Moral Tribes E-Book

Joshua Greene

• Herausgeber: Atlantic Books
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch

Seitenzahl: 822

Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2014

Beschreibung

A ground-breaking and ambitious book that promotes a new understanding of morality, one that will help us to solve society's biggest problems. Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us), and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern life has thrust the world's tribes into a shared space, creating conflicts of interest and clashes of values, along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground. A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights a way forward. Our emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight, sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words, and often with life-and-death stakes. Drawing inspiration from moral philosophy and cutting-edge science, Moral Tribes shows when we should trust our instincts, when we should reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward. Joshua Greene is the director of Harvard University's Moral Cognition Lab, a pioneering scientist, a philosopher, and an acclaimed teacher. The great challenge of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong? Finally, Greene offers a surprisingly simple set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives.

Leseprobe

MORAL TRIBES

MORAL TRIBES

EMOTION, REASON, AND THE GAPBETWEEN US AND THEM

Joshua Greene

ATLANTIC BOOKSLondon

First published in the United States of America in 2013 by Penguin Press, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC.

First published in Great Britain in 2014 by Atlantic Books, an imprint of Atlantic Books Ltd.

Copyright © Joshua D. Greene, 2013

The moral right of Joshua D. Greene to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act of 1988.

Illustration credits appear on pages 404–405.

Excerpt from ‘My Favorite Things,’ music by Richard Rodgers and lyrics by Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright © 1959 by Richard Rodgers and Oscar Hammerstein II. Copyright renewed. Williamson Music owner of publication and allied rights throughout the world. International copyright secured. All rights reserved. Used by permission.

All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior permission of both the copyright owner and the above publisher of this book.

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

Hardback ISBN: 978-1-78239-336-8Trade paperback ISBN: 978-1-78239-337-5E-book ISBN: 978-1-78239-338-2Paperback ISBN: 978-1-78239-339-9

Book design by Amanda DeweyPrinted in Great Britain

Atlantic BooksAn Imprint of Atlantic Books LtdOrmond House26–27 Boswell StreetLondonWC1N 3JZwww.atlantic-books.co.uk

For Andrea

Man will become better when you show him what he is like.

—ANTON CHEKHOV

The philosophy of one century is the common sense of the next

—FORTUNE COOKIE, TIGER NOODLES, PRINCETON, NEW JERSEY

Contents

Introduction: The Tragedy of Commonsense Morality

PART I.

Moral Problems

  1. The Tragedy of the Commons

  2. Moral Machinery

  3. Strife on the New Pastures

PART II.

Morality Fast and Slow

  4. Trolleyology

  5. Eff iciency, Flexibility, and the Dual-Process Brain

PART III.

Common Currency

  6. A Splendid Idea

  7. In Search of Common Currency

  8. Common Currency Found

PART IV.

Moral Convictions

  9. Alarming Acts

10. Justice and Fairness

PART V.

Moral Solutions

11. Deep Pragmatism

12. Beyond Point-and-Shoot Morality: Six Rules for Modern Herders

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Image Credits

Index

Introduction

The Tragedy of Commonsense Morality

To the east of a deep, dark forest, a tribe of herders raises sheep on a common pasture. Here the rule is simple: Each family gets the same number of sheep. Families send representatives to a council of elders, which governs the commons. Over the years, the council has made difficult decisions. One family, for example, took to breeding exceptionally large sheep, thus appropriating more of the commons for itself. After some heated debate, the council put a stop to this. Another family was caught poisoning its neighbors’ sheep. For this the family was severely punished. Some said too severely. Others said not enough. Despite these challenges, the Eastern tribe has survived, and its families have prospered, some more than others.

To the west of the forest is another tribe whose herders also share a common pasture. There, however, the size of a family’s flock is determined by the family’s size. Here, too, there is a council of elders, which has made difficult decisions. One particularly fertile family had twelve children, far more than the rest. Some complained that they were taking up too much of the commons. A different family fell ill, losing five of their six children in one year. Some thought it unfair to compound their tragedy by reducing their wealth by more than half. Despite these challenges, the Western tribe has survived, and its families have prospered, some more than others.

To the north of the forest is yet another tribe. Here there is no common pasture. Each family has its own plot of land, surrounded by a fence. These plots vary greatly in size and fertility. This is partly because some Northern herders are wiser and more industrious than others. Many such herders have expanded their lands, using their surpluses to buy land from their less prosperous neighbors. Some Northern herders are less prosperous than others simply because they are unlucky, having lost their flock, or their children, to disease, despite their best efforts. Still other herders are exceptionally lucky, possessing large, fertile plots of land, not because they are especially wise or industrious but because they inherited them. Here in the North, the council of elders doesn’t do much. They simply ensure that herders keep their promises and respect one another’s property. The vast differences in wealth among Northern families have been the source of much strife. Each year, some Northerners die in winter for want of food and warmth. Despite these challenges, the Northern tribe has survived. Most of its families have prospered, some much more than others.

To the south of the forest is a fourth tribe. They share not only their pasture but their animals, too. Their council of elders is very busy. The elders manage the tribe’s herd, assign people to jobs, and monitor their work. The fruits of this tribe’s labor are shared equally among all its members. This is a source of much strife, as some tribe members are wiser and more industrious than others. The council hears many complaints about lazy workers. Most members, however, work hard. Some are moved to work by community spirit, others by fear of their neighbors’ reproach. Despite their challenges, the Southern tribe has survived. Its families are not, on average, as prosperous as those in the North, but they do well enough, and in the South no one has ever died in winter for want of food or warmth.

