The science of morality from the bottom-up and the top-down
This post describes the status of science of morality investigations, plus my views on how those studies relate to each other, can be expanded on, and can and cannot tell us about right and wrong.
The science of morality approaches morality both from the bottom-up by looking for cross-cultural universals within descriptively moral norms and judgments, and from the top-down by applying game theory to understand the cooperation strategies that have enabled us to become such an incredibly successful social species. Ill argue that both perspectives merge to a unified, robust understanding of cultural moral norms and our moral senses judgments as parts of cooperation strategies.
The bottom-up approach begins with gathering data about what people in different cultures say is moral and immoral. These surveys produce a superficially chaotic data set with diverse, contradictory, and strange elements. In philosophical terms, these surveys gather information about descriptively moral norms(ref6) and judgments (norms and judgments considered moral in at least one culture).
Oliver Curry and Jonathan Haidt are the two best-known bottom-up science of morality investigators. They have proposed separate theories about moral cross-cultural universals the subset of moral norms and judgments that are empirically universal to all studied societies.
Oliver Currys Morality as Cooperation theory3 describes moral universals as solutions to seven cooperation problems regarding family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights. Curry proposes that behaviors that are part of solving these problems are normative what people ought to do.
Jonathan Haidts Moral Foundation Theory4 summarizes moral universals as five circumstances (others have been proposed since) that universally trigger moral judgments: (1) harm (reducing)/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. Haidt proposes that behaviors that maintain these circumstances are normative5.
There is some overlap. Both agree with the consensus among science of morality investigators, that morality is about maintaining and increasing cooperation2,3,8,11,12.
Are Curry and Haidt proposing competing theories or just different perspectives on the same phenomena? And what is the origin and function of norms and judgments that are not cross-culturally moral? These questions will be easier to answer viewed from the top-down perspective.
Martin Nowaks top-down approach uses game theory to identify five mechanisms7,8 for the evolution of cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. These mechanisms are as innate to our universe as the mathematics of game theory they are based on. They were available to our ancestors and were selected for and encoded in our biology and cultures by the benefits of cooperation they produced. Species that have not encoded these mechanisms into their biology and cultural norms would find it difficult or impossible to form highly cooperative societies.
The top-down approach predicts that some of Nowaks mechanisms will necessarily be part of morality for all highly cooperative species. The top-down approach thus enables us to make claims about what is universally moral for all intelligent species, not just what is cross-culturally moral for people (the limit of universality the bottom-up approach can claim).
What about descriptively moral norms that are not cross-culturally moral? Why do they exist? Are universal cultural moral norms and judgments best understood as moral absolutes or what? And why do people experience the strong intuition that what they believe is moral is what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences and violators deserve punishment?
Again, the top-down, game theory perspective on morality is informative and can explain that:
1) Exploitation of outgroups by ingroups (slaves must obey their masters, women must be submissive to men, and homosexuality is evil) have been considered descriptively moral10,11 because these norms can increase the benefits for an ingroup cooperatively exploiting outgroups. This ingroup cooperation (even if it is to exploit an outgroup) matches one of the templets encoded in our moral sense for recognizing descriptively moral behavior.
2) Marker norms (including sex and food taboos plus dress and grooming moral norms) exist because they can improve the success of reciprocity strategies by enabling people to identify more reliably cooperative people who are committed members of their ingroups.
3) Versions of the Golden Rule are virtually universal in cultural moralities and are sometimes thought of as moral absolutes. Science can explain that versions of the Golden Rule are part of essentially all cultural moralities not because they are moral absolutes but because they are heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb like virtually all moral norms) for initiating indirect reciprocity, perhaps the most powerful cooperation strategy known.
4) Our illusion of moralitys strange bindingness regardless of needs and preferences exists1,2,9 because our illusion of imperative bindingness is part of our motivation for punishing moral norm violators. Punishment is a necessary component of the cooperation strategies that make up human morality2. This illusion was encoded into the biology underlying our moral sense by the reproductive fitness benefits it produced.
As described above, the science of morality has made wonderful progress in the last several decades in understanding cultural moral norms and our moral sense.
However, I argue that both the existing top-down and the bottom-up approaches can be further expanded to reveal even more useful information.
The following claims may be implied in the literature, but I have not seen them explicitly stated.
What problem do Nowaks five mechanisms solve?
I argue they all solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma, a higher-level problem that is innate to our universe. This dilemma is how to sustainably obtain the benefits of cooperation without exploitation destroying future benefits of cooperation. This is a dilemma because exploitation is almost always the winning strategy in the short term and can be in the long term.
Identifying the cooperation/exploitation dilemma as the ultimate source of human morality suggests that the absence of exploitation is what separates what is universally moral from what is merely descriptively moral. Hence:
Descriptive moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
Due to their origins in the mathematics of game theory, these principles are as species, environment, and time independent as the mathematics they are based on.
As a check, are these principles consistent with what we know about human morality?
Yes. Descriptively moral norms gathered as part of the bottom-up approach appear to be parts of cooperation strategies. And none of the cross-cultural universals the seven moral problems identified by Curry and five circumstances identified by Haidt - include exploitation as a component. That the above two simple moral principles can explain such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set supports them as the basis of a highly robust theory of morality. (The data set they explain includes past and present cultural moral norms, Currys and Haidts moral universals, and Nowaks five mechanisms.)
Competing explanations for cultural moralities such as reducing harm, conflict resolution, maximizing happiness, increasing reproductive fitness, and cultural relativism are not even remotely competitive in explaining this superficially chaotic data set.
Proposed counterexamples to the two principles are always welcome.
What can the science of morality tell us?
The science of morality can tell us the origin and function of descriptively moral behaviors and their universally moral subset. The science of morality can also inform us about instrumental oughts of the form If you desire X and wish to obtain it using a universally moral means, you ought to do Y. This knowledge can be useful for resolving moral disputes within groups that desire a similar X and wish to use this universally moral means (cooperation that does not exploit others). Like the rest of science, the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be or what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences.
Ill leave further discussion of cultural and philosophical implications for another time.
1. Blackford, Russell (2016). The Mystery of Moral Authority. Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Bowles, S., Gintis, H. (2011). A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton University Press.
3. Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality. Springer.
4. Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Koleva, S.; Motyl, M.; Iyer, R.; Wojcik, S.; Ditto, P.H. (2013). "Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism". Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 47: 55130
5. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon.
6. Harms, W., Skyrms, B. (2010) Evolution of Moral Norms. In Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Biology ed. Michael Ruse. Oxford University Press.
7. Nowak, MA. (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science. 2006 Dec 8.
8. Nowak, M., Highfield, R. (2011). SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Free Press.
9. Ruse, M. and Wilson, E. O. (1991) The Evolution of Ethics, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement.
10. Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton University Press.
11. Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in Mind: The Coalitional Roots of War and Morality, from Human Morality & Sociality: Evolutionary & Comparative Perspectives, Henrik Høgh-Olesen (Ed.), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 91-234.
12. Tomasello, M., & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 231-255.
The science of morality approaches morality both from the bottom-up by looking for cross-cultural universals within descriptively moral norms and judgments, and from the top-down by applying game theory to understand the cooperation strategies that have enabled us to become such an incredibly successful social species. Ill argue that both perspectives merge to a unified, robust understanding of cultural moral norms and our moral senses judgments as parts of cooperation strategies.
The bottom-up approach begins with gathering data about what people in different cultures say is moral and immoral. These surveys produce a superficially chaotic data set with diverse, contradictory, and strange elements. In philosophical terms, these surveys gather information about descriptively moral norms(ref6) and judgments (norms and judgments considered moral in at least one culture).
Oliver Curry and Jonathan Haidt are the two best-known bottom-up science of morality investigators. They have proposed separate theories about moral cross-cultural universals the subset of moral norms and judgments that are empirically universal to all studied societies.
Oliver Currys Morality as Cooperation theory3 describes moral universals as solutions to seven cooperation problems regarding family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights. Curry proposes that behaviors that are part of solving these problems are normative what people ought to do.
Jonathan Haidts Moral Foundation Theory4 summarizes moral universals as five circumstances (others have been proposed since) that universally trigger moral judgments: (1) harm (reducing)/care, (2) fairness/reciprocity, (3) ingroup/loyalty, (4) authority/respect, and (5) purity/sanctity. Haidt proposes that behaviors that maintain these circumstances are normative5.
There is some overlap. Both agree with the consensus among science of morality investigators, that morality is about maintaining and increasing cooperation2,3,8,11,12.
Are Curry and Haidt proposing competing theories or just different perspectives on the same phenomena? And what is the origin and function of norms and judgments that are not cross-culturally moral? These questions will be easier to answer viewed from the top-down perspective.
Martin Nowaks top-down approach uses game theory to identify five mechanisms7,8 for the evolution of cooperation: kin selection, direct reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, network reciprocity, and group selection. These mechanisms are as innate to our universe as the mathematics of game theory they are based on. They were available to our ancestors and were selected for and encoded in our biology and cultures by the benefits of cooperation they produced. Species that have not encoded these mechanisms into their biology and cultural norms would find it difficult or impossible to form highly cooperative societies.
The top-down approach predicts that some of Nowaks mechanisms will necessarily be part of morality for all highly cooperative species. The top-down approach thus enables us to make claims about what is universally moral for all intelligent species, not just what is cross-culturally moral for people (the limit of universality the bottom-up approach can claim).
