Evolution of Morals E-Book

Carlos Stegmann

• Herausgeber: Books on Demand
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 705

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021

Beschreibung

Carlos Stegmann is a civil engineer whose disposition always led him to have a main interest in the multidisciplinary overview of large and complex planning studies, a subject on which he accumulated a 40-year experience, having acted as coordinator of many such studies. It was this diposition, this innate tendency always to strive for the composite whole, and the application of his experience to the subject of morals, which originated the interdisciplinary insights of his thesis of moral evolution, which is the subject of this book. It is important to stress this interdisciplinary experience, for to be able to produce credible results, an attempt to explain something as pervadingly inclusive as human behavior must include all the manifestations of this behavior, from the cognitive to the physiological. No other work on human morals offers such an interdisciplinary approach, and the inquiry presented in this book may be considered the first of this kind.

Leseprobe

Dedication

To Rupert Riedlwho suggested that I write this book

And to Judith Rich Harrisfor her generous support

“My problem is ... that we need not only an evolutionary theory of knowledge but also an evolutionary theory of morals, that this evolutionary theory of morals is only now beginning to be conceived, and that its essential feature will be that morals are not a creation of reason, but a second tradition independent from the tradition of reason, which helps us to adapt to problems which exceed by far the limits of our capacity of rational perception.”

Friedrich A. v. Hayek, inaugural address to the Alpbach Forum 1985.

PRESENTATION

This book describes an inquiry into the nature of human behavior. It is an attempt to explain human behavior in terms of a theory of the structure and operation of the natural or physical mechanisms and laws which govern the specifically human cognitive faculties, which until now were treated almost exclusively by those branches of philosophy called theory of knowledge and moral philosophy. It is contended in this inquiry that concepts like the political-science concept of “extended order” developed by Hayek, and also the fundamental insights into human morals which we owe to Immanuel Kant are truly parts of biology, and that these concepts have to be reduced to behavioral physiology, a discipline of biology, to allow explanations of human morals. As Kant said: “where determination by natural law ends, all explanation also ends,” but until now all theoretical approaches to human morals (including Kant’s) were based on purely analytic modes of argumentation, and most represented the efforts of philosophers to define the meaning of the words “good” and “bad.” To the best of the author’s knowledge, the present inquiry is the first attempt at a synthetic approach to morals, considered as an object of physical reality, in terms of the hypothetical formulation of the natural, biological, laws which govern its formation and evolution.

The explanation is based on the thesis of the human behavior instinct. The thesis proposes that, like all the other instincts which have so far been discovered by the behavioral science, it is a phylogenetically developed, hereditarily predetermined program of behavior, but that its dénouement is not anymore automatic, as in those other instincts, but its drive is related to objectively known rules and standards. The mechanism is still an instinct, but there is this difference which makes us human: we know what we are doing. The thesis thus offers a solution to the problem of human “free will” which has so far been an insurmountable obstacle for the attempted explanations of human behavior by sociobiology and human ethology. The solution is based on the fact that the explaining scientist him or herself and his or her attitudes and moral questioning are included in the behavioral phenomenon, and must be thus considered in the attempted explanations. This important fact has been until now left out from the theories proposed by the behavioral scientists, who typically end their explanations by asking: “now that we know how we do behave, what should we do about it?” – which either puts the questioner in some aloft, ethereal region, excluded from his or her explanation, or implies a vicious circularity.

The thesis permits a biological interpretation of Kant’s categories of moral behavior exposed in his “Grundlagen zur Metaphysik der Sitten” (“Elements for the Metaphysics of Morals”), which asserts that the instinctual drive is affixed to the two kinds of values which correspond to Kant’s hypothetical and categorical imperatives. Both kinds of values are “imprinted” as beliefs in their rightness in the behavioral apparatus conscience. The imprinting of the first, corresponding to the realm of heteronomy is reversible; the imprinting of beliefs in the rightness of moral values, instead, is irreversible, which corresponds to the categorical character which Kant attributed to the imperative which upholds moral laws in the realm of autonomy. The irreversible character of the imprinting of beliefs in moral values, and the “ontomoral stiffness” with which they are upheld, permits to conceive and describe the process of Evolution of Morals (n.b.: this process has no connection at all with “evolutionary ethics”). Moral values carried by beliefs upheld with ontomoral stiffness by large groups of people will come to be implemented and tried out in practice, submitted to the merciless trial of their adaptation to reality as if they were biological organisms and will survive or die out in this process, which governs human history.

The problem which affects the objective discussion of human behavior is the apparently unavoidable intromission of moral categories and abstractions like: “biological determinism,” “free will,” “responsibility,” “feeedom of choice” and other moral attitudes related to the abstract category “freedom”; “nature versus nurture”; “learning versus instinct”; “monism and dualism of facts and standards”; “the predicament of man”; “the body-soul apory”; “good will”; “morality”; “the split between faith and reason, between emotion and intellect”; “objectivity as an ethical choice”; “evolutionary ethics” (n.b.: not evolution of ethics); “ethics is a philosophical discipline”; “sociology of knowledge”; “materialism and idealism”; “interactionism”; “reductionism”; “holism”; “Cartesian scientism”; “positivism”, and many other. These and other “isms,” give rise to passionate attacks and defenses, and searing criticisms (like the book “Not In Our Genes” by Rose, Lewontin & Kamin), but contribute nothing to the disclosure of objective information about the natural mechanisms which regulate behavior. Some of these moral attitudes, like “biologic determinism,” which strikes many as repugnant, are based on the mistaken logic that natural biological laws, like physical laws, must necessarily imply automaticity, robbing humans of their “free will.” But natural laws only answer the “how” question, their formulation provides tentative (synthetic) explanations of observed phenomena; and if the phenomena are human attitudes and behavior which are anything but automatic, the laws will have to explain how the changes of the behavior-governing rules and norms come about.

Which is the subject of the present inquiry.

