherence to the principle of reciprocity, are similar. We feel an urgent need to respond in kind in the future if someone gave us a gift or fed us.
Churchland summarizes how other primates, such as chimpanzees, also display what resembles a conscience. Their behavior was studied by primatologist Frans de Waal. According to him, they work together to achieve common goals, share food, adopt orphans and grieve for the dead. Churchland believes that such examples point to the evolutionary origin of human conscience.
To support her argument, she first focused on the mother-child relationship. According to the author, these relationships have evolved in the process of evolution, spreading to more distant relatives and friends. Conscience is essential to our ability to maintain and benefit from this attachment. Churchland writes: "Affection breeds concern, care breeds conscience." Consequently, the ability to formulate and comply with moral norms arises from the need to find practical solutions to social problems. Our conscience is strengthened by social incentives. For example, we will be frowned upon if we lie and positively if we are being courteous. Consequently, Churchland argues, conscience means "assimilating the standards of the community."
Conscientiousness is not always good. We admire the 19th century American abolitionist John Brown for his fight against slavery; however, some people doubt the correctness of his position, since he believed that the only way to counter such a vice as slavery was by armed revolt. We look with disgust at the extremists who kill people in mosques and detonate bombs in churches in the name of their "conscience." Conscience is a complex concept, and moral rules (for example, against killing) are not in themselves what neuroscience encodes in our DNA. Churchland explores related topics, including the lack of conscience as an antisocial personality disorder and the excess of conscience that occurs in those who follow the moral precepts of religion with excessive scrupulousness.
Churchland also sharply criticizes the state of affairs in her scientific field. She is dissatisfied with the isolation of academic philosophy, which "lacks worldly wisdom, supplanted either by endless hesitation, or by an unshakable adherence to a favorite ideology." Churchland debunks moral philosophers who believe that moral rules can be completely separated from biology, and based on logical constructions alone. She calls refutable the position that morality cannot have a proper philosophical basis if it is not universal. Churchland notes that years of attempts to derive universal rules have been unsuccessful. Finally, it shows that most moral dilemmas are nothing else: they are simply dilemmas in which it is impossible to satisfy all the requirements, and which seem to poseuniversal principles in conflict with each other.
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Such problems may seem insurmountable to those who believe that moral rules can be elevated to an absolute by basing only moral judgments and disconnecting them from real life, as if they are simply driven by some kind of philosophical logic. But as Churchland notes, "morality cannot be derived from the mere absence of contradiction."
She also sees little benefit in the utilitarian pragmatists, with their simple calculations, in which they add up the good, achieving the largest amount. Churchland quite correctly notes that life in a utilitarian society does not satisfy most people, because we treat members of this society differently. We give preference to our groups, our friends, our families. According to her, "for most people, love for their family members is a colossal neurobiological and psychological fact that cannot be eliminated by ideology." Churchland concludes that pragmatism is in insoluble conflict with the way our brains function, given that in the process of evolution we have become more attentive and caring for people we know than for those we do not know.
Churchland's book, in the best traditions of our leading philosophers, is embellished with vivid and instructive examples. The author has taken many examples from her childhood, spent on a farm in the wilderness of the Northwest United States near the Pacific coast. (She calls herself a "rough-hewn bumpkin." the inscription on the wall of the village kitchen, which reads: "He who does not work, he does not eat."
The flaws in Churchland's work are mostly flaws in her research area. She repeatedly notes that many aspects of the embodiment of conscience in the human brain and its formation in the process of natural selection are still simply unknown. However, she made a tremendous effort. Conscience is instructive, entertaining, and wise.
Nicholas A. Christakis