Steven Pinker argues about the innate moral instincts we possess using his research on brain activity and evolutionary psychology. He believes that different cultures possess different moral mindsets based on variations of the five universal moral spheres- harm, fairness, community, authority and purity. Pinker defends statements that say we act based on our “different weightings of the spheres. ” However, he points out that our moral sense is vulnerable to illusions, just as illusions in our other senses. His argument about the shudder test discusses these very illusions.
In the shudder test people quickly “hit the moralization button and look for villains rather than bug fixes. ” People all too often confuse “practical problems as moral crusades. ” He notes that experts say our initial repugnance “may be the only voice left that speaks up to defend the central core of our humanity. ” These experts advise us to “go with our gut” on such controversies like human cloning or other biomedical technologies. Pinker, however, argues that this would be cause faulty reasoning, because there are many “good reasons to regulate human cloning” that we simply disregard on account of our moral senses.
He brings up a valid point that “People have shuddered at all kind of morally irrelevant violations of purity in their culture…and if our ancestors’ repugnance had carried the day, we never would have had autopsies, vaccinations, blood transfusions, artificial insemination, organ transplants, and in viro fertilization, all of which were denounced as immoral when they were new. ” So, many of our medical advances would have never occurred because moral rationalizations would have gotten in the way.
The Essay on Moral Sense People Hadleyburg Citizens
In "The Mysterious Stranger" Mark Twain portrays a society so dependent on outside sources for guidance that the majority of Eseldorf's citizens do not have independent thought. This reliance is what eventually ruins many of the resident's lives and Satan merely serves to elucidate their foolish behavior. Though it is a much more modern time and setting, "The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg," is the ...
Steven Pinker rationalizes that “Our habit of moralizing problems, merging them with intuitions of purity and contamination, and resting content when we feel the right feelings, can get in the way of doing the right thing. ” He proposes that thorough further understanding of the science of moral sense we can see through these illusions brought on by evolution and culture. I agree with Steven Pinker’s argument about the “shudder test” because our initial reactions may not be entirely correct. Our gut reactions do not have any rationale behind them besides our innate moral sense constrained the culture we live in.
We cannot fully understand a situation by a simple feeling. Pinker mentions how we can be “blinded by our own sanctimony” and our supposed moral actions are viewed as correct. Even the most vile and ruthless actions can be moralized by our moral compass that our culture and psychological makeup has set for us. Pinker’s rejection of the shudder test as a way to guide our actions makes perfect sense when you refer to all the morally incorrect judgments it has contributed to. In order to avoid such illusions of our innate moral sense like using the shudder test to direct our decisions, we must understand the science behind our moral instinct.
