Jean
Piaget (1896-1980). A renowned Swiss psychologist, he argued that moral
development is linked to cognitive development.
Are
intelligence and morality interlinked? This was what Swiss psychologist Jean
Piaget concluded from his studies of child development. With increasing age,
children develop not only intellectually but also morally, growing out of
infantile self-centredness and into adult decentered-ness:
According to Piaget, moral development — the ability to judge ethical problems in an impartial and unbiased way — relies on prior cognitive development. Indeed, cognitive and moral development are structurally similar. In both is acquired a well-founded, reasonable structure. As Jean Piaget (1948/1932, p. 404) stated: "Parallelism exists between moral and intellectual development: ... Logic is the morality of thought just as morality is the logic of action." And this parallelism is based on the cognitive nature of morality, e.g. to behave ethically one has to take the perspective of third parties. (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 32)
This view has become popular and is even central to much of present-day thinking. If people are better educated, they will presumably become not only smarter but also more empathic and, thus, more considerate of their fellow humans. This view, as popular as it is, doesn't seem quite true. Many of us have known people who are intelligent and yet lacking in empathy. We call them psychopaths. Usually, they're explained away as aberrations. They're sick, aren't they? In reality, the line between 'normal' and 'psychopath' is arbitrary—like most mental traits, the capacity for empathy is distributed continuously along a bell curve. Lots of seemingly normal people have little empathy.
Nor
does Piaget's view seem true if we look farther afield. Many moral systems
attach little importance to empathy. Indeed, of all the world religions,
Christianity seems unique in advocating the moral duty not only to help others
but also to feel their pain, even when they aren't fellow Christians. Yes, most
Christians fail to meet this standard of universal selflessness, but other
religions don't set the bar so high.
Indeed,
the ideal of universal selflessness isn’t at all universal. It developed
essentially within a single cultural context, the Christian world:
In Judaism and Christianity, "God created man in his own image" (Gen1:27 ESV). Humans being the image of God, "God-likeness", implies treating humans in a respectful way. Of course, at first blush, history reveals large discrepancies between the message of Christianity and the actual behavior of Christians. However, this does not mean that such behavior was consistent with the Christian message, and in many cases it was criticized by prominent Christians at the time. The Christian message had a corrective function. For instance, the inhumane treatment of American Indians by Spanish colonists was criticized by the Dominican priest Bartholomé de Las Casas (as mentioned above). The abolitionist movement was organized by Protestants and led by the Evangelical Christian William Wilberforce. The horrors of war were mitigated by charities such as the Red Cross, which was founded by the evangelical Christian, Henry Dunant. (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 34)
The Muslim world imported as many slaves as did the Christian world, yet a Muslim abolitionist movement never arose, and the trade was ultimately abolished worldwide through the intervention of Christian nations, particularly Great Britain. Today, the slave trade has left no legacy of guilt among Muslims, while it definitely has in those nations that strove to bring it to an end.
This
apparent paradox has led Heiner Rindermann—a well-known psychologist in HBD
circles—to challenge the Piagetian idea that moral development is linked to
intellectual development. These two mental traits are distinct and have
followed their own trajectories in different moral traditions.
To
prove his point, he teamed up with sociologist Noah Carl to study
how respect for human rights is related, cross-culturally, to cognitive ability
and religion. They found a stronger relationship with religion than with
cognitive ability. Specifically, the percentage of Christians in a society had
a stronger positive impact (r = .62) on respect for human rights (Rindermann
and Carl 2018) than did educational level (r = .54) or cognitive ability (r =
.50 to .51).
One
can quibble about the methodology. The study defines human rights largely as
the right to make choices on one's own, regardless of existing social norms.
Freedom of religion, for instance, is defined as the freedom not only to
practice one's religion but also to convert to another. As the authors
themselves note, this is not a legitimate freedom in much of the world, unless
one is converting to the majority religion. Freedom doesn’t mean that a
minority is free to become the majority.