What about descriptively moral norms that are not cross-culturally moral? Why do they exist? Are universal cultural moral norms and judgments best understood as moral absolutes or what? And why do people experience the strong intuition that what they believe is moral is what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences and violators deserve punishment?
Again, the top-down, game theory perspective on morality is informative and can explain that:
1) Exploitation of outgroups by ingroups (slaves must obey their masters, women must be submissive to men, and homosexuality is evil) have been considered descriptively moral10,11 because these norms can increase the benefits for an ingroup cooperatively exploiting outgroups. This ingroup cooperation (even if it is to exploit an outgroup) matches one of the templets encoded in our moral sense for recognizing descriptively moral behavior.
2) Marker norms (including sex and food taboos plus dress and grooming moral norms) exist because they can improve the success of reciprocity strategies by enabling people to identify more reliably cooperative people who are committed members of their ingroups.
3) Versions of the Golden Rule are virtually universal in cultural moralities and are sometimes thought of as moral absolutes. Science can explain that versions of the Golden Rule are part of essentially all cultural moralities not because they are moral absolutes but because they are heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb like virtually all moral norms) for initiating indirect reciprocity, perhaps the most powerful cooperation strategy known.
4) Our illusion of moralitys strange bindingness regardless of needs and preferences exists1,2,9 because our illusion of imperative bindingness is part of our motivation for punishing moral norm violators. Punishment is a necessary component of the cooperation strategies that make up human morality2. This illusion was encoded into the biology underlying our moral sense by the reproductive fitness benefits it produced.
As described above, the science of morality has made wonderful progress in the last several decades in understanding cultural moral norms and our moral sense.
However, I argue that both the existing top-down and the bottom-up approaches can be further expanded to reveal even more useful information.
The following claims may be implied in the literature, but I have not seen them explicitly stated.
What problem do Nowaks five mechanisms solve?
I argue they all solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma, a higher-level problem that is innate to our universe. This dilemma is how to sustainably obtain the benefits of cooperation without exploitation destroying future benefits of cooperation. This is a dilemma because exploitation is almost always the winning strategy in the short term and can be in the long term.
Identifying the cooperation/exploitation dilemma as the ultimate source of human morality suggests that the absence of exploitation is what separates what is universally moral from what is merely descriptively moral. Hence:
Descriptive moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
Due to their origins in the mathematics of game theory, these principles are as species, environment, and time independent as the mathematics they are based on.
As a check, are these principles consistent with what we know about human morality?
Yes. Descriptively moral norms gathered as part of the bottom-up approach appear to be parts of cooperation strategies. And none of the cross-cultural universals the seven moral problems identified by Curry and five circumstances identified by Haidt - include exploitation as a component. That the above two simple moral principles can explain such a huge, diverse, contradictory, and strange data set supports them as the basis of a highly robust theory of morality. (The data set they explain includes past and present cultural moral norms, Currys and Haidts moral universals, and Nowaks five mechanisms.)
Competing explanations for cultural moralities such as reducing harm, conflict resolution, maximizing happiness, increasing reproductive fitness, and cultural relativism are not even remotely competitive in explaining this superficially chaotic data set.
Proposed counterexamples to the two principles are always welcome.
What can the science of morality tell us?
The science of morality can tell us the origin and function of descriptively moral behaviors and their universally moral subset. The science of morality can also inform us about instrumental oughts of the form If you desire X and wish to obtain it using a universally moral means, you ought to do Y. This knowledge can be useful for resolving moral disputes within groups that desire a similar X and wish to use this universally moral means (cooperation that does not exploit others). Like the rest of science, the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be or what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences.
Ill leave further discussion of cultural and philosophical implications for another time.
1. Blackford, Russell (2016). The Mystery of Moral Authority. Palgrave Macmillan.
2. Bowles, S., Gintis, H. (2011). A Cooperative Species: Human Reciprocity and Its Evolution. Princeton University Press.
3. Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A problem-centred approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality. Springer.
4. Graham, J.; Haidt, J.; Koleva, S.; Motyl, M.; Iyer, R.; Wojcik, S.; Ditto, P.H. (2013). "Moral Foundations Theory: The pragmatic validity of moral pluralism". Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. 47: 55130
5. Haidt, J. (2012). The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pantheon.
6. Harms, W., Skyrms, B. (2010) Evolution of Moral Norms. In Oxford Handbook on the Philosophy of Biology ed. Michael Ruse. Oxford University Press.
7. Nowak, MA. (2006). Five rules for the evolution of cooperation. Science. 2006 Dec 8.
8. Nowak, M., Highfield, R. (2011). SuperCooperators: Altruism, Evolution, and Why We Need Each Other to Succeed. Free Press.
9. Ruse, M. and Wilson, E. O. (1991) The Evolution of Ethics, in Religion and the Natural Sciences: The Range of Engagement.
10. Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton University Press.
11. Tooby, J., and Cosmides, L. (2010). Groups in Mind: The Coalitional Roots of War and Morality, from Human Morality & Sociality: Evolutionary & Comparative Perspectives, Henrik Høgh-Olesen (Ed.), Palgrave MacMillan, New York, pp. 91-234.
12. Tomasello, M., & Vaish, A. (2013). Origins of Human Cooperation and Morality. Annual Review of Psychology, 64(1), 231-255.
Comments (104)
Nicely done.
So systems theory describes all natural systems - even the universe itself - as being hierarchically organised through the holism of top-down global constraints acting to shape a systems bottom-up and locally constructing degrees of freedom.
This makes a system a self-causing or self-organising dynamical balance. Global laws or habits act downwards to limit local action. And this then gives form and purpose to that local action as it now has the right shape, the right material and efficient degrees of freedom, to be the kind of stuff that is going to construct, or rather reconstruct, the global whole and sustain its long run existence.
So it is a causal loop based on a win/win balancing act. And in societies, that is what a morality attempts to encode. The constraints of a society are the rules around cooperation. They tilt the social collective to stability in the long run. But a society, like any living structure, must have its local individualism, its local freedom, its local creativity, its local random variety, to be able to adapt and evolve.
Competition keeps the hierarchy dynamic, while cooperation is keeping it stable. And morality has to be finely tuned to producing the balance of the two complementary forces that are best in terms of the degree of adaptability and change that match a society to its larger environment.
So morality is not universal in its prescriptions, as every human group may need some different balance. But it is universal in its form in the sense that morality is a win/win balancing act where freedom is maximised for the individual within the constraints of a collective code that says what is historically the right stuff for reconstructing the society as it largely exists, with enough variety to also evolve in the face of changing challenge.
Exploitation is speaking to the competitive element of the dynamic, but painting it as something more negative - an issue that needs to be addressed by adding constraints against cheaters.
The systems view recognises that the individualistic element is the part of an evolving system that provides its lucky accidents. It is the requisite variety to use the cybernetic term. So morality is about limits, but also includes ideas around a suitable degree of give and take.
The big problem in all this is what are then the global goals of a society.
A science of morality - as in the systems science view - speaks to the general mechanism by which a society can even exist. And so in a minimal sense, existence becomes the natural purpose of a society. Finding the balance that allows for long-run survival is the embodied reason for being - as with any evolutionary story.
Can a society really have a grander purpose than simply to exist?
But on the other hand, what does this moral minimalism say about the modern developed world which is starting to cook itself in its own fossil fuel fumes?
Maybe having the general purpose of just continuing to exist as some kind of successful competition-cooperation balance seems plenty grand enough as a life mission. :grin:
Thanks for your comments.
The science of morality focuses on cultural moral norms and our moral judgments, which, I have argued above, are parts of cooperation strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.
Moral norms about competition arguably fit well into this perspective. Consider people competing in a marathon foot race. If they do not violate the moral norms about fairness (exploitation is essentially unfairness), they can morally compete without exploiting others. Exploitation might be tripping another runner, taking a taxi for part of the run, or poisoning a competitor. So competition is not necessarily exploitative. We can agree as a reciprocity strategy on moral rules for fair competition.
Competition becomes immoral when it is exploitative. More work is needed to clarify when that is.
Global warming poses a classic cooperation/exploitation dilemma. It is in everyones short-term interest to use the cheapest energy source they have usually fossil fuels and advocate for whatever energy source they own, such as fossil fuels. But following that short-term interest will create a disaster for all.
I am unsure how much good pointing out the fossil fuel companys moral failings will do. But it is one tool in the toolbox.
We ought to cooperate to socially and personally acceptable degrees if we want to live harmoniously in a community.
Ought we want to live harmoniously in a community?
One difference is that the norms of cooperation have to be voiced clearly as these must exist in the public space of the social organism. We must hear the collective view being articulated for there to be a global norm.
But the norms of competition are then the opposite. They are instead defined as the point where differences of view start not to matter. They are the defacto freedoms. They are the give and take which needs no strong public statement because they tend to get policed on a local, more ad hoc, basis.
So a well-organise moral system is of course sensitive to exploitation competition of the kind that crosses the line in some way that harms the global regulative order and so can't just be celebrated as a positive contribution to that social order, or even just laughed off as the kind of local difference that doesn't make a difference.
Thus we have three options to consider under the banner of the local degrees of freedom. There is the positive behaviour we want to amplify, the negative behaviour we want to suppress, but then beyond that, the neutral behaviour where moral norming simply ceases to care.
