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Showing posts with label Mutualism. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Mutualism. Show all posts

Tuesday, September 15, 2020

Is Morality All About Cooperation?

John Danaher
philosophicaldiquisitions.com
Originally posted 27 July 20

Here are two excerpts:

Morality as Cooperation (MAC): The Basic Theory

MAC takes as its starting point the view that human morality is about cooperation. In itself, this is not a particularly ground-breaking insight. Most moral philosophers have thought that morality has something to do with how we interact with other people — with “what we owe each other” in one popular formulation. Scott Curry, in his original paper on the MAC, does a good job reviewing some of the major works in moral philosophy and moral psychology, showing how each of them tends to link morality to cooperation.

Some people might query this and say that certain aspects of human morality don’t seem to be immediately or obviously about cooperation, but one of the claims of MAC is that these seemingly distinctive areas of morality can ultimately be linked back to cooperation. For what it is worth, I am willing to buy the idea that morality is about cooperation as a starting hypothesis. I have some concerns, which I will air below, but even if these concerns are correct I think it is fair to say that morality is, in large part, about cooperation.

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In summary, the idea behind the MAC is that human moral systems derive from attempts to resolve cooperative problems. There are seven basic cooperative problems and hence seven basic forms of human morality. These are often blended and combined in actual human societies (more on this in a moment), nevertheless you can still see the pure forms of these moral systems in many different societies. The diagram below summarises the model and gives some examples of the ethical norms that derive from the different cooperative problems.

The blog post is here.

Sunday, July 12, 2020

Moral Molecules: Morality as a combinatorial system

Curry, O. S., Alfano, M.,
Brandt, M. J., & Pelican, C. (2020, June 9).
https://doi.org/10.31219/osf.io/xnstk

Abstract

Is morality a combinatorial system in which a small number of simple moral ‘elements’ combine to form a large number of complex moral ‘molecules’? According to the theory of morality-as-cooperation, morality is a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. As evolutionary game theory has shown, there are many types of cooperation; hence, the theory explains many types of morality, including: family values, group loyalty, reciprocity, heroism, deference, fairness and property rights. As with any set of discrete items, these seven ‘elements’ can, in principle, be combined in multiple ways. But are they in practice? In this paper, we show that they are. For each combination of two elements, we hypothesise candidate moral molecules; and we successfully locate examples of them in the professional and popular literature. These molecules include: fraternity, blood revenge, family pride, filial piety, gavelkind, primogeniture, friendship, patriotism, tribute, diplomacy, common ownership, honour, confession, turn taking, restitution, modesty, mercy, munificence, arbitration, mendicancy, and queuing. Thus morality – like many other physical, biological, psychological and cultural systems – is indeed a combinatorial system. And morality-as-cooperation provides a principled and systematic taxonomy that has the potential to explain all moral ideas, possible and actual. Pursuing the many implications of this theory will help to place the study of morality on a more secure scientific footing.

Saturday, September 26, 2015

Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach

Curry, O. S. (2016). Morality as Cooperation: A Problem-Centred Approach. In T. K. Shackelford & R. D. Hansen (Eds.), The Evolution of Morality (pp. 27-51): Springer International Publishing.

Here is an excerpt:

First, the good, the bad, and the neutral. As we have seen, morality as coopera-tion predicts that people will regard speciļ¬c types of cooperative behaviour—behaviour that solves some problem of cooperation—as morally good. Thus, people will regard helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, and respecting property, as morally good. And they will regard failing to cooperate—by neglecting your family, betraying your group, cheating, being cowardly, rebelling against  authority, being unfair, and stealing—as morally bad. The theory also predicts that behaviour that has nothing to do with cooperation—nonsocial behaviour or competition in zero-sum games (‘all’s fair in love and war’)—will be regarded as morally neutral.

Second, universality and diversity. Morality as cooperation also predicts that—because these problems are universal features of human social life—these cooperative behaviours will be considered morally good in every human culture, at all times and in all places. There will be no cultures where morality is about something other than cooperation—say, aesthetics or nutrition. And there will be no cultures where helping your family, being loyal to your group, reciprocating favours, being brave, deferring to authority, dividing disputed resources, respecting property, and so on are considered morally bad. However, the theory does not predict that moral systems will everywhere be identical. On the contrary, the prediction is that, to the extent that different people and different societies face different portfolios of prob-lems, different domains of morality will loom larger—different cultures will prioritise different moral values. For example, differences in family size, frequency of warfare, or degree of inequality may lead to differences in the importance attached to family values, bravery, and respect.

Third, uncharted territory. Morality as cooperation predicts that as yet poorly understood aspects of morality will also turn out to be about cooperation.

The entire article is here.