Mr Harnhart:
A casual reader of your post may think that natural moral sense produces something like a universal feeling of human brotherhood whereas religion is a cultural evil that gives cohesion to some groups in order to exploit others.
The fact is that the first can not be true. Our natural moral sense is designed to give cohesion to our group and to exploit other groups as well as religion.
This can not be other way since our moral sense evolved when we were living in small groups of hunter-gatherers. There is no instinctive universal brotherhood feeling. It can Intellectually desired, but there is no biological basis for it.
Thus, your phrase:
Darwin saw that since moral norms were largely shaped by social praise and blame, and since such social norms tended to favor one's own tribal group against others, the moral conscience could be distorted by deformed social traditions.
assumes that cultural traditions are group-ist, whereas natural moral sense not, and this is absolutely misleading. It can not be anything like and instinctive feeling of universal brotherhood.
What ties Huck with Jim is not human brotherhood, but something that evolutionists call "reciprocal altruism" that has a proximate name: friendliness. reciprocal altruism is a tribal instinct that permits mutual aid.
In this light Huck has a conflict between two tribal groups he is member of: the one he belongs since he was born and the other is the one that he has recently established: his friendliness with Jim. The social instinct caught him in a conflict. both set of social/moral instincts that break Huck apart have pure selfish origins, explained in evolutionary terms.
So I can not admit the idea of a broader scope (in terms of number of people that we consider as equals) for moral instincts than for Religion. If any, i can think about just the opposite. Tribal, uneducated people are not aware of other people suffering. As many modern anthropologist can corroborate, the human condition is usually reserved to the members of the tribe. Pinker mention an African tribe for which the word for "food" is the same used for "out of the tribe" . if there is any human characteristic that can broaden the circle of persons for which we have empathy is culture and civilization. In this sense, the great religions are a cultural achievement against the natural narrow circle that is the default in uneducated people, either in tribal primitive life or in marginal urban areas of the western world.
Finally I doubt that the separation of natural moral instincts and religion makes sense; Any Evolutionary psychologist could say that any cultural phenomenon that is pervasive, universal and reappears whenever it is repressed among different cultures is quite probably the social effect of an human instinct or a set of instincts. If it is so, religion is a part of our natural moral instincts, so there is no reason to separate both. The intellectual disregard of religion would be the disregard of one of our most strong instincts, and this can be socially dangerous.
(trough Lady Godiva, thanks)
assumes that cultural traditions are group-ist, whereas natural moral sense not, and this is absolutely misleading. It can not be anything like and instinctive feeling of universal brotherhood.
What ties Huck with Jim is not human brotherhood, but something that evolutionists call "reciprocal altruism" that has a proximate name: friendliness. reciprocal altruism is a tribal instinct that permits mutual aid.
In this light Huck has a conflict between two tribal groups he is member of: the one he belongs since he was born and the other is the one that he has recently established: his friendliness with Jim. The social instinct caught him in a conflict. both set of social/moral instincts that break Huck apart have pure selfish origins, explained in evolutionary terms.
So I can not admit the idea of a broader scope (in terms of number of people that we consider as equals) for moral instincts than for Religion. If any, i can think about just the opposite. Tribal, uneducated people are not aware of other people suffering. As many modern anthropologist can corroborate, the human condition is usually reserved to the members of the tribe. Pinker mention an African tribe for which the word for "food" is the same used for "out of the tribe" . if there is any human characteristic that can broaden the circle of persons for which we have empathy is culture and civilization. In this sense, the great religions are a cultural achievement against the natural narrow circle that is the default in uneducated people, either in tribal primitive life or in marginal urban areas of the western world.
Finally I doubt that the separation of natural moral instincts and religion makes sense; Any Evolutionary psychologist could say that any cultural phenomenon that is pervasive, universal and reappears whenever it is repressed among different cultures is quite probably the social effect of an human instinct or a set of instincts. If it is so, religion is a part of our natural moral instincts, so there is no reason to separate both. The intellectual disregard of religion would be the disregard of one of our most strong instincts, and this can be socially dangerous.
