Mathematical model offers clear-cut answers to how morals will change over time

The Institute for Future Studies

Phys.org

Originally posted 13 APR 2022

Researchers at the Institute for Futures Studies in Stockholm, Sweden, have created a mathematical model to predict changes in moral opinion. It predicts that values about corporal punishment of children, abortion-rights and how parental leave should be shared between parents, will all move in liberal directions in the U.S. Results from a first test of the model using data from large opinion surveys continuously conducted in the U.S. are promising.

Corporal punishment of children, such as spanking or paddling, is still widely accepted in the U.S. But public opinion is changing rapidly, and in the United States and elsewhere around the world, this norm will soon become a marginal position. The right to abortion is currently being threatened through a series of court cases—but though change is slow, the view of abortion as a right will eventually come to dominate. A majority of Americans today reject the claim that parental leave should be equally shared between parents, but within 15 years, public opinion will flip, and a majority will support an equal division.

"Almost all moral issues are moving in the liberal direction. Our model is based on large opinion surveys continuously conducted in the U.S., but our method for analyzing the dynamics of moral arguments to predict changing public opinion on moral issues can be applied anywhere," says social norm researcher Pontus Strimling, a research leader at the Institute for Futures Studies, who together with mathematician Kimmo Eriksson and statistician Irina Vartanova conducted the study that will be published in the journal Royal Society Open Science on Wednesday, April 13th.

The research is here.

From the Discussion

Overall, this study shows that moral opinion change can to some extent be predicted, even under unusually volatile circumstances. Note that the prediction method used in this paper is quite rudimentary. Specifically, the method is only based on a very simple survey measure of each opinion's argument advantage and the use of historical opinion data to calibrate a parameter for converting such measures to predicted change rates. Given that the direction is predicted completely based on surveys about argument advantage it is remarkable that the direction was correctly predicted in two-thirds of the cases (three-quarters if the issues related to singular events were excluded). Even so, the method can probably be improved.

Predicting how the U.S. public opinion on moral issues will change from 2018 to 2020 and beyond, Royal Society Open Science (2022).

The Myth of Freedom

Yuval Noah Harari
The Guardian
Originally posted September 14, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

Unfortunately, “free will” isn’t a scientific reality. It is a myth inherited from Christian theology. Theologians developed the idea of “free will” to explain why God is right to punish sinners for their bad choices and reward saints for their good choices. If our choices aren’t made freely, why should God punish or reward us for them? According to the theologians, it is reasonable for God to do so, because our choices reflect the free will of our eternal souls, which are independent of all physical and biological constraints.

This myth has little to do with what science now teaches us about Homo sapiens and other animals. Humans certainly have a will – but it isn’t free. You cannot decide what desires you have. You don’t decide to be introvert or extrovert, easy-going or anxious, gay or straight. Humans make choices – but they are never independent choices. Every choice depends on a lot of biological, social and personal conditions that you cannot determine for yourself. I can choose what to eat, whom to marry and whom to vote for, but these choices are determined in part by my genes, my biochemistry, my gender, my family background, my national culture, etc – and I didn’t choose which genes or family to have.

This is not abstract theory. You can witness this easily. Just observe the next thought that pops up in your mind. Where did it come from? Did you freely choose to think it? Obviously not. If you carefully observe your own mind, you come to realise that you have little control of what’s going on there, and you are not choosing freely what to think, what to feel, and what to want.

Though “free will” was always a myth, in previous centuries it was a helpful one. It emboldened people who had to fight against the Inquisition, the divine right of kings, the KGB and the KKK. The myth also carried few costs. In 1776 or 1945 there was relatively little harm in believing that your feelings and choices were the product of some “free will” rather than the result of biochemistry and neurology.

But now the belief in “free will” suddenly becomes dangerous. If governments and corporations succeed in hacking the human animal, the easiest people to manipulate will be those who believe in free will.

The info is here.

Business Class

John Benjamin
The New Republic
Originally posted May 14, 2018

Students in the country’s top MBA programs pride themselves on their open-mindedness. This is, after all, what they’ve been sold: American business schools market their ability to train the kinds of broadly competent, intellectually receptive people that will help solve the problems of a global economy.

But in truth, MBA programs are not the open forums advertised in admissions brochures. Behind this façade, they are ideological institutions committed to a strict blend of social liberalism and economic conservatism. Though this fusion may be the favorite of American elites—the kinds of people who might repeat that tired line “I’m socially liberal but fiscally conservative”—it takes a strange form in business school. Elite business schooling is tailored to promote two types of solutions to the big problems that arise in society: either greater innovation or freer markets. Proposals other than what’s essentially more business are brushed aside, or else patched over with a type of liberal politics that’s heavy on rhetorical flair but light on relevance outside privileged circles.

