The Moral Ecosystem
The previous two articles pretty fully explain the high level view of how the process of morality works. I'm not going to delve into the neuroscience which undergirds being an agent susceptible to moral thinking and suasion because I'm not a neuroscientist.
People who I expect to know better are still looking for the brass ring of moral systems which will work universally based on their definition of human nature, natural law, objective good, happiness, well-being, or preference. The last section of the previous post touched on the moral ecosystem, but I felt it was important enough to get its own section.
To do this, I'm going to be talking about memetics and evolution.
People who I expect to know better are still looking for the brass ring of moral systems which will work universally based on their definition of human nature, natural law, objective good, happiness, well-being, or preference. The last section of the previous post touched on the moral ecosystem, but I felt it was important enough to get its own section.
To do this, I'm going to be talking about memetics and evolution.
I Can Haz Meme?
I suspect many have only heard the term meme in association with widespread image macros pronouncing Willy Wonka's skepticism or a household pet asking for something using terrible spelling. The term was coined by new atheist Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.
Wikipedia defines a meme as "[that which] acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures."
Memes evolve because they are subject to the three properties which define evolution: heredity, variation, and selection. Instead of competing for nutrients as organisms do, memes compete for mindshare. Just as humans can be host to many microorganisms, so can they be host to many cultural carriers some of which may aid or hinder others from spreading out of the host.
Wikipedia defines a meme as "[that which] acts as a unit for carrying cultural ideas, symbols or practices, which can be transmitted from one mind to another through writing, speech, gestures, rituals or other imitable phenomena. Supporters of the concept regard memes as cultural analogues to genes in that they self-replicate, mutate and respond to selective pressures."
Memes evolve because they are subject to the three properties which define evolution: heredity, variation, and selection. Instead of competing for nutrients as organisms do, memes compete for mindshare. Just as humans can be host to many microorganisms, so can they be host to many cultural carriers some of which may aid or hinder others from spreading out of the host.
Moral Systems are Memes - They are the Lifeforms of the Moral Ecosystem
So are moral rules, but I prefer to deal at the higher level when talking about the moral ecosystem. I suspect I'll get complaints for labeling moral systems as lifeforms, but they are definitely memes and memes are as "lifeformy" as viruses. The substrate and delivery vectors differ, but that's about it. The comparison is made to point out how absurd looking for the one perfect moral system is.
And so I ask you to name the best species of animal.
What does that even mean? Best for what? Even if you try to use selection as a yard stick, you can't just go on numbers because r/K selection won't let you. You could maybe go by how many different types of environments they could survive in but what Schelling point do you define for environmental differentiation? How "threatened" they are? That has its own problems.
I suspect that most scientists in the field would answer "there is no best species of animal, each species which is currently alive has found a niche to operate in." Well, guess what? It's the same thing for moral systems. If a moral system can survive and be passed to others (so it doesn't die when the host dies), then it "wins." If, upon coming up against another moral system which competes with it for mindshare, it neutralizes or destroys the other moral system, it "wins." If it fails to reproduce by either hampering contact or communication between hosts or it weakens the host so that others are less likely to adopt it after seeing what it does or its host dies before transmission, it will tend to be selected out of existence as a "species." Though it's not directly causal, this view bears an interesting relationship to the widely-accepted precept of normativity that "ought implies can."
And so I ask you to name the best species of animal.
What does that even mean? Best for what? Even if you try to use selection as a yard stick, you can't just go on numbers because r/K selection won't let you. You could maybe go by how many different types of environments they could survive in but what Schelling point do you define for environmental differentiation? How "threatened" they are? That has its own problems.
I suspect that most scientists in the field would answer "there is no best species of animal, each species which is currently alive has found a niche to operate in." Well, guess what? It's the same thing for moral systems. If a moral system can survive and be passed to others (so it doesn't die when the host dies), then it "wins." If, upon coming up against another moral system which competes with it for mindshare, it neutralizes or destroys the other moral system, it "wins." If it fails to reproduce by either hampering contact or communication between hosts or it weakens the host so that others are less likely to adopt it after seeing what it does or its host dies before transmission, it will tend to be selected out of existence as a "species." Though it's not directly causal, this view bears an interesting relationship to the widely-accepted precept of normativity that "ought implies can."
