Moral Psychopharmacology Needs Moral Inquiry: The Case of Psychedelics

Langlitz N, et al. (2021) 

Front. Psychiatry, August, 12:680064

Abstract

The revival of psychedelic research coincided and more recently conjoined with psychopharmacological research on how drugs affect moral judgments and behaviors. This article makes the case for a moral psychopharmacology of psychedelics that examines whether psychedelics serve as non-specific amplifiers that enable subjects to (re-)connect with their values, or whether they promote specific moral-political orientations such as liberal and anti-authoritarian views, as recent psychopharmacological studies suggest. This question gains urgency from the fact that the return of psychedelics from counterculture and underground laboratories to mainstream science and society has been accompanied by a diversification of their users and uses. We propose bringing the pharmacological and neuroscientific literature into a conversation with historical and anthropological scholarship documenting the full spectrum of moral and political views associated with the uses of psychedelics. This paper sheds new light on the cultural plasticity of drug action and has implications for the design of psychedelic pharmacopsychotherapies. It also raises the question of whether other classes of psychoactive drugs have an equally rich moral and political life.

From the Conclusion

If moral psychopharmacology took it upon itself to develop forms of psychedelic apprenticeship for the currently sprawling medical and non-medical applications of psychedelics, it would extend pharmaceutical research and development into the extra-pharmacological realm. Such a design process needs to be informed by best practices in clinical psychology and cognate fields, but, intellectually, it cannot hide behind professional prescriptions because what counts as good and bad is precisely what is at stake here. It is an open philosophical question that has to be answered in a recursive process of psychopharmacological experimentation, clinical and ethnographic observation, historical research, and ethical reflection.

The info is here.

The Execution Hypothesis for the Evolution of a Morality of Fairness

R. Wrangham

Ethics & Politics

XXIII, 2021, 261-282

Abstract

Humans are both the only species known to have a morality of fairness, and the only species in which the social hierarchy is headed by an alliance (a ‘reverse dominance hierarchy’). I present evidence in support of the argument by Boehm (1999, 2012) that these two features are causally linked. The reverse dominance hierarchy is detectable in the fossil record around 300,000 years ago with the

origin of Homo sapiens. From then onwards, according to the execution hypothesis, an alliance of adult males held the power of life and death over all members of the social group, and they used this power to advance their interests. The result was an intense selective pressure against antisocial behaviour and in favour of prosociality, cooperation and conformity to group norms, whether the norms were beneficial for the group as a whole or merely for the male alliance. The execution hypothesis thus argues that group dynamics have operated for at least 12,000 generations to favour the evolution of moral emotions, many of which are designed to protect individuals from the threat of severe punishment or death at the hands of a dominant alliance of males. 

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The Persistent Importance of Moral Enforcement

Ever since Durkheim (1902), hunter-gatherers and others living in small-scale, acephalous bands have been known to live by a set of norms that categorize numerous behaviours as right or wrong.  Morally circumscribed behaviors concern food, sharing, sexuality, marriage partners, emotional expression, disrespect, secret societies and much else, and are the topic of much daily conversation. To judge from one detailed study of Ju/’hoansi Bushmen hunter-gatherers, moral enforcement comes more from punishment than reward, with males being sanctioned more than females (Wiessner, 2005).

The paper is here.

The weirdness of belief in free will

Berniūnas, R, et al.

Consciousness and Cognition

Volume 87, January 2021, 103054

Abstract

It has been argued that belief in free will is socially consequential and psychologically universal. In this paper we look at the folk concept of free will and its critical assessment in the context of recent psychological research. Is there a widespread consensus about the conceptual content of free will? We compared English “free will” with its lexical equivalents in Lithuanian, Hindi, Chinese and Mongolian languages and found that unlike Lithuanian, Chinese, Hindi and Mongolian lexical expressions of “free will” do not refer to the same concept free will. What kind people have been studied so far? A review of papers indicate that, overall, 91% of participants in studies on belief in free will were WEIRD. Thus, given that free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content and that most of the reviewed studies were based on WEIRD samples, belief in free will is not a psychological universal.

Highlights

• The concept of free will has no cross-culturally universal conceptual content.

• Most of the reviewed studies on belief in free will were based on WEIRD samples.

• The term “free will” is inadequate for cross-cultural research.

From the General Discussion

Unfortunately, there has been little effort in cross-cultural (construct and external) validation of the very concept of free will. In explicating the folk concept of free will, Monroe and Malle (2010) showed that the ability to make decisions and choice are the most prototypical features (see also Feldman, 2017; Feldman et al., 2014). However, this is a description only of intuitions of English speaking participants. Here we tested whether there is a widespread consensus about the conceptual content (of free will) across culturally and linguistically diverse samples — hence, universality and cultural hypotheses. Overall, on the basis of free-listing results, it could be argued that two lexical expressions of English “free will” and Lithuanian “laisva valia” refer to the same concept of free will. Whereas Chinese ziyou yizhi, Hindi svatantra icchā, and Mongolian chölöötei khüsel, as newly constructed lexical expressions of “free will”, do not refer to the same concept of free will.

