Truth, a potential foundation of morality
Craig Anderson
University of Wisconsin, Madison
4/24/08
Introduced here is a concept for a new moral foundation, the morality of truth, or
the morality of right belief. The central aspect of this morality is that people tend to
moralize the beliefs that they hold to be true. Not only do individuals care that they
themselves have proper beliefs, but they further feel that others should share those same
beliefs. People have emotional and visceral reactions to claims that the ‘wrong’ beliefs
are true. This is just like other sorts of morals, but the action of believing is more subtle
than most other types of actions that are moralized.
Connected to the morality of holding the ‘right’ beliefs, it is also important that the
thought processes used to acquire those beliefs are sound. This is the idea that a person is
expected to be epistemically responsible, using the proper forms of reasoning to come to
develop beliefs(Koenig, 2002). There are different ways of using evidence to come to
conclusions about the world, and some of those are considered better than others.
Examples of highly regarded types of thought process are rationality, or the scientific
method.
The second point about the process of coming to believe is important, as moral
judgments about the beliefs that others hold may be attenuated or even eliminated in
cases where a person is ignorant of the ‘right’ belief due to circumstances out of their
control. Examples of this could be children, people in the past, or people of other
cultures who have not had exposure to the ‘right’ beliefs. In these cases, these
individuals could still be judged upon the soundness of their reasoning, but may not be
judged on the basis of the information which they had access to.
A more concrete set of behavior-governing rules that falls out of a morality of belief
are the actions involved with spreading beliefs. This consists of telling the truth, and
avoiding lying. There are other ways of justifying telling the truth, such as by appeals to
other dimensions of morality like fairness and harm, but it seems that this misses out on a
common intuition that lying is wrong, regardless of its effects. Having a morality of
belief brings truth-telling and lying into the realm of morality, without having to always
make some appeal to other morals.
A very clear example of this form of morality can be seen in the clash between
religions, or even somewhat in the clash between the religious and the secular. People of
each religious group see their own canon of beliefs as the truth, and that others are wrong,
immoral, or sometimes even inhuman, just for not believing in the right god(s). In many
cases, they are able to justify, just because of what the others believe, such things as
proselytizing, war, genocide, and more.
I see this as being a factor in things other than religion, but it is easiest for me to
demonstrate the moral of truth by using science and religion examples. I would guess
that 'right beliefs' don't reach the point of being considered morals by most of American
culture, most of the time. There are all sorts of attitudes and beliefs that people hold,
ideologies, stereotypes, beliefs of all kinds, that people may hold to be true, and believe
others should also believe to be true. However, they may not be willing(or able) to
coerce others into believing their ‘truth’. More often, the punishments that occur for
‘wrong’ beliefs are likely to involve losses of social status of one sort or another, whether
it be social standing within a group, or even exclusion from a group.
The reason why the morality of truth has slipped by unnoticed to this point is that
our culture has largely amoralized belief and truth. This has, however, required that laws
be passed to prevent the persecution of beliefs, with the 1st amendment serving this
purpose in American law. This explicitly allows both the freedom of speech(and
associated freedom of thought), along with the freedom of religion. On the international
stage, the UN International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights(adopted in 1966)
Article 18 states that:
1. Everyone shall have the right to freedom of thought, conscience and religion. This right shall include
freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief of his choice, and freedom, either individually or in
community with others and in public or private, to manifest his religion or belief in worship, observance,
practice and teaching.
2. No one shall be subject to coercion which would impair his freedom to have or to adopt a religion or belief
of his choice.
3. Freedom to manifest one's religion or beliefs may be subject only to such limitations as are prescribed by
law and are necessary to protect public safety, order, health, or morals or the fundamental rights and freedoms
of others.
4. The States Parties to the present Covenant undertake to have respect for the liberty of parents and, when
applicable, legal guardians to ensure the religious and moral education of their children in conformity with
their own convictions.