Why Moral Systems and Moral Rules?
There are plenty of non-moral memes floating around. Why are moral systems and moral rules prevalent in social creatures? There are biological reasons and, as the ultimate cop-out answer, they either aided group survival or weren't detrimental enough to be selected out of existence. Thinking is expensive; any time one can cache rules with a high likelihood of action or expectation being correct is an opportunity to save calories and cut reaction time. A non-normative example of a cached rule is that of object permanence. By default, I expect my car to continue existing and to be where I left it. Doing so is simpler than positing many possible but unlikely contingencies which could make my beliefs incorrect and takes less brain power to adopt than not doing so.
Because of the cost of thinking under pressure, trolley problems are a waste of time except to study how competing evaluative systems operate in the brain. People are going to do whatever they want to do if they actually find themselves in those situations regardless of how they answered on a trolley test. Moreover most will justify their actions to themselves and others afterwards due to an impetus to minimize cognitive dissonance. Thinking under time pressure is just too hard and is at odds with the powerful tugs coming from the limbic system. Enter moral rules.
If I can be trained to have an aversion to taking something which I didn't create, then I'm less likely to do it and rationalize it later. Others in society are able to trust me if they know I've been trained to have such an aversion. They can better predict my future behavior which helps them accumulate wealth and trade. None of this has to be explicit but societies in which people can trust and trade with one another are, all else being equal, more likely to survive in many of the environments groups of humans have found themselves in. Conversely, spending all one's efforts stealing and protecting wealth and giving up division of labor because trade is difficult is a quick path to social dissolution and the destruction of hosts carrying the "don't trust others" and "steal whatever you can" memes.
Because of the cost of thinking under pressure, trolley problems are a waste of time except to study how competing evaluative systems operate in the brain. People are going to do whatever they want to do if they actually find themselves in those situations regardless of how they answered on a trolley test. Moreover most will justify their actions to themselves and others afterwards due to an impetus to minimize cognitive dissonance. Thinking under time pressure is just too hard and is at odds with the powerful tugs coming from the limbic system. Enter moral rules.
If I can be trained to have an aversion to taking something which I didn't create, then I'm less likely to do it and rationalize it later. Others in society are able to trust me if they know I've been trained to have such an aversion. They can better predict my future behavior which helps them accumulate wealth and trade. None of this has to be explicit but societies in which people can trust and trade with one another are, all else being equal, more likely to survive in many of the environments groups of humans have found themselves in. Conversely, spending all one's efforts stealing and protecting wealth and giving up division of labor because trade is difficult is a quick path to social dissolution and the destruction of hosts carrying the "don't trust others" and "steal whatever you can" memes.
But doesn't that Point to Good for Society = Good?
Only if you either like society or need it to get what you want. For most goals one does need certain forms of society, but the current society may not be serving their ends. Those individuals won't consider the destruction of a "bad" society a bad thing so long as they expect a good society to arise in its place.