Nonetheless,
there does seem to be a correlation between Christianity and respect for human
rights as long as we define the latter, at least in part, as maximization of
personal choice and autonomy.
Is Christianity
confounded with European ancestry?
Correlation isn't causation. Couldn't Christianity be a proxy for
"European-ness"? Indeed, most Christians are at least partly of
European ancestry, and even more live in societies founded and still largely
run by people of European origin.
To
control for this confounding factor, one could compare Christian and
non-Christian societies within a region where European ancestry is minimal.
Sub-Saharan Africa comes to mind. Even in South Africa, the European minority
is down to the single digits.
Rindermann
and Carl (2018, p. 60) did make that comparison:
Those correlations are indeed weak. Moreover, the one between Christianity and respect for human rights is largely due to the relatively stable societies of southern Africa, i.e., South Africa itself, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Those societies enjoy a judicial and administrative legacy that may not last much longer, given recent events and the example of Zimbabwe.
Within sub-Saharan Africa [...] the percentage of Christians is still positively (but weakly) related to human rights (r = .10; N = 48), and the percentage of Muslims is still negatively (but weakly) related to human rights (r = -.12).
Those correlations are indeed weak. Moreover, the one between Christianity and respect for human rights is largely due to the relatively stable societies of southern Africa, i.e., South Africa itself, Namibia, Botswana, Lesotho, and Swaziland. Those societies enjoy a judicial and administrative legacy that may not last much longer, given recent events and the example of Zimbabwe.
To
be honest, I feel little in common with fellow Christians like Jacob Zuma and
Robert Mugabe. Ironically, both of them have a better claim to being Christian
than I do, since I refused to be confirmed after attending my confirmation
classes.
Is European
ancestry confounded with a genetically influenced trait?
If
European ancestry is a confounding factor, could it be a proxy for some unknown
genetically influenced trait? Rindermann and Carl tried to answer this question
by estimating the average "skin brightness" of each country.
Skin brightness is more highly correlated with human rights than is cranial capacity (r = .25 vs. .18). Of course, skin color itself is unlikely to exert any effect; it constitutes a marker for evolutionary pressures that may be associated with culture. (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 53)
This is, I suspect, a reference to Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) and his belief that humans had to become more intelligent as they spread into harsher northern climates: "those tribes that emigrated early to the north, and there gradually became white, had to develop all their intellectual powers, and invent and perfect all the arts in their struggle with need, want, and misery, which, in their many forms, were brought about by the climate. This they had to do in order to make up for the parsimony of nature, and out of it all came their high civilization" Parerga and Paralipomena, Volume II, Section 92.
Rindermann
and Carl seem to be assuming that European skin became white solely as an
adaptation to the northern natural environment. They also seem to be assuming
that moral development is linked to cognitive development—the very hypothesis
they want to test.
A
better genetic marker would be the long allele for the 5-HTTLPR serotonin transporter gene. It's less frequent in
collectivistic cultures than in individualistic cultures, the latter being the
cultures of western and northern Europe—the same cultures that value so much
the rights of the individual (Chiao and Blizinsky 2010). In a study of American
toddlers, carriers of the short allele were more likely to imitate the way
other people behaved (Schroeder et al. 2016).
The
study provides additional evidence for the view that Christianity, in itself,
doesn't explain why Europeans, and especially northwest Europeans, see all
individuals as being endowed with the same rights. Of the three branches of
Christianity, Protestantism has the strongest correlation with respect for
human rights (r = .48), followed by Catholicism (r = .42), and finally
Orthodoxy (r = -.07) (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 52). This suggests that
Christianity changed as its geocenter progressively moved from the Middle East
to southern Europe and then to northwest Europe, along the way becoming more
focused on the individual and on individual responsibility.
