Over the past few classes we've been discussing David Hume's empirical skepticism, including his belief in the is/ought or fact/value gap, and his theory of two kinds of truth, a.k.a. "Hume's fork." At the same time, we watched this video claiming that Hume is wrong, and humans are born with a moral sense that can be demonstrated through scientific experiments with babies.
Give me a one-paragraph or several-bullet response to the researchers' claims. Do you think Hume is right that we should be skeptical about these sorts of arguments? Why or why not? What's your theory of the status of morality, based on your own observations? (25 points)
30 Comments
Corey Van Huff
11/23/2016 06:22:45 am
Hume is right that we should be skeptical of such argument but I believe somethings are just a fact despite the moral inflections. Murder is wrong because it hurts the person who dies and the family of the person who died. That to me is a factual claim. Hume would disagree which is why I believe there are exceptions to his philosophy. I personally believe Humans are born good. Babies are a sign of that but not as demonstrated in the video. Babies don't try to hurt people or animals and they will make friends with other babies no matter what the baby looks like. Racism and hatred are taught, not inside of us but put in by the societal confines we live in.
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Parizaad Mohammadi
11/25/2016 12:35:05 pm
I believe that Hume was right about his thoughts on Morality. Some of us can believe that something we do is wrong while the rest of us have no problem with it what so ever. However, we all can agree that something is right or wrong. Humans are born with no knowledge of what's right or wrong. However, the video tries to show that when we're born we already have right, wrong, hate, and biased, built in. I don't think this is the case because babies don't have a reaction when seeing someone do something wrong. They usually don't cry or anything. And when kids get slightly older they don't seen to care what race someone is or treat them differently for it. As they get older kids learn from their enviromental and parents what to hate and if they should treat races differently.
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Paige Whittle
11/25/2016 05:52:53 pm
I believe that Hume is right that we should be skeptical about these sorts of arguments, but I believe that some things we can all agree are wrong. It would be hard to find a sane person that thinks murder is right in any circumstance, so murder could be considered wrong. Treating each other with respect is basic morality that I think many people could agree is good, so I believe humans do have a common sense of morality. However, I do not think babies are born knowing right from wrong. Kids can kick, hit, and bite others in retaliation for something they don't like being done to them, and they have to be reprimanded and told that this sort of violent behavior is wrong. Parents are needed to teach this sort of basic morality to their children in order to create a grown society that can commonly believe that extreme violence such as murder is unacceptable behavior. Overall, babies are born with a blank slate and have to be taught morals from their parents in order for a society of grown people to have the same ideas of good and bad.
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Olivia Smelas
11/27/2016 09:00:36 am
In my opinion, Hume is absolutely correct in his skepticism of said arguments, but there are baseline things that everyone can agree are wrong. This in my opinion comes back to instinct. In a past blog post I explained my view of instinct as a human's first knowledge and I think it is applicable in this question as well. (Hopefully) everyone can agree murder is wrong. How do we know this? Our first sense comes from our instinctual moral beliefs. We are born with instincts and our first sense of a moral code derives from them. As we grow and learn about and experience the world and people around us, this moral code develops differently. This is a possible explanation for why people steal and commit other misdemeanors (in an attempt to secure their survival in some way, instincts telling them stealing is okay if it guarantees resources). That being said, the puppet experiment on babies we were shown in class is, for lack of a better word, bullshit. The experiment itself conveyed in no way that babies have a developed moral sense. The conclusions were just manipulated to make it seem as such. How are we to know that the babies weren't reaching for the "good" puppet because it was closer, or the baby liked the color of the puppets shirt, or maybe had that type of animal at home and felt an inclination to reach for it out of familiarity... There is a million other better explanations as to why the babies reached for the puppets they did than a "moral code". We are talking about five month old children. That being said, a better experiment would be to use a shape/object/animal puppet that was unfamiliar to any of the children, in a black tee shirt, and display one of the puppets murdering the other... Harsh, I know, but I feel murder is the most general "bad" thing everyone acknowledges. Not necessarily the best experiment, but in theory, it could work. Hume is correct in being skeptical of this argument, as aforementioned, the experiment eas manipulated to produce results that weren't really conveyed by the experiment itself at all... Science is just a group of beliefs, and the puppet baby experiment is a perfect example of that. The status of morality is explained by both instincts and experience. We are born with instincts that determine our baseline moral code, and as we grow up and experience life, it changes. If I was raised by two felon-committing, murderer parents, I'd likely grow to develop a different moral code than if I grew up with church-going, rule-following parents.