The most interesting point here is that it was considered necessary to add to international
law the freedom of thought.
But even in the present day U.S., there are many beliefs that people hold that are
considered by others to be taboo, or even immoral, regardless of the specific actions that
they may take. It is possible that in today’s world, beliefs may be more moralized in nonwesternized or less scientific cultures, much like the moral foundations of purity,
authority, and loyalty.
Examples
An example of this type can be seen in the discussion of what counts as legitimate
grounds for belief. Scientists say that observation and experimentation should be the
basis for forming beliefs about the world, while religious people say that the Bible, or
some other form of religious authority, is the source of evidence, and the wellspring of
truth. In this case, people make a largely pre-evidential and normative(moral) decision
about whether to base their beliefs on the authority of scientific evidence or religious
doctrine. In actuality, many Americans have some sort of split epistemology when it
comes to this question-allowing for science to be the best description of much of the
physical world, while at the same time having spiritual or religious beliefs about complex
and unknown phenomena, such as the meaning of life, questions of the afterlife, even the
mind and soul. The line that separates these 2 types of beliefs for any particular
individual may be fuzzy, but it is often there nonetheless.
A famous historical example that shows this moralization of belief and the conflict
between faith and science is the story of the heliocentric solar system of Copernicus.
Copernicus himself did not publish his book outlaying his theory until near the time of
his death for fear of reprisal from the Catholic Church. Giordano Bruno and Galileo
Galilei were later punished for their defense of the heliocentric solar system. Galileo was
forced to publicly recant belief in the heliocentric solar system and then imprisoned for
the last 10 year of his life. Bruno went even further to suggest that our solar system was
just one of many, and was burned at the stake by the Inquisition for heresy.
Other similar conflicts are ongoing today in the U.S., sometimes with the shoe on
the other foot, with the scientifically minded going after the religious. One example is
Christians that believe in faith healing and eschew modern medicine. There have been
lawsuits claiming child abuse against the children of these Christians, basically trying to
make their faith healing beliefs illegitimate as a guide to action. A further critique of
religion is offered by Daniel Dennett book Breaking the Spell, where he questions
whether inculcating children into a religion before they can evaluate it rationally is child
abuse(Dennett, 2006).
Going further into looking at religions, it seems clear that they often moralize
beliefs. Heresy, by its very definition, is “belief or opinion contrary to orthodox religious
doctrine”(Oxford Dictionary). Heresy was a capital crime for a significant part of the
history of Christianity, as occurred for Bruno, mentioned above. Even today, heresy is
grounds for excommunication from the Church. This shows that beliefs themselves are
often moralized. While I’m not sufficiently familiar with religious history, I would
imagine that many religions have had similar levels of prohibition against ‘wrong’ belief.
Adaptive challenge addressed by a morality of truth
So what would be the adaptive advantage of moralizing belief? One hypothesis
relies on an argument about social and imitative learning. One of the things that makes
humans so exceptionally successful is their ability to learn through imitation of their
social partners. This allows a person to come to know far more than they ever could
through personal first-hand learning. But along with these advantages comes an
associated problem-how can an individual maximize his chances of learning the ‘right’
things? Boyd and Richerson have approached this problem by looking at strategies that
an individual can use, and selectively imitate such things as the most common behaviors,
or the behavior of the most successful individuals, amongst other learning rules(Boyd and
Richerson, 2005). However, another way to go about solving this problem is to have a
morality that requires individuals hold and spread the ‘right’ beliefs. If everyone in the
community is required through morality to hold the ‘right’ beliefs, then the chance that
one will pick up ‘wrong’ beliefs is greatly reduced. It is very much in an individual’s
interest to care what their conspecifics believe, as it is likely to have an effect on that
individual’s beliefs in the future. Enforcing ‘right’ beliefs on others then would act to an
individual as insurance for the future, so that neither they, nor their offspring or kin,
would be likely to adopt, or be corrupted by, maladaptive beliefs. Further, moralizing
one’s own beliefs would make an individual less likely to adopt those ‘wrong’ beliefs
even if exposed to them, as they would have a compliance motivation to stay with the
‘right’ beliefs. Anecdotally, it seems that these are the sorts of arguments made by
authorities about ‘wrong’ beliefs, that they are dangerous to the young and the feebleminded, and must be combated to protect them.