The book has been organized in such a way that, after the introductory Chapter I -The Big Jigsaw Puzzle, Chapter II presents the basic thesis of “The Human Behavior Instinct,” being followed in the next chapters by the application of that theoretical framework in critical analyses and discussions of representative works which deal with the subject of human morals. These include:

Chapter III: Immanuel Kant, 1786, Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten (Elements for the Metaphysics of Morals);

Steven Pinker, 1997, How the Mind Works;

Chapter IV: Friedrich A. v. Hayek, 1982, Law, Legislation and Liberty, and 1988, The Fatal Conceit - The Errors of Socialism;

Chapter V: Arthur Koestler, 1967, The Ghost in the Machine;

Karl R. Popper and John C. Eccles, 1977, The Self and Its Brain - an Argument for Interactionism;

Chapter VI: Konrad Lorenz, 1963, Das Sogenannte Böse - Zur Naturgeschichte der Aggression (The So-Called Evil - on the Natural History of Aggression), and 1973, Die Rückseite des Spiegels (The Backside of the Mirror);

Hans Mohr, 1987, Natur und Moral – Ethik in der Biologie (Nature and Morals – Ethics in Biology);

Irinäus Eibl-Eibesfeldt, 1984, Krieg und Frieden aus der Sicht der Verhaltensforschung (War and Peace from the Point of View of Ethology);

Robert J. Richards, 1987, Darwin and the Emergence of Evolutionary Theories of Mind and Behavior;

Chapter VII: Donald T. Campbell, 1997, From Evolutionary Epistemology Via Selection Theory to a Sociology of Scientific Validity;

Chapter VIII: Adolf Heschl, 1998, Das Intelligente Genom - Ueber die Entstehung des menschlichen Geistes durch Mutation und Selektion (TheIntelligent Genome - On the Origin of the Human Mind through Mutation and Selection);

Chapter IX: Judith R. Harris, 1998, The Nurture Assumption;

Chapter X: Karl R. Popper, 1962, The Open Society and its Enemies;

Chapter XI: Karl R. Popper, 1964, Facts, Standards, and Truth: a futher Criticism of Relativism;

Chapter XII: Edward Hallett Carr, 1987, What is History?.

Chapter XIII contains some applications of the theory to historical subjects, and Chapter XIV a general conclusion related to the overall motto of the book.

I have also added Appendices I, II and III: the first contains a historical review of concepts related to thermodynamics and theory of information, whence the physical magnitudes “disorder” and “order” originate. The second contains replies to two critiques, both of them based on presently accepted paradigmatic premises of philosophy and biology: one refers to the physical-science interpretation of Kant’s “Metaphysics of Morals” and the other is a general critique of the theory based on the tenets of sociobiology. The third summarizes the answers that the thesis of Evolution of Morals provides to several so far untractable philosophic questions.

All the explanations of human behavior and morals and the many moral proposals which have so far been given in the scientific and philosophical literature are plagued by logical riddles. The most important of which is the naturalistic fallacy, but including also vicious circles, paradoxes, antinomies, dichotomies, tautologies and aporias. Many of these riddles are examined in the book. It could be shown in all cases that they simply disappear if morals are treated as a natural phenomenon, and the attempts pursue instead the discovery of the natural laws which govern it.

The aim of the inquiry is, as stated, the explanation of the moral behavior of the human species, in terms of the tentative postulation of the natural laws and mechanisms which govern the operation of the human behavior instinct, the human apparatus of moral cognition. To this end it became necessary to describe its interaction with the apparatus of objective cognition. This has been done without pretending to explain the laws or processes which govern the formation of objective information, which is today one of the greatest challenges of science.

Since I always had to make clear to myself in plain language the concepts involved, I trust that this book will be understood by anybody with a sound mind and a cultural background sufficiently developed to motivate an interest in the subject. But I hope that its interdisciplinary character may also motivate an interest in the book by philosophers and scientists, who will be able to read in non-specialized language about subjects not included in, but nevertheless related to, their particular special fields.

CONTENTS

Presentation

Introduction: The Big Jigsaw Puzzle

Elements For An Evolutionary Theory of Morals

Introduction

Postulates, Basic Concepts And Terminology

Postulates and Basic Concepts

Terminology

Basic Hypothesis: The Imprinting of Beliefs

Reversible and Irreversible Beliefs

Formation of Beliefs in Individuals and Groups

Fields of Cognitions

Order, Information and evolution

Order and information

Evolution of Morals

The Statistical Nature of Moral Laws

Instincts, Conscience and Super-Ego

Abridged References to Works on Morals

The Role of Emotions: Damasio’s “Somatic Marker” Hypothesis

Summary And Conclusions

Categories of Moral Behaviour (Physical-Science Interpretation of Kant’s Elements

for a Metaphysics of Morals)

Introduction

Kant’s Preface

On Objectivity: Analytic And Synthetic Cognition

The Form of The Law

The Content of The Law

“Freedom” As Causality Of Practical Reason

Summary And Conclusions

Addendum – The Perplexity At Abstract Categories

On Objective Facts And Fatal Conceits (Hayek’s Ideas

on Morals and The Theory of Formation of Beliefs)

The Bias of Ethical Commitment

Hayek’s Ideas on Morals And Theory of Conscience

The Gap Between Instincts and Reason

Moral Evolution

Hayek’s Laws and Kant’s Imperatives

The Inference of Facts From Standards (“Der Schluss Vom Sollen Auf Das Sein”)

The Rationalization of Beliefs

The Nature of Belief (Critical Discussion of Arthur Koestler’s Work:

The Ghost in the Machine)

A Pill to Save Humanity

The Deep Imprinting of Ethical Beliefs

The Large Laboratory

The Brain And Its Self (Critical Discussions of Karl R. Popper’s and John C Eccles’ Work

The Self and Its Brain)

Fact Based on Belief

Reduction and Causation

The Poverty of Logic Applied to Ethics

The Problem of the Self-Driven Computer

Conscience And Instincts

The Single-Faced Janushead

On the nature of Human Aggression (Critical Discussion of Konrad Lorenz’s work on

Aggression)

The Backside of The Mirror – Mirrored (Critical discussion of Konrad Lorenz’ Work

The Backside of the Mirror)

Nature

and

Morals? (Critical Discussion of Hans Mohr’s Work

Nature and Morals)

The Dichotomy Nature-Morals

The Body-Soul Aporia

The So-Called Genuine Evil

The Institution of War (Critical Discussion of Irinaeus Eibl-Eibesfeldt’s Work

War and Peace from the Point of View of Behavioural Science)

Evolutionary Ethics And Evolution of Ethics (Critical Discussion of Robert J. Richards’

Theory of Evolutionary Ethics)

Concluding Remarks

Evolution of Information (Critical Discussion of Evolutionary Epistemology as presented in

Evolution and Cognition,

Special Issue in Honor of Donald T. Campbell, 1997/Vol. 3/No. 1)

Introduction

Two Fields of Cognition Vs. Undifferentiated Knowledge

Reference to Human Biological Cognitive Apparati

The Concept of Integrated Biological Entities

The Object of “Referent”

Comments on Campbell’s Essay by Other Authors

The Validity And Validation of the Inquiry’s Theoretical Approach

The Genome Of Intelligence (Critical Discussion of Adolf Heschl’s Work

The Intelligent Genome)

Thesis: The Obvious

Anthropomorphus and Objective Acceptation of Information

Genome and the performance of Intelligence

The Emotional Component of Intelligence

Objective Cognition

Nature And Nuture (Critical Discussion of Judith Harris’ work

The Nurture Assumption)

The Nurture and Moral Cognition

Human Nature

Final Identification With Moral Values

The Open Society and Its Friend (Critical Discussion of Karl Popper’s Attitude Concerning Liberal Authoritarian Polities)

On Attitudes

Philosophers – The Codifiers of Zeitgeist

Civilization – Ours, or Theirs?

