Humans are Innately Good Beings
The debate is finished. The distribution of the voting points and the winner are presented below.
After 1 vote and with 3 points ahead, the winner is...
- Publication date
- Last updated date
- Type
- Standard
- Number of rounds
- 4
- Time for argument
- Two days
- Max argument characters
- 10,000
- Voting period
- One month
- Point system
- Multiple criterions
- Voting system
- Open
It's been widely argued on both sides that humans are either born with good or bad qualities. So it would be interesting to find out how two people with opposing viewpoints on this issue of human morality defend their respective points while enhancing their agenda simultaneously.
Pro will make his argument with the following three claims.
1. Humans when left with nothing but each other are kind, caring, and overall good animals.
Before civilization and mass production homo sapiens were not the only human species on this planet. There were Neantherdals, Homo Erectus, and many more. We, as a species, had to work together to stay alive because the aforementioned species were much stronger and much smarter than us as shown by early archeological evidence. (https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-13874671). However, the only reason why are the only human species alive today on this planet is because we worked together as a community to stay alive. Although we were a lot less smart than the Neantherdals we were a lot smarter than they when we worked together and put all of our brainpower together to fight for one cause - our existence. We cared for each other and looked after each other for millions of years.
2. Humans, at a very young age, are aware of what's right and what's wrong, and prefer good over evil.
In Yale University experiments babies were shown a puppet play where one puppet stole something from another puppet and afterward the babies were asked to choose which puppet they preferred (https://www.nature.com/articles/nature06288). Over 80% of the babies chose the good character over the bad one. This shows that we at a young age can differentiate between right and wrong without even being able to talk. Furthermore, we prefer to praise the good guy over the bad guy. This further enhances my argument because babies are humans that have recently just come into existence and have not interacted with their neighboring environment as much as other humans have. Thus babies are the perfect example of humans who have not been influenced in any way and prove to show qualities that emphasize that humans are indeed good when left to their own devices.
3. Civilization and capitalism have strayed us away from our innate goodness.
In the real world, it may seem as if there are tons of people who do bad things on a daily basis and one might argue that rightfully so they should be considered as bad people. However, it is not one's innate greediness or selfishness that causes one to commit atrocities rather it's because of civilization and the external incentive of making more money. There have been several studies showing that money makes us more greedy and selfish. For example in a study done by the World Economic Forum in the United States households with lower-class incomes tended to give a higher percentage of their income to charity compared to those with middle-class incomes. However, accumulating more money and spending it on ourselves doesn't actually make us feel good. A study at the University of British Columbia showed that students who were forced to spend money on others were much happier and felt much more highly of themselves than those who just spent money on themselves. (https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/308Readings/Dunn2014.pdf). This proves the fact that money and power have misguided us away from our roots of kindness and love.
- Brief Opening Statement,
- Opening statement/concise args.
- Terms, BoP, and Resolution
- Goodness or Selfishness
- Morality, and therefore goodness, is subjective
- internal perspective
- The external perspective
- Terms, BoP, and Resolution
- Goodness or selfishness
“Whether demonstrated by situations of hunting, foraging, child rearing or migrating, humans with culture, in pursuit of shared goals, had much to gain through cooperation. Cooperating humans would lead to greater survival, greater reproduction and colonization.” [1]
“The scale of human cooperation is an evolutionary puzzle. All of the available evidence suggests that the societies of our Pliocene ancestors were like those of other social primates, and this means that human psychology has changed in ways that support larger, more cooperative societies that characterize modern humans. In this paper, we argue that cultural adaptation is a key factor in these changes.” [3]
- Morality, and therefore goodness, is subjective
- The Internal Consideration
“ We, as a species, had to work together to stay alive because the aforementioned species were much stronger and much smarter than us as shown by early archeological evidence….We cared for each other and looked after each other for millions of years.”
“Over 80% of the babies chose the good character over the bad one. This shows that we at a young age can differentiate between right and wrong without even being able to talk. Furthermore, we prefer to praise the good guy over the bad guy. …….that emphasize that humans are indeed good when left to their own devices.”
- The External Consideration
“In the real world, it may seem as if there are tons of people who do bad things on a daily basis and one might argue that rightfully so they should be considered as bad people. However, it is not one's innate greediness or selfishness that causes one to commit atrocities rather it's because of civilization and the external incentive of making more money. There have been several studies showing that money makes us more greedy and selfish. For example in a study done by the World Economic Forum in the United States households with lower-class incomes tended to give a higher percentage of their income to charity compared to those with middle-class incomes. However, accumulating more money and spending it on ourselves doesn't actually make us feel good. A study at the University of British Columbia showed that students who were forced to spend money on others were much happier and felt much more highly of themselves than those who just spent money on themselves. (https://www2.psych.ubc.ca/~schaller/308Readings/Dunn2014.pdf). This proves the fact that money and power have misguided us away from our roots of kindness and love.”
I agree, we did work together to continue our existence, but that does not logically lead to the conclusion that we innately have the ability to care for one another. At the core of working together is the selfish desire to improve, to survive, and evolutionarily speaking, that means that you have to work together. It does give us the capacity to be kind and caring, but that is not the actual instincts of being like that. Lying isn’t a learned trait afterall, while Empathy is.
What this actually proves is that humans prefer beings who are less selfish because that increases their own likelihood of cooperation, hence the hypocritical nature of human beings, they are inherently selfish (as all creatures are) - but they prefer the company of the least outwardly appearing selfish individual, that way they can be more selfish. Also, this does not demonstrate that babies are more good or anything of the sort, it proves that they prefer good things, this is a non-sequitur by pro.
