Airs – Ian Lance Taylor

Moral Instinct

Steven Pinker wrote an interesting article in the New York Times magazine this Sunday. I’m not a big Pinker fan. I think he tends to simplify a little too much, and sometimes falls into the classic error of evolutionary psychology: thinking that a plausible explanation is the right explanation. This was a good article, though, discussing research on what our instinctive moral judgements might be. As I’ve written before, I think that it is an interesting possible grounding for a universal ethics. In fact, I don’t know of a better one.

I’m not going to discuss the whole article, which you can read for yourself, but I’m going to pick out one quote: “In the West, we believe that in business and government, fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism and cronyism. In other parts of the world this is incomprehensible — what heartless creep would favor a perfect stranger over his own brother?” The point is not, in fact, expressed fairly: we do not expect people to favor perfect strangers, we expect them to recuse themselves to avoid conflicts. Since people often fail to recuse themselves, we threaten them with punishment to force them to do so.

The real point is that we enforce the idea that the interests of society take precedence over personal interests. Some other societies (apparently) do not. Where did this idea come from historically? How many societies adopt it? Can we make an argument for it based on any sort of moral instinct, or must we argue for it based on beneficial results?

OK, I’m going to mention one more point. Pinker suggests that some people dislike research into moral instinct, on the grounds that finding a natural basis for morality will discredit the more philosophical basis. I would be more sympathetic to that argument if we had any grounds to believ that we will in fact find a more philosophical basis, one which is not grounded on an argument from the authority of God.

Posted

in

by

Ian Lance Taylor

Tags:

Comments

24 responses to “Moral Instinct”

  1. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    Some people dislike research that might lead to a result that differs from what they were taught as children, or that might indicate what they’ve been doing their whole lives ought to be against the law, or already is. That’s all the more reason to do it, and fast.

  2. fdeweerdt Avatar
    fdeweerdt

    “The real point is that we enforce the idea that the interests of society take precedence over personal interests. Some other societies (apparently) do not.”

    That could be because other societies differently perceive the “community” Pinker refers to in his article.
    I assume that you talk about a western society in which the nation itself is perceived as a valid community. But many countries are relatively new social entities and its members are only bound by comparatively loose ties. Hence, from their point of view, our notion of community is groundless, and we are indeed preferring total strangers in favor of pairs.

  3. fche Avatar
    fche

    > In the West, we believe that in business and government,
    > fairness should trump community and try to root out nepotism
    > and cronyism […] The real point is that we enforce the idea that
    > the interests of society take precedence over personal interests.

    You may be reading too much into “society” here. Businesses eschew
    nepotism and cronyism because the practice is *inefficient*: it would
    bias decision-making toward personal emotional ties and benefits, which
    could cost shareholders/taxpayers value for their money.

  4. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    ncm: I have of course seen that attitude before, though it’s often hard for me to understand it. As you say, it seems better to know the truth, even if it is hard.

    I think it leads us in the direction of “research that is too dangerous to know.” This is a meme which is generally only deployed when immediately followed by “what the heck, let’s do it anyhow.” One example would be studying whether there really is a difference in intelligence between different human “races” (I use scare quotes because different classifications give different definitions of “race;” we’re familiar with skin color only because it is visibly obvious). Another, more frivolous example, would be Dennett’s concern that exposing free will as a myth could lead to a decline in taking personal responsibility for action.

  5. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fdeweerdt: excellent point. Thanks.

  6. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fche: I don’t think I can agree with you here. First I should say that I was thinking primarily of government, not business. Nepotism is in fact prolific in business. Many businesses are run by dynasties within the same family, and those choices are not subject to any significant outside review. Despite the rhetoric of ownership, the shareholders in general have very little power over management decisions. There are of course political families as there are business families, but the choices in that case are subject to a real vote.

    Nepotism and cronyism in the civil service is uncommon, because it is forbidden by law. Of course it is very common in government positions which are made by appointment. And it is very common in business at all levels. It’s the basis for the “old school network,” and it’s clearly visible in today’s interlocking directorates.

    So I don’t find any argument from business efficiency to be plausible here. I do think it is a societal thing, which is honored to a greater and lesser degree in different parts of society.