For or Against Slavery – A Criterion of Rightness

Marxism – The Rationalization of An Ethical Belief

Conclusion: The Difficult Objective Approach

Critical Rationalism And The Growth of Ethical Knowledge (Critical Discussion of Karl R. Popper’s Essay

Facts

,

Standards and Truth: A further Criticism of Relativism)

Facts, Standards, and Physical Law

The Role of Experiment

The Antinomy Monism – Dualism of Facts And Standards

Proposals and Propositions

The Judgment of Success and Failure

Conclusion: The Growth of Ethical Information

On Objectivity In History (Critical discussion of E.H. Carr’s work:

What is History?)

Evolution in History

The Moral Value Progress

Proposals For Historical Case Studies

Application of the Theory of Moral Evolution

The Evolution of Social Orders based on Solidarity and Tolerance

The Institution of Slavery – Its Evolution and Final Abolition

The Japanese Experience

The War On Drugs

Conclusion

Appendix I – Some Remarks About Order and Disorder

Appendix II – Replies to Critiques

Reply to a Critique of the Physical-Science Interpretation of Immanuel Kant’s Elements for a

Metaphysics of Morals

Reply to a Critique from the point of view of Sociobiology

Appendix III – Answers to Philosophic Questions

References

Name Index

Subject Index

I. THE BIG JIGSAW PUZZLE

As I am writing these lines in the year 2002, I have now been thinking and puzzling about the subject of this inquiry for more than 20 years, since 1981, when I attended a conference by Friedrich A. HAYEK on political and economic subjects.

Even before that time I had been wondering about the deeper significance of my professional activity, the planning of engineering works. The initial product of my contact with HAYEK's thought was a paper, Limits of Reasonable Planning, which was eventually published in the Journal of Professional Issues of the American Society of Civil Engineers.

I am by training a civil and hydraulic engineer, but no engineering design proper has ever carried my signature. Instead, my disposition always led me to have a main interest in the planning overview of the projects in which I participated. Thus, very soon I took responsibilities for the coordination of multidisciplinary projects and studies. These always involved several technical, economic and even legal and institutional fields in which I lacked proficiency by strict academic standards. I had to know, however, and learn enough of each field to be able to judge its interdisciplinary relevance as it affected the other fields and the project as a whole.

It must have been this innate tendency always to strive for the composite whole, which, after my acquaintance with the problems of morals raised in the work of HAYEK, spurred me on to read the scientific literature of the various fields related to the subject.

I also read, of course, some works on moral philosophy. But after getting acquainted with the various schools of thought of this field, I decided to disregard it entirely. All the great moral philosophers, from SOCRATES to KANT, from ARISTOTELES to POPPER, tell us how we ought or ought not to behave, basing their thoughts on attempts to discover the meaning of the words "good" and "bad.” I was interested in something else. After becoming aware of the evolutionary character of HAYEK’s "spontaneous order" and of the general rules of conduct that compose it, my aim was to discover the mechanism which caused that evolution. I was interested in the formation of morals, not in morals itself. And here, none of the moral philosophers had anything to tell me.1

So I turned to the behavioural sciences, to psychology, theory of evolution, theory of knowledge and the social and political sciences, and to history. The train of thought turned out to be irresistible and unstoppable; it was as fascinating and addictive as the putting together of a very large and complicated jigsaw puzzle, with the added spell to my coordinating mentality, that each piece of the puzzle originated from a specific field of knowledge whose members dared not, bound by academic scruples, to trespass into the field of others.

The first piece of the puzzle originated in HAYEK’s observation that socialists have tried to build an institutional frame as if it were a tribal organization. It appeared to me that there was no ”as if.” Socialists actually do follow the deeply engraved belief in solidarity which we inherited from our tribal ancestors. At the time, in the mid-80s, when I was reading HAYEK’s works, I used to have long discussions with a colleague and friend of mine on political and economic subjects. He came from a traditional, conservative Brazilian family, one to which the local epithet “quatrocentos anos” (“four hundred years”) applied, the American equivalent being a lineage traceable to the Mayflower. In his university years, however, he associated with the leftist student movement, being actively engaged in the struggle against the military dictatorship of the time, and became a convinced defender of socialist ideals, whereas my own beliefs were (and still are) decidedly liberal (in the true sense of this word). At a certain moment it became clear to me that we could go on discussing for ages, and neither would I be able to shake in the slightest his socialist creed nor would his efforts cause me to deviate even a hairbreadth from my liberal convictions. It also became clear to me that the big public confrontation with socialist intellectuals, which HAYEK tried to organize in his later years, would have been a wasted effort with no results whatsoever. Neither would HAYEK have been able to convert his opponents to his liberal ideas, nor would they have had the slightest chance of convincing him to accept socialist values.

So I came to realize that beliefs in moral values are incredibly stiff axiomatic guides of group behavior (partaken individually by all the members of the group) and that they evolve as if they were biological organisms: they are upheld and tried out with "ontomoral" stiffness and will survive or die out in the process, the touchstone being their adaptation to the reality of the physical and social environment. The survivals and deaths follow the trial-and-error process of evolution which results in a "phylomoral" increase of knowledge (information). New beliefs are very much like those “hopeful monsters,” strange new biologic organisms whose chances of survival depend on the merciless fitness trials to which they are submitted by reality.

