Falling Into Consciousness: An essay on morality

[ignatzmouse]

(This is part of a much longer work on morality and ethics. The considerations are important not only as they pertain to the infusion of "morality" into politics but also because of the guiding hand of the likes of Rand and Strauss on the American conscience.)

Animals invariably act out of direct need or instinct. Hunger -- find food; threat -- find shelter; ovulate -- find mate. But unless an animal has been abused or misused by humans, an animal's actions cannot be said to be ethically right or wrong. Outside of our own conceptions of human benefit/harm, good and evil cannot be attributed to animals. Humans, however, do have moral/ethical responsibility for their actions. Though it is a separate debate as to how morality and ethics are defined, the question is -- why do humans have responsibility for their actions and other animals left to themselves are not subject to that test? We don't charge dogs with rape of other dogs. We don't charge birds with murder when they push a sibling from the nest. Killer whales aren't charged with the torture of seals. As it may be pointed out, humans are also animals. Everyone except sociopaths see rape, murder, and torture as wrong. The difference, however, is not only consciousness but also the role consciousness plays in intent.

Firstly, the acquisition of analogical thought gave humans the ability to name their instincts, their compulsions, and therefore turn them into things (desires) rather than to simply exist as biologically impelled actions. Analogical thought quantified indistinct verbs and made instincts into nouns that could be possessed. Territorial survival became conquest through war. The instinct to feed at its unfettered worst became hoarding, gluttony, and environmental and species destruction. The instinct to sexual coition was transformed in the extreme to enslavement of others via prostitution, sexual abuse, and incest. The instinct to shelter quantifies all possessions as wealth and status leading to conspiracies of privilege and denial. The instinct to sleep and dream quantifies in the extreme to chemical abuse. Note that quantified instincts are not in themselves wrong, but being blindly "ruled" by them invariably leads to very bad outcomes. Why? Analogical thought gives us the ability to manipulate others, our society, and our world to our own short-sighted ends. In these extremes, the intention of analogical thought does not see beyond the center of the self, beyond the life and death of the organism that is served. Read, there are no other centers.

But, curiously consciousness also gives us the capacity to put ourselves in the other person’s shoes and to both feel the consequences of our actions and project the consequences of our intent upon others. Indeed, by naming the self and becoming conscious in the analogical mind, humans inherently reflect the self, suffering or nurtured, within others and even within other creatures. The analogically conscious "I" sees suffering or joy in others and understands what it is like to be in their place. We laugh together. We cry together. Sentimental movies or even television commercials can make us cry because our consciousness automatically inserts itself into the place of the person losing their child or reuniting with a loved one or overcoming humiliation to succeed. We empathetically *feel*. That ability of consciousness to feel presents us with the feedback we call the conscience. Because we can feel the consequence of our actions upon another, we know and wrestle with right and wrong. Our conscience speaks to us because we are conscious. We are no longer the sole center, driven forward by the singular purpose of survival. We see all beings as centers, an understanding that invokes compassion and balance within our choices. A person guided by conscience is committing to the truest sense of humankind, our greatest and most profound distinction from the rest of the animal kingdom, because the conscience can even modulate instinct-driven self-interest. In a sense, we have fallen from innocence, from our animal selves, into knowledge and with that knowledge comes responsibility. (My allusion is mythic rather than religious.) It is a wholly new level of thinking, a leap into 4th dimensional awareness that is an analog of relativity. The understanding is that all beings are subjects because we are able to place our own subjective self within their places.

Likewise, a person who is conscious, who has the ability to feel the consequences of his actions upon others, and instead chooses a lower and less human course by quantifying his desires is able to manipulate people and the world in a way that an animal in-the-moment never can. When the manipulation runs counter to the conscience, to an understanding of the consequence of his actions upon others’ suffering, it is called evil (not in the sense of a deity’s prohibition but in the sense of purposeful action against awareness). Desires in themselves are not evil - they are inherent and natural. It is only when one begins to consciously manipulate one’s world against one’s humanity, one’s conscience, that it becomes evil and recoils backward into the lone, self-myopic center. This is the work of a dumb organism operating under the mistaken belief that possessing more translates the mechanism's survival into immortality. Manipulation sides with the mechanism over the higher realization of the self. The soulless, mechanical being is a classic theme of literature and film, and at its heart is the loss of conscience. It leads to the whole range of human predations including totalitarianism, environmental cataclysm, impoverishment and the worship of wealth, addictions, degradation of others for personal satisfaction, self-humiliation in an effort to empty the mechanism of feeling, theocracy, animal cruelty, arts possessed by merchandising, racism, classicism, sexism, homophobia, narcissism, and propaganda. I'll choose against that route.

--Robert Glenn Plotner

[orwell]

1. Thanks

Nice essay. It dovetails with some musings I had just yesterday on the notions of "good" and "evil".

[Just Me]

2. One wonders how individuals are able to drop empathy,...

,...block moral conscience while committing evil acts.

I'm glad someone is writing about the capacity of people to be evil.

[Nay]

3. Actually, some animals other than humans CAN be guilty of rape and

murder -- some apes and monkeys seem to have the same shame/guilt/horror reactions that humans do when they watch, or commit, horrendous acts like murder. There are hundreds of stories about whales and dolphins who actively help humans and other animals escape predators like sharks -- and they really have no reason to do so other than altruism. So we aren't the only ones.

[ignatzmouse]

4. Relatives and Close Associates

I don't argue against some level of proto-consciousness in our closest relatives. I didn't address them as the discussion is complex. Some apes can recognize themselves in mirrors. Chimps do on occasion use simple tools. I try to make the distinction of analogical thought (metaphorical language rather than animal calls). Trying to sift out whether proto-consciousness provided the architecture for analogical thought or whether it is the other way around is an immense challenge. I suspect that they developed together and reinforced each other through advantage and adaptation. The opposable thumb provided a hand that could manipulate objects in the environment, and that potential for manipulation is a kind of analogy as well as providing a bare level of consciousness -- ("I can think to use my hand in a novel way to obtain what I want, therefore I sort of am.") Perhaps the same hand later served as early language via signing. The way certain objects are gripped or obtained can be mimicked to become a noun and a directive. (Fresh water = cupped hand.) Apes do appear to have a capacity for signing. I think it is, however, revelatory that human facial expressions have an enormous range of emotional reflection and symbolism built into the species that are inherently made and understood. No other animal is capable of much more than grimace and submission expressions. It is testament to a level of analogical mind that is not present in other animals.

Whether or not an ape has a sense of sharing and shame is also a matter of its advantage in a social group. Biologists will sometimes argue therefore that human ethics is based solely on survival adaptation. My point is that such a view is limited and only serves to bring us back into moral relativism. The same strictly biological views are also argued by those who wish to establish a hierarchy of nobility being served by inferiors or selfishness as a virtue. I argue that there is a difference granted by human analogical thought that moves beyond biological survival advantages and points toward enlightenment, a realization of all beings as centers.

As to altruistic dolphins, again, perhaps there is some level of proto-consciousness -- dolphins are used in some communication studies -- but, I believe we must be careful about assigning human traits in a projective way. Wild dolphins will also sometimes try to mate with human swimmers. I would not subscribe an understanding of love to them.