One of the more peculiar features of the moral/conventional distinction is each domain’s particular relation with authority. Moral prohibitions are typically seen as being independent of authority.11 Research shows that children will reject an adult’s authority if that adult makes immoral requests (Smetana 2006). In contrast, whether or not a conventional transgression is viewed as wrong is typically seen as being more dependent on authority figures. For example, although it is typically judged wrong for a boy to wear a dress to school, it ceases to be wrong if a teacher sanctions the act.
Richard Joyce has claimed that the capacity to draw the dependence relation within each domain is evidence in support of innate moral knowledge. He argues that in order to understand that conventional norms are dependent on authority “one would have to observe a correlation between the relevant authority changing its mind to permit the boy to wear a dress and that action no longer counting as a transgression.” And in the case of moral norms, “in order to infer an independence relation one would have either to (A) observe the relevant authority change its opinion about an act of harming while one
11. This is a different claim than saying that moral judgements have moral authority – the claim that moral judgements have authority over an agent irrespective of their interests. Authority independence means only that an action’s moral status will hold irrespective of whether or not an authority figure sanctions it, which is still consistent with the claim that moral judgements are subject to one’s own preferences.
notes that the act nevertheless continues to count as a transgression or (B) observe a previously condemned act of harming cease to count as a transgression while one notes that the relevant authority’s opinion on the matter has not altered” (2006:138-139). The observational evidence required to draw the domain relevant dependence relations are complex and difficult, if not impossible, to come by (especially for a three year old child).
The information required is therefore likely to be innate.
This picture misdescribes the learning situation, however. For the young moral learner, drawing the dependence relation is not a case of rule extraction from the environment followed by determining the relevant dependence relation with authority. Moral norms are not norms that also happen to be authority-independent; they are moral norms because they are instantiated by authority-independent events such as harming. They are prohibitions because of the consequences their violations have, not because an authority figure tells the child they are prohibited. Similarly, conventional transgressions are not norms that happen to also be authority-dependent; they are conventional norms because they are instantiated by features of the world that are determined by authority, such as social regularities. They are prohibited because authority prohibits them. (Note that the authority need not be a single authority figure, authority can also come from groups.) We can demonstrate this by looking at what information is available to the learning child and how that information contributes to making the distinction between authority-dependent and authority-independent norms. Although it may be authority figures who are involved in teaching both types of transgressions, the informational differences available to the child are sufficient to make the distinction. I will look at four aspects relevant to explaining the relationship between norms and authority: the contribution of emotions, the contribution of caregiver instruction, the frequency of transgression, and the young child’s conception of authority.
Emotions
As we have seen above, the emotional consequences of moral transgressions allow the learning child to see them as distinct from conventional transgressions. In canonical moral transgressions, these emotional consequences will occur irrespective of directives from authority (Nichols 2005; Prinz 2008b). The child can therefore determine the wrongness of the act independent of authority. This explains why when young children
witness events that are neither clearly moral or conventional, such as a bystander crying, the young child will typically judge the events as moral because they infer that the bystander was somehow harmed by the event (Smetana 1989). We also find that authority-independence is a property of other, non-moral emotional responses. Research by Shaun Nichols shows that non-moral disgust transgressions were ranked by children as less authority-dependent (and more generalisable) than conventional type transgressions. Disgusting acts are therefore perceived to be disgusting regardless of what anyone else says (Nichols 2002a, 2004).
In cases where an authority sanctions the harming of others, for the child the more emotionally salient consequence (harming others) will trump the other consequence such as the violation of the authority’s proscriptions, thereby causing the child to appraise the action as wrong. This is not to say that considerations of harm and welfare are the only relevant factors enabling the child to determine what is morally wrong. What it does show, however, is that affect contributes significantly to the establishment of independence as a property of moral norms. (I will address the issue of the authority-dependent nature of conventional norms below.)
Parental transgression responses
As we saw earlier, parents and caregivers specifically appeal to victim orientated consequences in the case of moral norms, and social regularity and authority in relation to conventional transgressions. Again, how the victim feels is typically independent of authority; children are being directed to identify those transgressions that cause harm as wrong because, first and foremost, they cause harm (Smetana 1997; Prinz 2008b). The young child may be taught this fact by an authority figure, but it is not authority that determines whether and event causes harm.
Frequency of transgression
Research shows that children experience the majority of moral transgressions with peers and siblings (Smetana 1989). Children compete with each other, hurt each other, take each other’s possessions and have playground arguments. These interactions are reciprocal, involving both transgressor and victim, and are often resolved in the absence
of authority. In contrast, it was found that conventional transgression occurred evenly between peers and siblings, and caregivers. Importantly, then, the frequency of the child’s experience with relations to authority in each domain is asymmetrical – a higher frequency of moral transgressions and their resolution is experienced independent of authority figures. Combined with the domain-specific responses to transgressions detailed above, we have clear differentiation between the domains in terms of their relations with authority.