(trough Lady Godiva, thanks)
6 comentarios:
Gracias Memetic :)
Muy bueno.
A mi me pareció un comentario bastante "naive" para venir de Arnhart. Vamos que creo, como tú, que el ejemplo no es bueno porque no ilustra lo que recuerdo que Darwin vino a decir sobre el "moral sense" en las páginas de "The descent of man". Y es precisamente lo que comentas en algún momento, que de universal nada de nada, no en su ámbito ... Pinker rescata a Peter Singer para actualizar lo que Darwin escribiera sobre cómo con la civilización se expande el círculo con el que acogemos a los "afectados" por nuestra "simpatía" (aquí vemos la deuda a Adam Smith), fundamento de ese tribal "moral sense" que, creo yo, Darwin ya veía como un instinto conglomerado de otros ... por ejemplo el que podemos encontrar en el, más "elaborado", instinto religioso, por así decir.
Gracias por tu apoyo. Sería muy interesante el estudiar los mecanismos darwinianos, osea egoistas en último término, que permiten que se amplíe el círculo.
Hola,
Comparto obviamente los cimientos de tu análisis, salvo la última frase. Yo diría (lo he sostenido ya time ago) que todo mito (religión incluida) es instintivo, es decir, tendencial. Pero eso no hace de la religión una garantía de cohesión social. En primer lugar, creo que el mito nace como subproducto de la extrañeza (en el sentido dado por Monod) y es ante ella que el instinto responde con la construcción y/o adaptación de un mito (quizá de varios a la vez según los planos de extrañeza). Por otra parte, creo que el círculo se amplía como resultado del crecimiento tendencial de la complejidad, pero no como una necesidad de los individuos, que con el pequeño grupo tenían y siguen teniendo bastante (por eso no desaparecen en la sociedad global ni en los grandes grupos de carácter sociocultural como la nación, etc.) Creo que la cohesión global (y las intermedias) se establecen por medio de grupos menores dominantes. Creo que esto explica mejor lo que se aprecia. No todo se puede reducir al instinto, aunque la base sea la genética. En esto, sigo valorando el enfoque de Judith R. Harris. ¿Habéis leído su "Mito..."? Es fundamental!
Good bye.
Carlos, claro que todo lo humano se apoya en instintos y por tanto todo tiene una base instintiva, porque todo lo que hacemos tiene como objetivo satisfacer una necesidad instintiva en último término, pero en cuanto a la religión yo hablo de algo mas concreto. Hay una entrada que habla de ello.
Bien, ya leí tu otra entrada y está bien (aunque tal cual implica atribuir a la religión visos de inevitabilidad salvo que se la autoreprima). Yo también escribí sobre el "mito como instinto" en mi blog hace algunos meses (echa un vistazo si puedes) y en todo caso yo enmarcaría la religión dentro del cuadro general de los mitos. No obstante dos cosas: considero un instinto como ese (de lo mitos) como "tendencial", es decir, no necesariamente realizable como otros (por ejemplo, el mito X puede sustituirse por otro tipo de dogmas no míticos, que den seguridad, como la fe ciega en determinados resultados temporales de la ciencia), y la otra cosa: que creo que los mitos en gral. y la religión en particular, tienen origen en la necesidad neuronal de estabilidad y certeza. Que esta necesidad se siente como "extrañeza" (usando el término de Monod, que comparto por gráfico) y que el estado psicológico que produce puede incluir esas asociaciones que mencionas de "presencias" o "compañías". Esto no lo veo como algo que se da sólo en lo religioso, pero claro, lo religioso, al estar más legitimado, brinda un mejor refugio para las neurosis. Tal vez sea decir lo mismo con un "afinación" diversa. La idea es circunscribir mejor el fenómeno y sus connotaciones.
Un abrazo.
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