another one: the State of Nature

Heya guys,

Here's another little nugget of discussion you might wanna sink your teeth into.

This one comes from the same argument, yet another point that i don't necessarily agree with and would like to see your thoughts.

The author states that he does not agree with a presumption of the historically famous social text Leviathon by Thomas Hobbes. Instead he takes the aristotelean view one step further, denouncing what hobbes called 'the state of nature' (stick with me i will explain).

Aristotle thought (correctly i believe) that humans are naturally hierarchical animals. Not only that but that a political commonwealth is the natural state of being for humans, that we will, no matter where or when or how we congregate, will form collective unions, cultures and laws. I believe that this is mostly true.

Hobbes put forward the notion of the 'state of nature', where all of human kind existed using natural justice, and pre-emptive justice.
The state of nature: Hobbes said that, if there was no common wealth, no system of law and no hierarchical structure to tell us what was wrong and/or right we would take it upon ourselves to protect our own. This would be 'every man against every man'. This is pretty straight forward. But he takes it one step further. He says that not only would you protect post the fact, but if you had any belief that someone would do you harm you would simply illiminate the threat without the need for supporting facts. In other words you would be motivated purely by what you believed was in your best interest, and the interest of your family, rather than by some set of moral code of conduct that is imposed by a State or commonwealth.

Hobbes goes on to say that this state of nature is the reason why humans make the commonwealth in the first place. They remove this state of nature from themselves and give it to a ruler (or in our case a ruling body). States or commonwealth's therefore exist in a state of nature, which is more or less true (now that we have a burgeoning field of international law and the UN its a little more hazy, but until 1950 that was true).

The author of this text - one Dr Engle states that he believes that the state of nature never existed and that Hobbes was operating from false assumptions. He says that he agrees with Aristotle in that humans natural state is one of commonwealth. While i agree that humans will naturally gravitate toward the commonwealth i also believe that the state of nature has existed, if only in the existential mist of peoples minds. Reality doesn't have to have a point in space and time for humans. It can exist as the dark place in the back of our thoughts. Because we know that it is there we create laws to protect us from ourselves. The very fact that many nations still exist in the state of nature points to the truth in hobbes and the truth in aristotle. The two are not mutually exclusive.

Or at least that is my argument. What do you guys think?

Hmm, interesting. I find it a little difficult to argue because I’m not completely familiar with the concepts.

So, I agree that humans, the intelligent and social animals that they are, will automatically form that base level society thing that I think you’re talking about, as all intelligent and social animals do. But I also agree with the ‘state of nature’ thing. Except one part,

“be motivated purely by what you believed was in your best interest [...] rather than by some set of moral code of conduct that is imposed by a State or commonwealth.”

If this is an integral part of Hobbes’s ‘state of nature,’ then I’d agree with Dr. Engle and say that the state of nature never existed, not even in our minds. I may be reading too much into that one quote, but it did seem to suggest to me that humans derived their morals from the “state,” or required the state to enforce them. That may be, to a degree, true for some “morals,” but hasn’t it been pretty well established that humans (and other animals, obviously) have an innate level of “morality”?

But that probably doesn't have much to do with Hobbes's main claim and can probably be reconciled with his theory, and so I, too, don’t think that they’re mutually exclusive.

They do, but you couldn't have an inate level of morality without the other side of the coin. In other words that inate morality may be exactly what forced us to create the commonwealth in the first place. The temtation to go against our morality would be invariably strong given a 'society' without any sort of umbrella guiding moral compas.

There are many things, most things actually, that we derive from our cultural surroundings not the least of which is a sense of right and wrong.

Tom wrote:They do, but you couldn't have an inate level of morality without the other side of the coin. In other words that inate morality may be exactly what forced us to create the commonwealth in the first place. The temtation to go against our morality would be invariably strong given a 'society' without any sort of umbrella guiding moral compas.

Yeah, I think I agree with that.

Tom wrote:There are many things, most things actually, that we derive from our cultural surroundings not the least of which is a sense of right and wrong.

