1. The Neural Net and Moral Instincts

This section is a discussion of morality in terms of moral instinct and moral systems. It seems to be any difficult topic, so to cover it I will describe three bodies of knowledge; science, philosophy, and morality. Partly because of Aristotle's book "Nicomachean Ethics" about morality, the topic has often been considered to be part of philosophy. The topic is difficult for philosophy because like the evolutionary process that produced it, it may be more about trial and error or chance than about logic, the primary tool of philosophy. The definition of morality used here, since this is biology, is a species survival strategy that has a learned and an instinctive component. Historically, the largest teacher of morality has been religion and husbanding morality is the primary function of religion. Philosophy is second and historically has been used by fewer people. Morality is how we decide right and wrong. It works in the context of survival.

There are a few ways for humans to gain knowledge and understanding. The first is observation, our own and the observations of others. Both science and philosophy are based on those. Another way of creating knowledge and understanding is to apply logic and reason to observation. Realistically though, our greatest ability to create understanding comes from the pattern recognition capability of the neural net. How it works is not really based on logic that is available to us. But as I described in my book "When Barbara Explained Genius" the problem with that form of intelligence is that the insights it produces must be converted into some form of language or symbology that can be retained in memory and communicated. That can be very difficult to do. Insights do not start as any form of human language. Converting them can be very difficult and may take many tries. The mind can naturally trigger more familiar logical processes that can evaluate the parts of an insight for accuracy. Really, most science and philosophy have a significant component of insight to it. Then both automatic and conscious logic and reason processes are applied to the insight to convert it into something that can be communicated and tested it for accuracy. Both mathematics and language can be used for communication and logical truth testing.

The best illustration of how a neural net works is vision. The first thing your vision sees in the outline or domain. Then it starts to see elements within that domain. Then it starts to locate where the parts are in the domain. Pattern recognition seems almost instantaneous, but careful study can show the parts, timing, and sequence of how it occurs. The interesting thing is that it can be re-triggered just by blinking. Think about looking into the fog when on a boat. Even if there is nothing to be seen, your eyes may create a pattern. If you do think you see something you may not recognize it but if you blink, that time you may get the pattern and recognize what you are seeing. This is true of many things you can look at. The patterns you can visually recognize are not arbitrary. The neural net of your eyes, visual cortex and other parts of your mind recognize very discreet visual elements. You have neurons to see vertical lines. You have neurons to see slightly turned vertical lines and neurons to see slightly more turned vertical lines. You have a lot of specialized neurons just in your vision. It is not a completely general capability. Many mammals seem to have a specialized capability to see snakes. That makes sense because they represent a common danger. Evolution selects for all species to be adapted to their environment and so tend to have biases or mental shortcuts to perceiving dangers and opportunities common to their environment. That built in tuning is part of why biological brains tend to work better than silicon ones. It is also why silicon brains come up with unexpected methods of problem solving.

Some schools of thought say that philosophy is only truths achieved by logic and reason because the senses can be fooled. Really, most philosophy starts out as an insight which in science is called a hypothesis. After an insight is converted to language of some form, those concepts in both science and philosophy can be broken into boolean logic, at least to some degree. As the mind naturally does, then those parts can be evaluated. In a logical chain, if any part is found to be false, then the entire chain is false. That is convenient because it allows for fairly easy evaluation of any insight or hypothesis. Trying to prove truth of many ideas by proving every part is true, is extremely difficult as an any programmer can tell you. Finding individual false conditions is far easier so the idea that philosophy proceeds only by logical proof is only partly right. Often something is considered true if it cannot be proved false in any part. This applies to many theories in science. If they seem to be a good description of something, they are considered true until something comes along and proves them false. Then they need to be replaced. Many of Mr. Einstein's ideas are like that though more often something has been discovered to suggest that his ideas are true. It is hard to prove many philosophical truths such as the concepts and value of developing self awareness, but that intuitively seem true and no one has proved them false in part or whole.