Within Christianity, Protestantism stresses conscience, individual guilt, internal control, autonomy and self-responsibility (Weber, 2008/1904). All these traits are conducive for liberty, the rule of law, democracy and human rights (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 34)
[...] in Protestant countries, trust is higher, corruption is lower and levels of social and economic freedom are higher (Delhey & Newton, 2005; Harrison, 2013). People tend to be more self-controlled, having internalized social rules, meaning that harsh and violent control by the state is not needed. (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 37)
The two authors are aware of the Hajnal Line and its relationship to a suite of psychological and behavioral traits. In societies north and west of a line running approximately from Trieste to St. Petersburg, social relations have long shown a certain pattern:
-
men and women marry relatively late
-
many people never marry
-
children usually leave the nuclear family to form new households
-
households often have non-kin members
This
is the Western European Marriage Pattern (WEMP). Everyone is single for at
least part of adulthood, many stay single their entire lives, and a significant
proportion of households have members not belonging to the immediate family or
even to kin. In short, an individual is less fettered by the bonds of kinship
even within his or her household (Frost 2017).
This led to late marriage, high rates of childlessness (of about half of the cohort), more rights for women, and large investments in education. Going further than Hajnal himself did, it arguably also enhanced delay of gratification, self-control (especially of sexuality), conscientiousness, frugality, industry and cognitive ability. The causes of this marriage pattern can be traced to Roman, Germanic and Christian traditions, to the interests of the church, and to the interests of landlords and guilds. (Rindermann and Carl 2018, p. 39)
The above view is also the one held by *hbd chick, i.e., the WEMP developed after the introduction of Christianity and was, at least in part, a consequence of medieval Christian practices and institutions. Yet there is good evidence for the existence of the WEMP as early as ninth-century France and fragmentary evidence even earlier (Frost 2017). I have argued that the arrow of causality points in the other direction: a pre-existing mindset in northwest Europe was carried over into Christianity, much like the Christmas tree and other pagan traditions. Later, as the center of Christendom moved west and north, this mindset gained importance within Western Christianity and pushed it more and more toward the idea of individual salvation and an individual relationship with God.
The
northwest European mindset is characterized essentially by four interrelated
mental traits:
Independent social
orientation
- independence of the self from others, including stronger motivation toward
self-expression, self-esteem, and self-efficacy and emphasis on personal
happiness rather than social happiness.
Universal rule
adherence
- capacity to obey universal and absolute moral rules, i.e., moral universalism
and moral absolutism, as opposed to situational morality based on kinship.
These rules are enforced by monitoring not only others but also oneself.
Rule-breakers may be branded as morally worthless and expelled.
Affective empathy - capacity to
experience the emotional states of other people in order to prevent harm and to
provide help if needed. Help is conditional on the other person being judged
morally worthy.
Guilt proneness - capacity to
self-monitor thoughts and behavior for rule adherence in order to self-judge
and, if necessary, to self-punish.
Conclusion
Are
universal human rights truly universal? If we look at cultures across space and
time, we find that the notion of human rights was nonexistent in most cultures
and historical periods. Not until the 18th and 19th centuries did some
countries codify this notion in law, although it clearly has antecedents that
go farther back, at least to the formulation of canon law by the Catholic
Church and perhaps farther. Northwest Europeans seem to have long been
predisposed to think in terms of individual rights and universal moral rules.
Since
the early 19th century, we in the West have tried to impose these rights on the
entire world, initially through the suppression of the slave trade and then
through the efforts of missionaries and colonial authorities to ban certain
practices, like the custom of sati in India. Such efforts became an integral
part of Western imperialism and "the white man's burden."
Although
this burden has since been taken up by truly international bodies, like the
U.N., the notion of universal human rights still reflects a Western view of
people as atomized individuals who mainly seek to maximize their wealth,
happiness, and personal autonomy. This is not how most humans view the purpose
of existence. For that matter, this view was not originally held by northwest
Europeans, whose understanding of moral universalism has steadily radicalized
and expanded in scope over time.