You mean the particulars of what we see as right and wrong? I would agree with that. But, I mean, an actual sense of ‘right’ or ‘wrong’ appears to be biological, e.g. such things as a fear of outsiders might be inborn, and then the culture we grow up in imprints on us who we should consider as outsiders. Wouldn’t you say that culture ‘molds’ what we are born with, rather than actually creates anything; or, our innate traits create culture as much, if not more, than our culture creates us.

It is true that the comunity is grown from the inital moralities that we held. However, where do those moralities really come from. If you get down to it, really scrutinise them where to they arise?

To give an example most freedoms in the US constitution are 'freedoms from - blaa blaa". This is because they had a bad system and so they wanted to limit or cut out the things that they hated and bring together a new more open culture.

In this new culture freedoms became ingrained in the offspring of those that wrote them. By the time you get down to us the social norms of this society are freedom of speech, freedom of expression, freedom from persecution etc etc. Originally these were not normal, but now they have a whole new set of moral boundaries because of these freedoms, moral boundaries that effect who and what they are, what they can do. This then effects the laws of the society since laws are fundamentally based on morals. These laws then restrict and guide a new generation in new directions which may bring about a new set of freedoms and so the circuit continues.

As cultures are continuously changing, and morals are constantly changing with them you have to then scrutinise the escence of morals. You may argue that there are BIG morals and Little morals. Like it used to be immoral for women to show their ankles. That was a little moral. Where as it is still immoral to kill a man in cold blood. That is a big moral. But can you truly say that one moral is bigger than another?

Semi nudity didn't stop being immoral as soon as it was legal either. Once it was legal the idea took a long time to shift from legallity to morallity. Now, what would happen if one day a society, a culture said that killing someone was legal? Would the morals of that society shift, slowly to be sure, toward morallity reflecting legallity?

Yeah, I think I agree with most of that, about, as I think Dawkins (and others) put it, the ‘changing moral zeitgeist.’ I don’t think I could even argue against the suggestion that morals change, because everything in history seems to point to the contrary. Not that I think the movement is random, and that we could find ourselves shifting back to, say, stoning people, or whatever; I think it’s predominantly a uni-directional shift, and one towards focusing more on the individual’s freedoms and rights. Whether this is for the ‘best’, I’m not sure.

I may be coming at this from a different (and therefore inappropriate) angle than you. So tell me if I’ve gone off the question.

In terms of your first question about the origin of our ‘initial’ morals, I wasn’t quite sure what you were getting at, but I would just suggest that our ‘biology’ is the root of them.
Coincidentally I was recently watching a TED talk that focused a little on this, and in this talk the guy puts forth what he believes are five candidates for the ultimate underlying moral foundations that are inborn in humans and other species (to a degree): harm/care, fairness/reciprocity, ingroup/loyalty, authority/respect, purity/sanctity.
What was interesting was that he then went on to discuss, as you’ve just been mentioning, how our different upbringing changes our emphasis of these five foundations — it’s not that, he argues, they are changed or removed or new ones added; just that we put a difference of importance on the five.

Indeed. I agree with most of that lol.

But what i have a doubt about is that those scientists that are looking at this field are not coming at it from any where near an objective standpoint. They are looking at these charactaristics and comparing them to their own moral standpoints and are seeing the similarities. What i am saying is that they are seeing what they have to see, being who they are.

Its like the Nasa probe thing that took pictures of Mars and saw the face. Its recognition software that made the pictures clearer automatically digitalised the picture into what looked like face. This is because it couldn't see it for anything else, seeing those lines as a face was already built into it.

I am sure that there is an inbuilt level of morality in beings, especially sentient beings. But to what degree that morality can affect actions when there is no threat of reciprocity ( i had to use it) is the question at hand.

Also looking at your basic morals and juxtapostions i agree completely as i cannot think of anything that can't be covered by that. But each of those concepts carries a massive amount of definition with it. For instance, authority. Authority to different people carries different weight and responsibilities, some of which could be considered and are considered to be immoral to other cultures (such as your authority having the duty to 'discipline' you wife, or the authority and therefore the duty to exectute a man).

What i am trying to say is that you don't need to add new ones. Those five carry such enormous weight and scope with them that they are all you need, but that doesn't mean that new concepts of morality can't be derived using a foundation of any one of the five.

Tom wrote:But what i have a doubt about is that those scientists that are looking at this field are not coming at it from any where near an objective standpoint.

