Philosophy Now Forum

I am trying to solve the puzzle of why it seems most moral philosophers would agree the pre-Socratic Greek philosopher Protagoras was talking about morality but modern science cannot when both come to similar conclusions.

Here is the situation laid out as I see it:

In Plato’s dialog of the same name, Protagoras patiently explained to Socrates that the function of morality, the primary reason it exists, is to increase the benefits of cooperation in groups. This idea was the basis for teaching morality in Protagoras’ informal school. Perhaps because this was the common understanding of people at the time, and thus not sufficiently interesting, or perhaps because Protagoras was a competitor drawing away students, Socrates rejected the idea that morality’s function was to increase cooperation.

Due to Socrates’ and Plato’s influence, moral philosophy then developed for 2500 years without the competing idea that the function of morality was to increase the benefits of cooperation in groups. Moral philosophers forgot about this ancient idea of morality as cooperation.

Now we turn to modern science (with no mention of moral or morality so as to not offend):

In the last 40 years or so, science has made great progress in understanding the origins and function of human altruism and cooperation. Because its origins were so puzzling, one type of cooperation was especially interesting to scientists. It requires people to act, in appropriate circumstances, generously towards even non-kin and people who are not expected to reciprocate. This behavior is now understood as initiating a cooperation strategy called indirect reciprocity, arguably the most powerful cooperation strategy known.

Further, it appears that the large benefits of indirect reciprocity have selected for motivating emotions in people, and have selected for norms in cultures, that are elements of this cooperation strategy. (Other cooperation strategies such as kin altruism and direct reciprocity appear to be similarly encoded in our biology and cultural norms.)

This science also reveals that for indirect and direct reciprocity to be sustainable, people who exploit others attempts at cooperation must be punished, at minimum by social disapproval and damaged reputations. So a defining attribute of cultural norms selected for as elements of indirect reciprocity is that there will be the common feeling that violators should be punished.

For example, “Do not kill, steal, or lie” are norms whose violations are commonly thought to deserve punishment. These admonitions are heuristics (usually reliable rules of thumb) for elements of indirect reciprocity. Each of us is admonished to not do these things to other people and they are expected to reciprocate and not do them to us. Another wonderful example is “Do to others as you would have them do to you” which is a powerful heuristic for indirect reciprocity. People who violate this norm are also commonly thought to deserve punishment, just as we would expect from the relevant science.

Anyone who initiates indirect reciprocity is always open to exploitation. Exploitation discourages cooperation and destroys the future benefits of cooperation. One variation of indirect reciprocity reduces the potential for exploitation by limiting cooperation to an in-group identifiable by membership markers. Historically, those markers have often been supplied by religious edict such as leaving hair uncut, being circumcised, not eating pigs, or not participating in homosexual sex. In-group members can be more reliable cooperators because they can be more reliably punished for exploiting others.

That’s the science with no mention of moral or morality. How could it be culturally useful?

Cultures commonly have social goals that will be more likely achieved by increasing the benefits of cooperation. This new science tells us how to do just that by refining cultures norms whose violation deserve punishment (commonly known as moral norms!).

For example, knowing that “Do not kill”, both as a cultural norm and as an emotional reaction, is a heuristic (a usually reliable but fallible rule of thumb) for indirect reciprocity opens the door to more sophisticated thinking. First, simply knowing “Do not kill” is a fallible heuristic, not a universal principle, is useful. Assisted suicide and abortion, which are kinds of killing, might be more acceptable as norms if they were understood to either increase the benefits of cooperation in the culture or have no effect on it.

In addition to being a marker of membership in an in-group, prohibitions against homosexual sex can also increase benefits of cooperation in an in-group by exploiting homosexuals, an out-group, as imaginary threats to the in-group. People are particularly motivated to increase cooperation in the face of outside threats, real or not, due to our evolutionary history when doing so was a matter of life and death.

