If we say that morality belongs exclusively to humans, does that entail that morality is not biological?

First, as we shall see later, morality belongs to memetic animals, meaning it is not exclusive to humans. However, I do not want to explore this aspect of the issue in this post. Much more interesting is the question of morality as a biological phenomenon. Why? Because it raises questions about the relationship between nature (biology) and nurture (culture). Are values genetically implanted or culturally nurtured, or both?

Morality is all about values

Values are intersubjective in that they do not exist per se, that is, without people, but only as bonds of human interaction. Value is only value in exchange. Exchange can take place between two or more actors.

Let us put the above statement into the memetic context.

Memes, as inter- and intra-subjective entities, form memetic fields. The interaction of a human mind with a word or sentence in a book (artifact) triggers the meme, which collapses (as the wave function) into the particular memetic field of the mind that “receives” that meme. At the moment of collapse, the bundle of strategic and material memes moves from the potentiality of meaning to the actuality of meaning.

The situation is like an experimentally demonstrated phenomenon in quantum mechanics, where a particle in a quantum superposition collapses into a trace observed on the detector. A trace with a particular vector. A meme, as a quantum-like particle, hits a detector, a human brain, or, better, a memetic field of which human brains are a substrate, and with that, it collapses from superposition to a particular trace, which is subjectively experienced as a thought.

The crucial point about this collapse moment is that the resulting vector depends on the shape of the receiving memetic field. Each of us has a differently shaped memetic field, so we understand the same meme differently. The shape of a memetic field’s surface defines the directionality and the “force” of the trace (meaning) created by the collapse.

The vector of that collapse is the value; the same value that is the subject of this post.

Values are not memes. They are vectors only, an emergence that depends on incoming memes and on the curvature of a particular memetic field.

Intersubjectivity

This leads directly to the distinction between intrasubjectivity and intersubjectivity in memetic phenomena. Should Robinson Crusoe remain alone on the island, he would still be in possession of a memetic field. Few available memes there would still create a sense particular to Robinson. But Daniel Defoe needed Friday, “joined” to Robinson Crusoe, to create a rich story of intersubjectivity of memes. Not only were memes for communication more abundant, but the clash of different value systems created not only a rich story but also a platform for the enrichment of both memetic fields. Values thus exist intrasubjectively; however, they become tacit only in exchange, as intersubjective emergences.

Just as brands do not exist in themselves but only for us, values exist for others only because they are personal. Only when they are selfish can they enter the exchange engine.

Collective memetic fields

The more challenging aspect of explaining memetic fields concerns collective memetic fields. Brands are already collective memetic fields because they are co-created by many people. As we explained in Brandlife, brands are not owned by the entity that created them and legally owns them. Over time and with growth, they increasingly belong to their users. Why? Because individual memetic fields influence the creation of a brand’s memetic field.

However, the best illustration of a collective memetic field is what Karl Jung called archetypes, as discussed in The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (1959) and elsewhere. Archetypes are collective memetic fields that persist for the longest periods, most of them dating back to prehistoric times. What is peculiar about archetypes in the context of morality is that they clearly shape our morality. The Biblical 10 commandments, for instance, are memetic artifacts based on much older archetypes that explicitly shape the collective Western sense of morality, the collective Western memetic field. We, who are born into this cultural tradition, receive such archetypal impulses even before we are physically born. Our personal memetic fields are thus, to a certain degree, predefined by such long-lasting collective memetic fields.

Values and natural selection

It would take us too far to discuss memetic fields here. What becomes clear is that morality is a kind of human metabolism on a social level. Both morality and cellular metabolism are part of biology if biology is understood as a playground of living agents. If cellular and bodily metabolic processes are explained mainly by chemistry, morality is explained by memetics. Memetics explains that part of the laws of biology that is specific to humans. Because it is specific to humans, it is still part of biology.

Although memetic fields organized around brands need human brains as substrates to persist, that does not absolve them of being part of biology. Viruses that can only live inside the cells of other bodies are still considered living things. Susan Blackmore’s positioning of memes as viruses of the mind is so apt! This is another argument that values (as memes) are part of biology and subject to the laws of evolution.

Values evolve according to the laws of natural selection. Let me repeat that the laws of natural selection do not imply directionality. Evolution has no positive or negative bias. From the perspective of individual interests, values can evolve negatively, just as cancer evolves in the body. In both cases, an individual is threatened with death.

Let’s go one step further to make the point clearer. Mathematics is a memetic phenomenon and, as such, is part of biology. That mathematics cannot be reduced to biology does not mean it is not part of the biosphere. But if mathematics is part of the biosphere, it is also subject to the rules of natural selection.

That something cannot be reduced to something else does not mean the two share no laws. Entities are irreducible in complexity. Not only can we not reduce physical laws to a single law (a grand unifying theory), but we also cannot reduce social laws to an individual. Better: we should not reduce social laws to individuals, since all totalitarian systems, in practice, make such a reduction. Such a practice is immoral because it is unnatural; that is, it is unsustainable.

But what about ethics? Is ethics part of the biosphere? Thomas Nagel (Mortal Questions, 1997) explicitly excludes ethics from biology. In doing so, he joins a long list of excellent minds who stumble at the edge of something and see no way out, like Dante in the first chapter of The Divine Comedy. And both Nagel and Dante were right. Ethics is not morality.