So far, we have a story about how and why moral norms are perceived as authority-independent due to authority-authority-independent emotional content, parenting practices directing them towards this content, and the frequency of transgression. Because emotional responses trump directives from authority, authority makes a diminished contribution when assessing emotionally salient moral transgressions. Young children need not infer any relationship between harm and authority to determine that an act is morally wrong. The dependence relation is not as complex as Joyce makes it to be. Still, this does not address Joyce’s issue with respect to learning the authority-dependent nature of conventional norms, as it fails to explain how children can infer this relation without seeing the relevant authority change the norm. How do children know that if teachers change their mind about dress wearing that it is ok for boys to wear a dress to school, without actually witnessing this change of mind? To understand the classification of conventional norms as authority-dependent we need to look at the child’s concept of authority and its relationship to social regularity.
Conceptions of authority
In many cases, the determinant of social regularities, such as conventional norms, will be authority, and, importantly, children view the legitimacy of authority as being dependent on context. Research shows that young children see authority figures as having specific jurisdictions. For example, 4-6 year olds see a school principal’s authority as largely limited to the context of the school (Laupa 1994; Laupa and Turiel 1986), and there is plenty of evidence from the child’s environment to establish this fact. In the case of schooling, children have ample evidence that teachers and school principals determine the social regularities of the school: they are told when they can and cannot talk, when they can eat, when they can play, and when they can go to the toilet; they get in trouble
when they do not obey the teacher; parents tell children to “do as you teacher tells you at school”. Additionally, teachers will tell a child “you will have to ask your parents that” if it falls outside their jurisdiction. Children experience teacher authority as context dependent and, in the child’s eye, teachers and school principles determine the social regularities of the school. This is true of other areas of life in which authority determines the rules, and children experience context dependent authority from a very young age.
Children therefore have specific ideas about which authority is relevant to which social regularities: “The findings show that preschoolers have understandings of the social context in which authority relations are embedded, conceptualising authorities not solely with respect to their adult status, but to their role within the social context of the school”
(Laupa 1994:1). The child (tacitly) knows that the consequences of wearing a dress to school violates a social regularity (all children know that boys do not wear dresses to school!), and they know the relevant authority who determines social regularities at school. When the relevant authority changes the social regularity, then children will change their appraisal in relation to that new social regularity. Wearing a dress to school is a transgression because it violates the social regularity as determined by the authority at school, and it is not a transgression when it does not. Children do not need to observe specific instantiations of the particular authority-dependence relations of specific norms to draw this inference; they need only a general conception of the relationship between the relevant authority and the jurisdiction of that authority with respect to social regularities. We can conclude therefore, that the dependence relation in the case of conventional norms is not as complex as Joyce proposes.
Re-characterising the dependence relation
We can now re-characterise the relationship between transgression and authority.
Children’s judgements of the dependence relation are not a case of rule extraction from the environment, followed by determining the relevant dependence relation with authority. Moral norms are not norms that also happen to be authority-independent;
typically they are moral norms because they are instantiated by authority-independent events (such as harming). Similarly, conventional transgressions are not norms that happen to also be authority-dependent; they are conventional norms because they are instantiated by authority-dependent features (such as teachers’ dictates). In the moral
case, the young child’s sensibilities to harm trump considerations of authority and, in the conventional case, there simply are no relevant authority-independent consequences to trump authority. I propose that we ought to see this in the justification that children provide for making such judgments. In the case of moral transgressions they will appeal to the harm and welfare of the victim, “it is wrong because it hurts them”, not “it is wrong and it hurts them” (where ‘hurting’ is identified via an authority-independent emotional response). In the case of conventional transgressions, children will appeal to social regularity and authority: “It is wrong because the teacher told you not to do it”, not “it is wrong and the teacher told you not to do it.”
We can see these ideas more clearly when we consider the case of a young child learning that hitting is wrong. Children can quickly learn that harming events—being hit or scraping one’s knee, for example—hurt irrespective of what people say. They also learn that the events that cause harms are wrong – they are told by their caregivers that hitting is wrong because it hurts others; they experience and witness the negative effects of being hit. They are sensitive to the harmful consequences of hitting and cannot conceive of harmless hitting occurring. When asked if it is ok to hit someone when an authority figure tells them it is, the child will still conceive of the hitting event harming, and therefore judge it as wrong. It is the harmful consequences of hitting that have been moralised by the learning child, not the norms from authority forbidding hitting.
