Mindscape 176 | Joshua Greene on Morality, Psychology, and Trolley Problems

Patreon: / seanmcarroll
Blog post with audio player, show notes, and transcript: www.preposterousuniverse.com/...
We all know you can’t derive “ought” from “is.” But it’s equally clear that “is” - how the world actual works - is going to matter for “ought” - our moral choices in the world. And an important part of “is” is who we are as human beings. As products of a messy evolutionary history, we all have moral intuitions. What parts of the brain light up when we’re being consequentialist, or when we’re following rules? What is the relationship, if any, between those intuitions and a good moral philosophy? Joshua Greene is both a philosopher and a psychologist who studies what our intuitions are, and uses that to help illuminate what morality should be. He gives one of the best defenses of utilitarianism I’ve heard.
Bonus! Joshua is a co-founder of Giving Multiplier, an effective-altruism program that lets you donate to your personal favorite causes and also get matching donations to charities that have been judged to be especially effective. He was kind enough to set up a special URL for Mindscape listeners, where their donations will be matched at a higher rate of 100%. Check out givingmultiplier.org/mindscape.
Joshua Greene received his Ph.D. in philosophy from Princeton University. He is currently Professor of Psychology and a member of the Center for Brain Science faculty at Harvard University. His an originator of the dual-process model of moral reasoning. Among his awards are the the Stanton Prize from the Society for Philosophy and Psychology and Harvard’s Roslyn Abramson Award for teaching. He is the author of Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them.
Mindscape Podcast playlist: • Mindscape Podcast
Sean Carroll channel: / seancarroll
#podcast #ideas #science #philosophy #culture

[@whirledpeas3477]

If James Brown was the hardest working person in show business, Than Sean Carroll is the hardest working person in physics. Both deserve respect 👏

[@martinds4895]

Great episode, great guest. Thanks Sean.

[@hmp01]

controversial topics, interesting and daring conversation, love it

[@adrianmoon3396]

Awesome topic and discussion, it's really the fundamental driver of how civilization got to where it is (or where WE are) and where it's inevitably heading. Love this stuff 👍

[@nowhereman8374]

Kudos again to the both of you. I am glad you revisited the trolley problem in terms of emotion and learning, and neuroscience in general. I wish Dr. Greene would have been asked specifically about the Xenophobic response and how that influence our morality and our meta-morality.

[@StayPrimal]

Thank you for your time professor. It is more appreciate than you think.

[@mozzerianmisanthrope406]

Recently read a fascinating book somewhat based around the the trolley problem - The Car That New Too Much by Jean-Francois Bonnefon. Just settling down to listen to this on a stormy afternoon! ✌

[@Oners82]

*Knew

[@mozzerianmisanthrope406]

@@Oners82 Autocorrect, not me.

[@michaeljmorrison5757]

Has trust become a problem because we have failed to appreciate the upper levels of Maslow's Hierarchy of needs and so we are stuck, thinking only in the low, the greedy and the impoverishment levels. BUT we don't need to be there! We do not need to change anything except our perception!

[@fugslayernominee1397]

2nd time listening to this, it was a great episode!

[@dizzytitan8481]

I'm laughing that a horn goes off in the background when he brings up the man who got a railroad spike through the forehead

[@user-wu8yq1rb9t]

Hello Dear Professor

[@gtziavelis]

Would you have on Yanis Varoufakis? he would have a lot to say about game theory, geopolitics, etc.

[@myothersoul1953]

Animals suffering just as much as our suffering? I've been wondering about that so it's good to know someone did the research and and found a difference with a enough statistical power to conclude that it's not significantly different from zero. That's not what one would predict looking at physiology but if the data show it's the same.

[@HarryNicNicholas]

i just gave to great ormond street, they aren't on your list. anyway, what has had me scratching my head is, is there in fact enough resources for everyone? if we all gave as much as we could to every charity we encountered, how many fixes would it make (don't get me wrong, i'm not trying to deter people from giving) but what i wonder is, is it actually possible to solve all the problems that charities are set up for, or is it a neve ending chanllenge? sure, places like great ormond street will always have to support itself cos new patients arrive every minute and will always be arriving, but what i mean is can we dig all the wells, and fix all the blindness and put an end to the _need_ for these charities? is it possible?