“Very much like” - just an analogy? Analogy of what with what? Behavioral biology is a physical science, devoted to the discovery of physical - natural - laws. The behavior of socialists, instead, would originate from an esoteric realm called culture, where no natural laws apply? My reason, my whole being, reacted against such a possibility as a sheer nonsense. There must be some natural mechanisms at work in the human mind, which caused the engraving of the stiff axiomatic guides of behavior. So I read the behavioral literature, mainly the work of Konrad LORENZ, and there I found what I was looking for: discussing (in The Backside of the Mirror, 1973) “the striving for renewal of youth,” LORENZ says, “The surprisingly quick process of attachment to a new cultural group, the fixation of the instinct of collective enthusiasm [zeal] to a new object, carries features which remind strongly of a process of object-fixation known from the animal kingdom, the so-called ‘imprinting’.” (my italics) So I took LORENZ by his word, and said - it doesn’t just “remind strongly,” it is the same phenomenon - it applies in the animal kingdom, which includes humans. The strong engraving of axiomatic guides of behavior in the human mind is the phenomenon of “imprinting,” and this piece of the puzzle thus became the “basic hypothesis” of my theory.

The third piece fell into place after more than 8 months of studying and trying to understand KANT's Elements for a Metaphysics of Morals. I felt that there was something deeply wrong with KANT's set-up, and suddenly, leafing through the work, I saw it:

And therefore, a being endowed with reason must consider itself as intelligence (i.e., not as resulting from its lower forces), not as pertaining to the world of the senses, but belonging to the world of reason; it thus possesses two standpoints from which it can consider itself and the laws which govern its behavior: firstly, insofar it belongs to the world of the senses, as governed by laws of nature (heteronomy), and secondly, as belonging to the world of intellect, under laws which, being independent from nature, are not empirical but founded on reason alone. (The last emphasis is mine).

At the time I had not yet read Gilbert RYLE's The Concept of Mind, which later confirmed unequivocally what I had seen: there is no such thing as a disembodied intellect. To assume that such a thing exists, is "DESCARTES' myth," the "fundamental error of category" pointed out by RYLE, who spoke of it, "with deliberate abusiveness" as "the dogma of the ghost in the machine." Natural entities are "natural" all the way, including the human species. They are integrated entities composed of strata, from the atomic particles to the level (in the case of humans) of society and culture. Every event or phenomenon that occurs in these entities is one-and-the-same event or phenomenon in all the strata, although it can be described, and sometimes measured, in terms of the natural laws that pertain to each stratum, and the laws must be reducible to each other, down the hierarchical ladder. The very concept of "natural law" only makes sense in such a context.2

The concept of integrated natural entities led me to conceive conscience as a physiologic apparatus that operates with phylogenetically developed learning programs, including the process of "imprinting": what gets to be "imprinted" are the beliefs which govern human behavior.

But what kind of "beliefs?" What do we mean by "behavior?" Here, another piece took its precise place in the puzzle, and it was taken from KANT; because, if in KANT's work one disregards the "ought-to" guided by reason, what remains is a superb structure, a description of the moral categories according to which humans actually do behave. It thus became possible to talk about "reversible" beliefs associated with the hypothetical imperatives of dexterity and wisdom, and "irreversible" or categorical beliefs, which subsume the essence of our moral behavior, responding to the categorical imperative of universality.

But how could such ways of behavior have originated? What is their reason and their cause? Here the paradigmatic explaining power of evolution came to my help, and an explanation became immediately obvious: in the cognitive field of heteronomy, within the boundaries set by an object or purpose, planning, predictions and criticism are always possible. It is this nature of the field which permits the collaboration of individuals within groups, a condition essential for survival, and thus the phylogenetic/moral adaptation followed: beliefs in this realm are reversible. The unbounded nature of the cognitive field of autonomy, of morals, to the contrary, makes predictions and criticism impossible: the order in this domain is created by universal (purposeless) laws; changes of these laws give rise to chains of direct, indirect, and retroactive effects, which are so complex that predictions of their effect on the overall order is a practical impossibility. Nevertheless, general laws of conduct are as important for survival as are the rules of heteronomy - but the only possible way of acquiring information about their effectiveness is the trial-and-error method of evolution; thus the phylogenetic/moral adaptation followed: beliefs in this realm must be upheld with unyielding ("ontomoral") stiffness: they are irreversible. In this way, another, main piece took its place in the puzzle: reversible beliefs guide collaboration, irreversible ones, competition.

Another piece that fell into place along the way refers to the strange coexistence, in the same mind, of fallible reason and infallible belief. KANT postulated the "a priori” existence of "forms of perception," those labeled classification boxes with which we perceive and try to understand reality, and Konrad LORENZ gave them an evolutionary interpretation which can be summarized by saying: reality exists because we perceive it, because if it didn’t, we wouldn’t have a perceiving apparatus (formed through millions of years of evolution). That "we try to understand" means that we have the faculty, called reason, to sift through the images of reality presented by our intellect, trying to ascertain true from false, forever in doubt, forever hypothetically. Concerning beliefs, however, reason is never in doubt - they are absolutely true, right, and trustworthy.

How come?

I think that the explanation of this paradox resides in the nature of the "classification boxes." These "boxes," the forms of perception, are actually abstract logical extremes, intrinsic to the analytic faculty of our perceiving apparatus, but do not exist anywhere else in nature: freedom, free will, determination and indetermination, ideal and material, single and dual, equal and unequal, true and false and many other logical extremes, are the forms of perception or categories (in the KANTian sense), with which we try to understand, to comprehend, to classify, to produce synthetic statements about reality; but now our phylogenetically/culturally developed moral striving apparatus, that apparatus which continues to apply the commands for growth and reproduction first encoded in a genome in the dawn of our living world, actually deceives reason by telling it: "This or that logical extreme which you perceive is real, it is an absolutely true ideal which you must try to attain!" A belief is thus formed by the erroneous conviction that the extremes belong to reality, that they exist not only in our mind, but everywhere else in nature; it will from that moment coexist with reason and give rise to the phenomenon of "rationalization," the inference of facts from standards, which marks all those movements to which the character "religious" can be applied, which shape the cultural and historical evolution of mankind.

Two other pieces that fell into place in the puzzle were the realization that the universal character of moral laws conditions the statistical nature of the "social field," the "extended order" of society and the "order of the market" (HAYEK); and the insight that, concerning moral behavior, psychological phenomena can be considered as phenomena of behavioral physiology, that FREUD's "Super Ego" is actually the phenomenon of "imprinting" defined by behavioral science.

