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1-Page Summary of The Moral Landscape

Overview

Most people think they’re good, honest citizens but every day the newspaper is filled with stories of crimes and other immoral actions.

Many good people do bad things. The reason is that our moral compasses are unreliable and vary from person to person. We should look into the workings of the brain, which creates morality, rather than in ancient religious texts that claim to lay down rules for morality.

In this passage, you’ll read about moral relativists who don’t care if they live in a world where they’re constantly happy or one where they are tortured. You’ll also see how you could stop a train from crashing even if it means killing someone. Finally, you will find out why genital mutilation can be considered morally wrong no matter what the culture is.

Big Idea #1: Morality isn’t supernatural: it’s governed by physical and chemical processes in our brains.

Most people have a sense of morality and will readily proclaim that helping others is right, but killing them is wrong. Right?

However, have you ever thought about where morality comes from? Many people believe that it’s a result of religious teachings and was determined by a divine power. However, the more we understand about the brain, the more we see that it’s actually completely natural as well.

Let’s look at the brain more closely. It turns out that it is not mystical and functions just like all of our other organs, for example, by releasing dopamine or firing synapses. These processes together form a physical state which reflects how we’re experiencing the world at any given moment. This state is near universal to all humans, so if you examine two people who are both feeling sad, their brain states will have similar patterns.

Moral decisions are based on physical sensations. The feeling of right or wrong is brought about by the level of hormones in our brains.

For example, when we cooperate with someone, it makes us feel good. It’s no surprise then that feeding the hungry is considered to be more moral than letting them starve.

The brain plays a major role in determining how we perceive morality. Therefore, the only way to approach moral questions is through knowledge of the brain. This approach will give us more useable information than anecdotes and parables from ancient religious texts do.

Big Idea #2: Morality has its roots in our evolutionary history.

As we now know, our sense of morality is connected to brain states. We can understand this connection better by examining how the brain came to be in the first place.

The way our brains work is similar to how other organs in nature function. For example, a giraffe’s neck and the eye of a hawk each serve their own purpose but neither evolved for that reason.

Evolutionary changes happen by accident. And these changes are the result of mutations in genes, which lead to certain attributes or take them away. This can impact an animal’s ability to survive and reproduce positively or negatively.

Evolution is always built upon what came before. Our brains are the amalgamation of ancient and new developments. The newer additions, like our frontal lobes, are responsible for more complex behavior. But there’s still some wiring that’s older in our brain, so the newer additions must work with those less-sophisticated structures to function as a whole.

Our sense of morality comes from our evolutionary ancestors. In terms of brain states, there is no difference between beliefs like “2+2=4” and moral beliefs such as “killing the innocent is wrong.” To form moral beliefs, we must consult older parts of our brains. We can see this in experiments with monkeys who demonstrated morally correct behavior by forgoing food to prevent their cage mates from receiving electric shocks.