References
Chiao,
J.Y. and Blizinsky, K.D. (2010). Culture-gene coevolution of
individualism-collectivism and the serotonin transporter gene. Proceedings of the Royal Society B 277:
529-537.
http://rspb.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/277/1681/529.short
Frost,
P. (2017). The Hajnal line and gene-culture coevolution in northwest Europe, Advances in Anthropology 7: 154-174.
http://file.scirp.org/pdf/AA_2017082915090955.pdf
Rindermann,
H. and N. Carl. (2018). Human rights: Why countries differ, Comparative Sociology 17: 29-69.
Schopenhauer,
A. (1974)[1851]. Parerga and Paralipomena,
English translation by E. F. J. Payne, Clarendon Press, Oxford, 2 volumes.
Schroeder,
K.B., Asherson, P., Blake, P.R., Fenstermacher, S.K., and Saudino, K.J. (2016).
Variant at serotonin transporter gene predicts increased imitation in toddlers:
relevance to the human capacity for cumulative culture. Biology Letters 12(4).
http://europepmc.org/articles/pmc4881356
An interesting fact about this is that while NW Euros are the most individualist in terms of values, they are not the most individualistic in terms of personality and character (selfishness,sociopathy,egoism,etc.) if one compares different races and ethnic groups. NW Euros have lower levels of dark triad traits (psychopathy, narcissism, sadism, etc) than Middle Easterners, Southern Europeans, Latinos and Blacks.
ReplyDeleteI don't think intelligence is orthogonal to malevolence, I would take high intelligence as an admittedly imperfect though still worthwhile indication of trustworthiness. The origin of NW European mental traits lying very far back possibly in selection among coastal Mesolithic peoples is what I think you are arguing. No room for Indo Europeans or Gimbutas's theories? In individuals I can see how the person who is obviously trustworthy because they have those NWE traits could be valuable in any enterprise and the first commercial state was Holland, followed by England. However, England found itself at war with fellow Puritan state Holland over commercial supremacy. One should not expect that countries behave in line with individual morality, unless that converges with the dictates of power politics. I think universal human rights function internationally to alter or preserve the balance of power. Britain used anti slavery laws to interfere with French and American commence and reduce the prestige of their systems. Britain opposed antisemitism while interfering in Russian interests in the Balkan counties freed from the Ottomans. Edmund Burke had more influence on state policy in relation to opposing Revolutionary France that he did when he tried to ameliorate the plight of Indians under British commercial colonialism.
ReplyDeleteThe origin of NW European mental traits lying very far back possibly in selection among coastal Mesolithic peoples is what I think you are arguing. No room for Indo Europeans or Gimbutas's theories?
ReplyDeleteIf I'm not mistaken, Peter rejects the idea of demographic replacement or significant impact by the Indo Europeans in NW Europe.
However, England found itself at war with fellow Puritan state Holland over commercial supremacy. One should not expect that countries behave in line with individual morality, unless that converges with the dictates of power politics.
Also commercializing Protestant England had privateering, which was state sanctioned theft. It wasn't just state sanctioned but socially approved and prestigious, and privateers were some of the wealthiest and most famous men of their day.
It would be interesting to compare Far Eastern (f.ex. japanese and chinese) christians to their countrymen and to the western christians.
ReplyDeleteYes, most Christians fail to meet this standard of universal selflessness, but other religions don't set the bar so high.
ReplyDeleteWhat about jihadists and suicide bombers? Few Christians today seem willing to risk or sacrifice their lives.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThey sacrifice themselves for Islam, NOT humanity in general.
luke jones,
ReplyDeleteIslam is a universal religion for all of humanity. Obviously they believe the cause of Islam for humanity in general.
@Anonymous
ReplyDeleteThen explain the tribalism, psychopathy and mafia behavior common throughout the Muslim world. Islam is only universal in the sense of being non-ethnic like Buddhism, Christianity and Zoroastrianism. They don't believe in human rights, neither do other people except NW Euros and their dispora.
Now I'm not going to deny genetic differences between human races, nor cultural differences between Northern Europeans and Moslem Southern/Eastern Mediterraneans. But denying they are moral universalists, is rubbish.
ReplyDelete