One summer, a great fire burned through the forest, reducing it to ash. Then came heavy rains, and before long the land, once thick with trees, was transformed into an expanse of gently rolling grassy hills, perfect for grazing animals. The nearby tribes rushed in to claim the land. This was a source of much strife. The Southern tribe proclaimed that the new pastures belonged to all people and must be worked in common. They formed a new council to manage the new pastures and invited the other tribes to send representatives. The Northern herders scoffed at this suggestion. While the Southerners were making their big plans, Northern families built houses and stone walls and set their animals to graze. Many Easterners and Westerners did the same, though with less vigor. Some families sent representatives to the new council.

The four tribes fought bitterly, and many lives, both human and animal, were lost. Small quarrels turned into bloody feuds, which turned into deadly battles: A Southern sheep slipped into a Northerner’s field. The Northerner returned it. Another Southern sheep did the same. The Northerner demanded a fee to return it. The Southerners refused to pay. The Northerner slaughtered the sheep. Southerners took three of the Northerner’s sheep and slaughtered them. The Northerner took ten of the Southerners’ sheep and slaughtered them. The Southerners burned down the Northerner’s farmhouse, killing a child. Ten Northern families marched on the Southerners’ meetinghouse and set it ablaze, killing dozens of Southerners, including many children. Back and forth they went with violence and vengeance, soaking the green hills with blood.

To make matters worse, tribes from distant lands arrived to settle the new pastures. One tribe claimed the new pastures as a gift to them from their god. The burning of the great forest and the greening of the hills had been prophesied in their holy book, they said. Another tribe claimed the new pastures as their ancestral homeland, from which they had been driven many generations ago, before there was a forest. Tribes arrived with rules and customs that seemed to outsiders rather strange, if not downright ridiculous: Black sheep must not sleep in the same enclosure as white sheep. Women must have their earlobes covered in public. Singing on Wednesdays is strictly forbidden. One man complained of a neighboring woman who, while tending her sheep, bared her earlobes in plain view of his impressionable sons. The woman refused to cover her earlobes, and this filled her pious neighbor with rage. A little girl told a little boy that the god to which his family prayed did not exist. The shocked boy reported this to his father, who complained to the girl’s father. The father defended his daughter, praising her fierce intelligence, and refused to apologize. For this he was killed, as required by the laws of the tribe he had offended. And so began another bloody feud.

Despite their fighting, the herders of the new pastures are, in many ways, very similar. For the most part, they want the same things: healthy families, tasty and nutritious food, comfortable shelter, labor-saving tools, leisure time to spend with friends and family. All herders like listening to music and hearing stories about heroes and villains. What’s more, even as they fight one another, their minds work in similar ways. What they perceive as unjust makes them angry and disgusted, and they are motivated to fight, both by self-interest and by a sense of justice. Herders fight not only for themselves but for their families, friends, and fellow tribe members. They fight with honor and would be ashamed to do otherwise. They guard their reputations fiercely, judge others by their deeds, and enjoy exchanging opinions.

Despite their differences, the tribes of the new pastures share some core values. In no tribe is it permissible to be completely selfish, and in no tribe are members expected to be completely selfless. Even in the South, where the herd is shared, workers are free at day’s end to pursue their own interests. In no tribe are ordinary members allowed to lie, steal, or harm one another at will. (There are, however, some tribes in which certain privileged individuals are free to do as they please.)

The tribes of the new pastures are engaged in bitter, often bloody conflict, even though they are all, in their different ways, moral peoples. They fight not because they are fundamentally selfish but because they have incompatible visions of what a moral society should be. These are not merely scholarly disagreements, although their scholars have those, too. Rather, each tribe’s philosophy is woven into its daily life. Each tribe has its own version of moral common sense. The tribes of the new pastures fight not because they are immoral but because they view life on the new pastures from very different moral perspectives. I call this the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality.

The Parable of the New Pastures is fictional, but the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality is real. It’s the central tragedy of modern life, the deeper tragedy behind the moral problems that divide us. This book is about understanding and, ultimately, solving these problems. Unlike many authors of popular books, I make no promise of helping you solve your personal problems. What I’m offering you, I hope, is clarity—and with this clarity, the motivation and opportunity to join forces with like-minded others.

This book is an attempt to understand morality from the ground up. It’s about understanding what morality is, how it got here, and how it’s implemented in our brains. It’s about understanding the deep structure of moral problems as well as the differences between the problems that our brains were designed to solve and the distinctively modern problems we face today. Finally, it’s about taking this new understanding of morality and turning it into a universal moral philosophy that members of all human tribes can share.

This is an ambitious book. I started developing these ideas in my late teens, and they’ve taken me through two interwoven careers—as a philosopher and as a scientist. This book draws inspiration from great philosophers of the past. It also builds on my own research in the new field of moral cognition, which applies the methods of experimental psychology and cognitive neuroscience to illuminate the structure of moral thinking. Finally, this book draws on the work of hundreds of social scientists who’ve learned amazing things about how we make decisions and how our choices are shaped by culture and biology. This book is my attempt to put it all together, to turn this new scientific self-knowledge into a practical philosophy that can help us solve our biggest problems.

LIFE ON THE NEW PASTURES

Two issues dominated Barack Obama’s first presidential term: healthcare and the economy. Both reflect the tension between the individualism of the Northern herders and the collectivism of the Southern herders. The Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, also known as Obamacare, established national health insurance in the United States. Liberals praised it, not as a perfect system but as a historic step in the right direction. The United States had finally joined the rest of the modern world in providing basic healthcare to all its citizens. Conservatives—many of them—despise Obamacare, which they regard as a step toward ruinous socialism. The recent healthcare debate has been awash in misinformation,* but amid the lies and half-truths there can be found an honest philosophical disagreement.

