SEPT 26

9: SEP 26

Assigned

• Robert Sapolsky, C 13, "Morality" pp. 483-493
• Haidt, Chapter 6, "Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind" (112-127 15)

In-class

• SW1 details and small group discussion
• Chat GPT

Sapolsky. Behave. C 13, 483-493

• Origins of Social/Moral Intuitions in Babies and Monkeys and Chimps

• More infant morality:

• weigh commission more than ommision - infants track commission better than ommission, as in adults.
• Pro-sociality - helper puppet studies, (watch previous YouTubes)
• Punishment - sweets go to helper puppets
• Tracks secondary punishment - secondary friends study - Babies prefer secondary puppets who were nice to nice puppets and punished bad puppets.

• Capuchin monkey study (deWaal) - "monkey fairness". (demonstrated also with macaques monkeys, crows, ravens, and dogs), details on 485. google "crows solving puzzles" or "elephants solving puzzles" animals are much more intelligent than we have historically understood. [1] “Inequity aversion”
• Chimp version of Ultimatum Game - in the deWaal version, chimps tend toward equity unless the proposer can give the token directly to the grape dispensers. 486
• "other regarding preferences" (Does the animal show awareness of other's preferences?) in monkeys, but not in chimps!
• Keep this in mind the next time you are thinking about whether to cooperate with a chimp!
• some evidence of "solidarity" in one inequity study the advantaged monkey (the one who gets grapes) stops working as well.
• Interesting comment: human morality transcends species boundary. starts before us.

• Exemptions for testifying against relatives and vmPFC patients who will trade relatives in Trolley situations.

• vmPFC damaged patient will sacrifice a relative to save four non-relatives.
• Interesting note about criminal law exemptions. Why do we let family members avoid testifying against each other.

• Context: Neuroscience of the Trolley Problem and "Intuition discounting"

• dlPFC (focused on reasoning) in lever condition and vmPFC (focused on emotional information processing) in bridge condition. Correlation of vmPFC activation with likelihood of not pushing the guy of the bridge.
• Greene's hypothesis: not so much because it is "up close and personal" as we speculated, but in lever condition the killing of the one is a side-effect. In bridge condition, its because of the killing. Different kinds of intentionality. Ok for most people if you push someone out of the way on your way to the lever. Not intentional killing.
• Why this is so cool: This research helps us think about the particular cognitive adaptation we have about killing. It's not just something that excites the brain because "it's up close and personal", it seems to involve a concept of intentionality, and hence Theory of Mind is somehow instantiated in our brains. Coincides with the baby-puppet studies.
• Loop condition -- you know you have to kill the person on the side track, should be like bridge condition, but test subjects match lever condition, roughly.
• Hypothesis: Intuitions are local; heavily discounted for time and space. (Think of other examples of this.) Stories in which your reaction to something changes when you learn where it happens. Another cognitive adaptation. Is it help to follow it all the time, or should we be more concerned about this one? (quick group chat)

• Related point about proximity - leave money around vs. cokes. Cokes disappear. One step from money and the rationalization is easier. (Also in Ariely research) Singer's pool scenario vs. sending money for absolute poverty relief.

• Priming study on cheating involving bankers. 492 - shows "intuition discounting" when primed to think about work identity. more cheating the more primed about "role" - "It's not me"...

• But this circumstance is different...

• Under stress subjects make more egoistic, rationalizing judgments regarding emotional moral dilemmas.
• [this is not mentioned in the text, but it is what he is talking about: the Fundamental Attribution Error - neuro-evidence for the Fundamental Attribution Error [2]
• Short version: We judge ourselves by internal motives and others by external actions. Our failings/successes elicit shame/pride while others' elicit anger and indignation. The FAE suggests that we explain our own failures more generously than the failures of others. We offer ourselves excuses (inner lawyer) but are biased toward inferring bad intent from others. (Think of fitness advantage for this bias.)

Haidt, Chapter 6, "Taste Buds of the Righteous Mind"

• Analogy of moral sense to taste sense. "the righteous mind is like a tongue with six taste receptors"

• Unpacking the metaphor:

• Places where our sensitivities to underlying value perception have depth from evolution, but have flexibility or plasticity from the "big brain", which allows for shaping within culture and retriggering.
• Morality is rich, not reducible to one taste. A way of perceiving the world. against moral monism
• Like cuisines, there is variation, but within a range.

• Mentions Enlightenment approaches, again: argument against the reductive project of philosophical ethics 113-114. ethics more like taste than science.

• Hume's three way battle: Enlightenment thinkers united in rejecting revelation as basis of morality, but divided between an transcendent view of reason as the basis (Kant) or the view that morality is part of our nature (Hume, Darwin, etc.). Hume's empiricism. also for him, morality is like taste

• Autism argument: Bentham (utlitarianism), Kant (deontology). Think about the person who can push the fat guy.

• Bentham told us to use arithmetic, Kant logic, to resolve moral problems. Note Bentham image and eccentric ideas. Baron-Cohen article on Bentham as having Asperger's Syndrome (part of the autism range). Kant also a solitary. Just saying. clarify point of analysis. not ad hominem. part of Enlightenment philosophy's rationalism -- a retreat from observation.
• The x/y axis on page 117 shows a kind of "personality space" that could be used to locate Enlightenment rationalists. (Note that Haidt is looking at the psychology of the philosopher for clues about the type of theory they might have!)

• Major global religious and ethical culture identifies virtues that seem to respond to similar basic problems of social life.

• Avoiding bad evolutionary theory or evolutionary psychology: "just so stories" -- range of virtues suggested "receptors", but for what? the virtue? some underlying response to a problem-type?

• Moral taste receptors found in history of long standing challenges and advantages of social life. The "moral foundations" in Haidt's theory just are the evolved psychological centers of evaluation that make up moral consciousness for humans.

• Modularity in evolutionary psychology, centers of focus, like perceptual vs. language systems. Sperber and Hirshfield: "snake detector" - note on deception/detection in biology/nature. responses to red, Hyperactive agency detection.

• See chart, from shared folder: C F L A S: Care/Harm, Fairness/Cheating, Loyalty/Betrayal, Authority/Subversion, Sanctity/Degradation

• Work through chart. Note how the "adaptive challenges" are some of the things we have been reading research on.

• Original vs. current triggers, 123 Reason/Intuition

• Small group discussion: Try to find examples from everyday life of events do or would trigger each of these foundations. Consider either real cases of people you know and the things they say or examples from general knowledge, or even hypothetical examples. For example:

• You and your friends all worry about COVID cases, but some more than others. Might be observing the Care/Harm trigger, or Sanctity/Degradation.
• You and your friends all occasionally enjoy risqué humor, but you are uncomfortable listening to people talk about intimate things like sex casually. Maybe you have a different sanctity trigger.
• You hear someone talk uncharitably about someone who sees them as a good friend. You are triggered for disloyalty.
• You and a co-worker agree that your boss is a bit full of himself. You find yourself pushing back, but your co-worker just ignores his boorish behavior. You have different triggers for authority and subversion.
• You like Tucker Carlson, but then you see that one of his pro-Putin shows is being run on Russian TV along with Trump’s and Pompeo’s praise for the warmongering dictator. It feels like betrayal.

• Focus on both ways that we are all triggered and ways that we are differentially triggered.