Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
Joshua Greene

Publisher blurb:
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 times have forced the world’s tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities.

Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings (“portrait,” “landscape”) as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain’s manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot 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—often with life-and-death stakes.

Good reads:
Evolution has given us an “automatic” mode of thinking, where we generally hold the beliefs of our tribe. But, tribes often have moral beliefs that conflict with those of other tribes, and neither set of beliefs are necessarily “better”. So it behooves us to switch over to “manual” mode, and use reason to think about the issues. At the end of the book, Greene offers six pragmatic “rules” to help resolve moral issues.

Mine:

Three tribes manage their land different ways.
No common pasture – all private property, lots of inequality. Lots of strife and little government.
Totally equal – share land, animals. Big gov and lots of talking about fares.
Some equality – share the land and find ways to share uses.

Basic idea that different societies have different moral approaches to cooperation works for me but object to Greene assertion/acceptance of the disproved idea that people will exploit the commons. It is possible people will happen but not

All people should have basic rights and access to basic protections of safety, shelter , food, clothes and medical care. Sign of moral ‘progress’. what are we doing right and what can we improve? share values, unshared values and common terms to discuss the agreement and difference.

Two problems. me versus us. two people need to row a boat, both need to do it. Not hard to dispute. is cooperation worth the compromise of individual need. (tragedy of commons). And second one is the us verses them. our build in settings work for me vs you but fails for us vs them. the automatic helps in clear situations . the manual is a rational process for understanding a few ways of applying our dual process moral. we good within group but struggle working with other groups.

Morality a suite of mental machinery to help us cooperate. reciprocate – i’ll scratch your back, you scratch mine. Tit for tat in sharing games. always do what just happened to you. shared with, share. not shared with, don’t share. Morality a set of free standing trues, in a manifestation of moral psychology. tips of bigger psychological process. 3 schools of moral thinking. Utilitarianism – transcend our auto thinking, Deontology (Kant) – justify our auto settings – derive morality from first principles and crosses line from reason to rationalization, Virtue Ethic (Aristotle) – describe our auto settings – balance, not explicit rules, find a good balance, not helpful for tribal differences.

deep pragmatism flexible and open to compassion, apple to share values and common languages. Make principled more compromises.

A new fields opens up and a big long series of fights over how to manage it. Each group thinks that they way of living is correct. Yet all can work and expresses something about values but not necessarily

utilitarianism – bad things can feel fine to do. good things can feel bad. automatization settings. in trolley car, we have innate reactions to certain situations. not rational. people won’t push a man down on the tracks to save trolley full of people but they will throw a switch to new track than runs over a man. Harm as a means to end rejected but not if by accident. the intention impacts perception of morality of deed. responds to active rather an passive hard. pushing a person active, throwing a switch that runs over a person passive. responds more to personal force rather than indirectly. not separate but interacted in our moral alarm system.

Ends – maximizing happiness doesn’t produce twisted outcomes. says that we obligated to help less fortunate. but we are on the hook. helping is possible. how to spend extra money on yourself instead of helping other people. Optimal is not to do the most moral thing at the time, no matter the costs. you have to figure the other costs, time with your family, your health, your enjoyment. cutting off those off to help us in suboptimal. finding the optimal happiness is a balance. Brian not built to help ‘them’ so we need to go easy.

Deep in deep pragmatism: our tribal feelings can’t all be right and we need another mechanism for conflict resolution. when do point and shoot? Me vs Us, have friendship, shame, guilt that help us work in the group. Us vs Them, our values vs theirs. Match right thinking with right process. Me vs you, use the gut reaction. No drive and drive, steal from church. When us vs them switch to manual mode. you can tell because there is a controversy. No contention, no protest outside court saying Bernie Maddof should be charged with stealing peoples money. we all agree what he did was wrong. no controversy. we tend to think that we are right and they are wrong. that is the first instinct for most of us. Become wiser when admit ignorance. Illusion of explanatory depth, can’t explain much about how toilets work or policies. Justify reasons cements beliefs, but has how and show shallow knowledge opens things up.

Dual process brain: Confabulators – constantly fashioning events into a narrative that we understand, rationalization of why we feel a certain what or acted a certain way. Masturbation is wrong because you use yourself as an ends – Kant. Wrote for average people using educated language. Was also over re

Rights allow us to rationalize gut feelings with out thinking about. closing the conversation off before it stars. Not unlike sexiness. We don’t think about us creating our sense of attraction, attraction is out in the work with the attractor. truly in out. Not have to provide real, how things work explanation. if we use greater good, how it will increase happiness, we need to know how it will work. Evidence in this approach rather than rights. No clear why to say how rights are derived and who has them. Right work best a weapons and shields. Rights for things that have been settled, slavery is wrong, rape is wrong. Opening the utility debate would do so much hard, not worth opening. Tools for making moral progress. Abortion good example. both sides talk about rights yet both have to make strange illogical decisions. how is young fetus ok to abort and later are not? viability outside the womb is a technological determined. as technology improves does time of abortion change too? not a coherent position. pro life, denies life to a person. does this apply to contraception? is a zygote a person? first cell is DNA cooked. many happen in lab. what if person backs out? nothing special about our fertilize eggs are supposed to dog or a chicken. no moral magic – ensoulment. only strong feeling and a bunch of beliefs. but not coherent position. position is more like, killing foggie-looking fetus seems ok but killing a later fetus that looks human is not ok, how i feel. when does ensoulment happen? all the male sperm enter the nuclease, some, all?

DP version: what happens if we make illegal, what happens if we keep going? sex behavior changes, seek abortion other ways, have babies they don’t want. Could be less harmful sex – before people are ready. Illegal big negative without any real benefits. if illegal, some more people would exist. would that leave the world better? remove a safety need, more dangerous procedures, more people life.

Moral Foundation Theory: Liberal less more than conservatives because show less of the 6 basic moral foundations, care/harm, honesty/cheating, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, liberty/oppression. each associated with emotions. supposedly our moral minds different palettes. liberals would slap dad in a in agreed to gag, engage in. this bullshit. criticism gov can be sanctify it through criticism. more refined palette. MFT starts from one tribes perspective and measures from there. not objective measure of morality but how close you hew to one tribes view of morality. Less tribal is better. Liberals questioning of more open, wider and more possible to connect with them.