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Emily Fitzgerald
11/27/2016 11:13:41 am
I think that Hume is right in saying that we should be skeptical of the bold claims made by these researchers. I think that babies are born pure, not good or bad. They're like sponges, and take up all of the insight and information given to them at this young age. The opinions that these babies form come from what and who they are exposed to at this vulnerable time. But opinions are subjective, and whether or not these acquired opinions are good or bad varies from person to person, which makes this entire argument hard to resolve. The conclusions from this study should be questioned, because the scientists can't speak for the kids themselves and don't have solid evidence to prove these claims. Also their experiment revolved around their definitions of good and bad. I think humans are born with a completely blank slate and develop morals through their own experiences and external influences.
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Max Portman
11/27/2016 03:33:49 pm
Hume is absolutely correct in his skepticism of this knowledge and morals. In my opinion, morality is something that is taught through observation. A baby has no regards to right or wrong let alone the concept of good and bad and are taught this at a very young age by his or her parent/guardian. A baby may observe its mother of father poising somebody and will be raised believing it is okay to do so because they were told by their parents that this is how things are and work. The same argument could be made for artificial intelligence. If something of that nature is created and led its whole life to believe that it is special, than who's to say that a baby will not do the same?
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Jennifer Spinelli
11/27/2016 06:05:57 pm
I agree with Hume, I mean the study we watched was just ridiculous. Babies wouldn't rather watch people suffer because they're different. There was no control subject in the experiment. Also, babies have no object permanence so how could they recognize each stuffed animal? But yes, I agree with Hume in saying that we need to be skeptical. I am very much a skeptic and I pretty much have to see it to believe it.
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Izzy Halloran
11/28/2016 10:46:28 am
Hume is absolutely right that we should be skeptical of these flawed arguments. Firstly, the experiment that was conducted regarding whether babies are born with a sense of morality contained many mistakes. The interviewers didn't take the color or placement of the bears into consideration, therefore skewing the results. I believe we are born as blank slates, hunks of flesh, with no understanding of morality. I agree with Hume that morality is subjective, it differs for everyone. Children learn right and wrong from their parents, teachers, or anyone they spend a large amount of time with. The argument that babies are born with a sense of morality can be completely disproved if you look at anyone who has experienced a trauma at a young age. An example that comes to mind is the main character of the show Dexter. Dexter was a normal three year old until he witnessed his mother's murder. He began to blur the line between good and bad, and had the urge to kill because that's all he had seen. He was not taught that killing was bad when he was young, so he grew up thinking it was morally right to kill people.
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Gabriella Lopez
11/28/2016 03:42:48 pm
I agree with Hume that we should be skeptical of these arguments. They simply have no solid proof, or evidence. In fact, they are simply connecting two opposite ideas with little baseline or hard fact. There is no way to prove that babies have a true sense of morality. Babies can be attracted to many different aspects, such as color or excess movement the bear had. Although, there is no way to prove them right or wrong. There is no way to ask a baby why they made the decisions they did. Even though its possible that they made their choices based on their sense of morality, it can as well be possible that the babies made their choices based on other factors (color, movement, etc.) Personally, I believe that as we grow up we create a sense of morality. Our parents shape us into moral beings. We know what is right and wrong based on the guidance of our parents and the society we are in. Overall, I do not believe that morality is something we are born with, but rather something we are taught.
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Giulia Dostie
11/28/2016 04:26:33 pm
I agree completely with Hume that we should be skeptical about arguments about mortality. I believe that babies are born with a blank slate, that slowly grows with knowledge by the people who influence them in their everyday life, for example their parents. As children grow, they learn what is morally acceptable in society and what is not, and how they handle these situations determines how they will fit into the society. If at a young age you are taught that it isn’t socially acceptable to go around murdering people, which I hope everyone knows, you determine how to apply that, making yourself a morally “good” or “bad” person. I believe that you have to be taught the difference between right and wrong, rather than being born with it. That baby experiment could have so many factors explaining why the babies gravitated towards a certain animal, like color, texture, and size. An example of children being taught morals is my younger brother. As a toddler he didn’t understand that sharing was a sign of “good” and hitting was a sign of “bad” behavior. So in school he was always hitting people he liked until over time, and with repetition, he learned that hitting wasn’t a sign of friendship, and rather the opposite.