The last piece to fall into place was Antonio DAMASIO’s "somatic marker" theory. Belief, to believe, our moral values, everything incident in the decision process which governs the operation of our conscience apparatus and determines our moral behavior, is also a neurophysiological phenomenon, a phenomenon explainable in the stratum of neural physiology. It is the realization, again so old and commonplace, that what actually governs our behavior are emotions and feelings. It is, however, a realization that has been masked to scientific insight by the exaltation of reason as the sole guide of human behavior, which, initiated by DESCARTES, has dominated the "age of enlightenment” of the last two centuries and still affects, in no small measure, our own. "Somatic markers" is the designation of a neural mechanism which affixes certain "somatic" (body) states (DAMASIO equates them with emotions) which we perceive as feelings, to certain objectively known values, in such a way that, when a decision is about to be carried out and the objectively known possible options for action are related to - also objectively known - values, the "markers" activate the feelings which in their own indescribable language tell us: "good, do!" and "bad, don't!" Together with the “imprinting” behavioral phenomenon, the neurophysiologic “somatic marker” theory can thus be taken to represent a physical-science interpretation of FREUD’s psychoanalytically defined “Superego”, and if the "markers" are equated with the "imperatives" that govern behavior, the relation with the rest of the theory is established. To learn, conceived as a process of "imprinting" of beliefs, is thus a process of affixing certain objectively known values to particular action-commanding feelings that will be activated by somatic markers whenever a decision for action is about to be made. Differently from the other hypotheses put forward in this inquiry, the "somatic marker" hypothesis can be, and has been, submitted to tests, which confirmed the existence of the proposed neural mechanism.

There still remained an important discovery for me to make and it came to me only very late in the game when all the pieces of the puzzle had been already accounted for and confirmed by recent investigations such as HESCHL’s The Intelligent Genome and HARRIS’ The Nurture Assumption. It came to me in reading Steven PINKER’s work The Language Instinct. I noticed that PINKER took great pains to demonstrate and stress that language is indeed an instinct. I suddenly realized that all I had been doing was to research, to describe, to find out the operating laws and their relationship with the epistemology of the cognitive functions and the way in which they induced the evolutionary development of moral norms and values, of the human behavior instinct, which I could equate with a human universal behavioral program. Like language, it is a phylogenetically developed, hereditarily predetermined instinct specific of the human species. But it is not anymore, as in our non-human relatives, the control of single-purpose, automatically released actions. It generates action-commanding feelings affixed to objectively known values and rules, and is thus overimposed, integrates and controls all the other instincts of our genetic heritage. The mechanism is still an instinct, but there is this difference which makes us human: we know what we are doing.

Concluding the metaphor of the jigsaw puzzle: some pieces have been joined, composing something which apparently fits together; and now the final question arises: what is the image that has appeared on its surface? Well, the image which appeared, I'm sorry to say, is simply a message which reads:

1 With the lone exception of KANT. The great philosopher too dedicates his works Elements for a Metaphysics of Morals and Critique of Practical Reason to the discovery of the meaning of “good” and “bad.” Although the rightness or wrongness of moral values cannot, as he contended, be demonstrated by objective reason, in the course of his analyses he discovered the ways in which humans actually do behave, setting the principles and categories of moral behavior, which since then must be considered to be fundamental for any theory of morals, as done in the present inquiry.

2 KANT, perhaps one of the most profound thinkers ever, knew about this: "Where determination by natural laws ends, all explanation also ends." Departing from this, KANT could have spared himself all the logical maneuvers by which he tried to discover the "laws of freedom" (this contradictio in adjecto) which, in the domain of "intellect," would take up the function which natural laws perform in the domain of "nature." In the end, though, he conceded that such laws were indiscoverable "on a philosophical basis, and I have no other."

"I AM A PART OF A BIGGER PUZZLE"

So, if anybody, after reading all this, now thinks that the human behavior instinct, and moral evolution, have been satisfactorily explained (including myself), he is quite mistaken. This whole exercise is simply the falsification of some older theories and is now itself ready to be falsified in turn.

II. ELEMENTS FOR AN EVOLUTIONARY THEORY OF MORALS

1. INTRODUCTION

The present chapter is based on a paper published in Evolution and Cognition, the Journal of the Konrad-Lorenz Institute of Altenberg, Austria (STEGMANN 2002). This paper refers to an interdisciplinary theoretical approach to the problem of explaining the nature of human behavior, but it cannot aspire to the full name of "theory,” as this term must always refer to tests confirming the proposed tenets, and no such tests have so far been made. The attainment of moral decisions and the biological bases of the participating processes is an as yet totally unexplored and uncharted domain. The proposed hypothetical model is only a very preliminary effort to explain these processes. This as yet still obscure realm - the conditions for the attainment of behavioral decisions – is, however, of decisive importance for the understanding of human attitudes and actions, and sometime a beginning had to be made in trying to develop a reasonably consistent structure of our ideas concerning this realm. The proposed explanation is consistent with observed and observable facts of human behavior and also with the findings of many researchers and scientists, but mainly with the works of Immanuel KANT, Friedrich HAYEK, Konrad LORENZ, Sigmund FREUD, Rupert RIEDL, Judith HARRIS, Adolf HESCHL, and Antonio DAMASIO. Nevertheless, in spite of its repeatedly checked and demonstrated internal and external consistency, the present account still refers only to an explanation in principle and is mainly intended to be a basis for research programs of the involved disciplines to conduct the tests and statistical surveys that may confirm or falsify it.3

The main tenet of the approach is that human behavior is controlled by an innate, phylogenetically developed instinct. The present chapter describes the main elements of the proposed explanation. The other chapters of this book are discussions or interpretations of works of some of the main philosophers and scientists who have devoted themselves to the subject, which have been made possible in the light of this explanation.

Biological explanations of human behavior have so far been based on extensions of the findings of behavioral research applied to non-human living organisms, such as the attempts made by sociobiology and human ethology. These attempts have provided deep insights into the human behavior apparatus, confirming in every way that humans possess a complex and variegated “parliament of instincts” (the expression coined by Konrad LORENZ), as do our non-human relatives of the animal kingdom. The reduction of group behavior to individual behavior was mainly accomplished by William Hamilton through his thesis of “kin selection,” presented in his seminal paper of 1964, The Genetical Evolution of Social Behavior, from which the concept of “inclusive fitness” was derived. This thesis was taken up by Edward WILSON, who, in combining it with the principles of population genetics, created the new science of Sociobiology (WILSON 1975). In his application of this theory to the human species, WILSON (1978) was able to show, without leaving any doubt, that human beings carry phylogenetically developed “propensities” (i.e. instincts), including “... bonding between parents and children, heightened altruism toward closest kin, incest avoidance, suspicion of strangers, tribalism...” and many other traits. He then goes on, however, to say “... people have free will and the choice to turn in many directions ...” In On Human Nature (1978,) he poses the question: “Human emotional responses and the more general ethical practices based on them have been programmed to a substantial degree by natural selection over thousands of generations. ... Which of the censors and motivators should be obeyed and which ones might better be curtailed or sublimated?”