[@NomadOfOmelas]

That's a fairly open question, but I think the crucial point is that we can make progress and decrease the number of problems in expectation, by giving to effective charities. It can be tempting to let 'what we can't do' get in the way of 'what we can do', but the importance of saving a life/decreasing suffering is intrinsically important in proportion to the good accomplished, not relative to the size of the problem. If a child is drowning, the fact that I cannot save all drowning children for time eternal is not reason not to do the good I can :)

[@sirilandgren]

Yeeeees, come to the utilitarian side! We have cookies (but only if you will enjoy them).

[@NomadOfOmelas]

And once one joins the club, one will realize that the instrumental good the cookies/pleasure brings, in displacing potential suffering, that they have realized their graduation from classical utilitarianism to negative utilitarianism as the final landing point :)

[@hamburgerlord9552]

"Comment"

[@sunroad7228]

To "solve Joshua Greene's problem" - you trade fossil fuels on the basis they are finite, not under the shenanigans of what is called 'supply and demand'. "In an Energy system, Control is what consumes Energy the most. Energy, like time, flows from past to future". Wailing.

[@joshua3171]

the (shopping)trolley problem

[@joshua3171]

the reality of the wobbly wheel

[@odinata]

The Good Place

[@lanceindependent]

I wish Greene were more clear on what he thought morality was, specifically. When considering what it would mean to have moral standards, one could in principle moralize virtually anything. There are people who consider correct moral action to be the pursuit of one's self-interest. This does not require that one cooperate with others. It would only be moral on such a view to cooperate if it promoted your self-interest, but it would also be moral to harm or manipulate others if it would benefit you. I don't endorse this view, but it is not clear why this would be an "incorrect" account of morality, rather than one particular stance on what would be moral or immoral that is no less legitimate than any other stance. And such a stance is not about cooperation, nor did it evolve via natural selection processes that favored cooperative impulses. So it just does not seem to be correct to closely link the notion of morality having evolved with the notion that psychological mechanisms that promote cooperation evolved. We may happen to moralize cooperation much of the time, but we don't have to, and it we still recognizably hold moral stances even if they are anti-cooperation. Morality, as a distinct form of cognition, probably did not evolve, but is instead culturally constructed. While the components involved in moral judgments may have evolved via a range of distinct selective processes, and a capacity for thinking in normative terms may have evolved, I have not seen much compelling evidence of a pancultural capacity for thinking in distinctively moral terms; this is a criticism Machery, Mallon, and Stich have all made regarding the notion of morality as a distinct form of cognition or a distinct normative domain, and I have yet to see any good rebuttal to their points.

[@twiedenfeld]

Morality is a function of empathy which is a function of mirror neurons and certain hormones, and is therefore evolved; though culture will certainly shape it. Not only is acting in self interest not moral, but going against your self interest is the definition of morality (if done to help someone else). I wouldn't, however, call acting in your self interest immoral; it is rather amoral. Immoral is harming someone for no reason. Normally only psychopaths act immorally.

[@twiedenfeld]

I like to think of morality as something akin to agriculture. It benefits humanity, is a function of nature, but there is no correct agriculture. Some cultures will grow wheat, some rice. It's dependent upon the environment, but human choice also shapes it.

[@Oners82]

@@twiedenfeld Your definition of morality is terrible, and everybody acts immorally at times, not just psychos.

[@onyxdandelion2704]

I think the reason some people would say no to pushing someone off the bridge to stop the train, is because with a switch there’s a certainty. If I push someone onto the tracks it might not stop the train, now I’ve killed someone.

[@Oners82]

Nope. Part of the stipulation of the thought experiment is that the train stops in both instances and the same number of lives are saved, yet we still have a different moral intuition about it (at least the vast majority of people do).

[@enisten]

Well, you don't want people to steal your money thinking they needed it "more than" you did, but what if they were about to die of hunger? That changes the whole calculus, no? Then they get to decide they deserve that money more than you do. Think about the Vulture and the Little Girl. By your logic, the photographer had no moral obligations there. Not in the US (the land of the by-stander effects), but in several countries, there are "duty to rescue" laws, and failure to do something to try to rescue someone in extremis or imminent danger is a punishable crime. I think you're being a slave of your culture here. It's not universal that you can *never* forcefully take something from someone and give it to somebody else with a utilitarian justification. That's exactly what eminent domain and income redistribution are. Where you draw the line between the just and unjust practices depends on your culture, though.

[@dwadem]

Dude says "right?" way too much. My morality now teeters

[@anev7163]

Some interesting stuff. However, you can have the best reasoning in the world but use bias misinformation as your premise the outcome is likely to be sh*t. I turst Greene about as much as an Alyssa Melano.

[@DestroManiak]

Oh no, the guest likes obama :(