The social system has to be organised in a fashion where it can actually arrive at what is neutral as this is then the foundation for starting to make the more complex distinctions in terms of what kinds of competitive actions are positive vs negative. We can start to define exploitation or cheating in opposition to being enterprising and creative because there is the Peircean firstness the state of action that is just "a difference" and so not yet a "difference that makes a difference" ... because of some further hierarchical level of contextual framing.
So while norms of cooperation must be publicly stated, the "norms" of competition rest on this assumption of a fundamental neutrality the spontaneity of chance events that don't in themselves matter one way or another. It is only when they start to encounter a context of top-down judgement that they can even morally matter.
Do you run your marathon in green shorts or blue? Who could even find a reason to care?
If a vast amount of such facts can be simply ignored as morally irrelevant, then we start to boil things down to the kind of local or personal facts which could start to matter in a fair marathon race. Like is your cardio superiority due to the lottery of blessed genetics or EPO?
Here we see the reductionist blundering about, missing the point, as per usual.
Anthropologist Richard Wrangham makes a good case for how Homo sapiens "self-domesticated" over 300,000 years of hunter~gatherer evolution because the unharmonious males in a small band got knocked off with summary justice. Their genes were eliminated from the tribal pool.
So is/ought covers the fact that hierarchical order develops over nested spatiotemporal scale. To even exist, a system has to become divided into what it is at any instant and what it ought to be in terms of its own hierarchy of constraints.
A directionality - a telos - is what has to get built into the fabric of its being. At base, any material state of affairs is falling apart faster than it can pull together. But a living system adds the intelligence to tilt the balance in a generally desired direction. As a metabolic network, all the chemistry is being ratcheted so the body rebuilds fast enough to cease falling apart. It becomes an intentionally self-stabilising entity, or an organism.
Human morality is just our clunky way of talking about this general system principle. Is and ought are opposed only in the sense of being these complementary limits of a global intent that serves to ratchet the local material variety in a cohesive long-run direction.
A community has to have a generalised harmony to even exist. As Wrangham argues, this necessity is wired into our genes because we down-regulated our reactive aggression neuro-circuitry to the point we can tolerate the close and constant presence of our fellow humans in ways that chimps can't even imagine.
The other side of the coin as there is always the other complementary side to the coin once you depart reductionism is that humans are still capable of proactive aggression. We can make the big flip from seeing our tribe mates as part of our collective in-group selves and instead now framing our fellow humans as dangerous, alien and "other".
This explains the paradoxical nature of hunter~gatherer communities who seem both incredibly peaceful, yet can then flip to total war on encountering another tribe. Or as Wrangham says, who will simply combine to agree to kill the tribemate who just happens to offend enough people often enough to need removal from the collective gene pool.
Wrangham tells how grievances are quietly aired in late night tribe discussions with a gradual "othering" of the annoying character as a sorcerer or bad luck bringer. A decision coalesces. Then a few weeks later there is a hunting party trip. The victim is teased about being brave enough to climb a tall tree and collect the honey. He puts down his weapons and climbs to the top, then looks down to see his weapons have been collected up, the other men stand patiently, a look in their eyes....
Human morality is built on this neurobiological and sociocultural dynamic of self and other, in-group and out-group, low reactivity and high proactivity.
It is not about the reductionism which means we can't have both sides of the holistic equation. It is about the fact that this dichotomisation of behavioural state is so sharply poised to go in either direction that it can be a decision taken over any spatiotemporal scale of human organisation.
To exist, a system has to embody a purpose. There must be an ought, as that is the information, the constraint, that can stabilise what reductively "just is". There can be an actual state of affairs rather than merely a vague uncertainty which is neither here nor there in any factual way.
Once you have a global ought that is in balance with a local is, then the system is equipped to self-sustain its existence. It knows how to persist.
Which is why morality seems so important.
Why do you imagine that is a problem or, even more bizarrely, that I and others here don't already understand and fully take into account this obvious and elementary fact?
Are you lost in the illusion that morality can only be understood as what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences? As Michael Ruse seems to delight in pointing out, and as I reference in the post, that illusion is one foisted on us by our genes and encoded in our moral sense because it increased the reproductive fitness benefits of cooperation for our ancestors.
It is far more culturally useful to understand what morality (referring to cultural moral norms and our moral sense) objectively 'is' as cooperation strategies than to entertain unending speculations about what morality imperatively ought to be.
Right, People commonly desire the benefits of cooperation, are willing to follow moral norms that preserve that cooperation, and can agree on benefits of cooperation to pursue. Understanding morality as cooperation strategies opens a new perspective for refining cultural moral norms to meet human needs better. The illusion of the reality of imperative oughts is an aspect of our evolutionary past. It is not necessary, and is arguably a hindrance, to refining cultural moral norms to increase human flourishing.
Just checking the pretence that science tells us what we ought to do, highlighting a point you yourself made, that "...the science of morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be".
There is extensive literature on this other, much more difficult puzzle, unaddressed by your approach.
This is the base of the top-down/ bottom-up division. The description "that we do cooperate" produces a top-down perspective on morality. However, that "I ought to cooperate" is something that I must feel, and will myself, and this is the basis for a bottom-up perspective on morality.
:up:
There is extensive literature on the subject of imperative oughts? Perhaps you are trying to make a joke again.
That seemingly bottomless ocean of literature underlies traditional moral philosophy with no resolution to date, no resolution in sight, and no reason to believe there ever will be any resolution. This is not surprising since our strong intuition that imperative oughts exist is an illusion created by our evolutionary history.
What reason do you have, beyond your intuition, for believing that these 'magic' imperative oughts exist?
In individual sports, the color of your shorts is irrelevant. In team sports, the color matters - a lot. The color of people's shorts (or uniform) is a quick way to recognize your teammates and an example of a marker strategy.
Good to hear. Thanks for commenting.
Some of the comments received prompt me to repeat previously made points.
As described in the OP, Morality as Cooperation Strategies describes objective claims supported by the modern science of morality that:
Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
Do these moral principles define imperative oughts what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences? Of course not. You will not find a source of magic oughts in science.
Is this lack of imperative bindingness a fatal flaw? Again, no.
For example, the science supporting these principles provides an objective understanding of:
A part of natural goodness (see Philippa Foots work on moral goodness as an aspect of what makes us good as human beings and how this knowledge can supply us with useful hypothetical imperatives - no imperative oughts required, 180 Proof).
Why we share a strong intuition that imperative oughts exist and why that intuition is an illusion encoded in our genes.
Moral means for accomplishing what we understand to be moral ends.
Readers should also understand that Morality as Cooperation Strategies is only about a subcategory of answers to the big ethical questions: What is good?, How should I live?, and What are my obligations?.
Morality as Cooperation Strategies illuminates (but does not define) my understanding of my preferred answers to these questions: Utilitarianism tempered by Negative Utilitarianism, Modern Stoicism, and obligations based on Rawlsian Justice.
How I see Morality as Cooperation Strategies integrating with and even illuminating traditional moral philosophy sounds like a good topic for another post.
All in all, though, your comments to date are much appreciated and have been helpful. I post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science.
Interesting that you mention Philippa Foot, a philosopher who perhaps above all others showed us the intractable nature of moral questions.
You say you "post here to understand better how to present conclusions from the science of morality to people familiar with moral philosophy but perhaps not with this science". You seem to think you are providing "answers from science", and are puzzled by their reception. Perhaps what you propose is not as novel to those old fuddy duddies as you supposed, and perhaps the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering.
It's not so much that what you have provided is wrong, as that it is so very incomplete.
Indeed, in so far as what you offer encourages the development of the virtues, we are in agreement. But it should be of concern to you that what you espouse might be used to explain away acts of collective, perfunctory evil, as easily as it does acts of virtue.
Perhaps you might begin to see that there is more going on here than you might previously have supposed.
I assume Foots discussions of the intractable nature of moral questions you refer to were about imperative oughts (what everyone ought to do regardless of their needs and preferences). If so, Foot and I are in strong agreement. I have proposed no imperative oughts. I have argued that imperatives oughts are illusions foisted on us by our genes (as Michael Ruse delights in saying).
It would be a category error to think that scientific facts could alone imply imperative oughts. This is an error I have not made, though I strangely keep being accused of it.
I expect Foot would find it interesting to understand, for instance, 1) the source of our illusion that imperative oughts are real and 2) the principles underlying cultural moral norms and our moral judgments and intuitions. Such knowledge about cultural moral norms could be directly useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce. Such knowledge about our intuitions could be useful for understanding aspects of moral philosophy that rely on our well considered intuitions which I see as most schools of thought in moral philosophy.
Quoting Banno
Not new? If identifying the ultimate source of cultural moral norms and our moral sense in a cooperation/exploitation dilemma is not novel, could you give a reference that describes that?
Or how about just a reference describing the philosophical implications of cultural moral norms and our moral sense advocating and motivating cooperation strategies?
I do not expect you to be able to do either, but I would be happy to learn I was wrong.
But yes, Ive always fully appreciated that the questions they are asking are not the questions you are answering (good observation!). That is obvious. That difference also has had unfortunate effects on the relevance of moral philosophy to public life.
Quoting Banno
Incomplete? What more is needed for this knowledge from science to be culturally useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce? I am sincerely interested in what else is needed. I really want to know.
But please dont respond with more nonsense about (as I understand your vague hints) the importance of searching for imaginary imperative oughts.
My goal is to find objective, mind-independent knowledge that is useful for resolving disputes about which moral norms to advocate and enforce in a culture.
What is your goal regarding moral philosophy?