There are also strong ties with three of the other moral foundations that could work
to be mutually reinforcing with a morality of truth, including ingroup/loyalty,
authority/respect, and purity/sanctity. These connections could potentially act as further
adaptive advantages for having a morality of truth for beliefs, as well as strengthening the
other moral foundations.
Purity concerns could certainly be recruited to support a morality of truth. It is
possible that having the ‘wrong’ ideas would be considered as being impure, whether
those beliefs would be in the wrong god, or that racism is a good thing(from a
progressive American perspective). At the same time as this would motivate ‘right’
belief, it would also broaden the reach of purity morals, allowing beliefs to be moralized
as well as more explicit actions.
The morality of ingroup/loyalty could be strengthened by the moralization of
beliefs. A morality of belief would increase the extent to which a group shared beliefs,
making the individuals within each group more similar to each other. It would then be
easier to engage the ingroup morality, because other members of the group would be
more like the self. And when a member of one’s group was threatened, there would be
additional motivation to help coming from the fact that one’s beliefs were being
threatened indirectly, as the person under threat shared the same beliefs. In the language
of multi-level selection, a morality of truth in beliefs would reduce differences within the
group, causing a reduction of within-group competition. At the same time, between
group differences could increase because each group would be narrowing onto its own
moral ‘truths’. Increasing between-group differences would increase the strength of
between-group competition. Having stronger group selection-caused by reduced withingroup selection and increased between-group selection, would then have a feedback to
increase morality of all kinds, as morality coordinates the behavior of group members.
There is also a strong reciprocation between the morality of truth and that of
authority, as perceived truth would be vested with authority. This would increase the
scope of authority, so that it also applied to the action of believing. Respect for authority
would often be synonymous with respect for truth, as ‘true’ beliefs would be deemed
inherently authoritative . Another tie between truth and authority comes from the fact that
those in positions of authority within a community have a very strong influence on what
is considered the truth.
Evolutionary history
It is clear that in order to moralize belief that one would need to have a fairly well
developed theory of mind. Theory of mind is often evaluated by looking at whether an
individual is aware that others can hold beliefs that are false, meaning that they are
different from the beliefs of the individual. Before it is possible to care what beliefs
others hold, one certainly has to know that those beliefs exist, as well as what they are. It
is only after understanding the beliefs of others that it would become possible to sanction
others’ beliefs.
There is only a limited amount of work that has been done relating to theory of
mind in our closest relative, the chimpanzee(Tomasello, 2003; de Waal, 1996). While
I’m not fully versed in those findings, my understanding of them is that the researchers
are now sure that chimpanzees have at least some understanding of theory of mind, but it
is not known how extensive that understanding is(Tomasello, 2003). Also, there is little
to no evidence of active teaching on the part of primates, which would be a clear way of
showing that primates cared about the thoughts of their conspecifics. As it is unclear to
what degree chimpanzees have a theory of mind, there is as yet no evidence that indicates
indignation by chimpanzees over the beliefs of others.
So, while it now seems to be the case that chimpanzees have some form of theory of
mind, they don’t show any moralization of beliefs. This gives some evidence that the
morality of truth has evolved since the evolutionary split between humans and
chimpanzees. The time at which it could have become advantageous to moralize belief
would have coincided with the large increase of imitative social learning, which afforded
the cumulative culture characteristic of humans today. An important but as yet
unspecified part of this story would be the question of how some moral emotions became
tied to notions of truth. This is discussed some in the relation of truth to other moral
foundations above. One possible way is through the emotion of disgust. In this way,
individuals are seen as impure by others if they do not hold the right beliefs. In
opposition to that, it could also be that those seen as having better access to the ‘truth’ are
elevated, and both the truth ideas and the people holding them are respected and revered.