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Kelly Farley
11/28/2016 04:43:56 pm
I think that Hume's skepticism toward morality makes a lot of sense. However, I found the researchers studies to be very interesting. I started off watching the video with my theory being that all babies are born with a clean slate and then their personal morality and views come in based on their experiences and other positive or negative influences they have. After I finished watching the video, I feel like it is kind of hard to deny that the research that was done had some pretty interesting outcomes. The fact that babies have the instincts in them at that young of an age to want to make groups, favorite the good characters, not like the "other". The fact that these little babies are all showing similar traits on not liking the "other", the character that was not like them and that most wanted that "other" to be punished. I think that if all humans are born with that, that would explain a lot of things that have gone on in history and continue to go on with most people always trying to separate or overpower one another. After watching this video, my theory is that we are all born with some sort of an idea of good and bad, however as a baby it does not mean much because you can not act upon it. As you start to get older, these morals begin to be influenced by parents, teachers, other family members, and friends. I believe as you get older, your innate morals that you have started with are then allowed to be changed and molded. I do not think people have an end point where at a certain age those are their morals and will be for the rest of their life. I see it as these morals always have the chance to change or be molded by your experiences or any daily encounters.
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Corbin Nielsen
11/28/2016 05:30:47 pm
I personally believe that, as Hume described, we should be skeptical when it comes to understanding human morality and the difference between "good" and "bad". Babies, as a newly formed member of the human species, are a fundamental key to solving this conundrum. However, performing a few tests that are highly subjective in their results cannot give the clear results we desire. Take, for example, the fact that nearly all of the "good" puppets were being held in the right hand of the puppeteer, and were generally more vibrant and colorful. Those two factors alone could have thrown the results greatly. On the other hand, we need to address this: what truly is the difference between "good" and "bad"? In some countries, the decimation of others is considered good in certain ways, while, as westerners, we consider that mentality to be bad. These two conflicting beliefs bring up more and more questions that have yet to be answered. Furthermore, if babies are born inherently good, what produces their "bad" actions? If the actions are not learned when they are babies, then when are they acquired? This experiment leaves too much open for interpretation.
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Will Spencer
11/28/2016 06:28:49 pm
Personally I think Humes theory is right. We should most definitely be skeptical about these things, considering that every social environment has a different culture and way of doing things. A child growing up in Nazi Germany is going to have a much more different opinion on Jewish people than someone in growing up in America. While someone thinks something is right, there will always be someone who thinks its wrong, it all depends on how and where you were raised. In my opinion, nothing is "grandfathered " in to your brain, you learn everything while growing up. My theory on the status of Morality is pretty simple. I think that everyone MOSTLY gains information as they grow up. No information is really developed before you're born.
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Adam Fioretti
11/28/2016 07:13:15 pm
I agree with Hume, I think he is right. All of this can't really ever be proved therefore all these people are just coming up with alternative ideas of what could be whats happening. This is all subjective because as many people you may have agree with these things you may have a good amount disagreeing. I think the Human brain is like a blank sheet of paper that over time gets populated with illustrations that map out knowledge later in life. In my opinion babies have innocent minds and don't mean anything until proven guilty.
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Kiera Lee
11/28/2016 07:17:38 pm
I fully believe in Hume's skeptical outlook on the validity of one's "inherent" good and bad nature or knowledge. A baby has no concept of right and wrong, but is taught and influenced by those around him or her and the general upbringing of that particular human being. I also believe Hume is correct in assuming that Science is but a set of beliefs shared by the scientific community, especially relating back to the fact that the scientific view of a baby's natural born instinct through these unreliable tests is that a baby knows right and wrong from an extremely young age. This is not fact, yet experiments done on a certain amount of babies can influence humans to even believe this is accurate. Anyone can be influenced to some degree towards anything, which is why Hume's skeptical outlook on human's natural moral sense is much more reliable, in my opinion.
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Bella Glidden
11/28/2016 07:35:11 pm
Hume is right when be says we should be skeptical when understanding human morality. We should be skeptical because we don't know everyone's intentions and morals. Most people know the difference between right and wrong when making choices, but there is always some who will believe a bad idea is a good one. For example when a seriel killer kills someone he believes that he is doing something good and that he has to do it. Many people would say that murder is bad and not okay, but we don't know everyones intentions and that is why we should be skeptical on human nature.