Quoting Banno
There is no justification of acts of collective, perfunctory evil in anything I have said. There is only explanation of 1) why people can do such evil and think it moral and 2) the underlying source of immorality in the exploitation of others. I see this as culturally useful knowledge.
Do you realize that your accusation only makes sense if you are thinking that what morality is implies what we imperatively ought to do? That is the error you bizarrely accuse me of.
Quoting Banno
I would be delighted to learn there is more going on relevant to the implications of understanding the underlying principles of cultural moral norms and our moral sense.
Perhaps you could describe what "is going on here" that you think I am not aware of?
What it does do is tell us somewhat, about how to better understand our own natures, and the natures of others. I guess for someone like me, who sees no positive value in living in disharmony with my nature, it seems like valuable stuff to understand.
I find the hostility rather baffling.
As for living in harmony with one's nature, that leaves much hanging. Should one live in harmony with one's nature, as a Stoic might say, or stand against it, as Nietzsche, Sartre, Kierkegaard &c. would have it... And if we were to discuss these chaps, then we would be doing philosophy.
Which is part of what is missing from the OP.
But can you ever ignore the empirical evidence and fact that we are fundamentally, essentially, components of a collective, which to that extent defines our nature?
I would greatly appreciate it if you could justify or give any explanation of your astonishing claim:
Quoting Banno
The bottom-up claims of Curry, Haidt and my extension are objective science. Objective science, on its own, cannot commit the naturalistic fallacy. It takes a person to do that.
The only person presuming that science tells us what we imperatively ought to do (the only person committing the naturalistic fallacy) is you. You alone are making this error.
I do not now and never have presumed something so naive. No conclusion I have described relies on the naturalistic fallacy in any way. The cultural usefulness of my claims is only as the basis of instrumental, not imperative oughts.
I have repeatedly emphasized that this science, like the rest of science, can only supply instrumental oughts and is silent on ultimate goals.
Yet, over and over, you can't get it. You somehow interpret my examples of principles underlying cultural moral norms and our moral sense as imperative oughts. Why?
Any suggestions for clearer language I could use? Here is my present language for my conclusions from the integrated bottom-up and top-down perspectives:
Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
Where in these two claims do you see any presumption of the naturalistic fallacy? Is it the use of the phrase universally moral behaviors?
The second claim is a factual claim about what is universal in solutions to the cooperation/exploitation dilemma (and in human morality, the behaviors advocated by cultural moral norms and motivated by our moral sense).
Is there another phrase to describe what is universal about the behaviors advocated by cultural moral norms and motivated by our moral sense that would be less confusing for you? I really want suggestions.
To which again we add the further point, even if one grant that there is some coherent sense in which humans have a "nature", it remains an open question as to whether that nature is to be followed, or to be overcome.
And again, these are part of the discussion that is absent from the account in the OP.
I'm not too keen on the term, but that looks rather mote-and-bailly. Somehow this tells us Quoting Mark S without telling us what to do? You commence your argument in the bailey of right and wrong, but when challenged retreat to the motte of supposed "objective science".
Quoting Mark S
Apparently Hilary Putnam also makes this error. Putnam makes the argument that if the basis of our valuative, ethical judgements is an evolutionary adaptation shared by other animals then it is as though we are computers programmed by a fool ( selection pressure) operating subject to the constraints imposed by a moron (nature). Putnam says One cannot discover laws of nature unless one brings to nature a set of a priori prejudices which is not hopelessly wrong. And those prejudices cannot themselves be a product of blind evolution.
He concludes Without the cognitive values of coherence, simplicity, and instrumental efficacy we have no world and no facts, not even facts about what relative to what. And these cognitive values, I claim, are simply a part of our holistic conception of human flourishing. Bereft of the old realist idea of truth as "correspondence" and of the positivist idea of justification as fixed by public "criteria," we are left with the necessity of seeing our search for better conceptions of rationality as an intentional activity which, like every activity that rises above the mere following of inclination or obsession, is guided by our idea of the good.
If coherence and simplicity are values, and if we cannot deny with out falling into total self-refuting subjectivism that they are objective (notwithstanding their "softness," the lack of well-defined "criteria," and so forth), then the classic argument against the objectivity of ethical values is totally undercut.
1. Regardless of how sophisticated it might be, no description of what we do can imply what we should do.
2. That an act is cooperative is not sufficient to ensure that it is moral. Folk can cooperate to act immorally.
The lesson I take from Foot is the intractability of moral issues. There are no simple solutions here, no algorithms or methods with universal applicability. While cross-cultural descriptions of moral norms might be interesting, perhaps allowing us to understand something of human diversity, and games-theoretical problem solving may be of some nerdish assistance, they do not form anything like the whole of morality; indeed, they hardly even begin to address the issues.
Look instead to Rawls, or Hanna Arendt, or even Peter Singer for more comprehensive accounts.
Quoting Joshs
Interesting. I can't see how we would begin to assert notions of 'the good' or virtue, except through connecting these to values we have arrived at through some kind of intersubjective process. And there will always be those who don't 'see it' or agree or find curious exemptions.
:up:
Here's were Arendt's "banality of evil" is pertinent. One might well anticipate a future Eichmann justifying himself in the terms used in the OP: "I was only cooperating using the cross-cultural universals within descriptively moral norms and judgments..."
I have not studied Hilary Putnam, but nothing (with one exception) I have written contradicts his quotes here. The science of morality reveals what the underlying principles of past and present cultural moral norms are. These principles reveal what is objectively universal to cultural moral norms and our moral senses judgments which non-philosophers would say summarizes their moral values. That looks like agreement to me that at least these values are objective.
However, there is nothing in the Putnam quote about imperative oughts. The objectivity of moral values does not necessarily imply that everyone somehow ought to follow these values regardless of their needs and preferences.
The objectivity of moral values does imply a conditional ought:
If your goal can be obtained by cooperation and you wish to act consistently with those objective moral values that sustainably maintain cooperation, then you ought (instrumental) to act consistently with those objective moral values.
So, I dont see the quotes as relevant to Bannos bizarre belief, despite all evidence to the contrary, that I am somehow naively claiming a source of imperative oughts from science.
Just FYI, where I disagree with Putnam is his reported assumption that the source of our ethical judgments is a fool referring to selection pressure. This is an obsolete, inaccurate perspective that remains the source of much misunderstanding among moral philosophers, particularly when making evolution-based moral debunking arguments.
Selection pressure is part of the mechanism that encoded cooperation strategies in our moral sense and cultural moral norms and is not the source of what was encoded. The ultimate source of what was encoded cooperation strategies (and the source of our moral values) is in a cooperation/exploitation dilemma that is innate to our universe. The encoding mechanism for morality is a fool. What was encoded is not.
Quoting Banno
Despite your incoherence here, I will respond that I have made no retreat from bailey to motte - check your spelling.
Where I start from and where I end is that science can provide useful instrumental (conditional) oughts for achieving shared goals. One form is:
"If your goal can be obtained by cooperation and you wish to act consistently with those objective moral values that sustainably maintain cooperation, then you ought (instrumental) to act consistently with those objective moral values."
This is culturally useful moral guidance. No imperative oughts are required, which is a good thing. It is a good thing because we have no evidence they can exist.
Why are you so fixated on imperative oughts when our best evidence is that their pursuit is a waste of time? You must know that your intuitions on the subject are an illusion. In contrast, conditional oughts are quite real and culturally useful for refining cultural moral norms that can encourage human flourishing.
Quoting Banno
I do not claim anything so silly.
Quoting Banno
This is, of course, true. If you read what I have written, you will know that nothing I have written contradicts this.
The Two problems you describe do not exist.
What I have said is that:
Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
If you could find an example of cooperation that does not exploit others being immoral, then you would have an interesting criticism. As is, you have nothing.
As far as I know, Phillipa Foot was unaware of game theorys explanatory power for cultural moral norms and our moral sense. So it is no surprise that she didnt talk about the cultural value of conditional moral oughts based in science.
Peter Singers wonderful 1981 book The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress is consistent with the above two moral principles. Singer intuitively recognized that moral progress was made by expanding the circle of moral concern (the circle of people who were not to be exploited). Singers moral progress through history is the history of moving from merely descriptively moral behaviors (the first principle) that may exploit others to universally moral behaviors that do not exploit others (the second principle).
John Rawls justice as fairness explicitly advocates expanding the circle of moral concern to everyone. This is consistent with the second principle since exploitation is unfair.
By revealing the underlying principles of our moral norms and moral sense, the science of morality reveals the underlying foundations of much of moral philosophy.
...and yet "...science can provide useful instrumental (conditional) oughts for achieving shared goals"? Despite nine threads on the same topic, perhaps your account is not as clearly expressed as you think?
Quoting Mark S
Let's look at the logic here. Is this it...
The clause on cooperation doesn't appear to do anything here. Your argument looks to be that if you want to do something then you ought do it. But not only is it, as Mick pointed out, that you can't always get what you want, sometimes you ought not get what you want.
Sure, if you have the urge to pee you probably ought, but in the appropriate place and so as not to inconvenience others. Of course we might well let folk do as they want, unless there is good reason not too; and that, what is to count as "good reason", is what ethics is about.
Quoting Mark S
I put it to you that rather, cooperation strategies may be part of achieving our goals. You've got it the wrong way around.