  7. fche Avatar
    fche

    > Many businesses are run by dynasties within the same family, and those choices are
    > not subject to any significant outside review.

    Privately owned businesses, sure. But an owner can make his decisions in any way that
    she wishes – trading economic efficiency for family ties. But do you believe that some
    low-down middle manager is permitted by the owners to engage in cronyism etc.?
    If not, why do you think that might be?

    Outside review of publicly held companies is an iffy notion. Shareholders are by nature
    weighted by their investment sizes. An individual grandma may complain about hiring
    practices but she has barely any money actually riding on it and consequently barely any
    say. People who are not even stockholders are not in the least relevant. If nepotism etc.
    were to be rampant in a big publicly held company, bit shareholders would probably get
    concerned. If you agree, why do you think that might be?

  8. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    I suppose the reaction maps to how well we trust the investigators’ integrity. Some questions demand more integrity than we tend to encounter in day-to-day life. The racial IQ issue is a particularly good example, where such lack of integrity has been demonstrated time and again. (We might identify the lack as self-deception, in most cases, if we are inclined to charity toward them. I am not.)

    Moral questions of all sorts demand this sort of integrity, but it is no more evident in the wider world than in the world of science. The only proxy we have found for integrity is demonstrable disinterest. Disinterest in moral questions is both hard to find and hard to trust. We might need to wait for Strong AI before we can get very far with this sort of analysis. That presents other problems.

  9. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fche: it’s not just privately held businesses. For example, Ford Motor Company is still being run by a Ford, one hundred years later.

    I’m not sure where you’re going with your other questions. Cronyism is in the eye of the beholder. If I hire a classmate of mine, is that cronyism? With respect to the larger point, does the answer even matter?

  10. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    ncm: Sometimes it’s integrity, sometimes people would (supposedly) prefer to really not know. I’ve seen the argument that “racial” disparities in IQ should not be investigated, because, if they are real, knowing that to be true would be bad for society. This is independent of whether we can trust the researchers to determine whether it is true. The argument is that regardless of the truth of the matter, the risk of getting the “wrong” answer is such that we are better off not knowing.

  11. fche Avatar
    fche

    > I’m not sure where you’re going with your other questions.

    I am trying to suggest that self-interest is a plausible reason
    for the prevention of corrupt practices such as these. There is no
    need to appeal to instinct and “interests of society” and such
    fuzzy stuff.

  12. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    Which one feels more right to you: hiring the best person for the job, or hiring your brother-in-law? The hypothesis in the article is that people in different societies tend to give different answers to that question. That is a question of ethics: what we believe to be right. Self-interest might create laws which override our ethical beliefs, but the article is suggesting something else: that members of different societies believe further that one or the other answer is truly the right thing to do.

  13. fche Avatar
    fche

    > Which one feels more right to you: hiring the best person for the job, or
    > hiring your brother-in-law?

    If I own the business in question, I’m entitled to do whichever I want.
    If I don’t own the business, the owners will exercise *their* self-interest by
    imposing policies that preclude casual brother-in-law hiring. (SImilar
    thing applies to governments, but there the owners are the taxpayers.)

    > The hypothesis in the article is that people in different societies tend to
    > give different answers to that question

    The article frames the question in statist/morality terms, which seems to me
    begging the question.

  14. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    I should have finished the article before posting. The rest is more interesting than I expected.

    I noted a curious omission: the effect of an action on the person performing it. A lot of morality concerns the corrosive effect on personality. Killing somebody doesn’t just freak out everybody else, it changes you.

    The moral quandary example involving pushing somebody in front of a trolley omits to consider that the effect would be very uncertain; you might just as well end up with six dead as five, then. That makes any conclusions suspect, even the fMRI work.

    Some of the examples of repulsive behavior seemed either more or less fine to me, e.g. scrubbing with flag scraps, or slapping a preacher. Eating your own dog would make me wonder about your sanity, not your morality. But some of the examples of irredeemably repulsive behavior are carried out routinely by officers of the court in the U.S., e.g. child abuse.