Although authority figures may teach a child that hitting is wrong because it harms, they do not determine whether hitting causes harm. In the case of conventional transgressions, there simply are not the relevant authority-independent consequences to over-ride the dictates of authority because the consequences are determined solely in relation to authority. It is wrong to wear a dress to school because an authority determines the rules about dress wearing at schools, no other reason. Therefore, children can conceive of the relevant authority telling them it is ok to where a dress to school and it no longer being wrong to do so. Children witness, and are involved in, conventional norm negotiations all the time, such as when playing games. Harming events, however, are non-negotiable.
Through development the child will learn the many subtle aspects of moral and conventional characterisations. Such a picture does not mean that authority has no influence or can alter moral behaviour or moral judgements; Nazi concentration camp officers and the Milgram Experiments in the 60’s show people can, under certain
circumstances, obey authority in ways that contradict their normal moral beliefs and behaviours. Nor does it mean that authority does not play an essential role in moral learning. Authority figures guide moral learning, giving children the tools to make more nuanced judgements (Prinz 2008b). In the very early years, harm is sufficient for moral categorisation. As children develop, they can be taught relevant concepts such as
“victim” and “intention” to supplement notions of harm. These more nuanced concepts then become relevant in establishing moral violations and their exceptions. For example, contact sports such as rugby, boxing, and gridiron are, by and large, excluded from moral appraisal because, although there is harm, there is no victim. In cases where a player harms another by breaking the rules, there is a victim and hence it is deemed morally wrong. Learning that some harm is not immoral is a case of learning exceptions to the early default position of categorising all harms as wrong. Although moral learning will often be complex, we can see that the internal and external resources available to the child allow him to identify the criteria that differentiate prototypical moral transgressions from conventional transgressions.
2.6 Conclusion
In this chapter we have seen that moral nativists make specific claims about the innate structure of the moral mind and the role that the environment plays in moral development. One argument in support of their view is that empiricist accounts of moral learning are inadequate to explain the move from informational exposure to mature moral competence, because the child’s environment is impoverished with respect to the information required for moral learning. This POMS argument combines a developmental claim and a task analysis claim. We have seen that the trajectory of moral developmental is consistent with a domain-general learning account. With respect to task analysis, I have shown that the (non-moral) internal and external resources available to the moral learning child radically narrow the gap between informational input and performance output. I have also argued that moral acquisition is not as complex as proponents of the POMS maintain. Finally, we looked at, and rejected, one specific argument in defence of the POMS – that criterion judgements (in particular the authority-dependence relation) can be accounted for without innate moral information.
We have good reason, therefore, to doubt the poverty of the moral stimulus argument and the moral nativist’s positing of an innate moral faculty.
In chapter 1, I detailed the argument that morality is an adaptation. Yet in this chapter I have argued against an innate, domain-specific moral faculty. This raises questions as to how morality can be an evolutionary adaptation. In the following chapters I will argue that our moral cognitive systems are not bound to the head of the moral thinker nor even the boundaries of their body. Moral cognition is embodied and extended. This is important from an evolutionary point of view because it enables us to establish the proper parts of the moral cognitive system and hence the target of selection. In the final chapter I will detail how this non-nativist adaptationist picture fits within an evolutionary framework, namely a gene-culture dual inheritance model of the evolution of moral cognition.
2.7 Summary
In the previous chapter we saw that morality has a plausible evolutionary history; it is an adaptation. Being an adaptation does not necessarily mean that morality is innate, however. In this chapter I have argued against one particular argument in support of the claim that morality is innate. The main points are as follows:
• Poverty of the stimulus arguments have recently been applied to the moral domain in support of an innate moral faculty.
• The poverty of the moral stimulus (POMS) argument rests on two claims: a developmental claim and a task analysis claim.
• Against the POMS argument, I have argued that:
– the development of moral cognition is consistent with an empiricist account of moral cognition;
– both the internal and external resources available to the moral learner are sufficient for a domain-general account of moral learning;
– the moral learning task is either not an explicitly moral problem, or when it is, is not that complex; and
– we can account for children’s grasp of the moral/conventional distinction without appealing to an innate moral faculty.
Having outlined why we have good reason to doubt that morality is underwritten by an innate, domain-specific moral faculty, I will now lay out the terrain for subsequent chapters, detailing traditional individualistic approaches to cognition and how some prominent nativist accounts of moral cognition are individualistic. I will then propose that moral cognition is best seen as incorporating bodily and highly structured external resources as part of the moral cognitive system. This has implications for the type of evolutionary account I will give in chapter 6.