At its core, this disagreement, like so many others, is about the tension between individual rights and the (real or alleged) greater good. Universal health insurance requires everyone to buy in, either through an individual purchase of health insurance or through taxes. Conservatives mounted a legal challenge to Obamacare, culminating in a landmark Supreme Court decision. The Supreme Court upheld Obamacare on the grounds that it’s funded through a combination of voluntary purchases and taxes (which are both constitutional) rather than by the government’s forcing people to buy something (which is arguably not constitutional). But the tax-versus-forced-purchase distinction is really just a legal technicality. The people who hate Obamacare don’t hate it because they believe that it’s funded by forced purchases rather than forced taxes; what they hate is the forcing. Obamacare might not be socialism, but it’s certainly more collectivist than some people care for, restricting individual freedom in the name of the greater good.

During the 2012 Republican presidential primary, candidates denounced Obamacare as loudly and often as possible, calling it socialism and vowing to repeal it. During one of the primary debates, journalist Wolf Blitzer had the following exchange with Texas congressman Ron Paul.

BLITZER: A healthy 30-year-old young man has a good job, makes a good living, but decides, you know what? I’m not going to spend $200 or $300 a month for health insurance because I’m healthy, I don’t need it. But something terrible happens, all of a sudden he needs it. Who’s going to pay if he goes into a coma, for example? Who pays for that?

PAUL: Well, in a society that you accept welfarism and socialism, he expects the government to take care of him.

BLITZER: Well, what do you want?

PAUL: But what he should do is whatever he wants to do, and assume responsibility for himself. My advice to him would have a major medical policy, but not be forced—

BLITZER: But he doesn’t have that. He doesn’t have it, and he needs intensive care for six months. Who pays?

PAUL: That’s what freedom is all about, taking your own risks. This whole idea that you have to prepare and take care of everybody—

[applause]

BLITZER: But Congressman, are you saying that society should just let him die?

As Paul prepared his hesitant answer, a chorus of voices from the crowd shouted, “Yeah! Let him die!” These are the Northern herders. Paul couldn’t quite bring himself to agree—or disagree. He said that neighbors, friends, and churches should take care of such a man, implying, but not explicitly stating, that the government should let him die if no one else is willing or able to pay. As you might expect the more Southerly herders disagree.

(Note: In the Parable of the New Pastures, the Southern herders are extreme collectivists, communists, and are thus far to the left of contemporary mainstream liberals, despite frequent accusations to the contrary. Thus, as we discuss contemporary politics, I refer to contemporary liberals as “more Southerly” rather than “Southern.” Contemporary U. S. conservatives, in contrast, resemble more closely their fictional Northern counterparts.)

Along with healthcare, the miserable state of the U. S. economy took center stage during President Obama’s first term. When Obama took office in 2009, the economy was in free fall, thanks to a housing bubble that burst after a decade of inflated growth and a financial sector that placed enormous bets on housing prices. The government did several things in an attempt to stave off complete financial disaster. First, in late 2008, while President Bush was still in office, the federal government bailed out several of the investment banks at the heart of the crisis.* Later, the Obama administration bailed out the auto industry and extended aid to homeowners facing foreclosure. These measures were opposed, to varying degrees, by Northern herders who argued that the banks, the automakers, and the desperate homeowners should, like Ron Paul’s hypothetical patient, be allowed to “die.” Why, they asked, should American taxpayers have to pay for these people’s poor judgment? The more Southerly herders didn’t especially relish the thought of bailing out irresponsible decision makers, but they argued that these measures were necessary for the greater good, lest their bad choices sink the whole economy. During Obama’s first year, congressional Democrats passed his $787 billion stimulus bill, the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009. This, too, was opposed by Northern herders who favored less government spending and more tax cuts. Better, they said, to put money into the pockets of individuals who can decide for themselves how to spend it.

Related to both healthcare and the economy is the broader issue of economic inequality, which came to the fore in 2011 with the Occupy Wall Street protests. From 1979 to 2007, the incomes of the wealthiest U.S. households skyrocketed, with the top 1 percent enjoying income gains of 275 percent, while the bulk of Americans gained around 40 percent. (The gains at the tippy top, the top 0. 1 percent, were even larger, around 400 percent.) These trends inspired the Occupy slogan “We are the 99%,” calling for economic reforms to restore a more egalitarian distribution of wealth and power.

The story of rising income inequality comes in two versions. According to the individualist Northern herders, the winners earned their winnings fair and square, and the losers have no right to complain. “Occupy a Desk!” read the sign of a Wall Street counterprotester. Presidential hopeful Herman Cain called the protesters “un-American,” and the eventual Republican nominee, Mitt Romney, accused them of waging “class warfare.”

In September 2012, the liberal magazine Mother Jones dropped one of the biggest bombshells in U. S. electoral history. They posted online a secret recording of Romney in which he described roughly half of the American population as willful government dependents who will never “take personal responsibility and care for their lives.” According to Romney’s infamous speech, the “47 percent” of the population that earns too little to pay income taxes (on top of payroll taxes) deserve no better than what they’ve got.

The more Southerly herders tell a different story. They say that the wealthy have rigged the system in their favor, noting that rich people like Mitt Romney pay taxes at a lower rate than many middle-class workers, thanks to lower tax rates on investment income, myriad tax loopholes, and overseas tax havens. And now, thanks to the Supreme Court’s decision in Citizens United v. Federal Election Commission, which legalized unlimited campaign contributions to “independent” political groups, the rich can use their money to buy elections like never before. These more Southerly herders say that even in the absence of nefarious system rigging, maintaining a just society requires active redistribution of wealth. Otherwise the rich use their advantages to get richer and richer, passing on their advantages to their children, who then begin life with a big head start. Without redistribution of wealth, they say, our society will bifurcate into permanent classes of haves and have-nots.

