Moral Tribes

Moral Tribes Plot Summary

Introduction

Human societies have always faced moral challenges, but our modern world presents a unique dilemma. While we've developed sophisticated moral systems that enable cooperation within our respective groups, these same moral intuitions often lead to conflict between groups with different moral perspectives. This is what Joshua Greene calls the "Tragedy of Commonsense Morality" - the paradox that our moral instincts, which evolved to solve problems within tribes, actually create problems between tribes with different moral perspectives. The central question explored is whether we can develop a "metamorality" - a moral framework that can adjudicate between competing tribal moralities. Drawing on insights from philosophy, psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary theory, we learn that understanding both the structure of moral problems and the structure of our moral brains reveals a path toward resolving our deepest moral disagreements. By examining how our brains process moral decisions through both automatic emotional responses and controlled rational thought, we can begin to see how utilitarian reasoning might serve as a common currency for bridging moral divides in an increasingly interconnected world.

Chapter 1: The Tragedy of Commonsense Morality: When Intuitions Collide

Modern moral conflicts often arise not from a lack of morality, but from competing moral frameworks. The concept of the "Tragedy of Commonsense Morality" explains why well-intentioned people with strong moral convictions frequently find themselves in seemingly irreconcilable disagreements. This tragedy occurs when different groups or "tribes" operate according to their own internally coherent moral systems that conflict with those of other groups. The problem isn't that people are selfish or immoral. Rather, our moral intuitions evolved primarily to solve what might be called the "Tragedy of the Commons" - the challenge of cooperation within groups. Our moral emotions like empathy, guilt, and righteous indignation help us overcome selfishness and cooperate with members of our own tribe. However, these same moral mechanisms that enable within-group cooperation often impede between-group cooperation. This can be illustrated with the metaphor of herders sharing pastures. Within tribes, herders developed norms to prevent overgrazing of their common land. But when different tribes with different norms encounter each other on new shared pastures, conflict emerges. Some tribes might value individual rights and personal freedom, while others prioritize collective welfare and shared responsibility. Each approach worked well within its original context, but now they clash. The tragedy deepens because each tribe believes its moral intuitions reflect universal truths rather than adaptations to specific circumstances. We tend to perceive our own moral frameworks as objective and others' as biased or misguided. This moral tribalism manifests in contemporary political divides, where liberals and conservatives each view their positions as obviously correct while seeing opponents as morally deficient. Understanding this tragedy is the first step toward resolving it. By recognizing that our moral intuitions are not infallible guides to universal truth but rather evolved mechanisms with specific functions and limitations, we can begin to move beyond tribal moral thinking. This awareness creates space for a more flexible approach to moral disagreements that acknowledges the legitimacy of different moral perspectives while seeking common ground.

Chapter 2: Dual-Process Morality: Automatic Settings vs. Manual Mode

Our moral brains operate through two distinct systems that can be characterized as "automatic settings" and "manual mode." Automatic settings are our intuitive moral responses - the gut feelings that tell us immediately whether something is right or wrong. These emotional reactions are fast, efficient, and operate largely beneath conscious awareness. They evolved to facilitate cooperation within groups and typically work well for everyday moral decisions. Manual mode, by contrast, is our capacity for deliberate moral reasoning. It's slower, more effortful, and allows us to override our automatic responses when necessary. While automatic settings provide quick answers based on emotional responses, manual mode enables us to think through complex moral problems systematically, considering multiple perspectives and weighing competing values. This dual-process model is supported by compelling neuroscientific evidence. When people consider moral dilemmas that trigger strong emotional responses - like the famous "footbridge" trolley problem where saving five lives requires physically pushing someone to their death - brain regions associated with emotion show increased activity. Conversely, when people make utilitarian judgments (choosing to sacrifice one to save many), regions associated with cognitive control and reasoning show greater activation. This distinction explains why we often find moral disagreements so intractable. When different groups clash over moral issues, they're typically responding with different automatic settings - different emotional reactions that feel self-evidently true. Since these automatic responses feel like perceptions of moral truth rather than subjective reactions, we struggle to understand how others could possibly disagree. The dual-process framework also explains why certain moral dilemmas feel so difficult. When our automatic settings pull us in one direction (don't harm an innocent person) but manual-mode reasoning points elsewhere (save more lives), we experience internal conflict. People with damage to brain regions involved in emotional processing tend to make more utilitarian judgments, suggesting that without the emotional pull of automatic settings, the utilitarian calculus becomes straightforward. Understanding this dual-process nature of moral cognition is crucial for addressing complex moral disagreements. Neither system alone is sufficient. Automatic settings provide essential moral motivations but can be inflexible and tribalistic. Manual mode offers flexibility but requires effort and can be hijacked by self-serving rationalizations. The challenge is knowing when to trust our gut reactions and when to shift into deliberative reasoning.

