{"id":4297,"date":"2014-09-28T04:57:46","date_gmt":"2014-09-28T03:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=4297"},"modified":"2014-09-28T13:54:26","modified_gmt":"2014-09-28T12:54:26","slug":"review-moral-tribes-emotion-reason-and-the-gap-between-us-and-them-joshua-d-greene","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2014\/09\/review-moral-tribes-emotion-reason-and-the-gap-between-us-and-them-joshua-d-greene\/","title":{"rendered":"Review: Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them (Joshua D. Greene)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/17707599-moral-tribes<\/p>\n<p>http:\/\/gen.lib.rus.ec\/book\/index.php?md5=08a6526a7a706c4ae5f5aa7543ffc702<\/p>\n<p>Years ago when i used to study filosofy, i came across <a href=\"http:\/\/www.wjh.harvard.edu\/~jgreene\/\">Joshua&#8217;s website<\/a>. On the site i found his phd thesis which i read. It is probably the best meta-ethics writing ive come across. He seems to have removed it from the site &#8220;available by request&#8221;, however i still have it: Greene, J. D. (2002). <a href=\"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-content\/uploads\/Joshua-D.-Greene-The-Terrible-Horrible-No-Good-Very-Bad-Truth-about-Morality-and.pdf\">The Terrible, Horrible, No Good, Very Bad Truth About Morality and What To Do About It<\/a>. Anyway, this thesis is what apparently turned into the book. The book is clearly written for a mass market, so it has only a few notes and is very light on statistics. I think it is basically sound. The later chapters were somewhat annoying to read due to excessive repetition and unclear language. I suppose he added to appeal more to laymen and confused people.<\/p>\n<p>In he introduction, he is so nice as to lay out the book:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>In part 1 (&#8220;Moral Problems&#8221;), we&#8217;ll distinguish between the two major kinds of moral problems. The first kind is more basic. It&#8217;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&#8217;s Us versus Them: our interests and values versus theirs. This is the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, illus\u00adtrated by this book &#8216;s first organizing metaphor, the Parable of the New Pastures. (Of course, Us versus Them is a very old problem. But histori\u00adcally it&#8217;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&#8217;ll see how the moral machinery in our brains solves the first problem (chapter 2) and creates the second problem (chapter 3).<\/p>\n<p>In part 2 (&#8221; Morality Fast and Slow&#8221;), we&#8217;ll dig deeper into the moral brain and introduce this book&#8217;s second organizing metaphor: The moral brain is like a dual-mode camera with both automatic settings (such as &#8220;portrait&#8221; or &#8220;landscape&#8221;) and a manual mode. Automatic settings are efficient but inflexible. Manual mode is flexible but inefficient. The moral brain&#8217;s automatic settings are the moral emotions we&#8217;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&#8217;ll see how moral thinking is shaped by both emotion and reason (chapter 4) and how this &#8220;dual-process&#8221; morality reflects the general structure of the human mind (chapter 5).<\/p>\n<p>In part 3, we&#8217;ll introduce our third and final organizing metaphor: Common Currency. Here we&#8217; ll begin our search for a met amorality, a global moral philosophy that can adjudicate among competing tribal moralities, just as a tribe&#8217; s morality adjudicates among the competing inter\u00adests of its members. A metamorality&#8217;s job is to make trad e-offs among competing tribal values, and making trade-off s requires a common cur\u00adrency, a unified system for weighing values. In chapter 6, we&#8217;ll introduce a candidate metamorality, a solution to the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality . In chapter 7, we&#8217;ll consider other ways of establishing a common currency, and find them lacking. In chapter 8, we&#8217;ll take a closer look at the metamorality introduced in chapter 6, a philosophy known (rather unfortunately) as utilitarianism. We&#8217;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.*<\/p>\n<p>Over the years, philosophers have made some intuitively compelling arguments against utilitarianism. In part 4 (&#8221; Moral Convictions&#8221;), we&#8217;ll reconsider these arguments in light of our new understanding of moral cognition. We&#8217;ll see how utilitarianism becomes more attractive the better we understand our dual-process moral brains (chapters 9 and 10).<\/p>\n<p>Finally, in part 5 (&#8221; Moral Solutions&#8221;), we return to the new pastures and the real-world moral problems that motivate this book. Having de\u00adfended utilitarianism against its critics, it&#8217;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 go o d and familiar sense: flexible, realistic, and open to compromise. But it&#8217;s also a deep philosophy , not just about expediency. Deep pragmatism is about making principled compromises. It&#8217;s about resolving our differences by appeal to shared values-common currency.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>So, TL;DR, morality is an evolved mechanism to facilitate cooperation. It does this well, but not always. Typical moral disagreements are confused due to relying on rights-talk. Rights-talk is fundamentally useless even counter-productive to resolving conflicts. Utilitarianism (aka cost-benefit analysis in moral language) is the only game in town, so even if it is not technically true, it is still the most useful approach to moralizing.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>https:\/\/www.goodreads.com\/book\/show\/17707599-moral-tribes http:\/\/gen.lib.rus.ec\/book\/index.php?md5=08a6526a7a706c4ae5f5aa7543ffc702 Years ago when i used to study filosofy, i came across Joshua&#8217;s website. On the site i found his phd thesis which i read. It is probably the best meta-ethics writing ive come across. He seems to have removed it from the site &#8220;available by request&#8221;, however i still have it: Greene, J. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29,1653],"tags":[1962,1963],"class_list":["post-4297","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-ethics-philosophy","category-psychology","tag-metaethics","tag-utilitarianism","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4297"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":4299,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4297\/revisions\/4299"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4297"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4297"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4297"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}