During her first political campaign, Massachusetts senator Elizabeth Warren made a Southerly case for redistribution in a stump speech that went viral on YouTube:

There is nobody in this country who got rich on their own. Nobody. You built a factory out there—good for you. But I want to be clear. You moved your goods to market on roads the rest of us paid for. You hired workers the rest of us paid to educate. You were safe in your factory because of police forces and fire forces that the rest of us paid for. You didn’t have to worry that marauding bands would come and seize everything at your factory . . . Now look. You built a factory and it turned into something terrific or a great idea—God bless! Keep a hunk of it. But part of the underlying social contract is you take a hunk of that and pay forward for the next kid who comes along.

Responding to these remarks, Ron Paul called Warren a socialist and said that the government can do nothing but “steal and rob people with a gun and forcibly transfer wealth from one person to another.” Conservative commentator Rush Limbaugh went a step further, calling Warren a communist and “a parasite who hates her host.”

Other tribal disagreements are less obviously related to the fundamental divide between individualism and collectivism. In the United States there is enormous disagreement over what, if anything, we ought to do about global warming. This may appear to be, at bottom, not a debate about values but a factual disagreement over whether global warming is a real threat and whether humans are causing it. But is this argument just about how to interpret the data? Those who believe in global warming are saying that all of us must make sacrifices (use less fuel, pay carbon taxes, and so on) to ensure our collective well-being. Individualists are, by nature, skeptical of such demands; collectivists, far less so. Our values may color our view of the facts.

Some of our troubles on the new pastures are not about individualism versus collectivism per se but about the boundaries of our respective collectives. Nearly all of us are collectivists to some extent. The only pure individualists are hermits. Consider, once again, Ron Paul’s prescription for the man who neglected to buy health insurance. Paul didn’t say that we should let the man die. He said that friends, neighbors, and churches should take care of him. What this suggests is that our tribal disagreements are not necessarily between individualist and collectivist tribes, but between tribes that are more versus less tribal, more versus less inclined to see the world in terms of Us versus Them, and thus more versus less open to collective enterprises that cross tribal lines, such as the U. S. federal government and the United Nations. For many conservatives, the circle of “Us” is just smaller.

Some tribal disagreements arise because tribes have values that are inherently local, particular to the tribe in question. Some tribes grant special authority to specific gods, leaders, texts, or practices—what one might call “proper nouns.”* For example, many Muslims believe that no one—Muslim or otherwise—should be allowed to produce visual images of the prophet Muhammad. Some Jews believe that Jews are God’s “chosen people” and that the Jews have a divine right to the land of Israel. Many American Christians believe that the Ten Commandments should be displayed in public buildings and that all Americans should pledge allegiance to “one nation under God.” (And they’re not talking about Vishnu.)

The moral practices of some tribes are (or appear to be) arbitrary, but, at least in the developed world, tribes generally refrain from imposing their most arbitrary rules on one another: Orthodox Jews don’t expect non-Jews to forgo lobster and to circumcise their male children. Catholics don’t expect non-Catholics to wear ash crosses on their foreheads on Ash Wednesday. The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e. g., gay marriage, gays in the military, the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e. g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research). That such issues are moral issues is surely not arbitrary. Sex and death are the gas pedals and brakes of tribal growth. (Gay sex and abortion, for example, are both alternatives to reproduction.) What’s less clear is why different tribes hold different views about sex, life, and death, and why some tribes are more willing than others to impose their views on outsiders.

This has been a whirlwind tour of the new pastures in the United States during the period in which I completed this book. If you’re reading this book at a later time, or in another place, the specific issues will be different but the underlying tensions will likely be the same. Look around and you’ll see Northern and Southern herders fighting over whether government should do more versus less; tribes that have smaller versus larger conceptions of “Us”; tribes engaged in bitter arguments over the morality of sex and death; and tribes demanding deference to their respective proper nouns.

TOWARD A GLOBAL MORAL PHILOSOPHY

If you were an alien biologist, dropping by Earth every ten thousand years or so to observe the progress of life on our planet, there might be a page in your field notebook like this:

Homo sapiens sapiens: big-brained, upright primates, vocal language, sometimes aggressive

VISIT# POPULATION NOTES

1

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

2

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

3

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

4

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

5

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

6

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

7

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

8

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

9

< 10 million

hunter-gatherer bands, some primitive tools

10

>  7 billion

global indust. economy, advanced technology w/ nuc. power, telecom., artificial intel., extraterrestrial travel, large-scale social/political institutions, democratic governance, advanced scientific inquiry, widespread literacy, and advanced art (See addendum)

For all but the past ten thousand years of our existence, it didn’t look like we’d amount to much. Yet here we are, sitting in our climate-controlled, artificially illuminated homes, reading and writing books about ourselves. Our progress goes well beyond creature comforts. Contrary to popular lamentation, humans are getting better and better at getting along. Violence has declined over the course of human history, including recent history, and participation in modern market economies, far from turning us into selfish bean counters, has expanded the scope of human kindness.

Nevertheless, we’ve plenty of room for improvement. The twentieth century was the most peaceful on record (controlling for population growth), yet its wars and assorted political conflicts killed approximately 230 million people, laying down enough human bodies to circle the globe seven times. In this new century, the death toll continues to climb, albeit at a reduced rate. For example, the ongoing conflict in Darfur has killed, through violence or increased disease, about 300,000 people. A billion people—about one in seven humans—live in extreme poverty, with so few resources that mere survival is an ongoing struggle. More than twenty million people are forced into labor (i. e., slavery), many of them children and women forced into prostitution.

Even in the world’s happier quarters, life is still systematically unfair to millions of people. When researchers in the United States sent out identical résumés to prospective employers, some with white-sounding names (e. g., Emily and Greg) and others with black-sounding names (e. g., Lakisha and Jamal), the white résumés generated 50 percent more calls from employers. Worst of all, we face two problems that may severely disrupt, or even reverse, our trend toward peace and prosperity: the degradation of our environment and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction.

