An article in the New York Times Magazine claims experimental verification for the idea that very small children are able to tell right from wrong. This, if true, would be wonderful posthumous news for Mencius, Jean-Jacques Rousseau and other believers in the basic goodness of human nature. It would also, I imagine, help to reduce the anxiety of new parents who fear they are not doing an adequate job of turning their little blobs of cuteness into moral agents. But at least one of the demonstrations of the principle released to the public doesn't convince me that it's about right and wrong at all. Come be immoral with me.

Speaking of cuteness, let me direct you to the NYTM's video clip from Paul Bloom's lab at Yale:

http://video.nytimes.com/video/2010/05/04/magazine/1247467772000/can-babies-tell-right-from-wrong.html

The kids watch a little puppet show in which there are a protagonist, a “helping” character and a “bad” character. The “bad” character pushes the protagonist down a hill, sits on a box to keep the protagonist from opening it, runs away with the ball in the middle of a game. The “helping” character restores the ball, pushes the protagonist up the hill, joins in opening the box. After the show, 80% of the kids embrace the “helping” character and reject the “bad” one, which is supposed to demonstrate that they already have a sense of right and wrong. (For the record, the last child shown in the video seems to be paying very little attention, and hesitates between the two puppets at the end; I even sense a little body language on the part of the demonstrator that subtly draws attention to the “helping” character. Watch it again yourselves.)

Does this snippet-- of course, I know it's only a snippet from a mountain of research-- prove anything at all about right and wrong? Are we compelled to take it as a moral event? I think not. When narratology got its start, with Vladimir Propp and others, it carefully stepped around categories such as “good” and “bad” (which nonetheless are a big part of the experience of tellers and hearers of tales; I think we all can attest to that). Propp classified the actors in a story as agents, helpers, frustrators, and so on. Maybe this is a less loaded vocabulary for describing the events in the Yale Moral Theater.

For in this light, we might describe what the little spectator sees as a story in which an Action is occurring, led by a Protagonist who wants something. (Some mirror-neuron magic assures that the child mentally steps into the place of the Protagonist.) Along comes a Helper who furthers the success of the action; or along comes a Blocker who frustrates the action. Are all Helpers good and all Blockers bad?

Consider the possibility that the box the Protagonist is set on opening contains rat poison, or a dirty bomb, or twenty kilos of uncut cocaine. The Helper would hardly be helping in assisting the Protagonist to open the box; rather, in this case, the Helper would harm and the true Helper would be the Blocker, who steers the Protagonist away from the exciting but dangerous stuff.

In other words, the small child is more likely to interpret the scene as the interchange, repeated dozens of times each day, of Desire frustrated by a Blocker, typically a parent. And if the child prefers the Helper over the Blocker, it's because children like to have their desires satisfied; right and wrong don't enter into it. Or at least the child's perspective doesn't include the features of right and wrong that are in play for a parent who's on the lookout for the encounter of danger and curiosity. It's a moral scene only if you believe that attaining the object of your desire is always good and being frustrated is always bad. That presupposition, however, deserves a little closer examination.

What's interesting is the rush to moralize the event-- and as always where babies are concerned, it carries the suggestion of both unshakeable psychological truth (babies are supposed to tell us what is really in unadulterated human nature) and moral power (whatever comes from or is done in the name of babies must be good). The experimental result, as so often, reflects back on the experimenter-- not just this one respected colleague, of course, but the whole bunch of us in this society who are waving baby-shaped placards and seeking some kind of authority.

So which puppet will you parents want to embrace after the show? The cuddly Jean-Jacques Rousseau doll, with the noble flash of idealism in his eye and brow? Or crusty old Sigmund Freud, with his perpetual cigar and clamped jaw? Which is the Helper and which the Blocker? Is it moral to desire a foundation for morality before experience, or would that just be the satisfaction of another desire? As the dad in the black T-shirt says, toward the end of the clip, “I just want to know how we did.”