Morality. It's a one way street.

[eye2i2hear]

The Moral Instinct
By Steven Pinker
Published: January 13, 2008

One aspect of this topic that Pinker raised again for me, is what I might label "The Norm" Fallacy.

Quote:People given diagnoses of “antisocial personality disorder” or “psychopathy” show signs of morality blindness from the time they are children. They bully younger children, torture animals, habitually lie and seem incapable of empathy or remorse, often despite normal family backgrounds. Some of these children grow up into the monsters who bilk elderly people out of their savings, rape a succession of women or shoot convenience-store clerks lying on the floor during a robbery.

Though [highlight=#E6FF99]psychopathy probably comes from a genetic predisposition[/highlight], a milder version can be caused by damage to frontal regions of the brain (including the areas that inhibit intact people from throwing the hypothetical fat man off the bridge). The neuroscientists Hanna and Antonio Damasio and their colleagues found that some children who sustain severe injuries to their frontal lobes can grow up into callous and irresponsible adults, despite normal intelligence. They lie, steal, ignore punishment, endanger their own children and can’t think through even the simplest moral dilemmas, like what two people should do if they disagreed on which TV channel to watch or whether a man ought to steal a drug to save his dying wife.

How close is a "predisposition" to a mere evolutionary (ie genetic) option? And a disproof of the Logic* of claiming validity to the likes of "the norm"? Who (has the Authority?) decides which predisposition is "the norm", that of the moralist or that of the "sociopath"? Are the very negative words sociopathic and pschopathic evidence of majority, rather than the norm, rule? Immoral? Illogical?
[I've read some estimates to be that sociopathy/psychopathy is as high as 10% of the general population]

Arguing for morality as the norm results in much conflict.
Arguing against Logic is inherently circular: to communicate/argue is inherently logical.
Logic is arguably [sic] the very stuff of conflict reduction/resolution!?! Logic is obviously the innate 'stuff' of living socially. [I'm not wishing to argue that all claims of logical deduction are irrefutable; rather that unlike with morality, there is at least no question about it's validity/value, innate or otherwise --unless I'm being illogical here...?]

Pinker also includes this remark:

Quote:The idea that the moral sense is an innate part of human nature is not far-fetched. A list of human universals collected by the anthropologist Donald E. Brown includes many moral concepts and emotions, including a distinction between right and wrong; empathy; fairness; admiration of generosity; rights and obligations; proscription of murder, rape and other forms of violence; redress of wrongs; sanctions for wrongs against the community; shame; and taboos.

But aren't the likes of rage, jealousy, screaming/shouting, stubbornness, vengeance, hatred, superstition, equally innate?

Thus it seems that Logic trumps 'normal' (even innate) evidenced by there possibly, if not the probably of there, being no 'normal' via both the majority and the psychopath brain. Thus while the psychopath (brain) might claim actions moral, logic invalidates such as being 'normal' aka logical. It seems logical [sic] as well to say that the use of logic trumps morality-think, morality-feel, and morality-norm when considering that the morality-norm comes likely as a product of evolution. While fascinating to explore, Evolution = Muther Nature/Mother Fu*ker, aka amoral. But She left Us an out via having granted the art of Logic; logic trumps evolutionary traits, with morality being but such a trait? [granted, We are She (indistinguishable 'from' nature), so actually She either shot her schizophrenic self in the foot or we're simply the highest ("truest"), Logical Order...?!?]

--eye2i

* Pinker has a section in his article titled "Reasoning and Rationalization", which reminds me of my oft touted LRR: Logic + Reason + Rationale. It arguably takes all three to maximize conflict reduction/resolution. Hence, I capitalized the word Logic