Morality from an HPCT perspective

Unedited posts from archives of CSG-L (see INTROCSG.NET):

Date: Thu Jun 03, 1993 3:11 pm PST

Subject: What's good about morality?

[From Bill Powers (930603.1445)] Joel Judd (930603) --

Rick Marken appears to be arguing that if you just let children develop allby themselves, they would turn out to be successful moral beings, but I don'tthink that even Rick knows that. There's no way to test the proposition, shortof dumping your children into a wilderness and coming back twenty years laterto see if they're alive, and if so how they turned out. All parents teachtheir children about how to be (or how not to be).

However, most of what parents teach children, I am firmly convinced, hasnothing to do with the words with which parents inundate their offspring.Children learn how to be by considering what their parents do far more thanwhat they say. If you teach moral principles to children in a patient, kind,and open-handedway, the children may well learn to be patient, kind, and open-handed;if you teach the same moral principles in a stern, demanding, unforgiving way,the children may well learn to be stern, demanding, and unforgiving. That is,assuming that the children don't rebel or otherwise refuse to take the parentas an example of a good way to be. The moral principles children are mostimpressed with are the ones that the parents live, not the ones theydescribe.

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> Surely one could be skillfully controlling for "selling drugs" to makea few $$$, or intimidating a classmate, or enjoying sexual intercourse, etc.all without conflict. Is that OK with you as long as they are functioning wellPCT-wise?

Presumably, you're arguing that children need to be taught that sellingdrugs, intimidation, and promiscuity are wrong; you're suggesting that theymight become organized to do such things in an unconflicted way, and so wouldnot violate any principles of PCT even though they are doing something "wrong"in moral terms.

I think the crux of the present argument comes down to the justificationone gives for moral principles. If there is something wrong with doing theabove things, and many more such as murdering people, breaking your word, beingcovetous or jealous or envious or greedy, how do you explain to someone justwhat is wrong with doing these things?

The only answers I have seen coming out of religious teachings are that Godhas told us that such things are wrong. Such religious teachings seem toassume that if it were not for revelations handed down to man from God, nobodywould have any basis for declaring any human behavior to be immoral. If Godhad not told mankind through Moses that it is a sin to murder, nobody wouldever have figured out that murdering is not an acceptable socialinteraction.

Perhaps it is true that an ordinary person raised in an ordinary family andgiven an ordinary education does not learn any higher personal reasons formoral behavior. A person raised in such a vacuum might easily find moralprinciples difficult to understand, especially when they go against what onewishes to do in the here and now. Without any framework within which tounderstand why some principles work better than others, and to what end, aperson might simply give up on the whole question, and adopt whatever isoffered simply on the basis of threats of punishment or promises of rewards.You then decide not to murder people because if you do, you will be arrestedand thrown in jail, or be executed. And if you happen to get away with it inthis life, God will catch up with you when you die and you'll roast forever inhorrible torment in Hell. Furthermore, if you do manage to keep all thecommandments in practice and in your heart, God will reward you witheverlasting peace and joy and your soul will spend eternity in an ecstasy oflove.

That's all very well, but it still doesn't explain what is wrong withmurdering people or breaking any of the other moral commandments, or what isgood about keeping the commandments. To live up to the commandments simplybecause God told you that you had better if you know what's good for you is togive up on trying to make sense of them. You still don't really know why youshouldn't go around murdering people, stealing other people's spouses, etc..You can find no reason _in your own understanding_ for adopting any moralprinciples.

From a practical point of view, it's probably a good thing that people whohave no inner basis for morality tend to accept the moral pronouncements ofauthoritative institutions that deal in such matters. A person who truly can'tthink of any good reason not to murder whomever he or she pleases ought to besent immediately into some religious institution, and be convinced thatmurdering people will bring sure and awful retribution, the more awful forbeing delayed. Such a person ought to be told in the most convincing possiblemanner that there is a God who knows their every deed and thought, and who iskeeping score for a final reckoning. The other people in the world would befully justified in doing this simply to protect themselves against apsychopath.