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Michael Deitz
11/28/2016 07:38:46 pm
David Hume is quite possibly one of the most correct men to ever live. Even having the past few hundred years spent trying to disprove him, the man has yet to be definitively proven wrong. I am on the same boat as Hume, one that states we should be skeptical of everything and aware that just because things tend to happen one way often, does not mean they always will. The morality found within babies is a very different idea; are we so inclined to base arguments off of an infants attraction to a color or animal that the whole point of the experiment may be lost? I personally just believe in doing good, morality is just being a good person. Everyone has a personal hell they are going through, making someone laugh or smile or just pure politeness may be the thing to change someones day. It does not always work but it is what I live by; the fact that life affects everyone differently and we should all be aware just what it means to be a decent human being. Holding the door open, being open minded, having civil interactions, and just being a genuine person is my moral standards, yet all of them are based on experience and not just an innate gut feeling. My job is not to make everyone else's life a hell, a logical conclusion by Hume's standards, and judging by how many people view their morals quite differently than mine, I would venture to say that those are not just born in ideals.
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Sofia Fernandes
11/28/2016 08:15:19 pm
I agree with Hume rather than the Baby Lab researchers. This is because morality is not in any way objective. It is impossible to say that humans are naturally "good" or "bad" because those terms cannot even be defined objectively. What is considered to be good in one culture may be considered to be bad in another, while we are all still humans. It is impossible for humans to be born with a sense of morality because the sense of morality is molded by the outside world of society, experiences, and nature. It is true that certain instinctual emotions do play a part in sparking morality, yet a persons final moral decision is not part of their nature, rather it is created by whatever moral base they have created for themselves.
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phoebe carr
11/28/2016 08:23:58 pm
I don't agree with Hume or the researchers on their opinions of the inherent goodness of man. I think Hume is wrong in thinking we are entirely blank slates at birth, but i also can't say every person is born good and learns evil. I think some people, not everyone, a predisposed to goodness and badness with whatever the chemicals in their brains are doing. Just how some dogs are a aggressive and some aren't, some people may naturally lean towards mischief whereas others may go in the opposite direction. Most people, though, are in the middle, and are closer to Hume's blank slate theory than the minority.
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Emily Clarke
11/29/2016 04:10:47 am
I believe no one is born with a sense of morals. I am not really sure where I stand when it comes to morality at such an early stage of life but i am sure that no one is born with a sense of morals. And if by chance humans are born with morals, I do not think there would be any way to prove it. The baby experiment was extremely ineffective. Hume is right in being skeptical of these things. I believe we are born neither good nor bad.
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Emma Vollmuth
11/29/2016 04:16:54 am
I think Hume is right to be skeptical about almost everything. Even though, the video did bring up a few interesting points, there is no way to be sure what the truth is, if there is any truth, because what the video was arguing is that by observing babies, we know the answer, this just cant be possible. Children need their parents, their environment and everything to grow and be able to grow into the person they are. Another example of this is a dog, dogs aren't born knowing how to be, and just like babies they have no means of communication with us, but along their life, their owners teach them how to be. The dogs get trained how to be good, and this in my opinion is just like humans, we are born blank slates, and trained by the things around us to be either a good or a bad person.
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Marissa Seely
11/29/2016 05:01:41 am
I think Hume is right in the sense that we should absolutely be skeptical of the researchers' claims. The experiments seemed to be very biased in a lot of ways (holding one animal closer to the child, taking advantage of the child's natural instinct to repeat the last thing they heard/saw, etc.) I didn't find the video reliable at all. Even preschoolers will give you the most ludicrous answers to basic questions if you put enough emphasis on the answer you want them to choose. I believe that just as we were born having a blank slate to build experiences upon, we also have a blank slate of moral values. We aren't born inherently good nor evil. Morals depend on countless factors, including the way you're brought up, your environment, your mental state, etc.
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Paige Davis
11/29/2016 05:34:25 am
In my opinion, I think Hume is right about this skepticism of morality because morality is subjective. People have different views on whats good and what is not. Some people think the death penalty is wrong and some people think it's the only answer when someone commits a crime. So who has morality there? It is all subjective so we should be skeptical because researchers claims and tests prove nothing. For example, with testing if babies have morality or natural born goodness they conduct tests based on what they think can judge morality. In reality, we can't tell what the babies are thinking or why they picked the stuffed animal they did. I think we should be skeptical because nothing can be proven because almost everything is subjective.