Quoting Mark S
What is claimed here... needs unpacking. "Universal moral behaviours" is a problematic term, and obviously, contrary to what is implied, folk can cooperate in order to exploit others. Your "Universal moral behaviours" are presumably those found by anthropological examination of what people do; and you agree, at least sometimes, that a description of what we do does not tell us what we ought do. Your term "Universal moral behaviours" carries the insinuation that these merely observed behaviours bring moral weight. But any such moral weight must be argued for separately. I don't see where you have done this.
As for the relation between cooperation and justice, take a look at The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas by Ursula K LeGuin (thanks, @unenlightened), and consider those who cooperate in the plight of the child.
So sure, cooperation, games theory, and anthropology might well be a useful part of a moral perspective; but they are not the whole.
Mark does your approach tell us what we ought to do by identifying universal moral behaviors?
What are universal moral behaviors - are they the same as oughts?
Quoting Mark S
These sentences confuse me - admittedly I am not a philosopher.
What does ' are parts of cooperation strategies' mean? Which parts? What constitutes the rest of these parts?
Is a universally moral behavior an ought?
What qualifies as a cooperation strategy?
Quoting Banno
For the non-philosopher, what do you recommend as a reasonable foundation for morality?
Not a question that can have a back-of-an-envelope answer. Not least because it's not clear what that question might be asking... but with my being of the analytic persuasion, that sort of vacillation is to be expected...
I'm disincline to talk of foundations or answers in this regard; it seems absurd to expect moral issues to be addressable by what one might loosely call an "algorithmic" method; one in which we can set out, beforehand, rules or methods that will give us the right thing to do.
Hence I am somewhat sceptical of both deontology and consequentialism.
But despite such considerations, we are obliged to make decisions of a moral sort, and so must muddle on as best we can. So one tries to do the best one can, and perhaps to do better on each new occasion than on the last, and so some consideration of the development of the various virtues has a place. A heuristic, not an algorithmic, approach, if you will.
As you said, Quoting Tom Storm
We might agree that such ambition ought best be avoided, and perhaps confronted when it is encountered. Hence these posts.
All of which might be taken as condescending twaddle, but you asked.
Quoting Banno
As a matter of logic, science does not tell us what we imperatively ought to do.
Is science then culturally useless? No, of course not. Claiming science is, therefore, useless would be silly.
Your contempt for the relevance of science of morality for resolving moral disputes and understanding the foundations of moral philosophy is equally silly.
The science of morality is culturally useful because it explains that:
1) Cultural moral norms are parts of cooperation strategies.
2) A subset of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others are universal to all strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma the same dilemma that must be solved by all highly cooperative specie from the beginning of time to the end of time. To enable highly cooperative societies, all intelligent species must create morality made up of strategies that solve that dilemma. .
3) Morality as cooperation strategies is uniquely harmonious with our moral sense, and therefore has self-motivating components, because these cooperation strategies are what created our moral sense.
4) Our moral intuitions are parts of cooperation strategies.
1), 2), and 3) provide an objective basis for resolving many disputes about moral norms and reveals what is universal for all moral systems systems that solve the cooperation exploitation dilemma. In summary, 1), 2), and 3) provide an objective basis for a universal moral system.
And before you start going off again about imperative oughts, no it is not a system that comes with innate imperative oughts. However, a group could decide that this is the system they will advocate and enforce based on the expectation it will best achieve their shared goals. Is that a good enough moral system for a well-functioning society? Of course! And as a bonus, it fits our moral sense like a key in a well-oiled lock because this key, morality as cooperation strategies, is what shaped this lock, our moral sense.
Why do you think we should throw out what science tells us about morality just because it does not come with magic oughts? Pursuing a source of imperative oughts is, to me, the intellectual equivalent of spending your life searching for magical unicorns who fart rainbows. Others disagree. That's fine. But please don't spread the falsehood that looking for imperative oughts is the only approach to designing and refining moral systems.
Returning to the list of what science explains, 4) explains the foundations of moral philosophy based on well-considered moral intuitions. What foundations does moral philosophy have except our moral intuitions and rational thought?
Quoting Banno
I have never claimed there was not more to morality than what science can tell us. I have emphasized there was more to morality than science can tell us multiple times. Again, you make false accusations based on your straw man version of what the science of morality provides.
Max Planck once said, Science advances one funeral at a time. Perhaps the same is true for moral philosophy. Some people are incapable of changing old ideas when presented with new evidence.
Quoting Tom Storm
Tom, here I'll answer the questions you addressed to me.
I'll separately answer your excellent question to Banno, "What do you recommend as a reasonable foundation for morality?" and invite you to compare my and Banno's answers and consider which answer you expect to be the most useful in your life.
Answering the questions you asked me:
Descriptively moral behaviors are described as moral in at least one society but perhaps no other. I could also have expressed this as:
Past and present cultural moral norms (no matter how diverse, contradictory, and strange) are virtually all explained as parts of cooperation strategies.
Parts of cooperation strategies include moral norms and moral intuitions that advocate or motivate 1) initiating cooperation, 2) punishing moral norm violators, 3) markers of membership in favored ingroups and disfavored or exploited outgroups, 4) detection of free-riders and other exploiters.
Examples of each include 1) versions of the Golden Rule and advocacy of loyalty and self-sacrifice for the group, 2) moral norms about punishments plus righteous indignation to motivate the punishment of others and guilt and shame to punish our own violations, 3) sex and food taboos plus clothing and behavior rules, and 4) He who will not work will not eat and moral gossip about who is and is not a reliable person to cooperate with.
Cooperation strategies are developed in game theory as means to overcome the cooperation/exploitation dilemma. The main ones are reciprocity, indirect reciprocity, and kin altruism. You might do a google search. There are a lot of them, with some more relevant to morality than others.
Moral norms in general are oughts (what we feel we have an imperative obligation to do). But, as I have explained, that feeling of imperative oughts is an illusion encoded in our moral sense by our evolutionary history because it increased cooperation.
Is what is universal to morality (cooperation strategies that do not exploit others) an ought? That depends on what you mean by "ought". Is it a magic ought (Banno's apparently favorite kind) - what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences? No.
However, that does not prevent it from being a culturally useful, culture and even species-independent, moral reference. All it takes to become a moral ought is for a group to decide to advocate and enforce it as a moral ought.
Groups could decide as a preference that they will advocate and enforce it as what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences. This preference could be based on it being most likely to achieve group goals. And experience shows that this advocacy and enforcement should work well. This cultural advocacy and enforcement is the main source of the oughtness (bindingness) of moral norms that enable our civilizations to continue to exist.
Quoting Tom Storm
The most reasonable foundation for morality is what morality is and always has been - the rules we live by to maintain cooperative societies.
Moral rules such as the Do to others as you would have them do to you, and Do not lie, steal, or kill make more sense once you understand them as parts of cooperation strategies they all advocate initiating indirect reciprocity.
For example, Do not lie as a cultural moral norm is the reciprocity equivalent of Dont steal from anyone else and everyone else will commit to not stealing from you and society will punish anyone who does steal from you.
Also, as parts of cooperation strategies, all of the above moral norms are understood as heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb) not moral absolutes. When the Golden Rule fails, such as when tastes differ, and following it would cause cooperation problems rather than solve them, you have good moral reasons for not following the Golden Rule. The same is true for Do not kill. If following it causes cooperation problems, as when dealing with criminals and in time of war, there is no moral reason it should be followed.
And applying the above moral foundation in your own life comes with a bonus increased durable happiness, the feeling of satisfaction and optimism in the cooperative company of family and friends. These durable feelings of pleasure in the cooperative company of family and friends exist because our ancestors who experienced them were more motivated to stay and participate in cooperative groups. Understanding why and when we experience these pleasures encourages the moral behaviors that trigger them. This really works to both increase durable happiness and motivation for moral behavior.
It is intellectually and psychologically rewarding to think "How can I cooperate with this person?" and then feel the durable happiness that cooperation triggers. There will be exceptions when attempts at cooperation are rebuffed, but on average, it works well.
The above describes a useful foundation for morality. Compare it to what Banno could supply.
Quoting Banno
For non-philosophers, Bannos muddled answer is not remotely competitive. Some might describe it as dead useless.
Thanks Mark, yes, this much makes sense and is clear to me.
Does this lead us into a space that there is nothing intrinsically good or bad and that almost anything might be allowable under the right circumstances?
Quoting Mark S
Do you think this is a controversial statement? I see where you are coming from but many people who do not share your values could find this problematic.
Not wanting to harm children (for instance) is no doubt hard wired in us as one of these 'evolutionary illusions'. But does this suggest that harming children might be permissible in certain contexts?
Quoting Mark S
I've found @Banno helpful on many subjects. He certainly reminds me that philosophy is not easy and to be wary of easy answers. He alerted me to virtue ethics when I first arrive here. Philosophy seems to be about continually refining the questions we are asking, which may matter as much as, if not more so, than the putative answers.
Quoting Mark S
This process is what we call intersubjective agreement - these often become reified over time (as you suggest). I suspect this process isn't just how morality develops, but is also behind many of our ideas of knowledge. I recall a quote from some postmodernist - the truth is a subjectivity we all share.
Final question and forgive me if this seems obtuse - how to do you discern between good and bad cooperation?
I'll respond to your other points later. But your last one is an easy question.
Quoting Tom Storm
My central point has been that moral norms for bad cooperation are bad because they exploit others such as "women must be submissive to men" and "homosexuality is evil". It is bad cooperation because it acts opposite to the function of morality - solving cooperation/exploitation problems. Bad cooperation creates cooperation problems rather than solving them.
