The Origins of Good and Evil

Joseph J. Plaud

Many people, let us call them religious idealists, argue that right and wrong are absolutes defined in this or that spiritual text. Following a string of school shootings, some Christian fundamentalists urged their local school boards to post the Ten Commandments in schools on the theory that being reminded of the commandment, “Thou shalt not kill,” might dissuade students from gunning down their classmates. According to this approach to morality, we have only to study God's rules and obey them to do right.

Others, who might be called moral relativists, argue that there are no absolutes about right and wrong; the only rules are those the individual establishes for him or herself. If murder and theft trouble your conscience, you shouldn't kill or steal, but (relativists argue) you have no right to impose those idiosyncratic values on others.

Both of these positions are problematic. There are many idealist groups, and each has its own ideas about what rules God has laid down. Is homosexuality wrong? Some Christian idealists site the book of Leviticus, which leaves no doubt that homosexuals have no place in society. Others turn to the New Testament, which teaches tolerance of those who are different from ourselves. Idealists in other religions also quarrel among themselves about right and wrong.

The moral relativists have their own problems. If we truly accept the notion that what is right is purely an individual matter, then there can be no standards of conduct and no accountability for harm done. Moral relativism leads inevitably to solipsism and anarchy.

Idealism and relativism are often pitched against one another as though they were the only possible options, but there are other moral philosophies. In my view, one of the most appealing is neither absolute nor relativistic, but somewhere in between. It is called natural ethics.

Natural ethics is described in the work of Jeremy Bentham, John Stuart Mill, Herbert Spencer and other philosophers, and in the work of some behavior scientists, notably B. F. Skinner. Natural ethics says that every society necessarily defines right and wrong as part of its evolution. Some forms of behavior prove beneficial to society, and these are identified as good; others are found to be harmful, and these are defined as bad. In most societies, for instance, stealing (or at least stealing from others in that society) is bad because it leads to quarrels about ownership and undermines the incentives for being productive. (Why work hard if the benefits of your labor will be taken from you?) Right and wrong are determined by their natural effects on society, not by a holy book or individual preference.

Natural ethics has in common with idealism the notion that there are hard and fast rules that everyone is expected to obey. It has in common with relativism the notion that what is right varies from time to time. Yet it differs from both approaches in that it says that the rules are made by the collective action of society, not by a church or an individual.

One advantage of natural ethics is that it helps us understand (and possibly to predict) changes in morality. It was not so long ago, for example, that birth control was considered an abomination. When natural resources were abundant and many hands were required to meet society's needs, birth control was a threat to society and was forbidden. Today, when we are in danger of exhausting natural resources and one machine does the work of a thousand hands, those who fail to practice birth control are often considered morally irresponsible.

Natural ethics may also help us understand why certain ethical questions are hotly debated. It is probably not a coincidence that arguments over the morality of an activity tend to flourish when the net effects on society are in doubt. Idealists argue that abortion is murder, for instance, while relativists argue that each woman has the right to choose. The morality of abortion may be settled only when it is clear whether society is better off with abortion than it is without it. The same may be said of capital punishment, homosexuality, and other moral controversies.

Social scientists may aid society in resolving such moral issues, not by imposing their own ideas about morality, but by documenting the effects of behavior on society. Had economists, for example, been able to demonstrate in 1850 that the American South would have been materially better off without slavery than with it (as might well have been the case), many Southerners might have joined the Abolitionist movement and we might have avoided a civil war.

In any case, it seems clear to me that ultimately society as a whole decides what is good and what is bad, and to understand that is to understand a little better the origins of good and evil.

Joseph J. Plaud, Ph. D. is Director of Research and Webmaster for the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies and holds faculty appointments at Brown University (as a Visiting Scholar) and Northeastern University.

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