This is a work of philosophy, psychology, evolutionary biology, and cultural evolution. Greene strives to ask- what are morals, how did they evolve, and can we come up with a meta-universal morality to govern all of humanity. The first thing to realize it that “our values may color our views of the facts.” Given that we all have different values, yet we all strive to cooperate with one another, we must come up with some sort of meta-morality to live peaceably, for “morality is a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation.” Even for extreme individualists, “the most basic form of decency, nonaggression, is a form of cooperation, and not to be taken for granted- in our species or any other.” However, our moral instincts evolved to survive within groups, within known personal connections, not between anonymous groups. “As morality is a biological adaptation, it evolved not only as a device for putting Us ahead of Me, but as a device for putting Us ahead of Them.” Within groups we care very much about how we are perceived, our reputations. “Humans spend about 65 percent of their conversation time talking about the good and bad deeds of other humans.” We have evolved to gossip. But we also care more about how people we perceive to be close to us behave than we do about complete strangers. We see how people look, dress, eat, talk, etc…. Those who we think should act like us, we judge more harshly when they do not behave according to preconceived norms. But we also let them into our moral circle. In many behavioral experiments, “people favored in-group members even when group assignments were explicitly made random.” We like Us. The flip-side of the coin is that “altruism within groups could not have evolved without hostility between groups.”
Greene suggests that utilitarianism is the best judge to get past these conflicting morals. “Consequentialism says that consequences- “results” as a pragmatist might say- are the only things that ultimately matter…. One’s happiness is the overall quality of one’s experience, and to value happiness is to value everything that improves the quality of experience, for oneself and for others.” Greene, while wanting to spread a meta-morality, has no delusions about why morality is of import, “the function of morality…. like that of all biological adaptations, is to spread genetic material.” That is where the problem lies in our parochial morality, too narrow for a meta lens, “we should expect our moral intuitions to be, on the whole, more selfish and more tribalistic than utilitarianism prescribes…. our capacity for empathy evolved to facilitate cooperation- not universally, but with specific individuals.” There are those we deem as part of us, part of our tribe. The challenge is to expand this tribe to all of humanity. “One can’t resolve tribal disagreements by appeal to virtues, because one tribe’s virtues are another tribe’s vices- if not in general, then at least when tribes disagree.” Greene seeks to use a system of “common currency” when our tribal moralities conflict. This is, obviously, easier said than done. By recognizing that tribalism is altruistic at one level, but selfish at the group level, however, we at least have a start. His main theme is that although morality serves in uniting I and Us, it creates Us versus Them. Utilitarianism is his attempt to justify an objective meta-morality reasoning that can transcend that larger divide. He does not completely succeed in making his case for a universal morality, but posits many interesting dilemmas on his way through the muddle.
Greene suggests that utilitarianism is the best judge to get past these conflicting morals. “Consequentialism says that consequences- “results” as a pragmatist might say- are the only things that ultimately matter…. One’s happiness is the overall quality of one’s experience, and to value happiness is to value everything that improves the quality of experience, for oneself and for others.” Greene, while wanting to spread a meta-morality, has no delusions about why morality is of import, “the function of morality…. like that of all biological adaptations, is to spread genetic material.” That is where the problem lies in our parochial morality, too narrow for a meta lens, “we should expect our moral intuitions to be, on the whole, more selfish and more tribalistic than utilitarianism prescribes…. our capacity for empathy evolved to facilitate cooperation- not universally, but with specific individuals.” There are those we deem as part of us, part of our tribe. The challenge is to expand this tribe to all of humanity. “One can’t resolve tribal disagreements by appeal to virtues, because one tribe’s virtues are another tribe’s vices- if not in general, then at least when tribes disagree.” Greene seeks to use a system of “common currency” when our tribal moralities conflict. This is, obviously, easier said than done. By recognizing that tribalism is altruistic at one level, but selfish at the group level, however, we at least have a start. His main theme is that although morality serves in uniting I and Us, it creates Us versus Them. Utilitarianism is his attempt to justify an objective meta-morality reasoning that can transcend that larger divide. He does not completely succeed in making his case for a universal morality, but posits many interesting dilemmas on his way through the muddle.
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