Harming children would usually be included under exploitation as bad behavior. For example, harming children to benefit others.
But if harming children is merely a side effect of having no moral regard for children, we can agree that is evil, but the reasons for being evil might better be found in traditional moral philosophy. Science tells us important things about morality but cannot tell us everything about morality.
Quoting Mark S
Does that satisfy you or does it seem to you that it is just repackaging traditional moralism in new garb, as if there is such a thing as universal morality , or that claiming that evolution wires us to be cooperative doesnt just push back the question posed by social norms into the lap of biology.
For one thing, it passes the buck on the question of why we desire to cooperate with each other. Its because Evolution told us to.
So, perhaps for most people harming children is anathema simply on account of how they naturally feel about it.
It could well be seen to have a scientistic flavor.
Quoting Joshs
I can see this interpretation. Yes, it's the ye olde search for foundational morality .
What's your essential perspective on moral 'foundations'?
Of course, I've done no such thing. What I have done is simply point to the is/ought distinction, and warned against taking what humans have done as evidence for what they ought do.
Quoting Mark S
This gave me a laugh. "imperative oughts" is not a term I would use, except in response to your use of it.
Deontology, after Kant, distinguishes between hypothetical and categorical imperatives. A hypothetical imperative is couched in an implication, as "If you want B, you ought do A". A categorical imperative is not so couched; it sets out a duty, as in "everyone ought do B".
I gather you use "imperative oughts" to mean what most English speakers would call "duty", or something close.
You seem to think I'm advocating deontology; I'm not. Perhaps that's baggage you've brought in from elsewhere.
If anyone is "going off about imperative oughts", it's you.
I'm not anti-science. But I do advocate clarity.
What might be of use in what you have cited is the notion that cooperation serves as a strategy for survival. That's not new. You add the notion that "cultural norms" - morality - is (all of it) mere cooperation strategies. That's not firm science, and even if it where, it does not follow that we ought cooperate. What might follow is that cooperation sometimes enhances survival. That's a pretty weak hypothetical imperative: If we would survive, we ought sometimes cooperate.
Sure.
But within the corpus of ethical and moral reasoning, that's pretty superficial.
Anyway, that should stir the pot and piss you off enough for now. There might be an argument buried here to the effect that cooperation leads to reciprocity and hence to justice. Now that might be interesting. But The Ones Who Walk Away From Omelas might have a say here.
It's not easy...
Quoting Joshs
It is highly satisfying.
"Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are common parts of traditional moralism. Now I can explain why people thought they were moral but since they contradict morality's function of solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma, I know they are immoral.
Our genetic evolution prompts us to desire to cooperate and triggers psychological rewards when we cooperate because our predecessors who did not tended to die out.
Ought we cooperate? I will better achieve my goals by cooperating with people who reciprocate that cooperation. Whether you cooperate or not depends on your goals and your interest, or lack thereof, in achieving your goals by moral means.
This is not complicated. If you want complications and endless arguments, join the search for imperative oughts (categorical imperatives in Kant's terms).
The question then devolves to 'ought we want to live happy lives" and that question just seems silly since happiness is universally preferred over unhappiness.
That's right and ultimately we need to settle on an axiom like this as a starting point.
This is not very imaginative but for the most part - it's better to be alive than dead, it's better to be well than sick, its better to flourish than suffer. How do we build principles that assist in achieving this for all? Even the notion of 'for all' is an axiom, since we know of people who think that the circle of moral concern should only encompass the types of peeps they recognize as citizens.
:up: Yes, that is the conundrum. Perhaps part of the problem is the incapacity of people to viscerally care for more than some relatively small number of others. I think it's worth remembering that for the greatest part of human history (including here prehistory) people lived in relatively small communities, and now many of us live in vast metropolises; perhaps we haven't adapted fully to that condition yet.
Would travelling back in time (assume it's possible) to kill baby Hitler be the moral thing to do? What about using data the Nazi's collected experimenting on people? What about diverting a runaway trolley car full of children by pushing one child in front of it? What about aborting a baby one minute for non-health reasons?
Indeed. I came to this conclusion myself. Pluralism and balancing competing values and beliefs within a culture is a massive challenge - especially where those beliefs are irreconcilable. I wonder what the conditions need to be for cooperation to be possible? Does it require a sufficiently generous understanding of the word and shared values, including a commitment to reason. Does cooperation rely on cooperation and does this make is circular? :razz:
Remember the limitations of the primary conclusions about cultural moral norms and our moral sense:
There is no reason to expect them to answer all moral questions that we can think of.
For example, they are largely silent on the goals of acting morally (cooperating). They might or might not be able to answer these particular questions.
Quoting Janus
:up:
It's going to have to say something about Trolley Car.
Quoting Mark S
Has Mark presented a cogent argument for this contention? Is he right?
Quoting RogueAI
There is no a priori reason that morality as cooperation must be able to help resolve the dilemmas posed in Tolleyology.
But Morality as Cooperation Strategies can explain some of its curious experimental results.
People commonly judge throwing a switch to sacrifice one person to save five as moral. But they judge it immoral to push a large man off a bridge (sacrificing one person) to block a trolley, saving five people. Why the difference when the body count is the same?
What triggers our moral sense to make different judgments? Pushing the large man off the bridge will reduce trust between people (if you stand next to someone they may kill you) and thereby reduce future cooperation. Throwing the switch does not reduce trust to the same extent.
I wrote a paper on that once, many years ago, although the case I was looking at was Trolley Car vs abducting a person to harvest their organs and save five people. I think in the trolley car cases, we see that as a rare one-off, so we sacrifice the one, but in the other trolley-car like cases where we get our hands dirty (pushing a person, abducting a person), we can see how society could head down a scary path where it starts to actively look for ways to kill people for "the greater good".
Or will it increase trust, in that those who comment on the event after the fact will see pushing the large man off the bridge as showing that you can be relied on to make difficult decisions, and as an exemplar of how one ought act?
Perhaps things are not so clear as you suppose.
Foot's Trolley problem was conceived as a way of showing some of the limitations of consequentialism. The trolley was to be contrasted with the case of killing a healthy person in order to harvest their organs to save five terminally ill patients. Same consequence, differing intuitions. (I see Rogue is aware of this).
Cooperation seems of little use here, in line with 's strategy of asking for explicit and practical examples of the use of a cooperation approach, in order to test it's utility.
I used to argue that morality was like traffic lights; a code of conduct to keep all of us safe. That's a perspective which misses some nuances. Why for instance should all of us care to follow a code? Similarly, why should we care to cooperate? And I still don't quite understand how cooperation is of itself moral.
Determining what is reasonable is also somewhat fraught I would have thought. It might be argued that it is reasonable to kill people with disabilities for the sake of the future genepool. I think Mark is putting up a valiant fight against the vagaries of morality in the current world. At some point this all boils down to worldviews and values - these are not always axiomatic to others.
Switching a lever to kill one instead of the five that will otherwise be certainly killed is taking matters into one's own hands to a greater extent than doing nothing, because doing nothing is not being the active cause of anyone's death. Sure, you can argue that omitting to act is the same as committing an act, but I don't buy that argument. The trolley problem fails to take people's feelings, and the paralysis that they might cause in the critical moment, into account. Also, the idea that one persons' life is worth less than five people's lives is questionable if we are not convinced that a definite value can be put on a human life.
Sure, and I'll add kudos for Mark's addressing moral issues at all - it's unfashionable to even frame discussions in ethical terms, so even addressing these issues shows some courage. One is expected to frame such issues in either legal or financial terms.
But there is a scientisitic feel to Mark's argument, the implicit - and at times explicit - derision of the historical and practical exegesis of ethics, as if it could all be replaced by Mark's extrapolation from evolutionary theory. Such a lack of depth.
If the fight against vagaries leads only to superficiality, then let's stay vague.
And yet we must act.
Right, the case of abducting a person to harvest their organs and save five people is supported as moral by virtually no one even though the body count is the same. I see the Morality as Cooperation explanation as complementary and expanding on your explanation in that it explains why we "don't want to get our hands dirty" - those actions would decrease future trust and cooperation, a big concern for our moral sense.
Relevant to these cases, Morality as Cooperation applied as moral means for utilitarian ends - a kind of rule-utilitarianism - eliminates simple utilitarianism's common gotchas of conflicts with our moral sense. As far as answering the question "What is good?" one attractive answer is a kind of rule utilitarianism with Morality as Cooperation defining moral means (morality as cooperation defining the rule) and, in this case, the utilitarian goal being saving the five lives.
The origin of the tram, and much else besides, together with Ascombe's reply.
Hummn Quite the opposite. Exploitative moral norms create cooperation problems and therefore violate the function of morality solving the cooperation/exploitation dilemma. There are a lot of good reasons for groups to decide to advocate and enforce cooperation strategies that do not exploit others that are universally moral. I cant imagine groups intentionally deciding to advocate and enforce cooperation strategies that exploit others. So women must be submissive to men and homosexuality is evil are ground ruled out.
Moral norms in general are oughts (what we feel we have an imperative obligation to do). But, as I have explained, that feeling of imperative oughts is an illusion encoded in our moral sense by our evolutionary history because it increased cooperation. Mark S
Quoting Tom Storm
The science-based reasoning behind it seems solid see the OP. I have heard no credible argument for how imperative obligations could exist. It appears at least highly likely that sound arguments for imperative obligations cannot be made.