Chapter 3: Utilitarianism as Common Currency for Moral Disagreements

Utilitarianism offers a potential solution to moral tribalism by establishing a common currency for evaluating competing moral claims. At its core, utilitarianism holds that the right action is the one that produces the greatest happiness or well-being for the greatest number of people. This approach provides a universal standard that transcends tribal moral differences by focusing on what all humans fundamentally value: positive experiences. Utilitarianism is frequently misunderstood. It's not about cold calculation or reducing everything to pleasure in a shallow sense. Rather, utilitarianism recognizes that happiness - properly understood as the quality of conscious experience broadly construed - is what ultimately matters to all of us. This includes not just sensory pleasures but also deeper satisfactions like meaningful relationships, intellectual achievement, and spiritual fulfillment. The genius of utilitarianism lies in combining two universal human values: the desire for happiness and the principle of impartiality. While we naturally care more about our own happiness and that of those close to us, we can understand the moral logic that everyone's happiness matters equally from an impartial perspective. This combination provides a framework for resolving conflicts between competing moral claims by measuring them against their impact on overall well-being. Utilitarianism's focus on consequences rather than rigid rules gives it flexibility to adapt to different situations. Unlike tribal moral systems that often rely on absolute prohibitions or sacred values, utilitarianism can acknowledge trade-offs and adjust to changing circumstances. This makes it particularly well-suited for addressing complex modern moral problems that involve competing values. Critics often object that utilitarianism is too demanding, requiring us to sacrifice our personal projects and relationships for the greater good. However, this misunderstands how utilitarianism works in practice. A world where everyone tried to be a perfect utilitarian would likely produce less happiness overall than one where people maintain special commitments to their loved ones while extending reasonable concern to strangers. The utilitarian approach doesn't require abandoning our moral intuitions entirely. Rather, it provides a framework for adjudicating between conflicting intuitions and extending moral concern beyond our immediate group. By establishing experience as the common currency of moral value, utilitarianism offers a way for different moral tribes to communicate across their differences and find principled compromises.

Chapter 4: Debunking Objections: Why Alarming Acts Aren't Deal-Breakers

Many powerful objections to utilitarianism stem from thought experiments that pit utilitarian reasoning against strong moral intuitions. The most famous is the "footbridge dilemma," where pushing one person off a footbridge to stop a trolley would save five lives. Most people find this action morally repugnant despite its better consequences, suggesting that utilitarianism conflicts with our deepest moral convictions. Through innovative experimental research, we can see that our anti-utilitarian intuitions often respond to morally irrelevant factors. For instance, people judge physically pushing someone (using "personal force") as worse than causing equivalent harm through indirect means, even when the outcomes are identical. Similarly, we distinguish between harm caused as a means versus a side effect, though this distinction lacks clear moral significance upon reflection. These patterns reveal what might be called "modular myopia" - our moral intuitions are produced by cognitive modules with specific limitations. The alarm system that generates aversion to violence evolved to prevent harmful interpersonal aggression within groups, not to maximize overall welfare. This system responds strongly to direct physical harm but is relatively blind to indirect harms or statistical victims, regardless of the magnitude of suffering involved. The same psychological limitations apply to our intuitions about justice and fairness. We feel that punishing innocent people is wrong even if it produces better consequences, but this intuition evolved to stabilize cooperation within groups, not to handle complex modern moral problems. Our sense of justice is a useful heuristic that sometimes leads us astray when applied beyond its evolved purpose. Another common objection is that utilitarianism permits or even requires gross injustice, such as slavery, if it maximizes overall happiness. This objection confuses utility with wealth. In reality, the psychological evidence on happiness shows that extreme inequality and oppression could never maximize well-being in the real world. The suffering of the oppressed would vastly outweigh any gains to the privileged. Rather than dismissing our moral intuitions entirely, a more nuanced approach is needed. We should trust our automatic settings when dealing with everyday moral problems within our communities. But when facing complex moral conflicts between groups with different intuitions, we should shift into manual mode and apply utilitarian reasoning. This doesn't mean becoming perfect utilitarians, but rather using utilitarian thinking as a second moral compass when our intuitive compasses point in different directions.

