I would like to, with the help of the members of this forum who have a grasp of both developmental psychology and evolutionary psychology, explore the origins of blame, forgiveness and morality in the context of early developing humans and possibly the relating and existing similar traits found in animals with similar shared origins.
This means that, we will be exploring both the context of development in a single human life, and development over evolutionary timeframes and in the context of group survival.
To even approach this topic, we need to explore its foundations, which I believe lay in ‘theory of mind’.
Those of you familiar with developmental psychology will no doubt be familiar with this term, so for the sake of clear shared communication and for those who wish to engage in this discussion who may not have the background, I will use the most accessible sources for definitions, that means when I do a google search, the first most accessible source will be used if I deem it to be resonant with my understanding, this is purely due to laziness and time poor constraints. Obviously where my understanding is lacking I will dig further.
Theory of mind, and other minds
Theory of mind, taken from Wikipedia
So to summarise, it is the projection (the inferring) of mental states of other entities (organisms which likely contain minds) through the observation of the organism and its behaviours, mannerisms, etc.In psychology, theory of mind refers to the capacity to understand other people by ascribing mental states to them (that is, surmising what is happening in their mind). This includes the knowledge that others' mental states may be different from one's own states and include beliefs, desires, intentions, emotions, and thoughts.[1] Possessing a functional theory of mind is considered crucial for success in everyday human social interactions. People use such a theory when analyzing, judging, and inferring others' behaviors. The discovery and development of theory of mind primarily came from studies done with animals and infants.
This capacity is one which develops in humans, it seems fairly early in life over a series of progressive unfoldments.
According to that wiki page, at the age of three or four the capacity to determine if observable actions are intentional vs unintentional develops.
So actions are being implicitly (unconsciously or below the level of awareness) categorised as either intentional (with purpose and goal) vs unintentional (without purpose or goal). Essentially, on purpose, or accidental.
Here, based on these few fairly undisputed points, I will begin my own investigation.
Theory of mind, it’s understanding of causality and its relation to other minds
In order to attribute purposefulness, theory of mind must also be taking into account causality. What I mean by causality is, cause and effect. A change occurs, then a resulting change occurs, and there is an association made between the cause, and the effect. The cause is seen as preceding the effect.
In isolation, such an incident seems on its surface completely reasonable. Especially when the source of the cause is an isolated, independent organism. However, the mind and its theory of mind does not seem to take into account any unseen prior causes to the initial source of the behaviour in question.
To summarise, the mind sees an organism as containing an agent, and infers that it has an ability to produce or cause changes, which lead to effects, of which have no preceding cause. The implicit understanding of theory of mind in regard to other minds is that, a mind is an independent, isolated entity, which can produce causes or changes, through its own body, which have resulting effects, and those initial causes have no preceding causes.
Determinism, and overlooked assumptions
Now to any determinist, this view is illogical.
Determinism is:
Other than in the scale of quantum events, which is far lower than the scale we are examining here, Science operates under this assumption that all causes have preceding causes.a philosophical view, where all events are determined completely by previously existing causes.
This can sometimes be a simplistic view of determinism, because the reality is not so linear and serial (one after the other). The truth is that there can be multiple interacting causes which couple together to produce effects. An example of this is the “three body problem” in Newtonian physics, which describes sciences inability to accurately calculate Newtonian interactions with more than two localisations of mass. This is borne out in “chaos theory”, which describes human’s inability to make accurate predictions of systems (groups of interacting parts) beyond a certain point.
The truth is that determinism is only a philosophical and theoretical view or metaphysic, which cannot even in theory be applied by humans or any other sentient species without perfect knowledge. But despite this limitation, it is still a useful metaphysic in which to place the Newtonian scientific world for making theories and rough predictions, and determining relationships between things in the world.
With these understandings of the context of determinism, and cause and effect, we come back to the assumptions our mind makes about other minds, and by extension, it’s own mind.
The mind is making an erroneous assumption that it and any other sufficiently developed mind can produce actions with no prior causes. One reason for this misperception is that there can be unconscious causes for actions. By unconscious, I mean that the mind is not aware at the time of the intention of the action, of what led to that action being cued for initiation. Because of this, the mind is blind to causes of its own actions, and infers that they appear from itself as the source.