It is in this closed ideological loop that we wannabe masters of the universe often struggle to think clearly about the common good or what it takes to achieve it.

The information is here.

Are We Becoming Morally Smarter?

By Michael Shermer
Reason.com
Originally posted in March 2015 issue

Here is an excerpt:

Since the Enlightenment, humans have demonstrated dramatic moral progress. Almost everyone in the Western world today enjoys rights to life, liberty, property, marriage, reproduction, voting, speech, worship, assembly, protest, autonomy, and the pursuit of happiness. Liberal democracies are now the dominant form of governance, systematically replacing the autocracies and theocracies of centuries past. Slavery and torture are outlawed everywhere in the world (even if occasionally still practiced). The death penalty is on death row and will likely go extinct sometime in the 2020s. Violence and crime are at historic lows, and we have expanded the moral sphere to include more people as members of the human community deserving of rights and respect. Even some animals are now being considered as sentient beings worthy of moral consideration.

Abstract reasoning and scientific thinking are the crucial cognitive skills at the foundation of all morality. Consider the mental rotation required to implement the Golden Rule: Do unto others as you would have them do unto you.

The article is here.

Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights

Book Review by Idil Boran
Notre Dame Philosophical Review
Originally published January 14, 2015

Alan Patten, Equal Recognition: The Moral Foundations of Minority Rights, Princeton University Press, 2014, 327pp., $45.00 (hbk), ISBN 9780691159379.

Those interested in moral and political philosophy over the last three decades will remember that questions pertaining to cultural diversity and minority rights dominated the literature during that period. The center of gravity was Will Kymlicka's compelling discussion and justification of minority rights within the framework of philosophical liberalism. The debate that ensued didn't just give rise to a constellation of philosophical arguments and positions. It created a global movement, giving inspiration to the then newly forming states of the post-Soviet era to rethink how politics of cultural identity could be integrated with principles of liberalism. Around ten years ago, however, scholarly interest in these theoretical questions was already starting to run its course. Many specialists who were associated with issues of liberalism and minority rights in the 1990's gradually began exploring new horizons of normative inquiry on justice as time went on. Some moved on to issues of global justice, and the role and status of state institutions and the relevance of borders for inquiry on justice. Others returned to the debates on egalitarianism and distributive justice, or other related themes.

The entire book review is here.

Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy

Brink, David, "Mill's Moral and Political Philosophy"
The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Fall 2014 Edition)
Edward N. Zalta (ed.), forthcoming

Here is an excerpt:

2.6 Utilitarianism as a Standard of Conduct

We might expect a utilitarian to apply the utilitarian principle in her deliberations. Consider act utilitarianism. We might expect such a utilitarian to be motivated by pure disinterested benevolence and to deliberate by calculating expected utility. But it is a practical question how to reason or be motivated, and act utilitarianism implies that this practical question, like all practical questions, is correctly answered by what would maximize utility. Utilitarian calculation is time-consuming and often unreliable or subject to bias and distortion. For such reasons, we may better approximate the utilitarian standard if we don't always try to approximate it. Mill says that to suppose that one must always consciously employ the utilitarian principle in making decisions

… is to mistake the very meaning of a standard of morals and confound the rule of action with the motive of it. It is the business of ethics to tell us what are our duties, or by what test we may know them; but no system of ethics requires that the sole motive of all we do shall be a feeling of duty; on the contrary, ninety-nine hundredths of all our actions are done from other motives, and rightly so done if the rule of duty does not condemn them. (U II 18)

Later utilitarians, such as Sidgwick, have made essentially the same point, insisting that utilitarianism provides a standard of right action, not necessarily a decision procedure (Methods 413).

If utilitarianism is itself the standard of right conduct, not a decision procedure, then what sort of decision procedure should the utilitarian endorse, and what role should the principle of utility play in moral reasoning? As we will see, Mill thinks that much moral reasoning should be governed by secondary precepts or principles about such things as fidelity, fair play, and honesty that make no direct reference to utility but whose general observance does promote utility. These secondary principles should be set aside in favor of direct appeals to the utilitarian first principle in cases in which adherence to the secondary precept would have obviously inferior consequences or in which such secondary principles conflict (U II 19, 24–25).

The entire entry is here.