posted 04-04-2001 12:06 AM               

Let me see if I get this: we learn what we know and we don't know what we haven't learned? That doesn't explain how people who have not been taught cruelty can still perform cruel acts. . (If everyone believed Locke, the whole TV violence debate would be a moot point, right?) It doesn't explain how people who live in seemingly terrible environments make moral choices, either. I'm sure Dave is going to bring free will into this in a way that's sure to make my head hurt but he can do it anyway. At some point, there has to be a convergence between experience and some degree of innate knowledge, right. Humans would certainly be more predictable if we adhered more closely to Locke's plan but right now, all I can predict is that someone is going to tell me that "innate" is not the right word for what I'm trying to say. Somehow "instinct" didn't seem right either. Is it what Dave refers to as "character?" Where does that come from if that is not learned?

posted 04-04-2001 12:07 AM               

That said, I think it's important to remember we're talking about individuals here, but that the discussion reverberates into ideas embraced by communities. I know there are certain acts that are almost universally declared to be wrong, like incest and murder within a community. But I don't think that means particularly that humans are hardwired to believe that certain things are wrong; I think what it means is that, through trial and error, communities around the world have learned that certain things have unpleasant consequences no matter what the circumstances may be, and those things should be avoided at all costs.

posted 05-04-2001 11:00 PM               

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Originally posted by Pattie Gillett:

Let me see if I get this: we learn what we know and we don't know what we haven't learned? That doesn't explain how people who have not been taught cruelty can still perform cruel acts.

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I'm willing to bet that if you broke down every act of cruelty into component 'ideas', you'd be able to trace those components to things that the individual experienced. The mind puts those ideas together in inventive ways, to be sure, but the raw material has to come from somewhere. And that's not to say that the raw material was necessarily bad. Let's look at your TV violence example. Watching old Lone Ranger reruns might give me the idea of shooting people, and Die Hard might give me an idea of the havoc that can wreaked with automatic weapons. Translating that to the idea of going into a school and opening fire might be the work of my own mind.

Now, I think there's a very big difference between someone who does this who's been raised in a good family and has been taught about conventional morality, and someone who has grown up surrounded by gunplay and thinks it's the only way to survive. The first person had more tools to work with to make a different choice.

You may ask how the first person learned cruelty if he grew up in a good environment. Well, there are friends, other news sources, etc. And there's the idea that someone almost accidentally teaches himself cruelty. Let's say I'm curious about cats and start flinging one around the room to test its on-foot-landing capability. I may get some kind of thrill from the cat's shieking that leads me to investigate further. In which case, we can say, a) there's probably something wrong with my wiring, but b) until I had the relevant experience, that messed up wiring didn't produce the idea of cruelty. If I can take the coffee-maker example entirely too far, the gag in the Foo Fighters' "Learn to Fly" video is that coffee made from a machine that's been used to hide drugs causes everyone who drinks it to have hallucinations. Now, once the drugs were hidden, the mechanics of the machine were screwed up -- but it wasn't until the coffee grounds and water were added and processed that you got the screwed-up coffee.

When I say there's no innate knowledge, I'm not saying there's not something about each individual that makes him or her more likely to be kind or mean or whatever. I'm just saying no one is born with the idea "I shouldn't hurt other people" in their heads already -- they gotta learn it, just like they have to learn that Mommy doesn't disappear forever when she puts the blanket over her face and that they can put one foot in front of the other to get from point A to point B.

quote:

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Originally posted by Kevin Ott:

But I don't think that means particularly that humans are hardwired to believe that certain things are wrong; I think what it means is that, through trial and error, communities around the world have learned that certain things have unpleasant consequences no matter what thecircumstances may be, and those things should be avoided at all costs.

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I think this is a really great point, and I think it's one that those who believe in moral absolutes and those who don't should be able to get behind. Because there could conceivably be moral absolutes even if we don't know them innately, just the same way we assume there to be certain absolute laws of the physical universe even though newborns don't come out of the womb analyzing A Brief History of Time.