Amid such doom and gloom, the premise of this book is fundamentally optimistic: that we can improve our prospects for peace and prosperity by improving the way we think about moral problems. Over the past few centuries, new moral ideas have taken hold in human brains. Many people now believe that no human tribe ought to be privileged over any other, that all humans deserve to have certain basic goods and freedoms, and that violence should be used only as a last resort. (In other words, some tribes have become a lot less tribal.) We subscribe to these ideals more in principle than in practice, but the fact that we subscribe to them at all is something new under the sun. As historians tell us, we’ve made a lot of progress, not just technologically but morally.

Inverting the usual question about today’s morals, Steven Pinker asks: What are we doing right? And how can we do better? What we lack, I think, is a coherent global moral philosophy, one that can resolve disagreements among competing moral tribes. The idea of a universal moral philosophy is not new. It’s been a dream of moral thinkers since the Enlightenment. But it’s never quite worked out. What we have instead are some shared values, some unshared values, some laws on which we agree, and a common vocabulary that we use to express the values we share as well as the values that divide us.

Understanding morality requires two things: First, we must understand the structure of modern moral problems and how they differ from the problems that our brains evolved to solve. We’ll do this in part 1 of this book. Second, we must understand the structure of our moral brains and how different kinds of thinking are suited to solving different kinds of problems. That’s part 2. Then, in part 3, we’ll use our understanding of moral problems and moral thinking to introduce a solution, a candidate global moral philosophy. In part 4 we’ll address some compelling arguments against this philosophy, and in part 5 we’ll apply our philosophy to the real world. I’ll now describe this plan in a bit more detail.

THE PLAN

In part 1 (“Moral Problems”), we’ll distinguish between the two major kinds of moral problems. The first kind is more basic. It’s the problem of Me versus Us: selfishness versus concern for others. This is the problem that our moral brains were designed to solve. The second kind of moral problem is distinctively modern. It’s Us versus Them: our interests and values versus theirs. This is the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, illustrated by this book’s first organizing metaphor, the Parable of the New Pastures. (Of course, Us versus Them is a very old problem. But historically it’s been a tactical problem rather than a moral one.) This is the larger problem behind the moral controversies that divide us. In part 1, we’ll see how the moral machinery in our brains solves the first problem (chapter 2) and creates the second problem (chapter 3).

In part 2 (“Morality Fast and Slow”), we’ll dig deeper into the moral brain and introduce this book’s second organizing metaphor: The moral brain is like a dual-mode camera with both automatic settings (such as “portrait” or “landscape”) and a manual mode. Automatic settings are efficient but inflexible. Manual mode is flexible but inefficient. The moral brain’s automatic settings are the moral emotions we’ll meet in part 1, the gut-level instincts that enable cooperation within personal relationships and small groups. Manual mode, in contrast, is a general capacity for practical reasoning that can be used to solve moral problems, as well as other practical problems. In part 2, we’ll see how moral thinking is shaped by both emotion and reason (chapter 4) and how this “dual-process” morality reflects the general structure of the human mind (chapter 5).

In part 3, we’ll introduce our third and final organizing metaphor: Common Currency. Here we’ll begin our search for a metamorality, a global moral philosophy that can adjudicate among competing tribal moralities, just as a tribe’s morality adjudicates among the competing interests of its members. A metamorality’s job is to make trade-offs among competing tribal values, and making trade-offs requires a common currency, a unified system for weighing values. In chapter 6, we’ll introduce a candidate metamorality, a solution to the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality. In chapter 7, we’ll consider other ways of establishing a common currency, and find them lacking. In chapter 8, we’ll take a closer look at the metamorality introduced in chapter 6, a philosophy known (rather unfortunately) as utilitarianism. We’ll see how utilitarianism is built out of values and reasoning processes that are universally accessible and, thus, how it gives us the common currency that we need.*

Over the years, philosophers have made some intuitively compelling arguments against utilitarianism. In part 4 (“Moral Convictions”), we’ll reconsider these arguments in light of our new understanding of moral cognition. We’ll see how utilitarianism becomes more attractive the better we understand our dual-process moral brains (chapters 9 and 10).

Finally, in part 5 (“Moral Solutions”), we return to the new pastures and the real-world moral problems that motivate this book. Having defended utilitarianism against its critics, it’s time to apply it—and to give it a better name. A more apt name for utilitarianism is deep pragmatism (chapter 11). Utilitarianism is pragmatic in the good and familiar sense: flexible, realistic, and open to compromise. But it’s also a deep philosophy, not just about expediency. Deep pragmatism is about making principled compromises. It’s about resolving our differences by appeal to shared values—common currency.

We’ll consider what it means, in practice, to be a deep pragmatist: When should we trust our automatic settings, our moral intuitions, and when should we shift into manual mode? And once we’re in manual mode, how should we use our powers of reasoning? Here we have a choice: We can use our big brains to rationalize our intuitive moral convictions, or we can transcend the limitations of our tribal gut reactions. I’ll make the case for transcendence, for getting beyond point-and-shoot morality, and for changing the way we think and talk about the problems that divide us. I’ll close in chapter 12 with six simple, pragmatic rules for life on the new pastures.

PART I

Moral Problems

1.

The Tragedy of the Commons

As you may have noticed, the Parable of the New Pastures is a sequel. The original parable comes from Garrett Hardin, a worldly ecologist who in 1968 published a classic paper entitled “The Tragedy of the Commons.” In Hardin’s parable, a single group of herders shares a common pasture. The commons is large enough to support many animals, but not infinitely many. From time to time, each herder must decide whether to add another animal to her flock. What’s a rational herder to do? By adding an animal to her herd, she receives a substantial benefit when she sells the animal at market. However, the cost of supporting that animal is shared by all who use the commons. Thus, the herder gains a lot, but pays only a little, by adding an additional animal to her herd. Therefore, she is best served by increasing the size of her herd indefinitely, so long as the commons remains available. Of course, every other herder has the same set of incentives. If each herder acts according to her self-interest, the commons will be completely eroded, and there will be nothing left for anyone.