Although this is true what I argued was that humans, when left with nothing - no society, no money, no extrinsic incentives except for the need to survive - are good beings who cooperate and work collaboratively with one another. This is demonstrated through the behavior of early human beings who didn't live in societies and only knew how to hunt, eat, and sleep. Obviously nowadays there are a myriad of extrinsic motivations that humans live for other than the need to survive. For example, making money, buying expensive items, getting a job, etc. Thus, Con's rebuttal that human beings have changed over the past thousands of years is incorrect because we have formed capitalistic societies that incentivize greediness and selfishness which is exactly what is meant by the term "one's environment" in the opening statement.
It doesn't particularly matter if humans lived in societies or not, for as long as we can track back their ancestory humans have lived in groups, and as group species it is to our best interest to take care of the pack, if the young fall behind or die, then the lifeline doesn't continue. As human's best tool has always been our innovation and mind, it only makes sense that humans would learn to work together in order to get farther, and if you learn to develop empathy - you can more effectively work with people. Claiming that because there are now external facets that influence the moral character of humans is irrelevant when discussing internal influences.
Goodness can exist as an objective even if morality is relative. This is because humans are able to tell the difference between what's good and what's bad. So humans who choose to do the right thing possess some sort of "good" quality. However the selection of which action is good and which action is bad is what's subjective.
if we were acting because of our selfishness then we would not care about the well being of others from our own species. We would branch off and each individual human being would do their own thing to survive. Selfishness is not a quality of a collective rather it's a quality of an individual. So, since we stood up for our fellow humans we were acting out of the goodness of our heart.
a baby who selected the good character had no incentive to select it at all. So, how can Con conclude that the babies chose the good character because of their innate selfishness. Also my point does prove that young humans possess a moral understanding that allows them to prefer the good character over the bad character. This allows for the conclusion that since the baby had no incentive or extrinsic motivation to choose one character over the other that they, by choosing the good character, displayed moral virtue.
There have been several studies that show that humans, especially at very young ages, choose to do good things and help each other out not because of a reward but because of their inherent goodness
tend to experience mental and physiological health benefits when expressing good moral virtues. For example.. study tested to see whether people who told the truth and those who told lies would experience differences in well-being .... they observed that the subject group that was instructed to only tell the truth experienced far fewer mental and physical health problems. Thus, this study shows that we live much better lives when we express our true virtues.
We love to form social connections with others from our species. Furthermore, we are biologically programmed in a way that we need friendships and companionships in order to live a happy life... This comes back to the fact that I believe humans are good because friendships require compromise and cooperation from both parties without which they would collapse. Therefore friendships prove how we express our good qualities in order to maintain long lasting friendships that we could not live healthily without.
It doesn't particularly matter if humans lived in societies or not, for as long as we can track back their ancestory humans have lived in groups, and as group species it is to our best interest to take care of the pack, if the young fall behind or die, then the lifeline doesn't continue. As human's best tool has always been our innovation and mind, it only makes sense that humans would learn to work together in order to get farther, and if you learn to develop empathy - you can more effectively work with people. Claiming that because there are now external facets that influence the moral character of humans is irrelevant when discussing internal influences.
If you care for other people they care for you - which is beneficial for you in the first place. This is what things like the golden rule is taking advantage of, the innert selfishness within humans - because if you do something wrong that can hurt others, then you are giving implicit permission for them to do it to you. Thus, being good to others and "standing up for them" will always, in the long run, be advantageous to you.
"Young children’s prosocial behavior is thus intrinsically motivated by a concern for others’ welfare, which has its evolutionary roots in a concern for the well-being of those with whom one is interdependent." Did you notice a word there? "Well-being of those with whom one is interdependent." According to lexico, interdependent means "dependent on each other" Then that means that children are motivated to help others who they are depend on. Why? Because they depend on them! Obviously you are going to care about the ones who take care of you, they take care of you.
"Here we show that 6- and 10-month-old infants take into account an individual’s actions towards others in evaluating that individual as appealing or aversive: infants prefer an individual who helps another to one who hinders another, prefer a helping individual to a neutral individual, and prefer a neutral individual to a hindering individual."
This comes down to the final round. Though pro remarks about helping others innate to babies, con points out that the closeness to help family more than stranger is not demonstrated, nor the grounding basis for what is right or what is wrong. “Good” is very difficult. Ironically, if the debate was “humans innately tend to a net benefit toward society”, I would give this to pro.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UmnrXMb5s9Y
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SqbjZmz0cFA
No worries at all! Hope you feel better.
Sorry about that, kinda super sick, you can write another argument if you like, I should be able to get a argument up in a day or two
ouch
Yeah, I think it's interesting that you bring that up because the Lord of the Flies was written by William Golding who was a school teacher that believed that humans were innately evil. However there was an actual real life "Lord of the Flies" accident where 6 boys were shipwrecked for 15 months off of the coast of Tonga in 1977. In fact the exact opposite of what happened in the book happened in real life. The 6 boys actually worked together to survive and had a systematic way of dealing with things. For example each boy would have a designated task to do by the end of the day like collect water or chop down trees to make a fire. It was only because of their cooperation and kindness to one another that they were able to stay alive for 15 months stranded on an island in the middle of nowhere.
"Humans when left with nothing but each other are kind, caring, and overall good animals." - Rishi_D
What are your thoughts on the book, Lord of the Flies?
I hope I can do it justice
Ahhh, this is a fantastic topic.