Scientists discover Babies Want to be Happy: The amoral lives of babies.

Scientists discover Babies Want to be Happy: The amoral lives of babies.

Brian Lynch

Revised

“It is interest… which is primary.[Interest] supports both what is necessary for life and what is possible…” Silvan Tomkins. 

Babies want to be happy. I claim this is exactly what we have discovered. But as they say, the devil is in the details.

The truth is being obscured by recent studies dealing with, for example, the “moral lives” of children such as seen in studies by Paul Bloom and others at Yale University. To be sure, to their

credit, they do not make easy or broad claims about their findings. Their findings are full of nuance. The problem is that in the popular press and even in the scientific world we have to get each other’s attention and so we need taglines. Here is the tagline: evidently, “children have a moral life,” that they seem to have a sense of right and wrong, of good and evil. I cringe from the get-go that a modern Yale scientist is throwing around the word evil at this point in his career.

This “moral sense” is based on observing puppet shows where there are “helper” puppets and puppets that hinder the progress of a puppet that is trying to do something. The child, in one case a one-year-old, will choose the helper and not only choose the helper but “whack” the “bad guy.

The first observation is if these findings go towards an innate sense of morality, where do the “bad” guys come from? Shouldn’t all people be good? And so some good babies become bad? I think that is a tough question.

It suggests that we have been doing everything wrong. And why would that be if humans started with such a strong innate moral component? As it is often summarized in the history of man: we have spoken of evil throughout time and some often claimed that we are born “evil.” And again why would that be if we are born with this innate sense of morality? At least in the West, we have been little “devils” in need of socialization. We need to be taught what is “right and wrong” even if we have to be tortured into it. So it seems in so many of our traditions. 

What then? What if we have been spanking the morality out of kids? Why would that be if we are born with a sense of morality? Is that where the bad guys come from? If we are born with a sense of right and wrong weren’t the bad guys born with this same sense? I would claim that is where most of the bad guys come from. That is we “abused them into being bad.” But I am not agreeing exactly that we are born with a sense of morality as these studies suggest but that we are born with an innate need for attachment that leads to what most call good moral character.

I suggest that the researches and science in general are on the right track but just do not have the language to guide them. They get close when Hume is quoted. They state, in the 

New York Times article, “As David Hume argued, mere rationality can’t be the foundation of morality, since our most basic desires are neither rational nor irrational. “Tis not contrary to reason,” he wrote, “to prefer the destruction of the whole world to the scratching of my finger.” To have a genuinely moral system, in other words, some things first have to matter, and what we see in babies is the development of mattering.”

 I think so much is cleared up and made simpler when we say that the babies “like” or desire to be “happy,” to feel good. What “matters” is to feel good. They are interested in those actions that bring them happiness. They will affiliate with that which will bring happiness. Their facileness at this is explained in their humanness. We learn quickly; at 11 months we are already forming words. Everything they are doing need not have any bearing whatsoever on “morality” but everything to do on what is pleasurable and what they will see as paying off in the future in the form of “happiness” and joy. And they already have some understanding that has something to do with an understanding of long-term cooperation and working with others. I need others' help to be happy, and to complete tasks. Morality falls out of the baby's understanding of what will pay off, of what matters.

It is more than remarkable that when these experiments are done with objects that do not have painted faces there is little or no feedback. In the article I read there was only mention of this but no further comment. Those of us that feel that humans are motivated primarily by emotional forces, or what we call “affect” feel that the human face is the seat of our humanness and is the glue that binds us together. If we want a basis for morality we need not look any further than “right under our noses.” The study of facial expression is showing us that huge amounts of subliminal information are guiding our actions and cognitions every step of the way. How long has it been since we have known that at least fifty percent of face-to-face communication is non-verbal?

Now, this is where a lot of people will take the New York Times article and run with a sexy part in the opening paragraph: “At this point, the toddler was asked to take a treat away from one puppet. Like most children in this situation, the boy took it from the pile of the “naughty” one. But this punishment wasn’t enough — he then leaned over and smacked the puppet in the head.”

Of course, note that this is only one child, that is all the other children only choose the “good” guy or rewarded the good guy depending on which study they were in or took the treat away from the “bad” guy. They did not also hit them over the head. Certainly, at this age, the child could have already learned that “hitting” was what one does when one is “bad.” Does the child have siblings and how do they interact and many other questions?

Not only is the answer “right under our noses” via facial expression but so too in the animal kingdom. To look there is to give the lie to our biology which we seem loathed to do. The animal kingdom has its closed system of morality which we often admire. That system is based on the same neuro-anatomy we all start with and that is a “glue” of a mutual recognition of each other that must at some level be called “interest” and in mammals also involves a mutual sharing of joy. These are not necessarily cognitive processes; as cognition only comes in higher primates and as we go along probably many more animals depending on your definition of cognitions, and of course in man. Babies derive pleasure from the pure interest they derive from the world around them and subsequently, the joy derived from that interest. 

“It is interest… which is primary.[Interest] supports both what is necessary for life and what is possible…” Silvan Tomkins. A “morality” quickly “falls” out of being “interested” in others. It has its logic and we need not fall over one another to get there. In the animal kingdom this is certainly the case, mutual “interest” (mutual recognition as being of the same species) in the survival of the species is all that is needed to keep things running smoothly.  

I claim that choosing “the good” guy is nothing more than affiliating with “the good” in the sense of “feeling good,” or wanting to be on the “fun team.” True enough taking the candy away from the “bad” guy is a much more sophisticated maneuver, or is it? What motivates the babies to take the candy away from the “bad” guy is not simply understood.

But are we not back to Hume’s “mattering?” Or I want to posit also that as I said earlier things or “stuff” “falls” out of “what is here.” An order evolves naturally and it evolves naturally from what is given vis-a-vis the “glue” of “interest” in others.

A solitary baby is quite different than one after another baby enters a room. As humans we cannot but note the presence of another human and be “interested” in them. What follows that initial interest is another story.

In short, all babies did not act the same. Not all babies took candy from “bad” babies. Could we say their “interests” varied? The question would be why? We should not jump to the conclusion thinking that they are thinking “morally.”

I suggest that the researchers do these experiments and analyze the real subtext and that is what is going on in the facial expressions of the babies throughout the experiment. Is there a difference between those that do and do not take the candy and what is their expression before this when they see the bunny run away with the ball among many more questions? Possibly this could be done with the footage they have.

No, “morality” is not innate, it seems like it might be as it starts to “fall out” of our bumping into each other as soon as that other kid comes into the room. We want like heck to have fun with them but it quickly gets complicated. The adult giving the baby the option of taking the candy away from the baby reminded me of a scene in the Bergman movie “Shame” where one of the protagonists is forced into a position of “having” to execute someone to save his own life. Or of the Mailgram experiments which are mentioned in the NYT’s article where subjects applied shocks apparently “simply” because they were ordered to. This is the “real” world of adult morality but it is still built on our interests.

The natural basis for morality is our innate need for attachment that is expressed by our automatic innate interest in others. Interest in others brings joy. What begins to make “bad” people is the lack of eye contact between caregiver and child in the first 18 months. If all goes well there we will base our actions, our morality, on what will maximize interest and joy in others and logically this leads to not harming others.