Moral Sense

Today I was listening to my favorite history professor, Thomas Laqueur compare the holocaust to other "cleansing" events such as genocide and massacres.  He briefly discussed the atrocities committed by people in the name of country, race and religion.    Typically, I'll shake my head and wonder how people could commit such heinous acts.  But, today, I began reading an article in the NYT magazine by Steven Pinker on "The Moral Instinct" and I was reminded what I think is truly astonishing:  The vast majority of people behave decently and often admirably.  Truly morally repugnant behavior is the exception and not the rule.

In the article, Pinker discusses the science of morality.   Studies have lent credence to the existence of a universal moral grammar.  One argument goes that our principles center on certain moral spheres: harm, fairness, community, authority and purity.    Differences in behavior among cultures can be explained by differences in the way that the spheres are privileged.  Some cultures, for example, privilege fairness over community.  

I find the idea of a moral "sense" very appealing, that being moral is being reasonable.  Pinker points to Peter Singer's theory of the Expanding Circle--"the optimistic proposal that our moral sense , though shaped by evolution to overvalue itself, kin and clan, can propel us on a path of moral progress, as our reasoning forces us to generalize it to larger and larger circles of sentient beings."

It's important to reason that our moral sense can easily become muddled.   Genocide, the holocaust and massacres have been committed by people who consider their actions moral. As Pinker points out, we tend to moralize issues and then shut down discussion based on our feelings of moral repugnance.   But I remain hopeful that science will continue to shed light on the complex mechanisms that run humans and we will actually achieve some kind of moral progress.