What is the relationship between morals and politics?

What’s the relationship between morals and politics? According to Moral Foundations Theory (MFT), people rely on multiple evolved intuitive “foundations” when making moral decisions, including: Care, Fairness, Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. A substantial body of previous research has found that, when making moral decisions, political liberals place more emphasis on Care and Fairness, whereas political conservatives place more emphasis on Loyalty, Authority, and Purity. However: the way that this research has conceptualised moral and politics has been criticised; there have been some anomalous and contradictory empirical findings; and it remains unclear whether the relationship between morals and politics is causal as opposed to merely correlational. Here I review the literature and make suggestions for future research.

This working paper was a contribution to a JRC/EC project on "Science of values and identity in the political process".

Cooperative Conservation: Seven ways to save the world

The world faces serious environmental problems. To solve them we must work together. Fortunately, humans are a very cooperative species. We have faced a range of cooperative problems in the past, and have evolved and invented a range of cooperative solutions to them—kin altruism, mutualism, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness, and property rights. Here, we illustrate how each of these solutions can be pressed into the service of conservation goals. Unlocking this potential will require overcoming conservationists' current cycloptic focus on only one type of cooperative problem (the prisoner's dilemma) and one type of solution (reciprocity). Only then will policy makers be able draw on the full range of cooperative dispositions and design more systematic and effective environmental interventions.

How to be good

I try to be a good person. And I'm sure you do too. But figuring out how to be good is not easy. What is the difference between good and bad, right and wrong, moral and immoral? Philosophers have struggled in vain with these questions for millennia. And for many people the nature of morality is so baffling that they assume it must have a supernatural origin. But the good news is that we now have a thriving science of morality – incorporating insights from genetics, animal behaviour, psychology and anthropology. And this science tells us that there is nothing mysterious or magical about morality. Morality is merely a collection of cooperative rules – rules that help us work together, get along, and promote the common good.

What’s wrong with Moral Foundations Theory, and how to get moral psychology right

Once the exclusive preserve of philosophy and theology, the study of morality has now become a thriving interdisciplinary endeavor, encompassing research in evolutionary theory, genetics, biology, animal behavior, psychology, and anthropology. The emerging consensus is that there is nothing mysterious about morality; it is merely a collection of biological and cultural traits that promote cooperation. Best known among these accounts is Jonathan Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory (MFT). MFT has had an enormous impact on moral psychology. However, the theory has some serious problems, both theoretical and empirical.

Seven Moral Rules Found All Around the World

For 50 million years humans and their ancestors have lived in social groups. During this time natural selection equipped them with a range of adaptations for realising the enormous benefits of cooperation that social life affords. More recently, humans have built on these benevolent biological foundations with cultural innovations – norms, rules, institutions – that further bolster cooperation. Together, these biological and cultural mechanisms provide the motivation for social, cooperative and altruistic behaviour; and they provide the criteria by which we evaluate the behaviour of others. And, according to the theory of ‘morality as cooperation’, it is precisely this collection of cooperative traits that constitute human morality.

Fallibilism

Fallibilism is the idea that we can never be 100% certain that we are right, and must therefore always be open to the possibility that we are wrong. This might seem a pessimistic notion, but it is not. Ironically, this apparent weakness is a strength; for admitting one’s mistakes is the first step to learning from them, and overcoming them, in science and society.

Morality is made of meat

What is morality and where does it come from? Why does it exert such a tremendous hold over us? Scholars have struggled with these questions for millennia, and for many people the nature of morality is so baffling that they assume it must have a supernatural origin. But the good news is that we now have a scientific answer to these questions.

What would Siri do?

Would you ever take moral advice from a computer program, like Apple's Siri? To my mind, this question boils down to whether it will ever be possible to programme a computer to make realistic, life-like recognisably-human moral decisions. And the answer to this question depends on one’s underlying view of morality. If you view morality as something magical or mystical, then the answer may be no. But if you view morality as part of the material world, a product of human biology and culture, then the answer must surely be yes. If meat is capable of morality, then there is no principled reason why silicon could not be.

Profile in 'This View of Life'

The evolutionary approach also gives us a rich deductive theory about what kinds of morality to expect. Evolutionary game theory tells us that there are many different problems of cooperation and many different solutions. These problems (and their solutions) include: (1) the allocation of resources to kin (love, altruism, family values, and the prohibition of incest); (2) coordination to mutual advantage (teamwork, loyalty, perspective-taking, and conformity); (3) social exchange (trust, gratitude, reciprocity, revenge, guilt, and forgiveness); and (4) conflict resolution through (a) contests (bravery, generosity, and humility); (b) hierarchy (deference, respect, obedience, benevolence, and “noblesse oblige”); (c) division (equity, merit, and fairness); and (d) property (respect for prior ownership and territory). The theory tells us to expect not one monolithic moral sense or a simple combination of desires and beliefs but rather a vast Periodic Table of Ethics.

Associationism

How do birds fly? How do they stay up in the air? Suppose a textbook told you that the answer was 'levitation', and proceeded to catalogue the different types of levitation (Stationary, Mobile), its laws ("What goes up must come down", "Lighter things levitate longer") and constraints (Quadrupedalism). You'd rapidly realise that flying was not well understood, and also that the belief in levitation was obscuring the need for, and holding back, a proper scientific account of aerodynamics. Unfortunately, a similar situation applies to the question 'How do animals learn?'.