Quoting Tom Storm
I dont doubt that Banno can provide this kind of a description of morality it is all part of a tradition of endless questioning and uncertainty that began with Socrates. Science now offers an objective foundation for morality (morality as limited to cultural moral norms and our moral sense) that is fixed in objective science and Banno is having trouble grasping that.
Of course, this science-based objective foundation does not answer all our questions about ethics. We can still have endless arguments about the non-objective parts of ethics. For example, science does not supply the wisdom of stoicism about how to live, or the wisdom of consequentialist thought about what is good. Banno could be an excellent resource on ethical wisdom from both virtue ethics and consequentialism.
I have been impressed with modern stoicism's ethical wisdom, which is way beyond anything science can provide. Massimo Pigliuccis writings and the book How to be a Stoic are illuminating.
Quoting Banno
Empirical data shows that most people consider pushing the large man off the bridge immoral. If you think people are immoral, you will not trust them or want to cooperate with them.
But a minority of people (most being people who have taken philosophy courses) say pushing the large man off the bridge is moral. Any chance you have taken a philosophy course? They and you make unusual moral judgments. Why?
Judging that the act is moral is an example of "slow moral thinking" based on mechanical thought processes from a premise, here a utilitarian one.
Judgments that the act is immoral by most people are spontaneous, near-instantaneous, "fast moral thinking" directly from their moral sense - no rational thought is involved.
Morality as Cooperation Strategies explains fast moral thinking, not slow moral thinking.
If anyone cares to read what I actually said, the next part of my comment points out your incoherence in accepting science to be useful, but rejecting the science of morality as necessarily useless. Is this your way of saying that you now agree that that the science of moralitys explanation of morality as cooperation strategies could be culturally useful if the naturalistic fallacy is avoided (which is the case I have presented)? If so, at last progress.
You have not simply warned against taking what humans have done as evidence for what they ought do. In my posts, you have repetitively, insultingly, and, most of all, falsely implied my claims violated the naturalistic fallacy and were therefore nonsense.
I think your sense of what is an explanation of what is a bit unrealistic. I think the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation for human moral thinking.
Yes, fast moral thinking (our spontaneous moral judgments) is an evolutionary adaptation. What morality as cooperation explains is what is encoded (cooperation strategies) in that evolutionary adaption.
So I am not understanding what you mean by "the adaptiveness of fast moral thinking (considered within an evolutionary framework) is more accurate as an explanation". Morality as Cooperation Strategies describes that adaptation. They are not separate things.
Do you have a different explanation of the content of the fast moral thinking adaptation?
Inasmuch as evolution might be said to have a 'purpose' that purpose is to produce individuals with a high probability of success in passing on their genes. When evolution is occuring in a species which gets a lot of benefit from social cooperation we can expect evolutionary changes that take advantage of that environmental niche of living as a member of a social species. However, it isn't realistic to think cooperation is the 'purpose' of that evolution. A relatively high level of cooperation is just a side effect of evolution in such an environmental niche.
Quoting wonderer1
First, none of my claims rely in any way on a supposed 'purpose' of evolution.
The science of morality shows 1) that cultural moral norms and the judgments made by our moral sense are best explained as parts of cooperation strategies and 2) that these strategies solve a cooperation/exploitation dilemma that is innate to our universe. This science is silent about purpose.
Also, remember that evolution is merely the process by which behaviors are encoded in our biology and cultural moral norms. Morality is consistent with what is encoded, cooperation strategies, not with the process that did the encoding - evolution. Evolution encodes immoral behavior just as readily as it encodes moral behavior. Evolution encodes whatever increases reproductive fitness in given circumstances.
Your error of confusing the process that is doing the encoding (evolution) with what is being encoded (cooperation strategies) is a common one, even among otherwise well-informed, careful philosophers such as Sharon Street in her moral debunking papers. Due to this error, she does not actually debunk morality's objective foundations (moral realism).
I guess I have a problem with your use of "strategy".
Whose strategy is it?
I believe that moral reasoning originates in the individuals attempts to make sense of their experiences of social relations, and at the core of this is the aim to anticipate behavior. Guilt is a key element of moral feeling, and the personal construction of guilt involves the assessment that we are responsible for a breach of intimacy or trust with another person or group. Culturally normative standard of morality are abstractions derived from these personal assessments. The belief in universal moral foundations is one way to try to explain how individuals end up alienated from others, but it is a kind of approach that makes morality dependent on blame, finger-pointing, the notion of culpability and reprehensiveness. I think this is an inadequate way of understanding behavior thar deviates from our expectations. One can have a morality devoid of blame , culpability and punishment, a morality not aimed at achieving conformity to norms but instead an audacious ought that helps us to reconstrue what we cannot deny.
Game theory shows that strategies such as direct and indirect reciprocity and kin altruism are as innate to our universe as the game theory mathematics they are based on.
However, long before the discoveries of game theory, people chanced across the parts of reciprocity strategies and kin altruism. These strategies solved the cooperation problems they faced and the benefits of cooperation they produced were the selection forces that encoded them in our moral sense and in our cultures. It was only after the discoveries of game theory that it became obvious that moral norms like the Golden Rule and "Do not lie, steal, or kill" were important moral norms because they advocated initiating reciprocity strategies.
Quoting Mark S
Did you come from a religious background by any chance? You dont see the link between your wrapping this narrative in the cloak of science and religious norms of conduct?
Failing to understand why peoples attempts to get along with others fall short of your standards can lead you in one of two directions. You can either experiment with your construction of the puzzling and seemingly immoral behavior of a group or individual until you come up with a more effective way to understand why it represented the best moral thinking for therm at the time, or you can blame them for your inability to make sense of their actions , slap a label of immorality on it and try and knock some sense into them. One can do this just as easily within a scientific as a religious justification. Instead of blaming the evil intent of an autonomously free willing subject, we blame forces outside of the control of the person, either inner demons like biological drives, instincts, incentives, or we blame social forces.
Ten people can enthusiastically agree on the importance of cooperation and the need to avoid exploitation, and yet each of them will construe the sense of these concepts in different ways, and your universalistic template for cooperation flattens and conceals those different senses. As a result, the behavior of some of those ten people may very well appear immoral to you.
I didn't see an answer to my question in there.
Quoting wonderer1
You could be more specific. But what I said summarizes all there is.
Descriptively moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies.
Universally moral behaviors are parts of cooperation strategies that do not exploit others.
Human morality is composed of strategies that solve the cooperation/exploitation dilemma.
Behaviors that exploit others contradict the function of human morality and create cooperation problems.
Concluding that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are immoral because they exploit others and create cooperation problems and thus contradict the function of morality has nothing to do with my background, the social environment these 'moral' norms were enforced in, or any other extraneous circumstances.
My claim of immorality for "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" is based only on their innate exploitation contradicting the function of morality.
Are you arguing for some kind of moral relativism? Do you hold that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are norms some societies can morally advocate and enforce or what?
I can make sense of why men would selfishly cooperate to impose moral norms such as "women must be submissive to men". That is easy to understand. But making sense of it in terms of why they did it has nothing to do with its morality.
The problem with using "strategy" in this context is that it suggests that moralistic fast thinking on the part of humans is part of someone's conscious plan, when it is actually a result of unthinking evolutionary processes.
Quoting Joshs
I'd be interested to see more details.
Oh yeah, Im a super-duper moral relativist. Which doesnt mean I dont believe that there isnt some sort of progress in moral behavior. What it means is that I dont think that moral progress should be thought of in terms of the yardstick of conformity to any universal norms, whether religious, social or biological in origin. Women must be submissive to men and Homosexuality is evil are immoral to the same extent as Newtonian physics, Lamarckism biology or Skinnerian psychology are considered inadequate explanations of the empirical phenomena they attempt to organize in comparison with more recent theories.
I suggest that labeling behavior as selfish or lazy is precisely failing to make sense of anothers motives. Its a substitute for doing due diligence in understanding how things seemed to the person at the same that they acted.
First, the strategies in fast moral thinking (such as reciprocity strategies and kin altruism) are encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense and in cultural moral norms which shape our moral sense.
Once more, they are encoded by evolutionary processes; evolutionary processes are not cooperation strategies. Don't make the same mistake Sharon Street does.
Offhand, I can't think of a better word than strategies. Suggestions are welcome.
We use scientific methods as a measuring stick for progress in physics. If cultural moral norms are just parts of cooperation strategies, I don't see why we can't use science as a measuring stick for progress in cultural moral norms.
The best measuring stick for moral progress from a philosopher I am aware of is described in Singer, Peter (1981) The Expanding Circle: Ethics, Evolution, and Moral Progress. Princeton University Press. Singer describes moral progress as expanding the circle of moral concern - or expanding the circle of people who are not exploited (in Morality as Cooperation Strategies terminology). Singer's book might be revealing for you. It and Morality as Cooperation Strategies are mutually supportive regarding the definition of moral progress.
Quoting Mark S
So you posit ad hoc distinctions in order to circumvent criticisms of your hypothesis. Until now your theory has been about the whole of morality, but of a sudden it is restricted to gut reactions rather than considered decisions...
Quoting Mark S
It will be clear to those readers that I have not said anthropological studies of moral behaviour are useless. What I have maintained is the obvious point, that anthropological descriptions, in themselves, do not tell us what we ought to do.
Your scientism runs deep, preventing your noticing it's superficiality. I'm not seeing any progress in these discusses despite nine threads. It was perhaps an error for me to engage with you, given the fixity of your thinking.