Hardin’s Tragedy of the Commons illustrates the problem of cooperation. Cooperation is not always a problem. Sometimes cooperation is a foregone conclusion, and sometimes it’s just impossible. In between these two extremes, things get interesting.

Suppose that two people, Art and Bud, are at sea in a rowboat, trying to stay ahead of a violent storm. Neither will survive unless both row as hard as possible. Here self-interest and collective interest (in this case, a collective of two) are in perfect harmony. For both Art and Bud, doing what’s best for “Me” and what’s best for “Us” is the same. In other cases, cooperation is impossible. Suppose, for example, that Art and Bud’s boat is now sinking and that they’ve only one life vest, which can’t be shared. Here there is no Us, just two different Me’s.

When cooperation is easy or impossible, as in the two scenarios above, there’s no social problem to be solved. Cooperation becomes a challenging but solvable problem when, as in Hardin’s parable, individual interest and collective interest are neither perfectly aligned nor perfectly opposed. Once again, any one of Hardin’s herders is better off adding more animals to her herd, but this leads to collective ruin, which is in no one’s best interest. The problem of cooperation, then, is the problem of getting collective interest to triumph over individual interest, when possible. The problem of cooperation is the central problem of social existence.

Why should any creature be social? Why not just go it alone? The reason is that individuals can sometimes accomplish things together that they can’t accomplish by themselves. This principle has guided the evolution of life on earth from the start. Approximately four billion years ago, molecules joined together to form cells. About two billion years later, cells joined together to form more complex cells. And then a billion years later, these more complex cells joined together to form multicellular organisms. These collectives evolved because the participating individuals could, by working together, spread their genetic material in new and more effective ways. Fast-forward another billion years to our world, which is full of social animals, from ants to wolves to humans. The same principle applies. Ant colonies and wolf packs can do things that no single ant or wolf can do, and we humans, by cooperating with one another, have become the earth’s dominant species.

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.

The tension between individual and collective interest exists in many situations that we don’t ordinarily think of as cooperative. Suppose Art is traveling through the Wild West along an isolated mountain trail. Up ahead, he sees the silhouette of a lone traveler coming over the next ridge. Is he armed? Art doesn’t know, but Art sure is, and he’s a good shot. Eyeing the stranger over the barrel of his rifle, Art thinks he can take him out with a single bullet. Should he do it? From Art’s selfish point of view, there’s nothing to lose. If he kills the stranger, he doesn’t have to worry about being robbed. Thus, it’s in Art’s self-interest to shoot the stranger.

Bud, who is also traveling through these parts, faces a similar choice while traversing a mountain range to retrieve a stash of gold. Bud encounters a sleeping stranger on the trail. He knows that he will likely encounter the stranger on his way back, at which point Bud will be carrying his gold. Will the stranger try to rob him? Bud doesn’t know, but he knows that if he poisons the sleeping stranger’s whiskey, he won’t have to find out.

The logic of self-interest unfolds: Bud poisons Art’s whiskey. A few hours later, Art shoots Bud dead. And then a few hours after that, Art downs his whiskey and dies. Had Art and Bud both cared a bit more about the well-being of strangers, they’d have both survived. Instead, like the herders in Hardin’s parable, their self-interest got the best of them. The lesson: Even the most basic form of decency, nonaggression, is a form of cooperation, and not to be taken for granted—in our species or any other. Consider, for example, one of our two nearest living relatives, the chimpanzees. If male chimpanzees from different troops encounter one another on the trail, and one party has a clear numerical advantage over the other, it’s a good bet that the larger party will kill the members of the smaller party, simply because they can. And why not? Who needs the competition? Peace is a cooperation problem.

Nearly all economic activity poses a cooperation problem as well. When you buy something from a store, you count on the storekeeper to give you what you’ve paid for (e. g., ground beef, not ground squirrel). Likewise, the storekeeper counts on you to hand over a real ten-dollar bill (not counterfeit) and to refrain from filling your pockets with additional merchandise. Of course, in our society we have laws and police officers to ensure that people hold up their end of a bargain. And that is precisely the point. Because nearly all economic activity involves the interesting kind of cooperation, the kind that pits individual interest against collective interest, we need additional machinery to make it work.

Beyond the marketplace, nearly all human relationships involve give-and-take, and all such relationships break down when one or both parties do too much taking and not enough giving. In fact, the tension between individual and collective interest arises not only between us but within us. As noted above, complex cells have been cooperating for about a billion years. Nevertheless, it is not uncommon for some of the cells in an animal’s body to start pulling for themselves instead of for the team, a phenomenon known as cancer.

THE FUNCTION OF MORALITY

After Darwin, human morality became a scientific mystery. Natural selection could explain how intelligent, upright, linguistic, not so hairy, bipedal primates could evolve, but where did our morals come from? Darwin himself was absorbed by this question. Natural selection, it was thought, promotes ruthless self-interest. Individuals who grab up all the resources and destroy the competition will survive better, reproduce more often, and thus populate the world with their ruthlessly selfish offspring. How, then, could morality evolve in a world that Tennyson famously described as “red in tooth and claw”?

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:

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

How does morality do this? We’ll spend the next chapter answering this question in more detail, but here is the gist: The essence of morality is altruism, unselfishness, a willingness to pay a personal cost to benefit others. Selfish herders will keep adding animals to their herds until the individual costs outweigh the individual benefits, and this, as we saw, leads to ruin. Moral herders, however, may be willing to limit the sizes of their herds out of concern for others, even though such restraint imposes a net cost on oneself. Thus, a group of moral herders, through their willingness to put Us ahead of Me, can avert the Tragedy of the Commons and prosper.