Chapter 5: Deep Pragmatism: Transcending Tribal Moral Intuitions

Deep pragmatism offers a path beyond tribal moral conflicts by focusing on what actually works rather than abstract moral principles. Unlike superficial pragmatism, which merely seeks compromise between competing moral tribes, deep pragmatism recognizes that our moral intuitions themselves evolved for specific purposes and may not be reliable guides for modern moral problems. This approach doesn't abandon moral intuitions entirely but uses our capacity for manual-mode reasoning to transcend their limitations. The core insight of deep pragmatism is that moral reasoning should match the type of moral problem we're facing. For problems within tribes, our automatic settings generally work well. But for problems between tribes with different moral intuitions, we need to engage manual mode to find common ground. This means shifting from intuition-based moral arguments to consequence-based reasoning that all parties can potentially accept regardless of their tribal affiliations. Deep pragmatism differs from moral relativism by maintaining that some moral approaches genuinely work better than others for resolving cross-tribal conflicts. While it acknowledges that moral intuitions vary across cultures for understandable reasons, it doesn't conclude that all moral systems are equally valid. Instead, it suggests that utilitarianism provides a more effective framework for resolving moral disagreements precisely because it focuses on outcomes that matter to everyone rather than tribal moral intuitions that divide us. This approach requires intellectual humility - recognizing that our strongest moral convictions might reflect evolutionary and cultural adaptations rather than moral truths. Research shows that people typically overestimate their understanding of complex policies and moral positions. When asked to explain exactly how their preferred policies would work, many discover gaps in their understanding and subsequently moderate their views. Deep pragmatism embraces this humility, focusing on empirical questions about consequences rather than abstract moral principles. Applying deep pragmatism to controversial issues like abortion reveals its value. Rather than endless debates about when personhood begins or competing rights claims, deep pragmatism focuses on what policies actually reduce suffering and promote flourishing. This doesn't mean ignoring moral intuitions entirely, but recognizing their limitations and supplementing them with evidence-based reasoning about consequences. This approach can identify areas of potential agreement even among those with radically different moral intuitions. Deep pragmatism acknowledges that moral reasoning is challenging and prone to rationalization. Our dual-process brains excel at generating post-hoc justifications for intuitive judgments, making genuine moral progress difficult. However, by understanding this tendency and deliberately engaging our manual mode, we can gradually overcome tribal moral limitations.

Chapter 6: From Rights to Results: The Case for Utilitarian Decision-Making

Rights-based moral frameworks dominate contemporary ethical discourse, but they often lead to deadlock when different groups assert competing rights claims. When rights conflict - as they inevitably do in complex moral controversies - rights-based approaches provide no clear method for resolution. The language of rights, while powerful for protecting established moral progress, tends to terminate moral conversation rather than facilitate it. Rights claims typically function as conversation stoppers: "My right to X trumps your concerns about Y." Utilitarian decision-making offers a more productive alternative by shifting focus from abstract rights to concrete results. Rather than debating whose rights should prevail, utilitarianism asks what policies would actually produce the best outcomes for all concerned. This approach provides a common currency for moral decision-making that can potentially bridge tribal divides. Even people with different moral intuitions can potentially agree about which policies would maximize overall well-being, creating space for productive moral dialogue. Critics often worry that utilitarianism permits horrific rights violations in pursuit of the greater good. However, this objection typically confuses utilitarianism with "wealthitarianism" - the mistaken belief that maximizing wealth or satisfying preferences is equivalent to maximizing happiness. Real-world utilitarianism recognizes that basic rights protections almost always promote greater happiness than their violation. The psychological suffering caused by exploitation, oppression, and rights violations typically outweighs any benefits, making genuine utilitarian justifications for such actions exceedingly rare. The utilitarian approach is particularly valuable for addressing global challenges that transcend tribal boundaries. Issues like climate change, global poverty, and pandemic response require coordination among groups with different moral intuitions. Rights-based approaches struggle with these problems because they provide no clear way to weigh competing considerations across cultural boundaries. Utilitarianism, by focusing on consequences that matter to everyone, offers a framework for global cooperation despite moral differences. Utilitarianism also helps explain why we have rights in the first place. Rights aren't mysterious moral entities but practical social tools that generally promote human flourishing. We recognize rights to free speech, due process, and bodily autonomy because societies that protect these rights typically produce better outcomes than those that don't. This understanding allows us to balance rights against other considerations when necessary, rather than treating them as absolute constraints regardless of consequences. Adopting utilitarian decision-making doesn't require abandoning our moral intuitions entirely. Instead, it means recognizing both their value and their limitations. Our automatic moral settings evolved to solve different problems than those we face today, particularly in our increasingly interconnected global society. By supplementing these intuitions with manual-mode utilitarian reasoning, we can develop moral approaches better suited to modern challenges.

Summary

At its core, this exploration of moral psychology reveals that our moral intuitions evolved to solve cooperation problems within groups but often create problems between groups with different moral perspectives. The key insight is that we possess dual-process moral brains - with automatic settings (intuitions) suited for everyday cooperation and manual mode (reasoning) capable of impartial evaluation - and that resolving our deepest moral disagreements requires knowing when to trust each system. The path forward lies in recognizing that utilitarianism, or what might better be called "deep pragmatism," emerges naturally from our manual-mode reasoning when we step back from tribal loyalties and consider what ultimately matters. This approach doesn't require abandoning all intuitions but rather developing the wisdom to know when our automatic settings serve us well and when they lead us astray. For those seeking to understand and address the moral challenges of our interconnected world, this framework offers not just theoretical insight but practical guidance for bridging the gap between "us" and "them."

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Joshua D. Greene

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