Society is not something which one can clearly point to. It's a combination of culture, identity, norms, and the like and people can have norms which are not mainstream but still identify and be identified as members of a society due to language, culture, some shared norms, etc. People can undermine various norms without destroying the society they are in. This was the case with the civil rights movement. Various competing norms interacted among agents until a new equilibrium was reached. There are likely some norms which are critical to the cohesion of any given society. As most living in a society probably a vested interest in the continuation of that society, the prevailing norms will label that which is bad for the survival of the society as "bad." Still, they are only "bad" relative to a moral system or relative to fulfilling a goal (which moral systems ultimately answer to anyways). Alonzo Fyfe points out that there are many desires which don't answer to a society or even an individual's fulfillment of desires. Kind of and no. Kind of in the sense that you'll most likely be operating in the normative context of something you identify as the society you belong to. You have certain expectations of others in this specifically designated group and expect them to have expectations of you. If people actually enjoy living in society or the benefits they get from it and are correct about the relationship between actions and effects on society, then what they consider good will probably dovetail with what allows that society to exist. The core things which societies tend to need to survive are the things which are most likely to be considered good (and not doing/thwarting considered bad). That tapers off a lot at the edges though. No in the sense that multiple moral systems can operate concurrently within one society because society is more than just roughly compatible norms. It's also defined by a sense of belonging, culture, shared history, language, and non-normative worldviews. While there may be some hard borders for a society, large societies with fairly liberal immigration in particular have individuals who do not fit every common social norm. Parts of society can die and new parts can be born - aka cultural evolution. People can stray from norms to try to change (kill part of) the current society but not destroy it completely. No in the more important sense that society is mostly used as a tool to get what you want as an individual and there are many different types of benefits one can get from society vary greatly. What one will consider good is ultimately up to them. One can sacrifice certain aspects of society for gains in areas they care more strongly about. That may be destroying one incarnation of a society for another, but the shared identity is usually enough to carry the social organism through its metamorphosis. For instance, The United States went from a slaveholding society to an anti-slavery society, but people still considered themselves Americans though some of the norms changed. That society wasn't destroyed though part of it died and a new part was born. |
Memetic propagation within society consists of multiple memetic lines which borrow from and contribute to one another.
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Niches and Anti-Absolutism
Moral systems can fit into many different niches because there are many ways the memes can survive even if the host has true beliefs. That there are six known moral foundations indicates that all members holding any of them were not selected out of existence. Most likely each of them helped humans survive in different circumstances. Some of them may no longer be worth keeping in a globalized high tech society, but if there's ever a crash you'll need the authoritarian purists if you want to survive.
For a long time I was looking for a solution that humans could use to overcome the temptations to deception. Those temptations are there because they're allowed to be. In a Kantian sense, sure, everyone can't lie or society eats itself. But, in a prosperous society, 1% or so probably can without undermining society to the degree that others have to care about or where its a net negative for them. There is a point where it becomes worth it for informed individuals to get involved and stop liars and cheats. This point depends on how robust society is and how easy it is to detect liars and cheaters. (As an aside, this is why I have been thinking of ways to reduce the cost to action against socially-undermining behaviors.)
The main reason I consider my previous purity goal misguided is that you don't want monocultures in unpredictable environments if you're depending on others to survive and you want to keep your options open later. Those who believe some guarantee of social "progress" or that 200 years of industry guarantee a world in which the same normative systems are bordering on delusional. I defend truth now solely on the grounds that it's more likely to get me what I want (for most desires I'm likely to have) and allow society to weed out bad ideas and adapt to new environments more quickly - generally. Though I can't think of any, I cannot prove that there's not a day that we won't need liars and cheats (though I doubt they'd be called that in those environments).
Still, we can shoot for "good enough is" in most circumstances.
For a long time I was looking for a solution that humans could use to overcome the temptations to deception. Those temptations are there because they're allowed to be. In a Kantian sense, sure, everyone can't lie or society eats itself. But, in a prosperous society, 1% or so probably can without undermining society to the degree that others have to care about or where its a net negative for them. There is a point where it becomes worth it for informed individuals to get involved and stop liars and cheats. This point depends on how robust society is and how easy it is to detect liars and cheaters. (As an aside, this is why I have been thinking of ways to reduce the cost to action against socially-undermining behaviors.)
The main reason I consider my previous purity goal misguided is that you don't want monocultures in unpredictable environments if you're depending on others to survive and you want to keep your options open later. Those who believe some guarantee of social "progress" or that 200 years of industry guarantee a world in which the same normative systems are bordering on delusional. I defend truth now solely on the grounds that it's more likely to get me what I want (for most desires I'm likely to have) and allow society to weed out bad ideas and adapt to new environments more quickly - generally. Though I can't think of any, I cannot prove that there's not a day that we won't need liars and cheats (though I doubt they'd be called that in those environments).