On the other hand, I think there can be a basis for understanding morality.HPCT suggests a way. Moral principles are not simply invented at random; theyare generalizations which, if maintained in practice, tend to create a socialsystem in which every person respects the will of others and can expect to berespected in turn. When you think of morality as a means for maintaining acertain kind of system, an idea of a human world of which one is a part, itbecomes clear that certain principles simply will not work to achieve such asystem while others seem to work quite well.

Consider contracts. When a person makes a contract with another, theexpectation has to be that the contract will be honored during its lifetime.Each person must realize that there must be a general acceptance of theprinciple of honoring contracts, for without it, no individual could rely onanyone else. When one person becomes known for breaking contracts, that personfinds it impossible to enter into any new ones, and thus loses all theadvantages of being able to plan for the future and make bargains with othersfor one's own benefit. A principle that allows breaking a contract at a whimis simply not practical.

Or consider murder. If it is generally accepted that murder is an optionopen to any individual, then no individual is safe. Without a generalagreement against murdering, you can never know whether the next person to beencountered won't take it in mind to win an argument or just expressfrustration with something private by pulling out a gun and blowing you away.Penalties for murder are always applied too late to help the victim. The onlytrue safeguard against being vulnerable to murder is to shape a society inwhich everyone understands that this is not a practical method for solvingproblems, and why it isn't.

People without a clearly formed set of system concepts have no basis forchoosing any particular morality. No basis, that is, except a belief thatcertain prescribed moral principles are enforced in some way beyondunderstanding, but also beyond escaping. There is nothing in such people torestrain them when a moral principle comes up against a practical immediateproblem of comfort, health, or survival. A person with a clear concept of thekind of society he wants to be part of will be aware that violating theprinciple will violate something that is more far-reachingthan the immediate problem. It makes the person into a member of a kind ofsociety that is, above all, not to be encouraged or exemplified. Even a simplesystem concept of the kind of person one wants to be, without respect to whatothers want to be, can be a powerful influence on the outcome when principlesclash with immediate needs. When one must alter principles, the existence of aclear system concept will make sure that the alteration does not create, evenin principle, a way of being that is not viable for all.

System concepts are a higher level of perception and control than anyothers, including principles. A person who has a clear and consistent set ofsystem concepts must necessarily submit to them: they are the person's ownhighest goals. To such a person, moral principles are not simply given asrevelations from another world. They are the means by which the most importantperceptions of all are maintained in a shape that is consistent, pleasing, andbeautiful.

While we can't literally teach system concepts, we can describe,illustrate, and demonstrate them. We can rely on the capacity of a humanbrain, even a young one, to recognize consistency, elegance, beauty,workability. Even a child can see the difference between a playtime in whicheveryone squabbles over toys and always gets the favorite one snatched away,and another one in which each child can count on a turn with whichever toy isappealing. Parents and teachers who understand system concepts can show themat work, show how maintaining them results in a better life for even the leastand weakest of the individuals.

Religious teachings, stripped of their explanatory frameworks, contain agreat deal of wisdom and practical experience. Certain aspects of theseteachings evoke in us a sense of powerful goodness, of rightness, as werecognize how much better the world would be if the teachings were followed byeveryone. In my opinion, explaining these teachings by saying that they mustbe followed not because they make sense but because God in all his power andmajesty commands that we follow them is to rob human beings of the chance tounderstand why they are so powerful and seem so good.

Perhaps there are people who are unable to comprehend experience at thelevel I call system concepts. I doubt that this is really true, but if it weretrue, there would be no recourse but to invent a God, a Heaven, and a Hell.Without some such constraint, people would pick principles without regard tothe welfare of the system of which they are a part. They would chooseprinciples that are to their own immediate advantage, and they would be unawareof what they were doing to the capacity of all people to get along together.The only way to enforce any sort of morality for the social good would be tosubstitute for understanding the idea that morality must be followed for the_individual's_ good: to avoid personal eternal punishment, or to attainpersonal eternal reward. That is the sort of concept that a person withoutsystem concepts can understand.

But I do not believe that any significant number of people is incapable ofgrasping system concepts. I think that system concepts are simply notarticulated, made clear, made real, taught. I think that children can learn tosee why moral principles make sense in their own lives, when they reach the agewhere system concepts become formed (whenever that is).

Best, Bill P.