Does morality come with intelligence?

[Verruckter]

Since I was young I've been observing and studying my surroundings. I've watched and analysed other people's actions and I've heard and interpreted their words. I've elaborated my own perception of what the world is like. It's not a complete one, for it stops at my simple, North American culture, but I believe it's vast enough for me to come to certain conclusions, all of which I came to on my own.

Now, by watching people behave in an environment where social interaction is primordial, I've managed to make associations between intelligence and morality. I've always considered both to be strongly related. It's a two way reasoning, really:

Intelligence allows you to understand what's happening around you - It gives you judgement and perspective on certain things. It allows you to say "This is right" or "This is wrong", which is exactly where morality comes in. I define morality as something in which your "subconscious" (or whatever modern psychologists call it) is the main element. It will, without consciously making you think about it, stop you from doing something bad. The reason why you don't go out and kill someone is because a certain part of your personality (your subconscious) will stop you from doing so. In this sence, intelligence lets you gather data which will influence your subconscious. It will, indirectly, tell you how to behave.

Now, my question is, and I'm asking this because I'm curious, is it possible that there's another explaination? Is it possible that morality is acquired without cognitive, conscious reasoning? Is it part of our genes, or is it something compeltely different?

[Hollus]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

I wouldn't give intelligence and morality the same close relationship you imply here. I would say that we acquire our sense of morality from many sources, right? You don't have to be very intelligent to mimic your parent's or role model's sense of morality. However, intelligence plays a much larger role if you take all a logical (or at least a systematic and CRITICAL) approach to morality.

So, to answer your questions:

1. Yes, you can have morality without cognitive, conscious reasoning. (Some animals have a basic sense of morality)

2. Yes, morality is part of our genes. According to the theory of natural selection, a mother who doesn't murder her children is more likely to pass on her genes that someone who does. So I can see a primitive sense of morality being passed down from our parents.

3. Like a lot of controversial topics related to this and other things, my opinion is that most things aren't entirely genetic or enviromentalistic(<---made up word?)

[Verruckter]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

I wouldn't give intelligence and morality the same close relationship you imply here. I would say that we acquire our sense of morality from many sources, right? You don't have to be very intelligent to mimic your parent's or role model's sense of morality. However, intelligence plays a much larger role if you take all a logical (or at least a systematic and CRITICAL) approach to morality.

So, to answer your questions:

1. Yes, you can have morality without cognitive, conscious reasoning. (Some animals have a basic sense of morality)

2. Yes, morality is part of our genes. According to the theory of natural selection, a mother who doesn't murder her children is more likely to pass on her genes that someone who does. So I can see a primitive sense of morality being passed down from our parents.

3. Like a lot of controversial topics related to this and other things, my opinion is that most things aren't entirely genetic or enviromentalistic(<---made up word?)

True, true, but then again, I see people who are incredibly rude and disrespectful all around me, some which barely know the basics of common social interaction. In this case, morality has a certain role to play: It tells you wether or not you can be at your ease, if you can speak loudly or take a lot of room if you are in a public place (I take the metro every day so I really know what I'm talking about lol). Sometimes I hear them speak and the matters they speak about or the way they express themselves is plain stupid i.e. it seems they're not very intelligent. I observe both lack of morality and intelligence in the vast majority of the cases of rude people.

[atalkingcow]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

I think the two are separate, definitely, however I can't offer any actual evidence to support my opinions. So,,, I will just say this::

To the OP, I think your metro example is simply because you were unlucky enough to be stuck by people who happened to be severely lacking in both.

[devonin]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

The problem here is that you haven't clearly defined "morality" in a very useful way. Someone can have their own strict moral code, adhere to it in all cases, and treat it very seriously, and that code can be in direct opposition to your own.

I think the question you want to be asking is more akin to "Are intelligence and enlightened self-interest linked."

Some of the most immoral (By some standards) people in history have been phenomenally intelligent. We have an entire "mad scientist" sub-class of people in popular culture who are incredibly intelligent, and as a result, have a very -poor- sense of right and wrong as the average person would define it.

I think the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to have spent time to develop a very deep and specific set of moral values, but I see no reason to imply that those values are necessarily "good" by which I mean "Shared by the majority"

[Verruckter]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

The problem here is that you haven't clearly defined "morality" in a very useful way. Someone can have their own strict moral code, adhere to it in all cases, and treat it very seriously, and that code can be in direct opposition to your own.

I think the question you want to be asking is more akin to "Are intelligence and enlightened self-interest linked."

Some of the most immoral (By some standards) people in history have been phenomenally intelligent. We have an entire "mad scientist" sub-class of people in popular culture who are incredibly intelligent, and as a result, have a very -poor- sense of right and wrong as the average person would define it.

I think the more intelligent someone is, the more likely they are to have spent time to develop a very deep and specific set of moral values, but I see no reason to imply that those values are necessarily "good" by which I mean "Shared by the majority"

I guess it's a bit hard for me to think outside of my own values... I wouldn't be able to imagine myself with different morality standards than the ones I'm going for right now.