Morality evolved to enable cooperation, but this conclusion comes with an important caveat. Biologically speaking, humans were designed for cooperation, but only with some people. Our moral brains evolved for cooperation within groups, and perhaps only within the context of personal relationships. Our moral brains did not evolve for cooperation between groups (at least not all groups). How do we know this? Why couldn’t morality have evolved to promote cooperation in a more general way? Because universal cooperation is inconsistent with the principles governing evolution by natural selection. I wish it were otherwise, but there’s no escaping this conclusion, as I will now explain. (I hasten to add that this does not mean that we are doomed to be less than universally cooperative. More on this shortly.)

Evolution is an inherently competitive process: The faster lion catches more prey than other lions, produces more offspring than other lions, and thus raises the proportion of fast lions in the next generation. This couldn’t happen if there were no competition for resources. If lion food existed in unlimited supply, the faster lions would have no advantage over the slower ones, and the next generation of lions would be, on average, no faster than the last generation. No competition, no evolution by natural selection.

For the same reason, cooperative tendencies cannot evolve (biologically) unless they confer a competitive advantage on the cooperators. Imagine, for example, two groups of herders, one cooperative and one not. The cooperative herders limit the sizes of their individual herds, and thus preserve their commons, which allows them to maintain a sustainable food supply. The members of the uncooperative group follow the logic of self-interest, adding more and more animals to their respective herds. Consequently, they erode their commons, leaving themselves with very little food. As a result, the first group, thanks to their cooperative tendencies, can take over. They can wait for the uncooperative herders to starve, or, if they are more enterprising, they can wage a lopsided war of the well fed against the hungry. Once the cooperative group has taken over, they can raise even more animals, feed more children, and thus increase the proportion of cooperators in the next generation. Cooperation evolves, not because it’s “nice” but because it confers a survival advantage.

As with the evolution of faster carnivores, competition is essential for the evolution of cooperation. Suppose that both groups of herders live on magical pastures capable of supporting infinitely many animals. Under these magical conditions, the uncooperative group has no disadvantage. Selfish herders can go on adding animals to their respective herds, and their herds will simply grow and grow. Cooperation evolves only if individuals who are prone to cooperation outcompete individuals who are not (or who are less so). Thus, if morality is a set of adaptations for cooperation, we today are moral beings only because our morally minded ancestors outcompeted their less morally minded neighbors. And thus, insofar as morality is a biological adaptation, it evolved not only as a device for putting Us ahead of Me, but as a device for putting Us ahead of Them. (And note that in saying this I am not assuming that morality evolved by group selection.*) This has profound implications.

The idea that morality evolved as a device for intergroup competition may sound strange for at least two reasons. First, much of morality appears to be unrelated to intergroup competition. What, for example, does being pro-choice or pro-life on the issue of abortion have to do with intergroup competition? Likewise for people’s moral opinions about gay marriage, capital punishment, not eating certain foods, and so on. As we’ll see in the chapters that follow, moral thinking can be related to intergroup competition in ways that are indirect and not at all obvious. We’ll put this issue aside for now.

The second strange thing about morality as a device for beating Them is that it makes morality sound amoral or even immoral. But how could this be? The paradox is resolved when we realize that morality can do things that it did not evolve (biologically) to do. As moral beings, we may have values that are opposed to the forces that gave rise to morality. To borrow Wittgenstein’s famous metaphor, morality can climb the ladder of evolution and then kick it away.

As an analogy, consider the invention of birth control. We evolved big, complex brains that allow us to invent technological solutions to complex problems. In general, our technical problem-solving skills help us produce and support more offspring, but in the case of birth control, we’ve taken our big brains and used them to limit our offspring, thus thwarting nature’s “intentions.”* In the same way, we can take morality in new directions that nature never “intended.” We can, for example, donate money to faraway strangers without expecting anything in return. From a biological point of view, this is just a backfiring glitch, much like the invention of birth control. But from our point of view, as moral beings who can kick away the evolutionary ladder, it may be exactly what we want. Morality is more than what it evolved to be.

METAMORALITY

Two moral tragedies threaten human well-being. The original tragedy is the Tragedy of the Commons. This is a tragedy of selfishness, a failure of individuals to put Us ahead of Me. Morality is nature’s solution to this problem. The new tragedy, the modern tragedy, is the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, the problem of life on the new pastures. Here morality is undoubtedly part of the solution, but it’s also part of the problem. In the modern tragedy, the very same moral thinking that enables cooperation within groups undermines cooperation between groups. Within each tribe, the herders of the new pastures are bound together by their moral ideals. But the tribes themselves are divided by their moral ideals. This is unfortunate, but it should come as no surprise, given the conclusion of the last section: Morality did not evolve to promote universal cooperation. On the contrary, it evolved as a device for successful intergroup competition. In other words, morality evolved to avert the Tragedy of the Commons, but it did not evolve to avert the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality.

What, then, are we modern herders to do? That’s the question I’m trying to answer in this book. How can we adapt our moral thinking to the circumstances of the modern world? Is there a kind of moral thinking that can help us live peacefully and happily together?

Morality is nature’s solution to the problem of cooperation within groups, enabling individuals with competing interests to live together and prosper. What we in the modern world need, then, is something like morality but one level up. We need a kind of thinking that enables groups with conflicting moralities to live together and prosper. In other words, we need a metamorality. We need a moral system that can resolve disagreements among groups with different moral ideals, just as ordinary, first-order morality resolves disagreements among individuals with different selfish interests.

The idea of a metamorality is not wholly new. On the contrary, identifying universal moral principles has been a dream of moral philosophy since the Enlightenment. The problem, I think, is that we’ve been looking for universal moral principles that feel right, and there may be no such thing. What feels right may be what works at the lower level (within a group) but not at the higher level (between groups). In other words, commonsense morality may be enough to avert the Tragedy of the Commons, but it might be unable to handle the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality. Herders on the new pastures who want to live peacefully and happily may need to think in new and uncomfortable ways.