The circularity of this question, which has been noted neither by WILSON nor by all the authors who put the same question in various other forms4, is the central problem posed by attempts to explain human behavior. The attempt to extend the theories of sociobiology to the human species collapses as it reaches the formidable obstacle of human “free will.” What is needed is a theory to explain the human decision process.

WILSON (1978, p. 255) also calls these “censors and motivators,” a “jerrybuilt foundation of partly obsolete Ice-Age adaptations,” maintaining, as many of his colleagues do (TOOBY and COSMIDES among other, as quoted in HESCHL 1998 - see Chapter VIII5), that human behavioral instincts were formed by genetic evolution as adaptations to conditions prevailing in the Pleistocene, and are totally unable to cope with the requirements of the modern world. To be able to cope, as Konrad LORENZ said (1963), “[the] rigid instinctual ways of behavior [require] the surveillance by our rational, responsible morals.”

The notion that human behavior is governed by “rigid instincts” has been bitterly rejected by authors like S. ROSE, R.C. LEWONTIN and L.J. KAMIN (Not in our Genes, 1984), who consider that to defend such a notion amounts to the (for them) repugnant moral attitude of “biological determinism.” Here another problem appears which affects the discussion of human behavior: the apparently unavoidable intromission of moral attitudes6 into the discussion. Ethics, a philosophical discipline, has governed this discussion in recorded history and it is quite difficult to open the subject to objective thinking.

Both the attitude of "biologic determinism" and its rejection, implying a revulsion against the idea of a dependence on natural laws, are based on the mistaken logic that natural biological laws, like physical laws, must necessarily imply automaticity, robbing humans of their free will. But natural laws only answer the "how" question, their formulation provides tentative (synthetic) explanations of observed phenomena; and if the phenomena are human attitudes and behavior which are anything but automatic, the laws will have to explain how the changes of the behavior-governing rules and norms come about. It is the attitudes themselves, both

WILSON’s “curtailing and sublimating” and ROSE et al.’s censure, and including also LORENZ’s “rational, responsible morals,” which must be explained by an objective theory of human behavior. “Freedom” and “free will” are analytic concepts, which bear no relation at all, and cannot be taken, by themselves, as having a synthetic correspondence to anything existing in reality. (See below the definition of objective and moral cognition; cf. also the discussion of this subject in Ch. III.) The real problem for a theory of human behavior is the disclosure of how the information about the norms and values which govern this behavior originates.

This status is claimed by the present explanation. It submits that humans possess a phylogenetically developed instinctual apparatus which operates, like the similar apparati of our non-human relatives, through the generation of action-commanding feelings. But the feelings generated by the human behavior instinct are not elicited automatically as are the action-motivating emotions of our non-human relatives, but are linked to objectively known values and rules. As such, the human behavior instinct is overimposed, integrates and controls the “parliament of instincts” of our genetic heritage. The mechanism is still an instinct, but there is this difference which makes us human: we know what we are doing.

This specifically human behavior instinct can be equated to a universal behavioral program, in analogy to the universal grammar program, which governs the learning of language (PINKER 1995). Just as words and their meaning, parsing rules and other culturally evolved characteristics of language are “imprinted” in the receptive grammar program through the agency of group members, so are culturally evolved norms of behavior “imprinted” in the receptive behavior program, also through the agency of group members. The way in which this happens, the various involved mechanisms and processes, are the subject of the proposed explanation.

Human beings are not limited to biology. To be able to produce credible results, an attempt to explain something as pervadingly inclusive as human behavior, must include all the manifestations of this behavior, from the cognitive to the physiological. Moral cognitive phenomena in Homo sapiens occur simultaneously as cultural phenomena in large social groups, as behavioral phenomena in the individuals who compose these groups, and as neurophysiological phenomena in the neural systems of the same individuals. The natural laws which govern the phenomena at the sociocultural level of groups are the subject of political, social and economic science; phenomena of social behavior coincide and are simultaneous with behavioral phenomena in the individuals who compose the groups, governed by laws which are the subject of behavioral biology and psychology. In turn, behavioral phenomena in individuals coincide and are simultaneous with the generation, at the neurophysiological level, of conceptual representations associated with emotions and feelings which command decision making and action. The approach of the present inquiry thus is to attempt a thoroughgoing inter-level, i.e., interdisciplinary reduction of human behavior, from political science and sociology to behavioral biology and psychology to neurophysiology. As noted, the present approach is only an explanation in principle, and its tenets must still be subjected to tests. One prediction is made, however, related to Antonio DAMASIO's “somatic markers” (DAMASIO 1994), which possibly may be verified by neuropsychological tests (cf. section 9 of the present chapter).

2. POSTULATES, BASIC CONCEPTS AND TERMINOLOGY

Postulates originate from the faculty of the human mind to imagine logical extremes which do not occur elsewhere in the reality of nature but are a precondition for the cognition of reality, or better, they are the actual means of cognition. Their formulation originates in the analytic capacity of the human mind, which is used to produce synthetic statements about reality (KANT 1786, CARNAP 1995). This means that the logical condition whereby a postulate is non-demonstrable, self-evident, or has an ontological nature is irrelevant for theories that aim to represent accurately facts of this world. Postulates are structural parts of those theories and must be justified by the success of their application (VOLLMER 1990).

In the following, some of the postulates and basic concepts on which the theory is based are stated. Also, in an attempt to avoid misunderstandings as much as possible, in the section Terminology some of the more relevant terms that have been used in the context of the theory are defined.

Postulates and Basic Concepts

Evolution is the basic impelling force of life since that moment in the dawn of our living world when commands for growth and reproduction were first encoded in a genome, including behavior consistent with these goals. Thus "purpose" became a part of nature. Living beings cannot do otherwise: growth and reproduction is a necessity. Evolution of life causes decrease of entropy and increase of order in an open system. The object of this evolution is information. Since something new cannot be known beforehand, because if it could it would not be new, the only possible mechanism of creating information is the random mutation-and-selection mechanism of evolution, the genome being its sole repository. Any other kind of explanation would have to resort to supra-natural causes (HESCHL 1998, see also Chapter VIII). All existing information is thus innate, it can only be put to use if already possessed by the genomes of particular individuals otherwise they would never be able to develop their cognitive/behavioral abilities. Although the origin of all information resides in the genome, the cognitive tasks are performed through the cognitive “apparati,” the seat of which are those vast brain and nerve systems whose structural and operational design incorporated in the genome has been created by the evolutionary mutation-and-selection mechanism.

