These are my notable quotes and quotable notes from Moral Tribes by Joshua Greene. I wrote my key takeaways from the book for the subscribers of my Future of Conflict series.

Quotes from Moral Tribes

Introduction

Theme: The tragedy of commonsense morality.

We fight not because we are immoral but because they view life on the news from very different moral perspectives.

This is “The central tragedy of modern life” in developed societies.

Chapter 1

Tragedy of the Commons:

The problem of cooperation is the central problem of social existence

Some cooperation problems are easier than others:

Most cooperation among humans is of the interesting kind, the kind in which self-interest and collective interest are partially aligned. In the first case involving Art and Bud above, we stipulated that their interests are perfectly aligned: Both must row as hard as possible or both are sunk. But cases like this are rare. In a more typical case, either Art or Bud could row a little less hard and their boat would still arrive. More generally, it’s rare to find a cooperative enterprise in which individuals have no opportunity to favor themselves at the expense of the group. In other words, nearly all cooperative enterprises involve at least some tension between self-interest and collective interest, between Me and Us. And thus, nearly all cooperative enterprises are in danger of eroding, like the commons in Hardin’s parable.

Everything worthwhile is a cooperation problem, apparently.

Peace is a cooperation problem”

(Ank: Rooted in fear!)

Ethnocentrism as an evolutionary adaption:

Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation but only with some people.

This is because:

Cooperation evolves not because it’s nice, but because it confers a survival advantage
This implies an Us vs Them set-up: two groups in competition for resources

Morality enables individuals with competing interests to live together and prosper.
We need METAMORALITY to have groups with conflicting moralities prosper.

We now have an answer. Morality evolved as a solution to the problem of cooperation, as a way of averting the Tragedy of the Commons:

and

Morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.

Chapter 2

Social benefit of vengeance: people know about it and you wont have to do it.

Same for loyalty, humility, love: Evolutionary speculation about emotions that could lead to cooperation

Same for reputation and gossip

Embarrassment and turning bright red as a signalling mechanism.

Judging behavior as pro-cooperative is part of our genetic inheritance

Anthropologist Donald Brown identifies in-group bias and ethnocentrism as universal.

Note for 20th century people, ethnocentrism was not always connected to race and skin color.

Given the strength and pervasiveness of racial bias, you might think that we are “hardwired” for racial discrimination. But if you think about it, this makes little sense. In the world of our hunter-gatherer ancestors, one was unlikely to encounter someone whom, today, we would classify as a member of a different race. On the contrary, the “Them” on the other side of the hill would likely be physically indistinguishable from “Us.” This suggests that race, far from being an innate trigger, is just something that we happen to use today as a marker of group membership. From an evolutionary perspective, one would expect the human mind’s social sorting system, if it has one, to be more flexible, sorting people based on culturally acquired characteristics, such as language and clothing, rather than genetically inherited physical features.

Race is not a deep evolutionary category (but gender is).

Oxytocin increases in-group favortism

Claim: most emotions are there to impose cooperative behavior on a group with similar values.

Empathy, familial love, anger, social disgust, friendship, minimal decency, gratitude, vengefulness, romantic love, honor, shame, guilt, loyalty, humility, awe, judgmentalism, gossip, self-consciousness, embarrassment, tribalism, and righteous indignation: These are all familiar features of human nature, and all socially competent humans have a working understanding of what they are and what they do… All of this psychological machinery is perfectly designed to promote cooperation among otherwise selfish individuals…”

Positive conclusion:

Out of evolutionary dirt grows the flower of human goodness

Chapter 3

The psychology of conflict, three hindrances

Selfishness at the group level. Tribalism. Putting Us ahead of Them.
Genuine differences in values; The terms of cooperation
Local values (usually related to religion)

Ank: That’s because religion and culture were inseprable for a long time

Ank: Cant do much about tribalism, except build an arbitrary inclusive tribe (The Nation)

Chapter 4

Intro to utilitarian consequentialism

We should do whatever will produce the best overall consequences for all involved

Experiments show utilitarian answers to trolley problems are related to cognitive control in the brain, as well as lack of time pressure, slowing things down, distrusting intuition, and less “personalizing” or, more broadly, empathy.

