[MD] Science catching up

[Platt Holden]

Hi All,

In today's NY Times is a review of a new book by Mark D. Hauser, a Harvard 
biologist, entitled "Moral Minds." In it he claims "people are born with a 
moral grammar wired into their neural circuits by evolution." He argues 
that grammar "generates instant moral judgments which . . . are 
inaccessible to the conscious mind."

In other words, Pirsig's morality of direct experience prior to 
intellectual conceptions.

Of course like most people today, Hauser limits moral decisions to human 
societies, attributing our moral instinct to "restraints on behavior are 
required by social living and have been favored by natural selection 
because of their survival value." Maybe at some future time scientists and 
others will escape from the language prison of social morality to 
understand that right and wrong are not exclusively the province of  human 
society, but the creative force behind the world's order.

But, don't hold your breath.

Best,
Platt