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Young Chen
11/29/2016 10:32:24 am
I think that that Hume is right about being skeptical about these sort of arguments. He's right because many things may seem right to others, while wrong to others. Morality is quite subjective in general. I believe that morality is only based the person. An example of this would be ISIS believing Torture and execution is right because the people don't pray in the will of Allah, while others accept all religions and that all regions can be practiced together, there doesn't need to be any execution. This is a split between morality because some see execution as the right punishment, while the others believe that you can just hold them and let them practice religion on their own accord.
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Bijou.
11/30/2016 09:12:36 am
I completely agree with Hume about being Skeptical about these sorts of arguments but i in a sense also disagree because not everyone will agree whats right and what is actually wrong. I believe people are born with morals. You do not always need someone to tell whats wrong and what you should and should not do. It should almost be automatic. But some times morals are not just second nature its taught. You teach a child how to behave and be nice to others, you do not congratulate good behavior.
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Alexandria Talavera
11/30/2016 07:25:24 pm
I personally agree with Hume's view on morality. His idea of a "blank slate" demonstrates the idea that we are all born with empty minds that are to be filled with knowledge and experiences that are soon to come. Based on what we learn and experience, we must decide for ourselves what we believe is right and wrong. A common argument in our society is the dispute over abortion. Once we are old enough to understand the concept, we must decide which side of the argument we believe in based on the experiences and knowledge you have gained through life. Ultimately, everything is skeptical because it can be interpreted a variety of ways, it just depends on your background knowledge.
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Edith Torres
12/1/2016 04:31:38 am
I see Hume's idea of skepticism as one of the most logical forms of philosophy other than existentialism and epicurianism. I agree with Hume's idea that we are not completely proven something is correct unless we witness real evidence. This is how i base my "religion" I do not agree that any one religion can be right, considering that each religion contradicts the other. So instead of believing any one belief, I simply accept that the truth has yet to be found and that each religion g has the potential to be correct. Anything is possible essentially. Except i am sure Hume would even question this thinking that not everything could be possible unless proven that everything is. This is the extent to which I would disagree with Hume. We need faith in what is not seen in front of us, so long as we can give it a logical meaning it can not be too far from the truth. And yes we are born knowing nothing too. We need to learn everything as we go and instinct is no where near the same as knowledge!!!:)
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Tara E
12/15/2016 05:00:26 am
I think that morality is completely subjective, but the idea that there is universal morality and that people are born morally good or morally bad is an illusion. Morality is q social construct. It is not an instinct and therefor it is not something an individual can be born with. It's a set or principals created by society determining what is right and wrong, as far as what each individual has been influenced to believe. The majority of people I've come across believe that morality is completely objective and that there are one set of rules determining what's right and wrong and anything you believe that differs is immoral. I don't know, I don't think you can say it's objective because every situation differs and something that is typically considered morally wrong, might have actually been right in the given situation. Like in Les Miserables, Jean Val Jean stole a loaf of bread to feed his sisters starving child. It is a Robin Hood type situation but would it have been right if he didn't steal and let the child starve? Even more than it being impossible to create a single universal code of morality that does justice in every single situation, I think the mere difference that individual's morals can differ so greatly it proves that its completely subjective and not something we are born with but something we are taught.
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Tyhler Harty
12/29/2016 09:43:19 pm
David Hume is correct that people should have skepticism towards things like arguments like this. The reason why is because an experiment determining if humans are good or not has to many variables to consider in telling whether, at infancy, they are natural born "good". My opinion on morality is it develops from what the person is able to perceive and how the person interacts with it, and this means that no one is born good in my idea of how morality is formed.
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Holly Braverman
1/7/2017 03:02:03 pm
-Researchers’ Claims: The video regarding scientific experiments with babies cannot be effectively used to claim that humans are born with a moral sense. In any valid experiment, the independent variable (the variable that is changed or manipulated to see how it affects the dependent variable) can be changed, and all other factors must remain the same. In the experiment shown in the video, the independent variable was whether a puppet would help another puppet open a box or slam it shut. Each of the two puppets wore different colored shirts, which biases the experiment. This is because color factors into people’s perceptions, especially those of babies. For example, babies tend to favor bright colors such as red and blue, over those that are more dull, such as brown (Source: http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/4474725.stm ). In addition, the “good” puppet was consistently placed towards the baby’s right side, both during the puppet show and when the baby had to pick a puppet. Perhaps the placement of the puppet factors into which puppet the babies chose. In summary, I am highly skeptical of the findings of this particular experiment due to its multiple continuity errors (such as using puppy puppets for one experiment and rabbit puppets for another) and improper experimental design.
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