Utilitarian rationale is always conscious, but people are often in the dark about non-utilitarian motivations

Chapter 5

Trying to understand emotion:
It’s an automatic brain process (can’t choose it)
It is telling the body what to do

Ank: Emotions are information
Josh: Emotions are commands

Reasoning by contrast, is conscious application of decision rules

Conclusion, we need both modes

reason (manual)
emotion (automatic)

As well as the part that decides which to use in a general circumstance

Ank: This all seems very analogous to Thinking Fast and Slow

Chapter 6

Opening quote from Obama:

Democracy demands that the religiously motivated translate their concerns into universal, rather than religion-specific, values. It requires that their proposals be subject to argument, and amenable to reason. I may be opposed to abortion for religious reasons, but if I seek to pass a law banning the practice, I cannot simply point to the teachings of my church or invoke God’s will. I have to explain why abortion violates some principle that is accessible to people of all faiths, including those with no faith at all.

Presents “Whatever works best” consequentialism as the answer to metamorality.

Of course, there are lots of problems with that, because “what works best” is what people say that support, but really they have ideological inclinations (which is better than just being selfish, I guess):

They aspire to live by deeper moral truths.

So the solution to the problem:

They should put their tribal ideologies aside, figure out which way of life works best on the new pastures, and then live that way

Tragedy of commons is solved by automatic machinery (we evolved that to prevent selfishness)

But that automatic machinery involves moral inflexibility, which is a problem.

So we need to swtich to manual mode.

But what does that mean, and how?
Maybe it’s not event possible?

In the end, there may be no argument that can stop tribal loyalists from heeding their tribal calls. No argument will convince Senator Santorum and Dr. Laura that their religious convictions, untranslated into secular terms, are unfit bases for public policy. At most, we can urge moderation, reminding tribal loyalists that they are not acting on “common sense,” but rather imposing their tribe’s account of moral truth onto others who do not hear what they hear or see what they see.

Chapter 11

Tries to establish deep pragmatism (utilitarianism) as the answer.

We should put aside our respective ideologies and instead do whatever works best… To take [this idea] seriously is to fundamentally change the way we think about our moral problems.

To give this philosophy teeth we need to get specific about what counts as best. we need a shared moral standard, what I’ve called a metamorality…. help us make tough choices and tradeoffs among competing tribal values.

Relativism says this is impossible.
Indepedent moral authority is hard to find. God, Math, and Science are all lacking. (he explores this in Chapter 7)

The deep pragmatist’s strategy is to seek agreement in shared values.

The second strategy, the deep pragmatist’s strategy, is to seek agreement in shared values. Rather than appeal to an independent moral authority (God/Reason/Science says: “The right to life trumps the right to choose”), we aim instead to establish a common currency for weighing competing values. This is, once again, the genius of utilitarianism, which establishes a common currency based on experience. As revealed by the buttons we will and will not push, we all care about experience, both our own and others’. We all want to be happy. None of us wants to suffer. And our concern for happiness and suffering lies behind nearly everything else that we value, though to see this requires some reflection. We can take this kernel of personal value and turn it into a moral value by valuing it impartially, thus injecting the essence of the Golden Rule: Your happiness and your suffering matter no more, and no less, than anyone else’s. Finally, we can turn this moral value into a moral system by running it through the outcome-optimizing apparatus of the human prefrontal cortex. This yields a moral philosophy that no one loves but that everyone “gets” — a second moral language that members of all tribes can speak. Our respective tribes have different moral intuitions, different automatic settings, and therein lies our strife. But fortunately for us, we all have flexible manual modes. With a little perspective, we can use manual-mode thinking to reach agreements with our “heads” despite the irreconcilable differences in our “hearts.” This is the essence of deep pragmatism: to seek common ground not where we think it ought to be, but where it actually is.