There are of course many other ways in which a morality of truth could be tied into the
emotions, and it is an open empirical question as to exactly which emotions are used to
enforce a morality of truth.
References
Boyd, R., & Richerson, P. J. (2005). The origin and evolution of cultures. New York:
Oxford University Press.
de Waal, F. (1996). Good natured: The origins of right and wrong in humans and other
animals. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press.
Dennett, D. C. (2006). Breaking the spell: Religion as a natural phenomenon: Viking
Press.
Koenig, M.A. (2002). Children’s understanding of belief as a normative concept. New
Ideas in Psychology, 20.
Tomasello, M., Call, J., & Hare, B. (2003). Chimpanzees understand psychological states
- the question is which ones and to what extent. Trends in Cognitive Sciences,
7(4).
United Nations. Universal declaration of human rights.
=====================
[Here are some additional clarifications from Anderson, from email correspondence with Haidt:]
You ask what I think that this foundation is really about. Well, at its core, I would say that the idea of a
morality of truth/belief is about solving the problem of dealing with the huge amount of culturally created
information that each individual is exposed to, and has the opportunity to internalize and take on as their
own, ignore, or fight against. One has to pick some subset of ideas and beliefs out of that pool of cultural
information to believe and use as a basis for action, and one important mechanism could be through the
moralization of some of those as the 'right/true' beliefs(Boyd and Richerson, amongst others, have
extensively studied cultural evolution and have proposed other more individualistic mechanisms for
choosing beliefs). This is a problem mostly confined to humans, as we are the only species that has large
amounts of cumulatively built cultural information that we need to negotiate.
As to the point about epistemic responsibility, I looked back and found that perhaps I was not complete
enough in my description of it. In different cultures, what it means to be epistemically responsible may
be vastly different, and it may rely on other forms of evidence, or other sources of 'right belief' than
evidence and experimentation. Those other sources of 'right belief' could be from such things as holy
books, tribal elders, mystical experiences, or the like. Likewise, the thought processes that may be
respected may not be those of rationality or the scientific method, but instead some other culturally
endorsed form of thought, perhaps ways that we in the West may think of as spiritual or magical thinking.
The important idea is that there are 'right' and 'wrong' ways to come to have beliefs, and those ways of
thinking are tightly intertwined with the beliefs that they support.
I can see why this would be easy to interpret as just being about binding groups together, as morals often
exist in the service of a group, and cultural beliefs are also easily seen to exist at a group level as well.
Certainly, many of the beliefs that tend to be moralized are going to deal with group cohesion, but I don't
think that this captures all of a morality of belief. It is crucially important for an individual to have
adaptive beliefs about a wide variety of topics, not just those relating to group cohesion. And as I
mentioned above, moralizing some of those as 'true' or 'right' can allow those adaptive beliefs to be
retained more easily. For a more explicit prediction, I would hypothesize that many cultures consider
lying to be wrong regardless of consequences(to group or individual). Perhaps whistle-blowers constitute
an example of people for whom the concept of truth(right belief) trumps in-group or authority moralities.
These are people who betray their group, and their superiors, in the service of the truth.
One other phenomenon that I think reflects upon the importance of truth/right belief is the time and effort
that are put into the pursuit of 'truth', and the way in which we value it. Scholars, both religious and
secular, can spend their entire lives in pursuit of better conceptions of what those right beliefs are, and
work to spread the 'right' beliefs while eliminating the 'wrong' ones. Seeking 'truth' or 'right belief' is, so
far as I know, something that is valued across all cultures. This general orientation towards 'truth' as a
public good that should be sought, seems to me to be very similar to the ways in which people relate to
other major moral themes, such as justice(fairness/reciprocity), or any of the other foundations of your
theory.