loving radio national's "all in the mind" program i'm at the moment into one older episode from november 2006: "Moral Minds: The Evolution of Human Morality". i'm re-listening to it again and again!
i think this episode is particularly interesting, because it deals with a very basic paradox i "suffer" from, as many people do in a globally informed society. consider the following: i'm sometimes very certain, this or that is the right thing to do (e.g. "don't kill somebody in your family") and i might even be sure, all my friends and many people in my society a ceratin about this, too. though at the same time i'm aware there are lots of people or even whole societies believing very differently. - so, is "right or wrong" just a relative thing? or differently phrased: is morality only locally (in on believe system) absolute? my feelings - and my wishes - say "no"... and (this time!) my feels might be right:
the radio program and the two scientists (marc hauser & richard joyce) it refers to, explain the paradoxon with some interesting experiements strongly suggesting that our moral believes are shaped on grounds of an universal moral grammar. so there are some universal moral standards most people across different cultures will agree too! that's exciting news, i think!
anyway, read the transcript yourself! i myself are now pondering whether to get Marc D. Hauser's "Moral Minds: How Nature Designed Our Universal Sense of Right and Wrong" or Richard Joyce's "The Evolution of Morality"...
any suggestions?
Friday, January 5, 2007
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