Babies and the Birth of Morality

15 September 2014

本周我们的话题是关于婴儿和道德的诞生。关于这个问题的众多问题之一是道德是天生的还是后天习得的。如果你想回答这个问题,还有什么比从婴儿开始更好的地方吗?

Well, you might be skeptical that newborns, of all people, have something to teach us about the nature of morality. It’s not like newborns face a lot of deep moral dilemmas -- “Should I laugh at the big guy making the silly faces at me or should I cry?”

Then again, maybe we underestimate them. Babies may not be fully developed moral agents, but studying them -- even when they're just a few months old -- can actually teach us a lot about the nature of morality.

Of course, babies can seem totally self-centered – all id, no superego. Sure, other people matter to them -- as sources of food, clean diapers, and comfort. But it seems they don’t know anything about right and wrong -- not until we start to teach them, anyway.

成为一个全面发展的道德主体需要时间、教育、社交等。但成人道德实际上是建立在并反映基本道德本能的基础上的从婴儿和幼儿开始就存在。这些基本的道德本能包括帮助有需要的人的倾向,对他人的痛苦和苦难的同情,甚至是惩罚那些做错事的人奖励那些做对的人的倾向。此外,这在没有很多成年人干预的情况下发生,从很小的时候开始,在每种文化中也是如此。

If you think this sounds like a fantasy-land of one-year-old babies enforcing universal standards of infant morality, consider this little experiment. Suppose we put on a puppet show, where three puppets are playing a game called "roll the ball." One puppet rolls the ball to another puppet, who then rolls it back. Imagine the puppet in the middle rolls the ball to the puppet on the right who then rolls it back. But suppose that when the first puppet rolls the ball to the third puppet, instead of rolling it back, the puppet gets up and walks away with the ball.

如果你在想,“坏,坏木偶!”那么你的思维方式就像一个一岁大的孩子。孩子会因为木偶的淘气而惩罚它。如果你在每个木偶面前放一份糖果,并邀请孩子拿走其中的一份,他们就会从淘气的那个手里拿走。有些孩子甚至会打顽皮的木偶。

Now is this just projection of adult categories onto babies? Maybe kids just don't like the naughty puppet, or they’re upset because the mean little puppet ended the fun game. Why should we think of those infantile instincts as “moral?” It’s one thing to be blindly driven by hard-wired instincts; it’s an entirely different thing to make conscious choices based on your understanding of moral principles and concepts.

At least, that's what a Kantian would say. We could think more like a Humean: moral instincts, not moral principles come first. The inborn moral instincts of children are the building blocks on which all the high-falutin’ moral theories of adulthood rest. But that just makes kids out to be unrealistic moral paragons. After all, why is the adult world such a moral mess if the foundations of morality are built into our very genes?

Kids obviously aren’t moral saints. Babies may be naturally altruistic and caring -- but only to a point. Just like us grown ups, they easily form "in" groups and "out" groups. And they can be quite nasty to the "out" group. So the moral messiness is there from the very beginning. There's clearly plenty to think about when it comes to babies and morality.


Photo byPicseaonUnsplash

Comments(10)


mirugai's picture

mirugai

Thursday, September 18, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

MORAL

MORAL
Philosophers do not ?define? morality, defining is sophistic and absolute and basically a process that is contrary to philosophical inquiry. Philosophers should, rather, seek to explore ?meaning,? in this case what philosophers should do is discuss what actions are moral, and what are not, and why. The biggest impediment to such discussions is that the joy of moral outrage overcomes one?s rationality (rational thinking about thought is ?doing philosophy?).
人类对一件事是客观的:他们自己的快乐;(几乎?)没有什么比道德上的愤怒更让人高兴的了。看看这些欢乐和欢乐的疯狂喂养:NBA老板的种族分裂,咬足球对手,足球运动员殴打妻子和孩子,等等。社会契约中的每个人都想在表现道德愤怒(以及随之而来的虔诚)方面胜过其他人。它与确认一个人认为好的和正确的东西的需要有关,与一个人渴望获得认可和成员资格的团体的认可有关。当然,媒体知道这一切的市场价值,广告商喜欢没有另一面的话题。主持人说今天?每个人都同意奴隶制是不道德的。每个年代?对奴隶制的短视受到了表达对制度的道德愤慨所带来的喜悦的影响。 No matter that slavery, if properly practiced, was considered a moral and good institution by the Greeks (the champions of philosophy), and (probably by imitation) by the Hebrews, another group priding themselves on their morals. A minimum wage worker in a city makes just enough money to pay for room and board, and gets some minimal health care; a slave gets free room and board and enough health care to keep being useful. And don?t talk about ?freedom,? some 17th century term, pretty much meaningless now in that it, too, means nothing definitive, but only what moral outrage joy has strung it out to.
One of the best moments in the show was when the roving philosophy correspondent reported that it was impossible to distinguish whether the babies were acting on some sense of ?good and bad? or on some notion of socialization or imitation of group behavior. The first challenge for the baby is to survive outside the womb, next comes comprehending that I have some control over the finger I keep sticking in my eye, then, much later, I need to do what these other guys around me do in order to survive. If you want to connect ?morality? to these needs, go ahead, but I think you are for the most part just making up some ?definition? of morality that suits your own ideas of right and wrong, colored by your own beliefs and moralizings. The discussion of moral principles by philosophers is worthy; but codifying or declaring what is and is not moral, is not doing philosophy; it is doing politics.
submitted by mirugai

mwsimon's picture

mwsimon

Monday, October 6, 2014 -- 5:00 PM

This is a really interesting

This is a really interesting way to go about studying our moral senses. We have a lot of intuitions about where our morals come from, but this seems like a really good way to systematically study their origin. When I listened to the show, I was struck by what Paul Bloom said about empathy. He doesn't think it the driving force behind our moral actions, as many of us tend to believe. I wonder if empathy is a thing that is natural to us. I still have an inclination to hold onto the belief that empathy does a lot for us.

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JamiePate's picture

JamiePate

Tuesday, May 31, 2016 -- 5:00 PM

Its an interesting philosophy

道德是婴儿与生俱来的还是后天习得的,这是一个有趣的哲学话题。根据我的经验,它不是天生的,实际上婴儿从父母和环境中学习。访问网站collegeessaywritingservice.blogspot.com,阅读专家作者关于这个主题的研究工作。