Ah, but Tom, that is where I think you are wrong; I believe they’re the only ones coming at it from an objective standpoint (also, I’d probably class them more as ‘psychologists’, which we all know aren’t real scientists).

Tom wrote:They are looking at these charactaristics and comparing them to their own moral standpoints and are seeing the similarities. What i am saying is that they are seeing what they have to see, being who they are.

That is probably true to a degree, after all, it’s difficult for anyone to do anything but. But, one method of trying to nullify(?) that problem is looking across all cultures, thereby eliminating (to a degree) specific cultural influences. And, in addition to that method, another method is looking across species, to completey remove any human cultural influence (although when you look at other species, that has its own problems).

Tom wrote:I am sure that there is an inbuilt level of morality in beings, especially sentient beings. But to what degree that morality can affect actions when there is no threat of reciprocity ( i had to use it) is the question at hand.

But is there not always a “threat” (nice) of reciprocity? There doesn’t need to be any organised law enforcement agency; other animals engage in reciprocal behaviour just fine. In fact, it’s an integral and constant part of their social behaviour, as it is ours. I think these base morals affect our actions greatly.

Tom wrote:Also looking at your basic morals and juxtapostions i agree completely as i cannot think of anything that can't be covered by that. But each of those concepts carries a massive amount of definition with it. For instance, authority. Authority to different people carries different weight and responsibilities, some of which could be considered and are considered to be immoral to other cultures (such as your authority having the duty to 'discipline' you wife, or the authority and therefore the duty to exectute a man).

Yes, I completely agree with the differing opinions of different cultures. (It was interesting to note that in that talk, the guy showed the differing opinions of ‘liberals’ vs ‘conservatives’.)

Tom wrote:What i am trying to say is that you don't need to add new ones. Those five carry such enormous weight and scope with them that they are all you need, but that doesn't mean that new concepts of morality can't be derived using a foundation of any one of the five.

Agreed.

So, I think my main opinion, to bring it back to your original question, is that if Hobbes’s State of Nature involves people living together with some degree of ‘proto-morals’, then I agree that it existed. But if it involves humans living together in some sort of anarchic, vengeance-cycle, constant vendetta type of existence, then I’m not sure I would agree. But I’m not sure if that actually was your original question... ah well, it’s all good talk.

Hobbes never ruled out morals. What he did point out was something like this:

If someone walks up to you on the street and says "I know where you live and i'm gonna kill your children" and then runs away you would probably freak and go to the police. In a place without state protection you wouldn't have that option. Would you wait to act reciprocally or would you hunt that sucker down and put a cap in his arse before he could do anything?

Carrying it further what if someone walked past you while you were playing with your kids and he looked at them in the wrong way, or was wearing the kind of seedy clothes you associate with pedophilia? Would you then allow for the possiblity that he was innocent or would take the 'safe' path and hunt that sucker down and put a cap in his arse, there by eliminating any possible threat. Unless someone actually saw you do it the chances of being cought would be next to none.

Hobbes didn't say that the state of nature is a moral vacuum, rather that there was no state to enforce any form of law based on morals. I personally believe that under that sort of pressure the moral break down would happen quite quickly..

just thought of a good example - looting. It happens all the time in grief stricken places. People who would other wise never think about doing something suddenly see that, without any form of body to police their actions they can get away with it and it just happens. It happened in New Orleans, just days after the bloody hurricane! Not just food either but TV's and stuff. Sure its not murder but its a start.

Yeah, I’m pretty sure I agree with all that. Though, I’d just want to say that while it’s not so tricky imagining a situation where there existed a ‘society’ exactly the same as our modern one except that the ‘state’ was removed, but it is tricky when we try to infer from that something about original human instincts, because humans didn’t live in large cities. So, our original instincts would have resulted in different behaviours when existing in, for example, small tribes, rather than large, densely populated, towns.

So, what I think I’m trying to say is that while the breakdown of morals may arise quickly if the ‘state’ were removed, I don’t know if we can draw from that that our human ancestors (or ‘original state of humans’ or whatever) existed in this broken-down state, because the two social environments are drastically different.

But the state of nature did not have to be real to be real.

Mm. Good point. And good debate.