Still, we can shoot for "good enough is" in most circumstances.
Well-Being is the Worst Term in the Universe
It's lazy and it just moves all the evaluation elsewhere. It's an attempt to disown desires though it's probably not intended to be such. Some people like biking, some people like swimming. Both are exercise and probably help people live longer lives though with the roads near where I live I would think that swimming is safer. Claiming that one should swim or bike for their own good is a form of nanny moralizing that I despise. Some people want to be fit, others want to spend their time in study, some want to be social, some want to be private, some want to swim, some want to bike. Those actions are all good for some goals and bad for some goals. If they are the goals themselves, then they aren't good or bad, they just are.
The reason there's not one overarching moral system is because too many people disagree on what makes a life worth living. Is it varied experience? Longevity? Interactions with others? Contribution to fields of knowledge? Hedonism? Art? Temperance? People have differing goals and there is not likely to be a system which definitively optimizes among them since desires are noncommensurable.
The reason there's not one overarching moral system is because too many people disagree on what makes a life worth living. Is it varied experience? Longevity? Interactions with others? Contribution to fields of knowledge? Hedonism? Art? Temperance? People have differing goals and there is not likely to be a system which definitively optimizes among them since desires are noncommensurable.
Talking and Fighting or Why Hoppe was Wrong
Memes spread by conquering the minds of others. Memes disappear when they get supplanted in the minds of hosts or all the hosts carrying them die. The three ways to get normative unity is to convince others, "convince others" (like while tapping a bat into your hand or being useful to them), or kill them. The boundaries of live and let live are dictated by costs and convenience. Just as they are in other ecosystems. The ecosystem is a smorgasbord of materials from which replicators can be made. Those materials are scarce so organisms take them from one another. Plants take them from the ground. Herbivores take them from the plants. Carnivores take them from the herbivores and bacteria and viruses take from all.
The ecosystem for memes is storage within minds. It's a meme war and moral systems are under selective pressure in the moral ecosystem.
When the gazelles become too fast, the slow lions must die or they must find another trick to eat. When moral rules become too odious and difficult, only the easier-to-follow ones will survive. This is why religious fundamentalism is on the decline - stoning people for working on the Sabbath thwarts too many common desires to be accepted by any but a minute subset of people.
Hoppe was wrong because talking and fighting may have the same purpose - to get others to do or be or believe what you want them to or to otherwise be useful to you in some way. Libertarian-specific moral rules or intent cannot be determined solely by observing a debate.
So, stop trying to find the one true answer and figure out what you want and determine how to get there. Then find ways to sell it to others (protip: in today's world you'll have much better luck if you're not full of shit and are actually helping other people get what they want). Once you have a large enough (or powerful enough if you can get the weapons or and island where you don't have to deal with others) group of people who'll look after your interests by looking after your own, congratulations - your moral system has become a useful tool.
The ecosystem for memes is storage within minds. It's a meme war and moral systems are under selective pressure in the moral ecosystem.
When the gazelles become too fast, the slow lions must die or they must find another trick to eat. When moral rules become too odious and difficult, only the easier-to-follow ones will survive. This is why religious fundamentalism is on the decline - stoning people for working on the Sabbath thwarts too many common desires to be accepted by any but a minute subset of people.
Hoppe was wrong because talking and fighting may have the same purpose - to get others to do or be or believe what you want them to or to otherwise be useful to you in some way. Libertarian-specific moral rules or intent cannot be determined solely by observing a debate.
So, stop trying to find the one true answer and figure out what you want and determine how to get there. Then find ways to sell it to others (protip: in today's world you'll have much better luck if you're not full of shit and are actually helping other people get what they want). Once you have a large enough (or powerful enough if you can get the weapons or and island where you don't have to deal with others) group of people who'll look after your interests by looking after your own, congratulations - your moral system has become a useful tool.