The research is here.

Suggestions for a New Integration in the Psychology of Morality

Diane Sunar
Social and Personality Psychology Compass
(2009): 447–474

Abstract

To prepare a basis for a new model of morality, theories in the psychology of morality are reviewed, comparing those put forward before and after the emergence of evolutionary psychology in the last quarter of the 20th century. Concepts of embodied sociality and reciprocal moral emotions are introduced. Three ‘morality clusters’ consisting of relational models (Fiske, 1991), moral domains (Shweder, Much, Mahapatra, & Park, 1997) and reciprocal sets of other-blaming and selfconscious emotions are linked to three evolutionary bases for morality (kin selection, social hierarchy, and reciprocal altruism). Evidence regarding these concepts is marshaled to support the model. The ‘morality clusters’ are compared with classifications based on Haidt’s moral foundations (Haidt & Graham 2007). Further evidence regarding hierarchy based on sexual selection, exchange and
reciprocity, moral development, cultural differences and universals, and neurological discoveries, especially mirror neurons, is also discussed.

An Alternative Model

Alternative combinations of these elements have been suggested, most notably by Haidt and his colleagues (Graham, Haidt, & Nosek, forthcoming; Haidt & Joseph, 2008), mapping Shweder’s three ethics or moral domains, and Fiske’s relational models, onto Haidt’s moral foundations. As described above, these authors match community with ingroup/loyalty and authority; autonomy with harm/care and fairness/reciprocity; and divinity with purity/sanctity. In addition, they suggest that three of the foundations can be matched with three of Fiske’s relational models (leaving out MP). In this scheme, fairness/reciprocity is linked with EM, care and ingroup morality with CS, and authority/respect with AR. Harm and purity as moral foundations are not linked with relational models, as they argue that these two foundations ‘are not primarily modes of interpersonal relationship (Haidt & Joseph, 2008; p. 386). Similar to my proposed clusters, they also link the morality of harm and care to kin selection and that of fairness to evolved mechanisms of reciprocal altruism, but in contrast see purity as a derivative of disgust mechanisms without a specific social basis.

The paper is here.

Seven moral rules found all around the world

University of Oxford
phys.org
Originally released February 12, 2019

Anthropologists at the University of Oxford have discovered what they believe to be seven universal moral rules.

The rules: help your family, help your group, return favours, be brave, defer to superiors, divide resources fairly, and respect others' property. These were found in a survey of 60 cultures from all around the world.

Previous studies have looked at some of these rules in some places – but none has looked at all of them in a large representative sample of societies. The present study, published in Current Anthropology, is the largest and most comprehensive cross-cultural survey of morals ever conducted.

The team from Oxford's Institute of Cognitive & Evolutionary Anthropology (part of the School of Anthropology & Museum Ethnography) analysed ethnographic accounts of ethics from 60 societies, comprising over 600,000 words from over 600 sources.

Dr. Oliver Scott Curry, lead author and senior researcher at the Institute for Cognitive and Evolutionary Anthropology, said: "The debate between moral universalists and moral relativists has raged for centuries, but now we have some answers. People everywhere face a similar set of social problems, and use a similar set of moral rules to solve them. As predicted, these seven moral rules appear to be universal across cultures. Everyone everywhere shares a common moral code. All agree that cooperating, promoting the common good, is the right thing to do."

The study tested the theory that morality evolved to promote cooperation, and that – because there are many types of cooperation – there are many types of morality. According to this theory of 'morality as cooperation," kin selection explains why we feel a special duty of care for our families, and why we abhor incest. Mutualism explains why we form groups and coalitions (there is strength and safety in numbers), and hence why we value unity, solidarity, and loyalty. Social exchange explains why we trust others, reciprocate favours, feel guilt and gratitude, make amends, and forgive. And conflict resolution explains why we engage in costly displays of prowess such as bravery and generosity, why we defer to our superiors, why we divide disputed resources fairly, and why we recognise prior possession.

The information is here.

Is It Good to Cooperate? Testing the Theory of Morality-as-Cooperation in 60 Societies

Oliver Scott Curry, Daniel Austin Mullins, and Harvey Whitehouse
Current Anthropology
The paper is here.

Abstract

What is morality? And to what extent does it vary around the world? The theory of “morality-as-cooperation” argues that morality consists of a collection of biological and cultural solutions to the problems of cooperation recurrent in human social life. Morality-as-cooperation draws on the theory of non-zero-sum games to identify distinct problems of cooperation and their solutions, and it predicts that specific forms of cooperative behavior—including helping kin, helping your group, reciprocating, being brave, deferring to superiors, dividing disputed resources, and respecting prior possession—will be considered morally good wherever they arise, in all cultures. To test these predictions, we investigate the moral valence of these seven cooperative behaviors in the ethnographic records of 60 societies. We find that the moral valence of these behaviors is uniformly positive, and the majority of these cooperative morals are observed in the majority of cultures, with equal frequency across all regions of the world. We conclude that these seven cooperative behaviors are plausible candidates for universal moral rules, and that morality-as-cooperation could provide the unified theory of morality that anthropology has hitherto lacked.