  15. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fche: You’re not answer the question I’m asking. I’m not asking what will happen in a given situation, or why. And I’m not saying that one choice is right and one is wrong. I’m asking which feels more right to you, personally. You can say that you don’ t know, that you don’t have any intuition about it. What Pinker is saying is that most people do have an answer to the question–one answer seems right to them, and the other answer seems wrong–and that the answer differs in different societies.

    It’s not begging the question. The question is not “why do people believe what they do.” The question is “do people in different societies have different ethical beliefs.”

  16. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    ncm: I have to agree that the example of throwing somebody off a bridge is rather far-fetched. I personally find all of those hypothetical questions to be very difficult to answer, and that one is much worse than average.

    I don’t think that anybody would argue that people in a position of power are ethical paragons.

  17. ncm Avatar
    ncm

    I found almost all of them easy to answer, that one in particular. I think it’s not because I’m a moral genius or idiot, it’s because the examples presented just aren’t very good.

    My point about officers of the court was that if these things were actually as universally, viscerally repugnant as implied, they wouldn’t be permitted as a matter of official policy, and, presuming they were unexpected consequences of official policy, they’d have a hard time finding people willing to carry them out.

  18. fche Avatar
    fche

    > fche: You’re not answer the question I’m asking. I’m not asking what will
    > happen in a given situation, or why. And I’m not saying that one choice is
    > right and one is wrong. I’m asking which feels more right to you, personally.

    But a question like that cannot exist in a vacuum. The hypothetical scenario
    needs to include the *other* moral obligations already in effect at the point of
    possibly hiring a family member, such as to follow one’s employer’s policies
    and to follow the law. So to ask “which one feels right” is tantamount to asking
    “Which of your many moral/ethical obligations would you prefer to sacrifice?”.

  19. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    fche: That is reasonable. So, let’s say your employer has a rule forbidding you from hiring your brother-in-law. Suppose that if you do hire him, the chances of your employer finding out are small. Do you follow the rules? Or do you hire him anyhow?

  20. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    ncm: I actually find it quite difficult to answer questions like “if you flip the switch, you can change the train from killing five people to killing one person.” It’s easy for me to say “it is better that one person die than that five die.” That is, I know how to answer the abstract question. But I am much less certain about how to act in the unlikely hypothetical scenario.

    I’m not sure what kind of child abuse you are talking about when you talk about officers of the court. I think there are some forms of child abuse which most people find repugnant, though of course they do certainly happen. There are other actions sometimes described as child abuse which I think a sizeable percentage of people do not find to be repugnant even if they agree they should be forbidden–e.g., corporal punishment, or sex between a teenager and a young adult.

  21. fche Avatar
    fche

    > fche: That is reasonable. So, let’s say your employer has a rule forbidding you from hiring your
    > brother-in-law. Suppose that if you do hire him, the chances of your employer finding out are
    > small. Do you follow the rules? Or do you hire him anyhow?

    Well, that form of the question is little different than … “would you mug that little girl
    if no one was likely to find out?”, and is not the sort of hypothetical that’s worthwhile
    answering in the abstract.

    I believe arriving at this point largely moots your initial point. There may well be societal
    patterns as to which sorts of corruption people casually tolerate, but it’s still corruption.

  22. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    I think your example and choice of words may be predetermining your answer. I think that any society would say that it is wrong to mug a little girl even if nobody would find out. But the argument in the article is that some societies would say that it is right to hire your brother-in-law even the company rules prohibit it. That is, it’s not corrupt; it’s actually the right thing to do. Just as we would say that it’s right to speed to get to the hospital, or to break the window of a drugstore to get the defibrillator needed to save somebody having a heart attack.

  23. fche Avatar
    fche

    > That is, it’s not corrupt; it’s actually the right thing to do. Just as we would say
    > that it’s right to speed to get to the hospital, or to break the window of a drugstore
    > to get the defibrillator needed to save somebody having a heart attack

    If members of some society actually equivocate an ongoing misdirection of
    funds with one-time emergency maneuvers, well, no wonder they don’t
    think they’re corrupt.

  24. Ian Lance Taylor Avatar
    Ian Lance Taylor

    Well, of course, it was me doing the equating. But I think the point is still correct: they don’t think they’re corrupt. They think that our typical attitude is inexplicable, honoring an agreement with a stranger over obligations to family.

Leave a Reply