Maybe then, if you are very intelligent, you may be enclined to either tolerate and respect everyone or hate and be disgusted by everyone for not being as smart as you (of course there are some grey areas).

Interesting point of view.

[devonin]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

I don't know, we as a species really like to accord status to "lesser" life forms based on degree rather than threshold.

We're generally okay with killing a chicken to eat it. We might want a cow to be killed humanely, we'd have serious moral trouble killing a dolphin, and we have strict laws against killing other humans, but we trample ants, and swat flies, and electrocute flying insects to death all the time.

The usual difference in our mindset tends to be that some things are "higher up" than others, and at a certain lower level, we stop counting things as important.

Along those lines, someone sufficiently ignorant to not be aware of those lines, or sufficiently intelligent to think themselves above such concerns could easily have a set of moral values in stark opposition to the ones you consider "standard"

[Verruckter]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

I think you've put your finger right on it. I don't have anything to answer to that and it looks pretty logical, so I guess it's pretty much true.

In other words, morality standards acquired by the subconscious do not in fact come from a certain degree of intelligence but moreso from the education and context in which the person was raised.

[justaguy]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

intelligence and morals are two completely separate spheres. intelligence is your ability to solve problems. morals are influenced by your surroundings. if you're a drug lord, and you have to have a certain number of dealers to maximize your profit, you're going to want to keep that number. if you go over that number, you can solve it one of many ways: you can tell them they're fired, or you can kill them. the drug lord murders three of his dealers to maximize profit. intelligence is the ability to identify the problem and create a solution, which he did. however, drug dealing and murdering is completely immoral. this drug lord may have been raised in an environment where drug dealing and killing was an everyday experience, but at the same time, he was a genius.

take the IQ test for another example. on there is nothing to do with morals, but only problem solving. a serial killer could score 150, whereas someone with strong morals may only get 100.

morality = environmental influence
intelligence = biological

[XCraigeX]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

The problem here is that you haven't clearly defined "morality" in a very useful way. Someone can have their own strict moral code, adhere to it in all cases, and treat it very seriously, and that code can be in direct opposition to your own.

Devonin makes a very good point here - we all have different senses of morality. For example, in certain cultures they may eat animals such as dogs - where i am from, we would not do such things...unless we were REALLY hungry .

I beleive we all estabilish our own "moral code" after socializing and moving around our environment. At the end of the day - we are mammals which means we are animals and therefore follow animal instincts on what we perceive as right or wrong.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

Intelligence in a structural sense, as in the sense of G, might have strong correlations with certain behaviors commonly regarded as moral. There could be any number of reasons for this however.

Also, some studies have been done on tensions between students and teachers when an IQ gap of more than 30 points exist. Tensions exist at a statistically higher rate between people of similar IQ and people of widely varying IQ.

[PinoySkillz]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

Intelligence allows you to understand what's happening around you - It gives you judgement and perspective on certain things. It allows you to say "This is right" or "This is wrong", which is exactly where morality comes in.

You are confusing intelligence with wisdom.

I define morality as something in which your "subconscious" (or whatever modern psychologists call it) is the main element. It will, without consciously making you think about it, stop you from doing something bad. The reason why you don't go out and kill someone is because a certain part of your personality (your subconscious) will stop you from doing so.

I'm not sure if you realize it but you just gave a perfect example of the Freudian theory of id, ego and super ego.

I agree with justaguy. Unless you believe humans are born either good or evil, then morality is based solely on environment. Intelligence has more of a biological base but does have environmental influences.

[devonin]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

You are confusing intelligence with wisdom.

Hundreds of RPGs can't be wrong *grin* Seriously though, this is an important distinction. Given the terms intelligence and wisdom, and assuming we treat them as seperate and distinct, I think that morality is definately primarily a concept of wisdom. The question -then- becomes whether we can corrolate intelligence with wisdom.

I'm not sure if you realize it but you just gave a perfect example of the Freudian theory of id, ego and super ego.

As much as I like some of Freud's work, I'm really not sure I buy the id/ego/superego paradigm. I mean, I'm no psychologist, and I'm definately no neurochemist, but from what little I understand about the way the brain works, and the way that neurons fire, and the connections they make, it seems to me that it is a more reasonable explanation to say "I've made a connection between situation A and reaction B [Say, "Someone is bothering me", and "I'm not going to hit them"] , because I was tought that way" and now, when someone bothers me in the future, I'm not disinclined to hit them because my ego wants to hit them, and my id says the consequences aren't worth it, and stops me from acting. I'd say instead that I'm disinclined to hit them because that's the path my brain wants to take, because the connection already exists.

I agree with justaguy. Unless you believe humans are born either good or evil, then morality is based solely on environment. Intelligence has more of a biological base but does have environmental influences.

I'd be more inclined to say that potential intelligence is biological, and actual intelligence is environmental. You could be raised in the least supportive environment possible, and if you've got the brain, you can teach yourself. You can also live in an incredibly supportive environment, and simply just not be that intelligent.

[Kilroy_x]

Re: Does morality come with intelligence?

http://cscs.umich.edu/~crshalizi/weblog/520.html