So how does moral instinct look like these? First off, moral instincts would be a very old neural net, probably the oldest. Most of the human neural net would be in the neo-cortex, something relatively new. Look for older parts of the brain and that will be closer to the neural net that deals with instinctive moral strategy. We are looking for moral instincts but we know that neural nets are learning devices. "My explanation" is that our moral instincts include the drive to internalize a moral system (probably the one of the culture or religion we grow up in) and that when that is internalized it is almost impossible to change. It becomes "instinct". We do know that people will fight to the death over their beliefs. In his "Allegory of the Cave", Plato mentioned that if you have a new idea, people probably will not like it. If it is a really good idea and you are very persuasive, they may kill you for it. In terms of modern science, this has been studied and two external factors are considered strong enough to get a person to change their moral outlook. One is referred to as a "life changing event" which is usually a near death experience. You do though repeatedly hear of people changing their outlook when something happens like when their child tells them that they are gay. It takes a lot to get a person to modify their internalized moral outlook. That is also further shown by the another thing found to have that effect, psychedelics, which are the most powerful psychoactive drugs in existence.

Being neural nets, they work by pattern recognition and some patterns are built in, particularly danger responses. The "fight or flight response" would be triggered by your moral instincts. We have instinctive ability to recognize many human and environmental dangers. We live in a much safer world than we came from so we don't see that as much but most people can recognize certain dangers such as an imminent attack and the ability to recognize dangers is highly trainable. Moral instincts not only makes decisions about right and wrong, they makes decisions about life and death. Much of the literature that has survived history is about moral decisions. Gut instinct often refers to neural net. What it tells you may be understood but it is not a message that comes in words.

Another thing that moral instincts may do is stop the individual from taking an action. In a case where it is not clear if an action would be right or wrong, your moral instincts will very often inhibit the action.

There are many ways that your moral instincts can drive or inhibit your actions. It can be hard to recognize because ... it is you. Moral instincts are a very old part of what a human is. They may be adapted to an older time. The funny thing is that if a person's conscious mind and their instincts are in disagreement, they can actually talk to their instincts. They cannot talk back but they can understand you and will listen if you explain your reasons. In ways, this hints at just how much your moral instincts can adapt.

There are a few other consequences of moral instincts residing in a neural net. Besides being trainable, that neural net is capable of solving problems by pattern recognition, but not just moral problems. Applying those patterns to scientific or philosophical problems may offer solutions that would not be obvious from other modes of thinking. It is hard to say just what the difference and relationship is between the neural net in the neo-cortex and the one more specialized in the older part of our mind, but it is pretty distinct. It would be both distinct and related like the visual neural nets. Much of the visual neural net is actually in the nerves of the eye itself.

All of this explains why philosophy, which is so wedded to logic and reason, ends up failing to describe morality. Morality is created by an evolutionary process which is more based on trial and error as well as huge elements of chance. The neural net reflects this but logic and reason don not reveal that.

Our moral instincts are extremely powerful but are reliant on our moral systems of strategy. Nature mostly relies on a strategy of competition. Humans need more to use more sophisticated strategies that enhance cooperation. Nature works in simple ways. We have powerful instincts to have sex and that naturally leads to children which releases nurturing behavior, but it might work better if we had more instinct to raise children. While we are driven to survive, it is like our sex drive, we need to know why we survive. We need a goal in front of us instead of just surviving now which is all evolution can effect. In Western tradition, the Greeks wanted to be more than animals and developed civilization for that purpose. Many other civilizations, some far older seemingly did the same thing. A goal gives one great power to accomplish. -- -- -- If nature works by competition is there a corresponding human strategy to support civilization and take us beyond where nature can? It needs to lead to cooperation and growth. There is a belief attributed to the Zoroastrians that might do. It was better known as it was taught by a Jewish teacher and ultimately replaced the oh so Darwinian strategies of Rome. He taught that we must love one another.

