Ingmar Persson and Julian Savulescu (the latter will be one of my tutors) have written about the need for 'moral' enhancement before we get too carried away with cognitive or even mood enhancement. Their argument tracks some of what I have been considering in recent posts.
They start with a consideration of evolved psychology and morality. And this is very interesting, though I don't think they get to exactly the same place as Rutger Bregman in Humankind and Wilkinson and Pickett in The Inner Level - both of which I find slightly more persuasive, resting as the former does on a theory of 'self-domestication' and as the latter do on Christopher Boehm's in-depth analyses of hunter-gatherer tribes.
Let me try to sketch - as briefly as I can - how I see this.
As groups who faced significant dangers from predation and had limited speed, strength and attacking attributes (claws, extended canines, poisonous stings), humans had to co-operate to survive. We were already a social species, but in order to truly co-operate, we had to tune down the tendencies to dominance and free-riding. Thus, two effects ensued: groups punished aggressive, arrogant and cheating behaviour and individuals selected mates who conformed to desired behaviours - as the cost of infraction was so high. As a result of this strong preference for egalitarianism and collaborative action, we became over thousands and thousands of years psychologically attuned to tit-for-tat reciprocity, fairness and altruism within the group (not just the kin), and inclined to have a strong negative reaction to signs of pure self-interest.
Bregman stresses that we 'self-selected for friendliness' and brings up evidence from the traits that arose in dogs as a result of domestication - social learning, playfulness throughout life, 'cuter' appearance and so on. This is quite convincing and I have come across this theory before.
In addition, the facts that we are the only animal that blushes and that has white sclera (so anyone can see what we are looking at) - thus making it harder for us to deceive each other - further suggest that we evolved to be trustworthy. In small groups, where anyone with a spear can kill anyone else, no matter how big or strong, we had to have some means of 'feeling safe' and that was, yes, trust.
The strength of Boehm's case is in the role of shame and blame. I know that I don't like these as 'moral' attributes yet they clearly played a vital role in the way that tribes managed their collaborative mentality and also acted as a grounding force for the development of 'conscience', whereby people learned to internalise the 'view of the group' and became able to edit their own behaviour, to develop self-control and a kind of 'proto-phronesis', if you like (possibly not).
All things considered, the mentality of the group would have been highly integrated, bound by intimacy rather than integrity, adapted for harmony rather than individualism. It would have been in the interests of everyone to ensure that all hunters and foragers were fit and well - because everyone relied on each other. Individualism would have been subordinated to the needs of the collective by virtue of the fact that to bring down a big mammal and to collect enough of whatever seeds and fruits made up the large part of their diet required everyone's contribution. No one could go it alone.
Savulescu and Persson add to this generally rather positive picture the reverse of in-group trust - out-group enmity. Here, it's worth noting that Bregman stresses that while bands might have maxed out at around 150 people (as Robin Dunbar has predicted), hunter-gatherers, it seems, did come across other groups and over the course of their lives it's been estimated that people would have known around 1000 individuals from different groups. In times of scarcity, there would indeed have been rivalry between groups, and altruism would shrink from group members, to kin, to pure self-interest, but there are also cases of signs of group co-operation among hunter-gatherer tribes - or certainly of generosity towards non-group members. So, I am not sure that the 'tribalism' story is quite as cut and dried as it's often made out to be. Indeed, I'd been inclined to hypothesise that tribalism runs rampant in times of threat and scarcity, while a greater level of trust and communication might well have been far from uncommon when stress levels were low.
But, at any rate, we now find ourselves in very different social situations. It does seem to be part of the historical (or archeological and anthropological) picture that 'religion' in large groups played a new and distinct role. Whereas hunter-gatherers' 'gods' were part of the bounteous and caring natural world, the gods of large groups in settled communities acted more like 'security'. No longer could the group monitor behaviour and blame and shame individuals - so, instead, there's a god who sees every hair on your head, watches everything you do and will punish you with eternal torment (not just ostracism) if you step out of line.
