> Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions.
Jonathan Haidt’s social psych research goes into this topic extensively. He spent the first half of his career doing giant surveys across cultures all over the world to identify the kinds of situations humans universally attach moral significance to, though the specifics of each will be modulated by local cultural norms. His list is more or less the same as yours, and he calls it “Moral Foundations Theory.” The most fascinating part to me is that while humans generally all respond somewhat to each of the foundations, the degree to which we attach significance to each one is highly correlated with how strongly we align broadly towards the liberal-left-progressive vs conservative-hierarchical-traditional political parties, religions, and lifestyles of the cultural environments we each inhabit.
I used to readily recommend his book on it “The Righteous Mind,” but it was written in the pre-Trump era, so it’s observations of how these foundations map onto political identities and how that could help us “all just get along” can come off as pretty naive and utopian now. The theory itself still appears to be largely valid, and has given me some very helpful insights in understanding the beliefs of certain kinds of people I don’t often see eye to eye with. So I’d say the book is still worth reading if you are capable of contextualizing some of the political commentary with its time.
He’s not an evolutionary biologist and generally steers clear of specifically diving into statements about that side of it, other than to point to the standard materialist interpretation of all behavior ie: something this universally observed must be at least in part a product of natural selection, with the relevant genetic correlates. It’s also important to note that this would not require any sort of “group level selection” theory to explain, individual- or gene-level explanations have no problem with it either.
throwhooawayyfoe t1_iskcwex wrote
Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3
> Behaviours like a preference for harm reduction, preference for fairness, preference for autonomy, preference for established hierarchies, and a preference for loyalty can be seen in the non human animal kingdom. Furthermore, every human culture I'm aware of assigns a moral weight to sacred objects or actions.
Jonathan Haidt’s social psych research goes into this topic extensively. He spent the first half of his career doing giant surveys across cultures all over the world to identify the kinds of situations humans universally attach moral significance to, though the specifics of each will be modulated by local cultural norms. His list is more or less the same as yours, and he calls it “Moral Foundations Theory.” The most fascinating part to me is that while humans generally all respond somewhat to each of the foundations, the degree to which we attach significance to each one is highly correlated with how strongly we align broadly towards the liberal-left-progressive vs conservative-hierarchical-traditional political parties, religions, and lifestyles of the cultural environments we each inhabit.
I used to readily recommend his book on it “The Righteous Mind,” but it was written in the pre-Trump era, so it’s observations of how these foundations map onto political identities and how that could help us “all just get along” can come off as pretty naive and utopian now. The theory itself still appears to be largely valid, and has given me some very helpful insights in understanding the beliefs of certain kinds of people I don’t often see eye to eye with. So I’d say the book is still worth reading if you are capable of contextualizing some of the political commentary with its time.
He’s not an evolutionary biologist and generally steers clear of specifically diving into statements about that side of it, other than to point to the standard materialist interpretation of all behavior ie: something this universally observed must be at least in part a product of natural selection, with the relevant genetic correlates. It’s also important to note that this would not require any sort of “group level selection” theory to explain, individual- or gene-level explanations have no problem with it either.