To find the metamorality that we’re looking for, we must first understand basic morality, the kind that evolved to avert the Tragedy of the Commons.

2.

Moral Machinery

I’ve said that morality is a device for enabling cooperation, for averting the Tragedy of the Commons. In fact, morality is a collection of devices, a suite of psychological capacities and dispositions that together promote and stabilize cooperative behavior. In this chapter, we’ll see how these devices actually work at the psychological level, how they are implemented in our moral brains. What we really want to know, of course, is why we fight. We want to understand why our moral machinery breaks down on the new pastures. But to understand how our moral machinery fails us (the subject of the next chapter), we first need to know how it works when everything is functioning properly.

Hardin’s Parable of the Commons describes a multiperson cooperation problem. In this chapter, we’ll simplify things by focusing on another famous parable describing a two-person cooperation problem. This parable, known as the Prisoner’s Dilemma, is about two criminals who are trying to stay out of prison. Despite the criminal context, the abstract principles behind the Prisoner’s Dilemma explain why our moral brains are the way they are.

THE MAGIC CORNER

For our version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, we’ll bring back our friends Art and Bud, this time as a bank-robbing duo. Following an otherwise successful heist, they are picked up by the police and brought in for questioning. The police know that Art and Bud are guilty, but they’re short on hard evidence. They do, however, have enough evidence to convict both Art and Bud of a lesser crime, tax evasion, which would put them away for two years each. Still, what the police really want is two convictions for bank robbery—eight years each, minimum. To get their conviction, the police need a confession. They separate the two suspects and go to work.

Art and Bud each face the same choice: Confess or keep quiet. If Art confesses and Bud doesn’t, Art gets a light sentence, just one year, and Bud gets ten years. The reverse happens if Bud confesses and Art doesn’t. If they both confess, they both get eight years. And if they both keep quiet, they both get two years. This set of contingencies is laid out in the payoff matrix shown in figure 2. 1.

Figure 2.1. Payoff matrix in a classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. Collectively the two players are better off keeping quiet (cooperating), but individually each player is better off confessing (defecting).

The four boxes in the matrix describe the four possible outcomes. Art’s choice determines the row; Bud’s choice determines the column. If Art confesses and Bud doesn’t, they end up in the lower-left corner—good for Art, bad for Bud. If Bud confesses and Art doesn’t, they end up in the upper-right corner—good for Bud, bad for Art. If both confess, they end up in the lower-right corner, which is pretty bad for both of them. And if they both keep quiet, they end up in the upper-left corner, the magic corner, the one that is pretty good for both of them and that minimizes their joint prison time.

So what will Art and Bud do? You might expect them both to keep quiet, putting themselves in the magic corner. However, if Art and Bud are selfish, and if all else is equal, that won’t happen. Both will confess, putting them in the lower-right corner, maximizing their joint prison time with eight years each. This “tragic” outcome is analogous to the tragic outcome in Hardin’s parable, and follows the same logic. Work through the payoff matrix in figure 2. 1 and you’ll see that Art is better off confessing, no matter what Bud does, and vice versa. If they’re selfish and rational, both will confess. Great for the police, tragic for them.

The Prisoner’s Dilemma, like the Tragedy of the Commons, involves a tension between individual interest and collective interest. Individually, Art and Bud are better off confessing, but collectively they are better off keeping quiet. Our question now is this: What would it take to get Art and Bud into that magic corner? How can they defeat their selfish inclinations and reap the benefits of cooperation? And how can we humans do this more generally? Wheel in the moral machinery.

FAMILY VALUES

In a famous episode related in the Talmud, Rabbi Hillel was approached by a skeptical man who vowed to convert to Judaism, on one condition: The great rabbi had to teach him the entire Torah in the time that he could stand on one foot. Rabbi Hillel replied, “That which is hateful to you, do not do to your neighbor. That is the whole Torah. The rest is commentary. Go and study it.”

This, of course, is a version of the “Golden Rule,” affirmed in one form or another by every major religion and every recognizably moral philosophy. It is also, not coincidentally, the most straightforward solution to Art and Bud’s cooperation problem. Spending ten years in prison is “hateful” to both Art and Bud, and thus, if they take Rabbi Hillel’s advice, they’ll both keep quiet and find the magic corner. (Of course, if they really took Rabbi Hillel’s advice, they wouldn’t be robbing banks in the first place, but that’s a separate problem.)

But why would Art and Bud care about doing “hateful” things to each other? Perhaps Art and Bud are brothers. That would explain it, but this only pushes our question back further: Why do brothers care about each other? Brotherly love (and familial love more generally) is explained by the well-known theory of kin selection,* which takes a gene’s-eye view of behavior. Genetically related individuals share genes (by definition), and therefore, when an individual does something to enhance the survival of a genetic relative, that individual is, in part, doing something that enhances the survival of his or her own genes. Or, to take a gene’s-eye view, genes that promote beneficence toward kin are enhancing their own survival, helping equally good copies of themselves inside the bodies of others.

In many species, what counts as caring in the biological sense—conferring a benefit on another individual at a cost to oneself—does not involve caring in the psychological sense. Ants, for example, confer benefits on their genetic relatives, but, so far as we can tell, ants are not motivated by tender feelings. Among humans, of course, caring behavior is motivated by feelings, including the powerful emotional bonds that connect us to our close relatives. Thus, familial love is more than just a warm and fuzzy thing. It’s a strategic biological device, a piece of moral machinery that enables genetically related individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.

TIT FOR TAT

Familial love helps genetic relatives find the magic corner, but what about people who aren’t related? They, too, can find the magic corner by giving one another the right incentives.