    2. Moral instincts

    3. Moral strategies - Cooperation, Competition, Status, Maximum Reproduction

    4. Ways of Solving Problems - Science, Philosophy, Morality

Science, Philosophy and Morality are distinct bodies of knowledge with different methods of solving problems. Sometimes they overlap. Sometimes they are related. All are used to provide understanding of the world and of self. All contribute to survival and each is needed. This discusses each one, but the purpose is really to illuminate the topic of Morality which has strong hereditary foundations and tends to be obscure. The description of science and philosophy are meant as stepping stones to a description of the body of knowledge and problem solving potentials of moral instincts and moral strategies.

All three types of knowledge follow characteristic patterns which may be real or they may be artifacts of how the human mind works (the neural net) but in either case that then is how human understanding works as well. That means that not only can knowledge be extrapolated to create understanding by logic and pattern recognition within a type of knowledge, but also between them. The patterns are all related. That is one of the values of developing skill with each of them because each type of knowledge can contribute to understandings in the others. All of these can develop understandings from insights created by the neural net. The problem with those insights is converting them into a form (usually language) that can be communicated and retained. The skills required to do that are the same for all three bodies of knowledge. The neural net can start up logical processes for verifying the patterns it is able to recognize. That means that human ability to use logic is hardwired into our minds. Clearly it can be trained quite a bit and works better with tools like language, but it is a very old ability in terms of evolution.

The accuracy of patterns can be evaluated by their completeness. That is how logic is used in philosophy. Are all the logical connections there? Are there any errors? Interestingly though, the accuracy of patterns can often or perhaps always be evaluated by their natural balance and even their poetic nature. That last part you will have to figure out for yourself. It seems to be a common feature of existence.

Science is probably the best known body of knowledge now. It has been defined as "the body of knowledge accepted by the accepted masters of the subject". Wherever scientific knowledge originates from, whether observation, experimentation, or prediction, it goes through a prescribed vetting process before being added to what is considered science. At least that is the basic definition. It has been that way to maintain a high standard of accuracy. There is a large grey area of valuable knowledge that is older than that process or is generally accepted for some other reason such as when it has gone through the medical vetting process. Science does use the tools of philosophy, logic and reason, to interpret the data it produces both to extend what the data means and to create understandings of the data that can be communicated. There is an overlap between philosophy. Much of what was called philosophy was explorations of the natural world before there were other tools to do it. Many questions in philosophy have been approached or even answered by science such as the nature-nurture question that was discussed by Plato but seemingly answered by Konrad Lorenz as a part of the science of biology.

Science has shown itself to be an amazingly powerful tool for investigating nature and humanity. It has allowed the organization and communication of enormous amounts of knowledge. It has given us great power and wealth. It has provided understanding of our world and ourselves. There is a lot that science cannot provide though and much of that must be husbanded by Philosophy

Just as science is an essential tool of survival, so is philosophy. Philosophy has offered us a great wealth as well. It organized and maintained all human knowledge before science was available for the purpose. One of the first products of Greek Philosophy was Rhetoric or persuasive speaking. It was a useful skill in a complicated society. Perhaps even more useful was the second great development of Greek Philosophy, Critical Thinking using logic and reason to verify the truth of the Rhetoric. Critical Thinking is still the most powerful tool humans have for discerning truth. It is an important skill of survival and only likely to become more important.

Philosophy is many things. It was the king of knowledge before science. It was something of a casualty of the war between science and religion. Science has been a jealous keeper of its authority about truth. Philosophy is old so it has many parts and views. The most basic view of philosophy is that it is truth that can be revealed by logic and reason, because other methods, even observation, can be fooled. Realistically, most philosophy is about logic and reason applied to observation because as any software developer can tell you, the branching of logic soon gets too complicated to manage. Besides, so much valuable wisdom and understanding was available from different schools of though including the Skeptics, the Stoics, the Epicureans and the multitude of other thinkers observing humanity and the natural world to create understandings. Still, all that knowledge had to be vetted by the basic philosophical principles of logic and reason.

