I like to welcome people back. In the first week of the course, we introduced the science of morality. We focused a bit on the interplay between emotion and reason in our moral judgments and our moral actions. And, we also provided a bit of introduction to the sort of psychological foundations of morality, and the philosophical foundations. Now, some people start off with an idea that philosophy is going to be a dry and boring topic. I hope to have persuaded you that, that might be wrong. I actually think that, when you get into the philosophical issues, they're both significant and fascinating. And so, I was I was interested in a news report that came out just a few days ago, in which there was a gunfight over, an, due to an argument over Kahn's philosophy. A couple of guys were standing in line, they got into big fight, and one guy whipped out a gun and started shooting at the other guy. I disapprove of violence, I don't think people should shoot each other, but I like the idea that people take their philosophy seriously. The news report ends by observing that day that nobody knows exactly what aspect of Kahn´s philosophy got them to the edge of violence, but I think it was probably the categorical imperative. In a second week, we introduced questions of compassion and empathy. We looked at the power of empathy, we looked at empathy's limits. And we looked at how empathy and compassion fit in, within a broader series of morality. Now in this third lecture, we're going to start at the origins of morality. The origins of moral rules and moral principes and moral feelings. Where do they come from? How is it that we have them? So, in this first lecture, I'm going to spend the rest of the lecture talking about moral diversity, that it's differences in moral feeling and moral judgments. The second lecture we'll talk about moral universals that is aspects of morality that are shared across all humans. The third and fourth lectures we'll deal with evolution and morality. Looking at morality from a biological, Darwinian perspective. Asking how the amoral force of natural selection could give rise to creatures like us, which have moral capacity for moral judgements, altruistic behavior and all sort of other directive, all sorts of sweeter kinder emotions and feelings. The fifth lecture is a guest lecture by professor Lori Santos, who's a colleague and a friend of mine. And she'll be talking about primate morality. Then we'll go back and the sixth lecture will be about morality in babies. And, finally we'll end with some open questions, some puzzles, some things that honestly we have not, solved yet, and maybe we, we're not ready to solve. But, I want to be honest in this course and sort of lay out what we know and sometimes what we don't know. So, diversity, many people are skeptical of moral universes. So, when you say I'm interested in morality, one, one, one reasonable response is, well, morality differs all over the place. There's nothing universal about morality. We have one moral system, but people in another country might have another, and people at another time might have another. And, this idea of moral diversity, is something which has been in the air a long time. One classic example is, from, comes from Heredades who wrote in his histories about 2,400 hundred years ago. And, Heredades tells a story of Darius, King of Persia. So, to make a point, Darius brings in a bunch of Greeks. And he says to them, so how much would I have to pay you to eat the dead bodies of your fathers? And, the Greeks are horrified. They would never do such a thing. What a, what a grotesque proposal! How wrong can you be? And then, in a Presidents of the Greeks, Darius brought in some members of an Indian tribe, but a very different custom. And, ask them, how much would I have to give you to burn the bodies of your fathers? And, the Indians were horrified. How could we do such a thing? The only thing you do to respect one's dead father would be to eat him. You don't burn him. And, and the point that Darius is making to his audience was, that what seems natural to one is unnatural to another. What seems right to one is wrong to another. Haradus goes on to write, if anyone were given the opportunity from choosing amongst all of the nations in the world, the set of beliefs which he thought best, he would inevitably, after careful consideration of irrelative merits, choose that of his own country. Everyone without exception believes his own native customs and the religion he was brought in to be the best. This might be a bit strong. I, I think we could think and imagine some counter examples. Imagine some people who would really say, they do it better over there. But for the most part, for a lot of our moral feelings and a lot of our, our intuitions we, we feel, we feel that our own way is superior, our own way is moral. But of course the people in the other place feel the same thing. Now, many contemporary psychologists, philosophers, anthropologist would agree with the point that Horradis is making, which is that there's significant variation And morality around the world. And, my favorite example here is from the University of Chicago anthropologist Richard Shweder, who provides a very nice list. So, he's talking about moral attitudes and moral feelings. And, he notices that people have found it quite naturally to be spontaneously appalled, outraged, indignant, proud, disgusted, guilty, ashamed of all sorts of things. And he has this list that you could see. Masturbation, homosexuality, democracy, capitalism, meat eating, divorce, romantic love, marriage, long hair, women being allowed to work, women not being allowed to work, and the range is dazzling and it's correct. For each of these items you could find some people in the world who find it monstrous and other people in the world who find it important, and significant, and valuable. One could see these differences, without going to an anthropological text or without reading history books, is open up the newspaper. So, one story, that, that I found in the New York Times as I was thinking about these issues and writing about these issues, was, was this, this very sad case in Afghanistan. So, you have two teenagers, and they're of different ethnicities, different groups, and they fall in love. And they, they start to date, they start to talk to each other. One day, in the middle of the day, they're sitting in a car together and their talking, and a group of men see them and approach them and demand to know what their doing there. What's up with them, are they involved, what's happening here? And, pretty soon people gather and 300 people gathered, and they decide that these 2 teenagers are adulterers. They're, they're, they're involved in a, in a sexual relationship outside of marriage. And they decide to, to kill them, to kill them through stoning. And, then security forces come, the police comes and there's a riot. Police come, they rescue the teens, they put them in custody for their own protection and there's a riot and one person dies. Now, after the event all sorts of people came and express their moral attitudes. But, their moral attitudes weren't necessarily what one would expect. so, the father of the girl says, well, this is terrible, this is a horrible thing, both people should be killed. Both the teenagers should be killed for what they did. the, the, the family members of the man who was killed in the riot says, it's the teenage girls responsibility, and here's what she can do to make good, what she can do is, marry one of their remaining sons, and then the debt will be paid. Now, from how I was raised, I, you know, I was raised in Montreal, Canada. I was, I now, now, now live in the United states. These are very alien moral sentiments. I was raised in a, in, in a community in a world where romantic love was prized. Romantic love was seen as a, as a precious and important thing. One might object to it in some case and not others, but nothing inherently wrong with it. And, so it's shocking to me to see how people are different. In fact and contemporary Western society, many could argue we are going to opposite extreme where there are sort of a celebration of sexual debotury, hardcore pornography is rampance. Some would argue that the objectification of women as sexual objects is rampant. And, and this is which, and, and these are, are, things that are viewed as morally okay in the West but shocking and repellent to many people around the world. So, it's clear enough that people at different places in different times have very different moral views. This leads the question, what if anything, do we have in common? And that's the topic of the next lecture. [MUSIC]