Ank: This ability is so far from existing moral technology as to be essentially magic

Two kinds of thinking for two kinds of problems:

Thus, we have two kinds of moral problems and two kinds of moral thinking. And now we can answer our question: The key to using our moral brains wisely is to match the right kind of thinking with the right kind of problem. Our moral emotions –our automatic settings are generally good at restraining simple selfishness, at averting the Tragedy of the Commons. That’s what they were designed to do, both biologically and culturally. Thus, when the problem is Me versus Us (or Me versus You), we should trust our moral gut reactions, also known as conscience: Don’t lie or steal, even when your manual mode thinks it can justify it. Cheat on neither your taxes nor your spouse. Don’t “borrow” money from the office cash drawer. Don’t badmouth the competition. Don’t park in handicapped spots. Don’t drink and drive. And do express your contempt for people who do such things. When it’s Me versus Us, trust your automatic settings. (The moral ones, not the greedy ones!)

Explaining Things

Controversy as the signal to shift into manual mode.

Of course, when we start “thinking hard” in manual mode, we normally think about all the ways we are right and they are wrong. This is unhelpful.

Here’s a better way:

In a brilliant set of experiments, Philip Fernbach, Todd Rogers, Craig Fox, and Steven Sloman applied this idea to politics. They asked Americans to consider six controversial policy proposals, such as a single-payer healthcare system and the cap-and-trade system for reducing carbon emissions. In one version of the experiment, they asked people to offer their opinions about these policies and to indicate how well they understood them. They then asked people to explain in detail how these policies are supposed to work. Finally, they asked people to once again offer their opinions and rate their understanding. They found that people, after being forced to explain the mechanics of these policies, downgraded their estimates of their own understanding and became more moderate in their opinions. The experimenters ran a control version of this experiment in which people, instead of explaining how the policies are supposed to work, offered reasons for their opinions. For most people, offering reasons left their strong opinions intact.

What these studies elegantly demonstrate, then, is that the right kind of manual-mode thinking can bring us closer together. Simply forcing people to justify their opinions with explicit reasons does very little to make people more reasonable, and may even do the opposite. But forcing people to confront their ignorance of essential facts does make people more moderate. As these researchers note, their findings suggest an alternative approach to public debate

Instead of simply asking politicians and pundits why they favor the policies they favor, first ask them to explain how their favored (and disfavored) policies are supposed to work. And what goes for Meet the Press goes for Meet the Relatives. When your opinionated, turkey-stuffed uncle insists that national health insurance is a historic step forward/the end of civilization as we know it, you may yet shift his opinion in your direction without overtly challenging him: “That’s very interesting, Jim. So how exactly does national health insurance work?”

Beware of Rights

Beware of rights-focused language. People use rights to avoid empiricism.

If we feel it shouldn’t be done, its a right
If we feel it should be done, its a duty

Ank: These are very important in early moral thinking, and less helpful in late moral thinking.

They are also useful in early-moral thinking because they translate subjectivity into objectivity

Rights and duties are the manual mode’s attempt to translate elusive feelings into more object-like things that it can understand and manipulate.

“What works best” type of claims can be justified with evidence. Rights cannot.

Okay, don’t Beware of All Rights

Some questions have been settled…. you can use Rights as a proxy in that case.

As deep pragmatists, we can appeal to rights when moral matters have been settled. In other words, our appeals to rights may serve as shields, protecting our moral progress from the threats that remain. Likewise, there are times when it makes sense to use “rights” as weapons, as rhetorical tools for the king moral progress when arguments have failed. Consider, for tools for the moral struggles of the American civil rights movement. There are utilitarian arguments for allowing blacks to vote and to eat alongside whites in restaurants. These are good arguments. But these arguments, like all utilitarian arguments, depend on a premise of impartiality, on the Golden Rule, on the idea that no one’s happiness is inherently more valuable than anyone else’s. It was precisely this premise that the opponents of the civil rights movement rejected. Thus, arguing about explicit racial discrimination is not like arguing about higher versus lower taxes, capital punishment, or physician-assisted suicide. From an impartial moral perspective, there’s nothing to debate. Jim Crow was a simple matter of one tribe’s dominating another, and by the 1950s it was clear that moral reasoning alone was not going to get the job done. What was needed was force, and an emotional commitment on the part of third parties to using force. Thus, during this mportant moral and political struggle, the emotionally salient language of rights was the right language to use. The issue might not have been settled, out there was, at the same time, no more room for rational debate.

Case study on how pro-choice and pro-life beliefs are similarly untenable when referring to rights. Too long to copy! I asked him for the PDF of that chapter.