According to the philosophers of the Age of Reason, humans would possess only one kind of intellectual apparatus, embodied by the term "reason", a premise still prevalent in our time. KANT (1904, p. 19): “[... it is required from] a critique of practical reason that, once completed, it must constitute a unity with speculative reason, representable through a single common principle, because in the end there can exist only one and the same reason, differing only in its application.”

Although more than 200 years have elapsed since KANT formulated this thought, it still constitutes an implicit basic assumption, or premise, in modern theories of mind and behavior. It leads to the false conceptualization that the process, which determines the formation of moral information, would be a process of objective cognition governed by reason. It will be seen from the following discussion that such a process is not possible. The attempted explanation contends, instead, that human beings possess two distinct cognitive apparati which, although related to each other, operate in different ways. One is the apparatus called reason, which is the seat of objective cognition (“speculative reason”) as understood by KANT. The other is the apparatus called conscience, the seat of moral cognition or (also following KANT) practical reason. In actual fact, KANT’s observation must be considered to be correct in the sense that we obviously do have in our heads a single and very complex apparatus of cognition. What is postulated is that cognition operates according to two very different processes when trying to develop information related to an object or purpose in the field of objective cognition or heteronomy, and information related to general laws of conduct in the field of moral cognition or autonomy.

A second basic assumption of these philosophers which is contradicted by the theory is that reason and its faculties would belong to an "intellectual" world distinct and independent from the "natural” biological world. The proposition that there exists an "intellectual world" separate from nature, or a dichotomy nature-intellect, is senseless, and so are all those dichotomies like matter-spirit, nature-culture, instinct-reason and many similar ones which can all be subsumed in the "body-soul" dogma, the absurdity of which has been conclusively demonstrated by Gilbert RYLE (1949). To assume the existence of any of these dichotomies means to commit a fundamental error of category. Matter and spirit do not exist separately but represent different strata of the integrated entity homo. The entity homo, to whom the phenomena of spirit belong, is a new, integrated category of existence and not a machine inhabited by a ghost, as RYLE, quite crassly, and, as he said "with deliberate abusiveness," put it. Spiritual events such as morals do not pertain to some esoterical realm separate and independent from nature but must be considered to be natural phenomena; they are stratum manifestations of events that occur simultaneously in all the strata of the integrated entity. They are thus explainable by natural laws pertaining to their stratum but also, as a special form of explanation, through their reduction to the laws of the lower strata that compose the integrated entity. Nevertheless, the assumption that there exists a purely intellectual or cultural realm independent from nature, where speculative and moral reasoning takes place and philosophers pursue the discipline of ethics, is still implicit in all the sociobiological and ethological writings which I have consulted. This subject is discussed in Chapter VI: Conscience and Instincts.

The process which determines the formation of moral information, takes place at the level, or stratum, of individual human behavioral physiology. This stratum, the seat of the human behavioral apparatus “conscience,” is interposed between the stratum of social and cultural phenomena and the stratum of neurophysiological phenomena. The idea of strata was taken from Konrad LORENZ' “levels of integration” within “systemic wholes” (LORENZ 1973, p.56 ff), where new levels of integration appear as a result of the phenomenon of “fulguration,” a concept developed by LORENZ (1973,) which is related to Gilbert RYLE’s quoted idea of category. Living beings, including Homo sapiens, are integrated natural units or entities (systemic wholes) composed of strata from the atomic-particle to the socio-cultural strata. Stratum-specific natural laws apply in each stratum, but events or phenomena which affect the entity are one-and-the-same event or phenomenon in all and each of the strata. Since the event or phenomenon is one-and-the-same, there cannot be any "causation" between strata, but the natural laws which apply in each stratum must be reducible to the laws which apply in the hierarchically lower strata; the idea of natural law only makes sense in this context. Another consequence is that all the strata of an integrated unit evolve together; there can be no strata with differing rates of evolution, as of society and of the human beings which compose it: the evolution of both is one-and-the-same phenomenon. Since genetic evolution is a process much too slow to account for the evolution of human behavioral physiology simultaneously with the rapid evolution of human social order, there must be another mechanism at work consistent with the faculty of the human species of transmitting and receiving information to and from group members.

The categories of moral behavior are those described by Immanuel KANT in his work Elements for a Metaphysics of Morals (Grundlegung zur Metaphysik der Sitten) (KANT 1786). KANT's fundamental insight into human behavior has not changed in the more than 200 years since it was formulated. What appears to be new is the explanation of moral behavior in terms of natural laws, which KANT could not give, limited, as he was, by the scientific advances of his times. The present theory can thus be regarded as an attempt to provide a physical-science interpretation of KANT's categories of moral behavior (see also Chapter III: Categories of Moral Behavior).

Terminology

A theory is composed of words which establish relationships between several special words considered to be the main terms of the theory. The main terms used in the present theoretical approach are: truth and rightness; to believe and belief; morals and moral behavior, ethics, and values; cognition, knowledge and information; and objective and moral cognition. Following POPPER, the definitions which are given below do not purport to establish any more profound meaning of the defined terms, independently, that is, dissociated from the context of the proposed explanation7. The definitions are strictly ad hoc or functional, i.e., the meaning attributed to the terms is strictly and exclusively what is meant by them in the context of the explanation. (Common definitions are, unless noted, from American Heritage Dictionary.)

In a field as controversial as the discussion of human behavior it is important to try to avoid misunderstandings, which are usually centered on the meaning of words. The author thus appeals to readers to consider the given definitions, and not others, in their analyses of this inquiry.

Truth, Rightness

In the context of the theory, truth is defined by the correspondence concept. Thus, truth is simply "the correspondence of a statement with the facts that it intends to describe." Truth is one of those logical extremes, or forms of cognition, which the analytic faculty of the human mind is capable of imagining, but which do not occur elsewhere in nature. Thus truth is forever unattainable, forever preliminary. For as soon as a correspondence seems to be established it becomes subject to criticism, and, eventually, it will be superseded by other truths as new facts and correspondences are discovered. If applied to a moral norm, value or standard held to be true, its truth is expressed as rightness.

To believe, belief

“To believe” is here meant in the transitive acceptation of this verb, as requiring an object to complete its meaning: “to uphold or maintain, to believe in the truth of a statement.”