The virtues of the hawk, the virtues of the dove

From the introduction to: Curry, O. S. (2007). The conflict-resolution theory of virtue. In W. P. Sinnott-Armstrong (Ed.), Moral Psychology (Vol. I, pp. 251-261). Cambridge, Massachusetts: MIT Press.

There has been a long-standing debate in the history of moral thought over the nature of virtue—the enduring traits that are indicative of a good moral character. One tradition—represented by Aristotle, Cicero, Machiavelli, Nietzsche, and Hume—has celebrated the so-called “pagan” virtues of beauty, strength, courage, magnanimity, and leadership. Another tradition—represented particularly by theologians—has celebrated exactly the opposite set of traits: the so-called “Christian” virtues of humility, meekness, quietude, asceticism, and obedience (Berlin, 1997). But what are the virtues? Where do they come from? Why do they consist of these two apparently incompatible sets of traits? And why have they been considered moral?

Geoffrey Miller rightly argues that the virtues are not explained by existing evolutionary theories of morality, such as kin or reciprocal altruism. Instead, Miller argues, such traits are the product of sexual selection; specifically, they are products of mate choice for reliable signals of genetic and phenotypic quality. Thus, the virtues are analogous to the peacock’s tail; they are dazzling, conspicuous displays of the qualities and character traits that members of the opposite sex look for in a mate.

However, Miller’s theory leaves two kinds of virtues unaccounted for: first, virtues displayed in contexts other than courtship and, second, the traditional Christian virtues. Moreover, Miller’s theory doesn’t explain why some sexually attractive traits—such as beauty—have been considered moral. Nor does it provide a criterion for distinguishing sexually attractive traits that are morally virtuous, such as beauty, from sexually attractive traits that are morally neutral, such as immuno-compatibility.

I shall outline a more comprehensive evolutionary theory of virtue. This “conflict-resolution theory” argues that the virtues are adaptations for competing without coming to blows; they serve to avoid, forestall, or defuse more violent means of competing for scarce resources. This theory incorporates both the “pagan” and the “Christian” virtues. The pagan virtues are “signals of superiority.” They are used to resolve conflict in two ways. First, they are used to attract mates—for here, natural selection has favored aesthetic and altruistic displays over aggression as a means of competing for mates. These are the virtues that Miller draws attention to. Second, signals of superiority are used to deter rivals. They do this as part of a “display-defer” strategy—that is, a strategy that uses, on the one hand, displays of fighting prowess and, on the other hand, ritual displays of deference to superior displays to turn otherwise bloody battles into rela- tively harmless contests. These displays of prowess are the second kind of pagan virtue. And this brings us to the Christian virtues. For they are the flip side of the display-defer strategy of resolving conflicts. They are “signals of submission,” conspicuous displays of deference that bring conflict to an end.

Thus, the conflict-resolution theory provides a secure theoretical founda- tion that accounts for a broader range of virtues and that subsumes Miller’s mate-choice theory. What is more, the conflict-resolution theory explains why these particular sets of traits have been seen as moral; it is because, like other aspects of morality, they constitute a successful solution to one of the recurrent problems of social life—in this case, the problem of settling disputes.

Below I briefly review the evolutionary theory of conflict resolution and look at some animal examples. I review the evidence for equivalent traits in humans. And I show how the conflict-resolution theory of virtue makes sense of various aspects of traditional moral thought.

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Morality as Natural History

What are moral values and where do they come from? David Hume argued that moral values were the product of a range of passions, inherent to human nature, that aim at the common good of society. Recent developments in game theory, evolutionary biology, animal behaviour, psychology and neuroscience suggest that Hume was right to suppose that humans have such passions. This dissertation reviews these developments, and considers their implications for moral philosophy. I first explain what Darwinian adaptations are, and how they generate behaviour. I then explain that, contrary to the Hobbesian caricature of life in the state of nature, evolutionary theory leads us to expect that organisms will be social, cooperative and even altruistic under certain circumstances. I introduce four main types of cooperation – kin altruism, coordination to mutual advantage, reciprocity and conflict resolution – and provide examples of ‘adaptations for cooperation’ from nonhuman species. I then review the evidence for equivalent adaptations for cooperation in humans. Next, I show how this Humean-Darwinian account of the moral sentiments can be used to make sense of traditional positions in meta-ethics; how it provides a rich deductive framework in which to locate and make sense of a wide variety of apparently contradictory positions in traditional normative ethics; and how it clearly demarcates the problems of applied ethics. I defend this version of ethical naturalism against the charge that it commits ‘the naturalistic fallacy’. I conclude that evolutionary theory provides the best account yet of the origins and status of moral values, and that moral philosophy should be thought of as a branch of natural history.

Curry, O. S. (2005). Morality as Natural History: An adaptationist account of ethics. (PhD), London School of Economics, London.

Review of 'The Origins of Life'

Life is a long, strange trip, and in The Origins of Life, John Maynard Smith and Eörs Szathmáry blast you through its three-and-a-half-billion-year history at breathtaking pace. Life, we learn, is information, transmitted in ever more intricate ways across the generations. Self-replicating chemicals walled themselves into cells, organized themselves into regimented communities of chromosomes, swapped notes with other populations to become sexual, cloned themselves to form multicellular colonies called organisms, got together with other colonies to form societies, and, eventually, in the case of one particular ape, developed the ability to put this whole story down on paper.