In terms of survival strategy, we are going to need to develop an even more explicit knowledge of the philosophical foundations of our ecology. It just contains so much useful and necessary knowledge for dealing with the world. These days the term "philosophy" can make people roll their eyes, but the basics of philosophy are critically important to us. In ways, philosophy is like physics. Physics is a huge thing and right now research seems focused on incredibly advanced esoteric subjects that sort of make my eyes roll. I am sure that professional physicists find these topics endlessly fascinating and quite important, but I do not think most other people do. You do not need to know much about advanced physics for your survival or daily activities, but whenever you ride a bicycle, cook a meal or use a modern machine, you use very practical aspects of physics. It is that way with philosophy too. I do not know what to make of most advanced philosophy, but to me, it seems as esoteric as the event horizon of a black hole. The basics of philosophy though, especially skills with reason and logic, are used every day. We all need to be good at those. Luckily they are commonly known as they are part of our common culture, part of the civilization we have built. Philosophy contains factual and moral premises that are required for a society to function but that are not part of science. The most basic functions of philosophy are to be able to properly use your mind to discern truth in the world around you and to understand yourself. Without training in the skills of how to use intelligence, it is of very limited use. Those skills are critical to survival and are becoming more so with the flood of information and disinformation we seem to be swimming in.

One of the first lessons of Western Philosophy, as inherited from the Greeks, was Rhetoric or persuasive speaking. We need to know what it is and to recognize it. It was pretty fundamental to the democratic forms the Greeks were developing. Not surprisingly, that form of manipulation quickly led to techniques to figure out what parts of the rhetoric were true... something I think we clearly are needing today. That technique was the "second" great development of Greek thought, Critical Thinking based on logic and reason. Unfortunately, that term is very commonly misused and overused these days. Still, basically, it is the use of "language" to examine the truth of propositions based on the use of language to model the reason and logic of the world we encounter. At its simplest, language can work as an application of Boolean logic, a type of mathematics. It can be usefully applied to much of the human experience.

In the past, it has always been assumed that an educated person was well-read. Reading uniquely teaches critical thinking as the author tells how their character discovered a problem, the process they followed to understand it, the mistakes they make and how they recognized them, then the various steps of expressing the understanding they developed. It sounds easy enough and obvious, but it is a set of learned skills and methods, so it takes time, practice, and teaching by someone with expertise. Reading teaches thinking. Learning requires making mistakes and "reading" can teach those lessons. It is a critical part of the training of how a person can and should use their mind. It is no easier to learn than a martial art, if probably less painful. It is though a complicated learning process that should be done with intent rather than just by accident and experience. Notice that reading is not considered science or philosophy though it teaches techniques of thinking and problem solving while having access to the largest of all bodies of knowledge. A current problem now though is that electronic media that is commonly replacing books does not tend to teach critical thinking. It expounds things, but rarely shows the development and paths that led to the understanding of what it shows. One can have a great deal of knowledge with minimal understanding, which is unfortunate because without understanding, one does not know the truth of something. One could be fooled by clever rhetoric that is actually false. Only detailed critical analysis and understanding, in words, combined with knowledge would show the truth or falseness of something. Understanding the complex world we live in and discerning the truth are going to become more and more critical as survival tools.

It seems fortunate that we have so much knowledge but unfortunate that it is often mistaken for understanding. Part of that is just because of laziness, a natural thing. Knowledge is far easier than understanding. You can watch a video on a single piece of technique or technology and you will think you understand it. When you try to use it though, you will find a tedious process of working through details, discarding paths, and building an internal understanding. There is a vast distance and a lot of work between knowing and understanding. It is just how the mind works. We are made to understand. It takes time, effort and discipline but it is essential to survival.