Hiding within this assumption is the further assumption that the mind does in fact contain an independent, entity, I.e. the self, which is the source of actions, thoughts, etc.
Based on this erroneous assumption of a self existing within an organism, minds are able to ascribe responsibility, a kind of labelling certain minds as the source or cause of certain actions. If those actions are deemed to be unwanted, then blame is ascribed.
The truth of the hidden or unseen causes of actions produced by organisms are either overlooked, or not seen as relevant to the production of those unwanted behaviours. This is how blame can exist within a deterministic world, it is a kind of shared lie which all participants all implicitly agree upon in order to function in a way which ensures future behaviours will be more acceptable, and that other minds can see the consequences of certain unwanted actions, I.e. punishment.
So blame and responsibility are actually useful and necessary concepts for survival, but exist upon a lie.
The self and other, the erroneous assumption and basis for morality
There is within the mind, a “construct” of this self. “Construct” here means, a collection of mental objects, perceptions, relating to the organism, it’s perceptions of its body, and attributions of mental states, emotional states etc to that entity. This construct is like a straw man, standing in for where an independent agential self would be.
This is what every human believes they are, implicitly. Even materialists. They have an implicit belief that they are such an entity, though they may even explicitly (consciously) know the truth that no such independent entity exists. It truly is a vexing situation all humans seem to find themselves in.
So here, we have an implicit motivation and reason for a kind of moral responsibility emerging. Simply by an organism developing alongside other organisms, one which has the capacity to infer mental states to other organisms based on their actions and mannerisms, a kind of morality begins to emerge.
We have not even begun to explore the evolutionary “benefits” to this state of affairs through natural selection.
I will not go there for now although it can be a topic we explore further, however I need to finally explore the concept of forgiveness and its relation to what has already been stated.
Forgiveness, the minds self understanding of contingency of action and deterministic context
Forgiveness is the tendency for humans, to excuse other organisms which are viewed as agential minds, of behaviours in certain situations.
How could forgiveness have developed, from a developmental psychological standpoint?
I believe it may relate directly to the theory of mind, and it’s own self understanding.
As the mind begins to observe its own actions, as it gains a kind of self awareness, it notices that sometimes it produces behaviours seemingly counter to its intentions. Counter to its goals.
It understands that there seem to be mental forces within its own mind which may be interfering with those goals and intentions. This, I believe, is the grasping that it is not in reality, a completely independent source for all actions, thoughts etc. There are hidden causes of behaviours and thoughts which exist within its own mind.
This is the basis for self forgiveness.
The golden rule
As it learns this about itself, by extension, it’s theory of mind applies this self understanding, of its flawed ability to either control unwanted behaviours, or inability to produce behaviours viewed as appropriate in certain circumstances. It can extend this self forgiveness, this understanding of the contingency it finds itself in as an agent, to others due to its theory of other minds.
We also have the basis for a kind of reciprocity and fairness emerging. The basis of empathy. To understand that other minds are like our own, we also have the wish that we be treated fairly, and thus, through the understanding of self forgiveness, a kind of reciprocity of fairness might emerge. The understanding that if we wish others to treat us with fairness and by extension forgiveness, we understand we must do the same for them.
I also propose that these moral developments are implicit, and are not consciously reflected upon.
It is possible that, these form the roots of the religious instinct and the associated moral teachings, which attempt to make explicit these implicit understandings and underlying ground rules of a cohesive group.
So, some contentious theories which can be discussed here.
Summary:
I have outlined the basis of a psychological development of morality, of blame, and of forgiveness, in the context of viewing other minds as independent sources of actions, which in reality is contrary to the Newtonian deterministic understanding of the physical world which minds and bodies and organisms exist within.
Self-Forgiveness emerges as one’s self awareness grasps its own fallibility due to the contingency of all actions and thoughts. Forgiveness of others and empathy for others also emerges with the aid of theory of mind coupled with a self forgiveness.
I have not explored how these developments may have produced behaviours which resulted in survival of that species compared to others without those traits. That could be a further topic of conversation here.
I know this is a lot to take in, so I have provided some summaries for those who are either too lazy to read the body of text, or, who struggled to make the connections I was making, in my descriptions.
Unfortunately I had to cut this short here as my daughter is pestering me to play with her, but I think it’s more than enough for now.
