Week 5 - Post 11

Evolution psychology connects the mental and psychological traits of human beings to the process of natural selection. It attempts to “bridge the gap between philosophy and the natural sciences” and proposes the morality of human beings as a product of natural selection. Morality would help individuals to better fit into the society and therefore increase their chances of surviving in the community. Evolution psychology, when applied to the field of ethics, is known as evolutionary ethics and is most directly related to descriptive ethics, which classifies the different ethical beliefs of different groups of people and try to rationalize their beliefs. Scientists and psychologists can study the different ethical beliefs held by different groups and try to rationalize them with evolution psychology.

The thesis of the second article is that while making difficult moral judgments, instead of using our intelligence or power to reason, our emotions often gets in the way. And these emotions, as argued by Greene, are the products of millions of years of evolution of human morality. During the process of making a tough moral decision, the most important aspect is not the logic of our moral judgments but “the role our emotions play in forming them”. From living with each other, our ancestors developed feelings and senses that would best help their own survival and the prospering of their communities and then transformed those feelings into moral codes and passed it on to us. Using brain scanners, Greene found out that different regions of the brain would react when faced with tough moral questions, and those regions are part of a “neural network that produces the emotional instincts behind many of our moral judgments.” And when there’s a difference in opinion between the reasoning system and moral or emotional system, conflicts arise within the brain itself. With continued studies in the field, reasons behind human conflicts might be found, and solutions or methods of prevention can be found to reduce the harm brought about by such conflicts.

This is certainly an interesting concept and offers a different perspective in the field of ethics and morals besides the theories proposed by Kant and J.S. Mill. I, too, faced a moral and reasoning dilemma while thinking about those questions proposed by Greene. Sometimes, the answer that makes the most sense to me would also make me feel sick to the stomach, and seeing some scientific explanations to my reasoning and reaction is definitely satisfying. However, I really doubt the usefulness of such studies, for that there’s seems to be no real life application of the study other than to “understand each other better”. Not to take away anything from Greene and his studies, instead of studying the reaction of human brains to the situations proposed by Greene, maybe more efforts and resources should be dedicated to actually solving those problems in the situations, such as feeding the starving children in the world.