Philosophy is a body of knowledge and way of knowing that it is distinct from science. Science is particularly good at producing facts and data. It does though rely on the ancient techniques of reason and logic from philosophy that are able to organize and change that data into understanding. Many questions asked in philosophy have been answered by science but many have not and science is unlikely to be the tool to provide understanding of them. Science cannot teach one how to recognize and defend against the manipulation of rhetoric. Science is unlikely to ever address principles that Stoicism teaches for dealing with the challenges of life. Science is not the tool to examine the reasons for the choices of the Skeptics or Epicureans.

All too often, science is used as an end, rather than a means of reaching understanding. It can be short sighted. For someone "reading" science, usually, it is easier to know what they read than to develop a real fine-grain understanding that is part of a world view. Science has shown a fantastic practical power to create wealth and manipulate the world. That has made it eclipse philosophy for managing knowledge and information about our world but it needs to be used for creating understanding as well. The understanding philosophy provides may get overlooked. Some people even think that science is the only valid source of truth, which is quite sad, because it may lead them to ignore the difficult and important questions that science cannot answer... and they are many. It may also simply make them miss that there are other ways of solving problems and other solutions.

Philosophy has lost a lot of respect, but one should remember that it was once the king of sciences. It is ultimately a way of discovering and verifying the truth. It is a way we build understanding, something important by itself to humans and also important to survival. It is a way of knowing and understanding. The point of bringing up philosophy (besides being an interesting digression into strategy) and science as different ways of knowing, solving problems, and developing understandings is to lead to one other way that is critically important. There is another way of knowing, solving problems and knowledge than those, that a person needs to develop in order to survive. That is Morality. It is the oldest problem solving method and it has an ancient body of knowledge. It is critically important to survival. Morality is the name of the instinctive and learned survival strategies that humans use. It is a problem-solving method that is often forgotten because it is old, subtle and can be vague, but it has a real power and importance. It is related to philosophy and much of what is known as philosophy is actually morality. There is a large difference between philosophy and morality though. The difference can be difficult to explain but it actually matters. Some claim that philosophy is only what is revealed by reason and logic but that makes no sense because you need something to apply the logic to. So a useful definition of philosophy would be the use of reason and logic to answer a question. That is as compared to morality which is insights created by the neural net and transformed by reason and logic into something that can be retained and communicated. This is relevant because philosophy is something you can be convinced of and understand by reason and logic. Philosophy starts as language. Morality does not. Morality must be understood by the neural net. Very often morality even defies logic. Logic leads to simple yes-no answers. Morality often leads to answers that require balances. This would apply to justice. There is rarely a simple answer when justice is needed. Moral answers may be too complicated for logical analysis such as the Stoic idea of journaling and other habits to develop self awareness. Moral statements often ignore logic for simplicity such as "an evil tree bears no good fruit". It probably does bear a good fruit once in a while but in moral terms, which is about survival rather than the absolutes of logic, it is true. Look at Stoic Philosophy or its Eastern counterpart Buddhism. Everything it says seems reasonable to you, to your moral instincts and may even be logical but very often logic and reason can only be applied in hindsight and the logic will not be rigorous. If a moral concept originated in the neural net of the mind, it is vetted for logic before and during the transformation to language. A good test of this would be see if these rules apply historic examples of moral statements like the 147 Maxims carved on the walls of the Temple of Apollo at Delphi or the 42 Negative Confessions of Ma'at. It should apply to the moral statements in the Bible and in Eastern texts that include moral aphorisms and guidance. Still, since it did not originate from logic or a tool based on logic, that is language of some sort, it may be quite true and will be accepted as true by your moral instincts but cannot be subjected to to any rigorous logical proof. It is the result of the pattern recognition of the neural net, not a logical ability. ****

A neural net can learn. That is why moral systems are so important. Still, the neural net is limited in what it can learn. An interesting thought is that more than anything else, your moral nature makes you unique. Products of the neural net are unpredictable. A well known problem for computer systems that use them. Nothing is more important or gives more power than a goal.