Beliefs, a thoroughly human cognitive category, govern human behavior. Beliefs, in the context of the present theoretical approach, are emotional attachments to objective concepts or mind images, which uphold the truth (q.v.) of those concepts or images.

Morals, moral behavior, ethic(s), and values

The term "morals" designates, in the context of the proposed explanation, the kind of behavior which distinguishes the human species. Thus "morals" are "norms and institutions which govern human behavior" without any reference to the values good, right, wrong, bad or evil. Obviously all norms and institutions, qua norms and institutions, are supported by values considered to be good or exclude others considered to be bad. The explanation itself, however, is objective: it takes into account that such values exist without supporting or condemning any of them, nor does it intend to establish any kind of method whereby what is good or bad may be ascertained. It thus envisages the same attitude of objectivity, of scientific detachment, applied in behavioral studies of irrational beings. Moral behavior is behavior related to universal instrumental and end values (norms and institutions), it being indifferent, or not relevant (from an objective point of view), if this behavior follows, or not, established values, or some new values which are different from the established ones.

The term "ethics" is reserved for "moral cognition and information," i.e., cognitive processes to establish, and information about, values like good, right, wrong, bad or evil. Ethical information resides, as will (it is hoped) become clear in the exposition, in ethical beliefs. This information, the information which guides human behavior, developed by conscience, is fundamentally different from objective information, the information developed by reason.

Strictu sensu, "moral values" are only those already mentioned: good, right, bad, wrong, or evil. However, in the course of cultural evolution, norms and institutions have always been associated with those values, and were thus also referred to as "values." As such they have been classified into "instrumental values" (norms) and "terminal, or end values" (institutions) (MOHR 1987, p. 8-9).

Cognition, knowledge, and information

The term cognition is used only in one of its two acceptations: “the mental process or faculty by which knowledge (information) is acquired” or “the process of recognizing information about an object." The other acceptation, “that which comes to be known," is not intended when the term is being used in the present inquiry.

In relation to knowledge, dictionaries, as usual, cannot evade the circularity implied by the use of some synonym, which in this case is the word whose meaning is closest to the meaning of “to know,” which is “to apprehend.” The definition of “to know,” given in most dictionaries, is “to apprehend (to know) with certainty," and the term knowledge, as used in the context of the proposed explanation, is “that which is known with certainty.” The term, however, is anthropomorphous, it refers to a content of the human mind, and the qualifying expression “with certainty” must be taken cum grano salis, as it is always based on a belief (q.v.). To avoid as much as possible the non-relevant connotations, which the human-centered meaning of the word “knowledge” can imply, it becomes appropriate to use instead the well-established physical magnitude information (cf. Section 7.) It is not necessary to substitute for the simple “information” philosophical or metaphysical terms like “knowledge,” “meaning,” “significance,” “semantical” or “genuinely semantical” information and other similar ones when describing the phenomena of life. Thus, the term knowledge, if used in the present inquiry, always refers to the physical magnitude information.

Objective and Moral Cognition

With the appearance of life there also began the division of the world into a knowing “subject” and a knowable external “object” represented by a certain environment (HESCHL 1998). In the most common acceptation an “object” thus always presupposes a “subject” and “objective” is the opposite of “subjective.” In the present inquiry, however, “objective” is always used in conjunction with “cognition” (q.v.), and the acceptation of “objective” is the common “uninfluenced by emotion, surmise, or personal prejudice,” but is here qualified more stringently as implying compliance with the Principle of Objectivity, which says that to arrive at valid results and conclusions, the process of objective cognition must be separated from, and totally indifferent in relation to moral values. The “object” of objective cognition is what is called “reality,” “the real world” or “nature,” and thus, ultimately, objective cognition pursues the discovery of natural laws. Moral values, that is, the rules and standards which govern human behavior, are an object which exists in nature and are also subject to objective cognition in a quest to discover the natural laws which govern the process of their formation and evolution. This process has here been called moral cognition. It is the process of recognizing information about the rules and standards which govern human behavior, and is, as such, an object (a “subject”) of objective cognition. The present inquiry is an objective attempt to discover the natural laws and mechanisms which govern moral cognition.

3. BASIC HYPOTHESIS: THE IMPRINTING OF BELIEFS

As seen in the previous section, spiritual events such as morals do not pertain to some esoterical realm separate and independent from nature but must be considered to be natural phenomena explainable by natural laws. It seems obvious that moral phenomena have to be reduced to that apparatus we call "conscience." There is enormous literature on it, and to say that human conduct is governed by conscience is a hackneyed commonplace. Strange as it seems, nevertheless, this may be considered some sort of discovery, as the term conscience is almost never mentioned in ethological texts about human behavior and its comparison with that of other species.

The phylogenetic evolution which culminated with the appearance of Homo sapiens must have included several instances of the phenomenon "fulguration," whereby, through the combination of various elements, a new category of existence comes into being, the properties of which could not have been predicted from the properties of the composing elements (LORENZ 1973, pp 47-50). The new entity now possesses a new upper stratum, but it is still the integrated whole of all the strata that compose it, from the atomic-molecular to the spiritual. Certain natural laws act in every stratum, and explanations or reductions must be considered possible. The new species is distinguished, chiefly, by the possession of a new cognitive apparatus which permits the transmission of learned or acquired information and thus initiated a new form of evolution (OESER 1983, 1996, 1997)8. This apparatus operates with two different mechanisms or processes:

the mechanism or process of objective cognition, usually called reason, which contains the analytic faculty which permits to derive synthetic knowledge about reality (CARNAP 1995, see also Chapter III)9, combined with the faculty of language and a greatly expanded memory, and which superseded (but still includes), as a result of the fulguration, the ratiomorph faculties of the pre-human ancestor; the mechanism or process of moral cognition, usually called conscience, which relates objectively known options for action to, also objectively known, values, which in turn are related to certain feelings which the apparatus generates to make us act (cf. Sections 9 and 11 of the present Chapter), and which superseded (but still includes), as a result of the fulguration, the action-governing instincts of the pre-human ancestor.

The present inquiry is an attempt to comprehend and explain the laws and processes which determine the operation of the apparatus conscience. It does not pretend to make a similar attempt to discover the structure and way of operation of the apparatus reason, which is probably one of today’s greatest challenges of science. It had to refer, however, to the relations and differences between moral and objective cognition, and this subject is treated below, supported by KANT’s division of pure (objective) and practical (moral) cognition (KANT 1904, 1966).

“Conscience” is the human behavior instinct, the phylogenetically developed universal behavioral program,