Have a read of Mary Midgley, if the opportunity arrises. Or Tolstoy. Or just about anyone outside of your scientistic milieu.
Cheers.
I would happily set fire to each one of your straw man versions of my proposals.
Over and over, I have explained where your straw man versions are in error, but oblivious, you raise them again like zombies from the dead.
One more time (Please God, make it be the last time! Im an atheist, so this is only an emotional plea for supernatural intervention.) you restate the basis for the naturalistic fallacy. This time as anthropological descriptions, in themselves, do not tell us what we ought to do, thereby falsely, and insultingly implying that I am somehow, somewhere relying on that fallacy.
And on who knows what basis, your strawman version of my proposal now includes your wackiest claim yet, that I argue the science of morality can explain slow moral thinking which potentially includes all of moral philosophy!
You present a new low in rational discussions, straw man zombie arguments fake representations of a position that, regardless of all attempts at correcting the misrepresentations, rise, over and over, like zombies.
You can put Inventor of the straw man zombie argument on your tombstone.
I once thought straw man arguments required ill intent. I now see straw man arguments as an unconscious defense mechanism against ideas contrary to existing beliefs. All of us are susceptible to making them. But when someone tells us we have misunderstood their argument, most of us listen.
Your comments have not been entirely counterproductive.
You correctly pointed out that the questions they (philosophers) are asking are not the questions you are answering. Quite right.
And I now understand why moral philosophy, like physics as described by Max Planck, will be progressing one funeral at a time.
The good news is that we appear to have a resolution to our disputes. You wish to no longer engage with me and I wish you to never again comment on my posts.
That was easy. I regret we did not figure out this simple solution at my third post rather than my ninth post.
Your request, that I suggest alternative vocabulary, is fair enough. However, I don't consider myself very qualified to offer a very good alternative, because I think moralistic emotional reactions are largely a function of how the limbic system (paleomammalian cortex) interacts with neocortex, and that isn't an area I've studied sufficiently to speak with much confidence.
Furthermore, the interactions between limbic system and neocortex seem fairly complex, with some capability for each system to override the other. (i.e. Conscious reasoning can somewhat suppress being overridden by the limbic system, but conscious reasoning is also somewhat at the mercy of the limbic system.)
That said, I'd think something like, "evolved in automated biasing of neocortex by the limbic system", might be along the right lines, though it's fairly unwieldy.
The top-down and the bottom-up/game theory perspectives I describe are about our moral sense's outputs (moral judgments and motivating emotion) rather than how our brains work.
Perhaps someday we will figure out how cooperation strategies were encoded into the biology that underlies our moral sense. But I do not expect that to happen soon.
It looks me like it is happening now, but in bits and pieces. Neuroscience is a toddler by comparison with more fundamental sciences, but it has come an enormous way from the abyssmal state I found it in when I first started looking into it seriously 36 years ago.
Since this is a philosophy forum and I take scrutinizing conceptual frameworks as a primary philosophical task, I'm mainly interested in the concepts you use: morality (descriptive vs normative), cooperation, exploitation, "imperative ought" (?), dilemma, and solving "cooperation/exploitation dilemma". You seem to give them mostly for granted.
Quoting Mark S
To me the meaning of "descriptively" must be contrasted to "prescriptively" (or "normatively") not to "universally". If you use "universality" as a condition for identifying rational moral norms then you are no longer descriptive but prescriptive. Alternatively, you can use "universality" to refer to cross-cultural descriptive moral norms and NOT to a condition of rationality. Conflating these two usages would be fallacious.
Then you should give a definition or clarification of "cooperation" and its opposite "exploitation" (independently from any moral descriptive/normative assumption, otherwise you are running in circle). You never did that as far as I can remember.
Besides this claim "Concluding that "Women must be submissive to men" and "Homosexuality is evil" are immoral because they exploit others and create cooperation problems and thus contradict the function of morality " is logically questionable: 1. if morality of moral norms is established wrt their universality then you are taking universality as a rational criterion, so you are talking in prescriptive/normative terms, not descriptive. 2. if certain moral norms exist and contradict a function you claim they must fulfill , then one can question the idea that such moral norms have the function you attribute to them.
Neomac, terminology is an ongoing challenge in presenting results from the science of morality. The philosophically relevant terminology in the science of morality literature remains immature and problematic, at least in my view. I am happy to describe why my using more standard philosophical terminology to describe science of morality results is misleading and inappropriate. Suggestions for how to improve my terminology would be gratefully received.
Quoting neomac
Right. The problem my terminology addresses is that the science of morality (like all science) cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be or what we imperatively (prescriptively) ought to do.
As you quote above, science can tell us as empirical observations that:
I cant say Prescriptively moral in the second claim because there is no innate source of normativity in science and, here, I am only describing scientific results with no prescriptive claims based on rational thought or anything else.
Yes, universally moral here refers to what is cross-culturally moral (and even cross-species moral) but has no innate prescriptive power. This is a simple concept in the science of morality but one that does not exist in moral philosophy.
So where does the normativity come from that makes the science of morality results culturally useful?
Their normativity first comes from groups choosing to advocate these principles as moral references for refining their moral norms based on being most likely to enable achieving shared goals due to increased cooperation. Their normativity comes in the form of hypothetical imperatives in Philippa Foots terminology and conditional oughts in mine.
The science of morality results second source of normativity is from individuals choosing them as moral references in their personal lives, again as hypothetical imperatives most likely to enable them to achieve individual goals.
In this forum, I have not talked much about why I think these principles could be so compelling for adoption first as moral references in a society and then as a moral reference for individuals. That would be a good topic for a future post.
I should be able to better respond to your other points once I hear your response. What do you think?
If morality is about what goals we imperatively (prescriptively) ought to do (e.g. when there is a conflict between individual and collective goals), and morality cannot tell us what our goals somehow ought to be then there is no science of morality.
If your assumptions leave moral goals to be set and chosen by individuals and not by scientific principles, in what sense we are not ending up in a form of moral relativism?
Quoting Mark S
You keep repeating that there is no innate source of normativity in science and yet you also maintain that the strategies in fast moral thinking (such as reciprocity strategies and kin altruism) are encoded in the biology underlying our moral sense and in cultural moral norms which shape our moral sense (https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/816533).
So how can something be encoded in our biology and yet not be innate? Whats the difference between innate and biologically encoded?
Quoting Mark S
OK my point is that there are costs in increasing cooperation that outweighs the supposed benefits of cooperation. So what I may argue against your core claims is that maybe morality is not only about boosting cooperation but also about shaping and constraining it.
Besides the same social interaction can be seen as a form of cooperation or exploitation: is the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value of wage labour a cooperative or exploitative exchange? If you hold capitalist standard views then you would more likely see it as cooperative, if you hold marxist standard views then you would more likely see it as exploitative.
Thanks for your reply. Lets see if I can use it to clarify the science of morality concept of morality as a natural phenomenon. So far as I know, this concept of morality does not exist in traditional moral philosophy.
I am happy to answer all of your questions, but getting the grounding right about what Morality as Cooperation Strategies claims will provide a framework within which those answers can make sense.
Summarizing morality as a natural phenomenon:
The science of morality has answered the question, Why do cultural moral norms and our moral sense exist? by explaining them as parts of cooperation strategies. Cultural and biological evolution selected for these norms and our moral sense based on the benefits of cooperation they produced.
This concept of morality (Morality as Cooperation Strategies) is as innate to our universe and cross-species universal as the mathematics that defines the cooperation/exploitation dilemma and the strategies that solve it.
However, being innate to our universe does not necessarily imply any innate, imperative bindingness - what we ought to do regardless of our needs and preferences.
Rather, Morality as Cooperation Strategies bindingness comes from individuals and groups choosing to advocate it. Groups that do not find solutions to the cooperation/exploitation dilemma cannot form highly cooperative societies. Applying solutions to the cooperation/exploitation dilemma has made us the incredibly successful social species we are.
People already unknowingly advocate applications of Morality as Cooperation Strategies when they advocate their cultural moral norms and act on spontaneous moral judgments.
The science of morality is then culturally useful when it identifies 1) those norms and judgments as heuristics (usually reliable but fallible rules of thumb) for solutions to the cooperation/exploitation dilemma and 2) the cross-cultural and cross-species universally moral subset of those heuristics that do not exploit others. People can use this knowledge to resolve disputes about refining their morality to meet their needs and preferences better.
Do the above claims seem coherent, or do you still see internal contradictions?
Saying that moral norms are innate "to our universe" (what do you mean by "our universe"? "universe" in the sense of "all existing matter and space considered as a whole; the cosmos." or "universe" in the sense of our species?) in some sense, but not innate in some other sense is not clear unless you clarify the senses in which something is innate as opposed to not innate. Is mathematics innately binding? Do we ought to abide by mathematics rules regardless of our needs and preferences?
Quoting Mark S
How? Show me how being aware that moral norms are just heuristics to solve cooperation problems and that those norms that are cross-cultural and cross-species are the ones which do not exploit others can help understand if the capitalist appropriation of the surplus value of wage labour is moral or immoral, or a solution to the cooperation/exploitation problem or not? Or how can this awareness help us understand if the policies of all main involved parties in the war in Ukraine is moral or immoral, a solution or not to cooperation/exploitation dilemmas?
If you can't bring anything NEW on the table and you just keep repeating things that liberal Westerners already accept (e.g. that slavery is bad and sexism is bad from cross-cultural non-exploitative moral rules), where is the help?