If religion couldn't totally 'police' our selfishness, an army could. But once a leader has the power to control a people by force, why should he control them for group benefit rather than for his own benefit? Who is going to be able to 'police' him? Suddenly, those individuals who might have been forced, or whose conscience might have led them, to limit their self-interest, are in a position to do what they like. Instead of selfishness being an unattractive feature, it becomes one that could be selected for. And aggression, too. And arrogance. These are the people who would have had their impulses limited in the millennia on the savanna, but have been allowed to flourish in the last 12,000 years.
We transition back into a species where might makes right - and those dominance systems that are part of our heritage (as seen in chimpanzees and baboons) come back to the fore. What's more, in this 'new' societal structure, self-interest rather than group-interest cashes out far better.
In The Inner Level, Wilkinson and Pickett stress how these two contradictory elements - the dominance systems and the centuries of egalitarianism - both function to make the current social systems especially troubling. We are dismayed by the injustices and inequalities, but feel that only by fighting our way to the top can we 'win'. Or even count.
Add to the mix rampant inequality, free market capitalism, mass media, economic theories based on self-interested actors, individualism, individual rights and the understandably cynical interpretations of human nature depicted by philosophers over the past 400 years and we have a situation where everyone 'thinks' that we are by nature selfish (see the Golem effect) and believes that, in any case, that's the only way to get ahead (because everyone else is anyway even if we don't always feel motivated by purely self-interested thoughts).
Oh yes, and then, as I mentioned yesterday, the visceral impact of threat, stress and uncertainty, combined with the absence of close (physical and nurturing) contact with trusted peers - this is something that we, as a social species, need if we are to flourish - leads to both the increase in negative emotions and also, connectedly, the limited efficacy of the reasoning power of the pre-frontal cortex.
Savulescu and Persson's view is that because it is easier to harm and kill than to cure and save - especially given technological weaponry - enhancing cognition (and thus the ability to bypass security and create bio or nuclear weapons without the backing of an institution) without improving our morality would be unwise (!). Of course, I agree.
But the problem is that in their framework, moral enhancement would not be 'imposed' on all (as this would infringe upon the rights of individuals) but instead would be a matter of 'free choice'. So, you have to wonder if there would be any benefit. Arguably, only those interested in not being self-interested would be, er, interested in being morally enhanced. Of course, if what these philosophers are saying is that research and development into cognitive enhancement should only be carried out after the like research and development - and uptake of - moral enhancements, then their case has merit. However, would those who took up the opportunity for moral enhancements fare well in societies as they currently are?
It seems to me that encouraging the dissemination of a different message*, changing the structure of institutions and of political and economic systems and developing a discourse about our communal, national and global inter-connectedness might impact more strongly as a means to moral enhancement.
For example, the work on the visceral nature of politics - and indeed all social interactions - is a reminder that what we do nearly always impacts others and that what they do impacts us at a level that we do not at this point in history appreciate. Take a very small example. By shouting angrily in a corridor, I would raise the stress levels of all those who heard me - priming them for threat and altering the way in which they behaved toward others for the next hour. We utterly fail to acknowledge any responsibility for the impact we have on others.
I like to consider traffic flow. Where two lanes become one. If everyone looks out for everyone else, the traffic flows smoothly through the bottleneck. But as soon as someone tries to jump the queue, there is a domino effect. People get riled by injustice and try to prevent the aggressor slipping in, the aggressor thus obstructs the outside lane and the defender's brake-lights cause a cascade of brake-lights behind them. If the aggressor does jump the queue, others follow her example and suddenly everyone's racing to overtake each other. Again, the end result is a queue. If only we all considered collective good, we'd all get through faster. But no, people feel so driven to win, to get one over and to beat the system. Because everyone outside their car is 'the enemy'.
Indeed, it's not just a worry that we might be inclined to fear out-groups, but that for an individual these days, everyone is the out-group. The self has no permeability and no responsibility to anything but itself.
Perhaps one could make a case for moral enhancements as a required qualification for anyone in a position of power - in politics, business, media, police, law, education. If those at the top led by example, maybe we wouldn't end up in such a jam.
NOTES
*This article suggests that we are being sent negative messages and how damaging that can be.
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