All I’m getting from this is “the term ‘morality’ is hopelessly confused.”
It’s like people tried to arrive at universally valid sexual preferences by rationalizing away seemingly inconsistent decisions based upon unimportant body parts like breasts and penises when most people were in agreement that those parts had nothing to do with being human. And we all ought to be attracted to humans only, shouldn’t we?
My current hypothesis is that most of the purpose of evolving morality is signaling that you are predictably non-defecting enough to deal with. This is not very well worked out—but it does predict that if you take it to edge cases, or build syllogisms from stated moral beliefs, or other such overextension, it’ll just get weird (because the core is to project that you are a non-defecting player—that’s the only bit that gets tested against the world), and I think observation shows plenty of this (e.g.1, 2).
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That said, I’m not sure the evolution of morality can productively be separated from the evolution of disgust, and disgust does seem to have a non-signaling purpose.
… disgust does seem to have a non-signaling purpose.
It certainly does. It helps to inform you who can be trusted as a coalition partner.
Furthermore, if your feeling of disgust results in your being less nice toward the disgusting party, then your righteousness tends to deter disgusting behavior—at least when you are there to express disapproval. That is a signaling function, to be sure, but it is signalling directed at the target of your disgust, not at third parties.
Also, if I feel disgust in situations that historically correlate with becoming ill—for example, eating rotten food—I’m less likely to become ill. We can be disgusted by things besides other primates, after all.
My current hypothesis is that most of the purpose of evolving morality is signaling that you are predictably non-defecting enough to deal with.
Morality is also involved in punishment, signalling virtue, and manipulating the behaviour of others—so they stop doing the bad deeds that you don’t like.
Certainly. I think my central thesis is that morality is a set of cached answers to a really complicated game theory problem given initial conditions (e.g. you are in a small tribe; you are in a big city and poor; you are a comfortable Western suburbanite), some cached in your mind, some cached in your genes, so it’s unsurprising that using intelligence to extrapolate from the cached answers without keeping a close eye on the game theoretical considerations of whatever the actual problem you’re trying to solve is will lead to trouble.
It’s like people tried to arrive at universally valid sexual preferences by rationalizing away seemingly inconsistent decisions based upon unimportant body parts like breasts and penises when most people were in agreement that those parts had nothing to do with being human. And we all ought to be attracted to humans only, shouldn’t we?
My current hypothesis is that most of the purpose of evolving morality is signaling that you are predictably non-defecting enough to deal with. This is not very well worked out—but it does predict that if you take it to edge cases, or build syllogisms from stated moral beliefs, or other such overextension, it’ll just get weird (because the core is to project that you are a non-defecting player—that’s the only bit that gets tested against the world), and I think observation shows plenty of this (e.g. 1, 2).
I find your ideas intriguing and wish to subscribe to your newsletter.
That said, I’m not sure the evolution of morality can productively be separated from the evolution of disgust, and disgust does seem to have a non-signaling purpose.
It certainly does. It helps to inform you who can be trusted as a coalition partner.
Furthermore, if your feeling of disgust results in your being less nice toward the disgusting party, then your righteousness tends to deter disgusting behavior—at least when you are there to express disapproval. That is a signaling function, to be sure, but it is signalling directed at the target of your disgust, not at third parties.
Also, if I feel disgust in situations that historically correlate with becoming ill—for example, eating rotten food—I’m less likely to become ill. We can be disgusted by things besides other primates, after all.
Morality is also involved in punishment, signalling virtue, and manipulating the behaviour of others—so they stop doing the bad deeds that you don’t like.
Certainly. I think my central thesis is that morality is a set of cached answers to a really complicated game theory problem given initial conditions (e.g. you are in a small tribe; you are in a big city and poor; you are a comfortable Western suburbanite), some cached in your mind, some cached in your genes, so it’s unsurprising that using intelligence to extrapolate from the cached answers without keeping a close eye on the game theoretical considerations of whatever the actual problem you’re trying to solve is will lead to trouble.