So that is the situation we are in. Nothing prevents people from arguing that their cultural moral codes ought (instrumental, like all implied oughts from science) be refined based on these insights from science with the goal of increasing the benefits of cooperation.

I expect most moral philosophers would agree that Protagoras was talking about morality. Can anyone explain why these same moral philosophers might argue (would argue in my experience) that the above scientists cannot also be talking sensibly about morality?

What is the difference that they think they can see and I cannot?

Any suggestions for how to better point out this inconsistency to moral philosopher majors would be greatly appreciated.

Could you cite a few of the studies you're referring to? I'd like to take a look at just what the methdology was, just what they're claiming, etc. from the horse's mouth.

Note that Protagoras would probably not be able to demonstrate the truth of his claim about the function of morality. And that claim is acceptable as sensible moral discourse. But scientists can demonstrate at least the scientific truth of their claims which conclude the same thing. And, at least according to most moral philosophers, the scientific claim confirming Protagoras’ is strangely unacceptable as sensible moral discourse.

Could it just be that a fact of the matter about what morality descriptively ‘is’ that is highly culturally useful is psychologically threatening for many moral philosophers? And, for this unconscious reason, what science says about morality ‘cannot’ be sensible moral discourse?

I was just hoping that you could give a couple citations to the scientific work that you're referring to.

Terrapin Station » Thu Sep 08, 2016 5:07 pm
Could you cite a few of the studies you're referring to? I'd like to take a look at just what the methdology was, just what they're claiming, etc. from the horse's mouth.

Terrapin, I want this thread’s focus to be how to explain to philosophy majors that there is an irrational inconsistency in conventional philosophical claims that science can tell us nothing important about morality.

That said, here is a good review article from Nature about the evolution of indirect reciprocity (the central core of what moral behaviors ‘are’) by Martin Nowak.

http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v4 ... 04131.html
It has 87 references if you want to delve deeper.

Then regarding our moral sense, we have the papers that establish the data sets of ‘moral’ emotions and the cross-cultural circumstances when moral judgements are triggered.

Haidt, J. (2003). The moral emotions. In R. J. Davidson, K. R. Scherer, & H. H. Goldsmith (Eds.), Handbook of affective sciences. Oxford: Oxford University Press. (pp. 852-870).

Graham, Jesse, Haidt, J., et al. (2012). Moral Foundations Theory: The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology. Available at http://ssrn.com/abstract=2184440

And again, I suggest Oliver Curry’s synthesis (which is more complex than mine). It has well over a 100 references.

Curry, Oliver Scott (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In The Evolution of Morality, T.K. Shackelford, R.D. Hansen (eds.)

Thanks, markus7, it will take me some time to read through those. I'm just curious just what the scientific methodology is for these studies (the first one unfortunately looks like what they actually studied was a computer simulation), and just what they're claiming.

Terrapin Station » Thu Sep 08, 2016 1:22 pm

Thanks, markus7, it will take me some time to read through those. I'm just curious just what the scientific methodology is for these studies (the first one unfortunately looks like what they actually studied was a computer simulation), and just what they're claiming.

Terrapin, game theory computer simulations are central to understanding the conditions in which cooperation strategies such as direct and indirect reciprocity are evolutionarily stable and will encode themselves in our biology and cultural norms.

Computer simulations have shown the power for increasing the benefits of cooperation (and being encoded in our biology and cultural norms) of marker strategies for in-groups, why punishment is necessary in cooperation strategies, and the kind of punishment and forgiveness that is most effective.

It is only after this computer work was done that it became feasible to recognize elements of cooperation strategies in all cultural moral norms. Without these simulations it would be difficult (impossible?) to recognize circumcision, not eating pigs, "Homosexuals are evil!", and the emotions shame, guilt, and indignation as elements of cooperation strategies.

If you want to understand what morality 'is', there is no better place to start than game theory and its computer simulations.

Also, the fact that the simple mathematics underlying these computer simulations is species, location, and time independent is what makes morality as cooperation strategies species independent from the beginning of time to the end of time everywhere in the universe.