The New York Times-20080127-Letters- -Letter-

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The Moral Instinct

Steven Pinker presents a fascinating overview of the roots of human morality (Jan. 13). He describes several hypothetical situations to illustrate the apparent arbitrariness of moral judgment and seeks to explain some of these distinctions as rationalizations based upon instinctive revulsion. In one such scenario, Pinker compares a person pulling a lever on a trolley track that would prevent a runaway trolley from killing five track workers by diverting it onto to a spur, where it would kill one worker, with a person pushing the only heavy object within reach, a fat man, onto the tracks to keep the trolley from hitting the five workers.

Pinker states, correctly, that most would consider the former permissible and the latter repugnant. He says that neither laypersons nor philosophers can articulate a relevant distinction, because each instance satisfies the utilitarian standard of achieving the greatest good for the greatest number and that the scenarios are morally equivalent. But they may not be morally equivalent for a simple reason: If you are in a position to push someone else onto a trolley track, you could, possibly, save five lives by jumping onto the tracks yourself, sacrificing your own life without violating the established taboo of taking another's life.

I find it curious that Pinker, who discusses altruism later in his fine article, could not see that expectations of altruism and self-sacrifice clearly distinguish the moral dimension of these two hypothetical cases. SIMEON GOLDMAN

Albany

I would like to add to Steven Pinker's analysis of the moral sense another bit of neurobiology, the existence of mirror neurons in the brain that create an awareness of other minds. The earliest experiments in this area revealed that neurons flash in the brain of a monkey watching another monkey peel a banana in the exact pattern of the monkey performing the action (monkey see, monkey do). Recent findings using fMRI in human subjects, reported by Keysers and Wicker in Neuron, 2003, and by Iacoboni in PLoS Biology, 2005, implicate mirror neurons in sympathetic reactions of disgust and interpretations of intentionality. It is thought that these mirroring patterns of neural activity form the basis of empathy and social bonding. The ability to feel, know and imagine the experiences of another would seem to underlie a universal sense of morality more than any rational cost-benefit analysis.

BETSY SEIFTER

Wellesley, Mass.

The article cites an experiment where rhesus monkeys chose to go hungry rather than to pull a chain that would deliver food to them but simultaneously shock a fellow monkey. These tormented monkeys showed a higher degree of moral standards than their captors. I agree with the statement in the article that people don't engage in moral reasoning but moral rationalization. How paradoxical that the monkeys demonstrated greater morality and humanity than the human researchers hoping to understand morality.

ROSELLE D. CLARK

Midlothian, Va.

In his otherwise excellent article, Steven Pinker goes astray when he says that we should not moralize climate change because voluntary conservation is not enough. But we can grant the inadequacy of voluntary conservation while insisting on the importance of seeing the failure of the United States to reduce its greenhouse-gas emissions in moral terms. We are not likely to get the other measures Pinker mentions -- like a carbon tax -- until American citizens realize that there is no defensible principle of fairness that entitles a nation with 5 percent of the world's population to emit 25 percent of the greenhouse gases that are currently causing the problem of climate change. To protect the affluent lifestyle of its residents, the United States is harming the poor in other countries who depend on rainfall that will become more variable because of climate change or who are living on land that will be inundated by rising sea levels. If that isn't morally wrong, I don't know what is.

PETER SINGER

Ira W. DeCamp

Professor of Bioethics,

University Center for Human Values

Princeton University

Princeton, N.J.

Among the five moral spheres of harm, fairness, community, authority and purity, Jonathan Haidt found that liberals put a lopsided moral weight on harm and fairness while playing down group loyalty, authority and purity. In fact, liberals do put weight on these spheres: Haidt may simply have been asking the questions from an inappropriate point of view and disregarding Peter Singer's Theory of the Expanding Circle. Liberals put great weight on loyalty to the entire human race (or even all animals), as opposed to one's own race, nation or clan. They put weight on the authority of empirical evidence (over dogma), the international community (over one's own country) or the Constitution (over the flag). And they put weight on purity in terms of the environment and sustainability. What appears to be moral lopsidedness is the result of applying the spheres to larger groups and more universal, all-encompassing entities.

STEPHEN W. SMITH

Minneapolis

Happiness studies, which are very much in vogue, show that people value good order and cleanliness (Singapore), plenty of social interaction (Denmark), safety for themselves and their families and fairness (countries with widespread corruption rank low on the happiness scale). Are the identical moral concerns referred to in Pinker's article just a surrogate for those things that help to make us happy?

The elusive idea of a moral sense has a nice altruistic sound to it, but common sense tells us that what we really want is for other people to behave in ways that make it easier for us to be happy.

PETER ROWBOTHAM

Scottsdale, Ariz.

Questions for Stephen Marks

Nice juxtaposition, the interview with Stephen Marks in the same issue as Steven Pinker's article. Deborah Solomon (Jan. 13) might have followed up her question to Marks (about whether he has any moral qualms) with another asking whether he feels moral questions apply to any aspect of his professional or personal life. I grant this might have read as overstating the obvious. We all have our failings, but Marks apparently feels that he and his actions are exempt from moral considerations. I am grateful that this attitude is rare in humans over the age of 9 or so. To those who provide Marks, and others like him, with over six figures as a reward for their dirty work, I'd like to invoke an old adage: a man who will steal for you will steal from you. MARTY HYKIN

Victoria, British Columbia

[Illustration]DRAWING (DRAWING BY ADRIAN TOMINE)