I try to tell my students in cross-cultural psychology, you will encounter many obstacles and traps if you try to debate or prove that one culture's set of practices, beliefs, values (etc) is correct or superior to those of another culture. But what you can always do, in full sincerity, is to acknowledge what problems are being solved by that culture's practices. And then you can decide, for yourself, whether you want to live with those practices and values.
An argument for moral relativism on the grounds of the adaptive value of diversity. But we don’t look to the gods for guidance on universal truths, we look to centuries of struggle to overcome arbitrary violence and suppression through both the expression of radical ideas of what it means to be human and the sacrifice of thousands or millions of individuals in the idea of some better version of human relations. This is true, at least, for we in the parts of the world that have in one form or another enshrined the sovereignty and dignity of the individual into the heart of our societies. However flawed these societies are in many respects. Murder is wrong everywhere; but only in a perhaps minority of societies is murder by the state severely proscribed. Now, if you’re mostly talking about anodyne yet important concepts of culture, like art, food, family structures, and so on, then yes. We should be open-hearted and prepared to adapt. But we should retain moral clarity where it matters.
For instance, an ethic that centers community and family has gone missing in the West, where in other parts of the world it remains. Replaced with an obsession on individual identity based not on anything collectivist in a positive social sense but on separation from others.
I think you're attributing to individualism an effect that was deliberately cultivated by collectivists. Marxists from Marx to BLM have attacked the family as a competitor with the State for the devotion of individuals. This traces all the way back to Jesus, Plato's Republic, and Sparta.
Yes, agreed, but the notion’s evolved over the centuries. Individualism today might as often mean flying the flag of your tribe, complying with its shibboleths, organizing online, and using social media/AI to wield outsized influence. Versus being an autonomous individual living life according to one’s own set of principles.
There's some irony that your substack is titled "That Doesn't Follow": it seems to me like your response is a non-sequitur. Hanson asked two yes-or-no questions, and you didn't answer either of them.
He wrote a commentary with some interesting ideas about moral confidence and moral variety. I agree with the basic idea and I in turn commented because I think moral confidence is warranted where it matters. That’s not a non-sequitur, in my view, but hey, you’re entitled to your read on it.
Of course, everyone struggled, everywhere, under a frequently brutal ruling class. Not everywhere has all human life and agency been deemed valuable. There are obviously many other morals, explicit or less so, that are more interchangeable.
>That one winning culture would then drift and decay into maladaption.
This is wrong. The winning culture would expand into new niches and diversify, as the British Empire did. American culture is quite distinct from British culture.
Besides, no one could manage to kill *all* rival cultures. Can't we at least destroy the bad, sick, or maladapted ones? Culling the herd maintains its strength, after all. If you want to make an evolutionary analogy at least do it correctly.
And in our culture, we have the strange phenomenon of elite class members who are certain that their/our culture is WRONG, and are given (through education and status signals and messaging) a kind of masochistic sense that their countries/histories/cultures are somehow far worse than they actually are.
When it comes to policymaking, these kind of perverse (insincere) displays are a disaster.
I remember being at a conference once where you were a speaker and in the Q&A section, some libertarian made some grand ideological claim such as "governments shouldn't do X" and your pithy and profound response was along the lines of, "that sounds nice, but governments are going to continue to do X as long as they have power which seems highly likely."
So to throw this back: how much of these sorts of ideas to increase cultural diversity are just arguing with a hailstorm?
It seems like the main possibilities of having an impact are: 1) create a movement that carves out a piece of land (legally) like an Amish enclave and then implements a community that rewards cultural diversity, or 2) focus nearly completely on getting the ear of some head of state who's willing to try something.
With more cultural diversity in the US, more people understand that other cultures may have superior solutions to human moral issues. Example -- many white and otherwise mono-cultural Americans embraced Buddhist values starting in the 1960s and in the decades since.
I do like the distinction between shallow and deep multiculturalism, which I didn't have a name for, although when I teach cross-cultural psychology, students learn rapidly that those shallow cultural markers are the tip of the iceberg of what we will learn about. What you imply is that when the Americans embraced Buddhism in the New Age and other late 20th century spiritual awareness movements, they may have mostly adopted the shallow makers.
But, the whole idea of adopting Buddhism is to take on the take deeper values, like compassion, generosity, tolerance, nonmaterialism. Experts say American Buddhism (or Western Buddhism) wasn't a monolithic phenomenon. Some interpretations leaned towards more individualistic or secular adaptations, but there was a definite adoption of deeper Buddhist values like social responsibility, particularly evident within "Engaged Buddhism" social movements.
Regardless of what happened with American Buddhism, deep culture features are strongly and rapidly converging worldwide, even if we see variety of shallow markers.
I agree that being uncertain of the truth of one's moral beliefs (moral humility) is of utmost importance in getting along with others, and that being aware of and comparing others' different beliefs to one's own is equally important. However, I don't see moral values converging at all, even if some other aspects of culture might be. And, as a nonmoral statement, I have no qualms about my certainty that nothing even close to a world - or even a million person - monoculture could ever happen.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, how about some concrete examples? Sobriety culture is superior to intoxication, and there is nothing good in tolerance for human sacrifice religious rituals. Results of moral action are measurable in competition between systems.
You have used reason to uncover objective moral principles! (Killing all prey at once is bad. Killing off all other cultures is bad.) That’s a great start. There are probably more.
You're turning the idea of "collective interest" around backwards. Morals induce behaviors in the collective interest. It's in the collective interest for people to take altruistic actions, because altruistic actions increase the global welfare, even if they carry costs for the individual. It's in the collective interest for people to be tolerant of others, because intolerance leads to violence and discrimination, which decreases global welfare. Being nasty and selfish is not in the collective interest. What you call "drift" is people arriving at social agreements about behaviors in the collective interest - behaviors like, being kind to others, being tolerant of different cultures and races, using science and reason instead of dogma to decide policy.
You make it sound like just calling for more variety in our cuisine. Do you not put a value judgement on morals? Are the morals of medieval europe just "different" than europe today, like mexican cuisine and italian cuisine, rather than "better" or "worse"?
What does moral variety look like? re-introduce the morals of medieval europe? isn't there high risk of harm from random moral variety? yes but that's what it might take to stabalize cultural drift?
Regarding "Different cultures have different morals, and you have at best only weak reasons to see your culture’s versions as best" --> but your culture's version of human morals is the version that underwent cultural evolution to fit the exigencies of your culture's history, ecosystem, subsistence method, and other cultural practices [which you already said here 'practical context-dependent and rather-random evolved strategies to make our culture more biologically adaptive']. So your culture's version of human morals has a strong reason to be the best fit for your culture.
I do agree with your analysis that most humans aren't thinking in terms of cultural fit, but instead, are absolutists and think there is one right set of morals for all humans.
Yes, if people merely guessed that their culture's morals are modestly more likely to be the best morals for their culture's situation, that would be great progress.
A good case can be made for there being a large variety of cultures: They can be compared over time to see which type of culture most people find satisfactory. Besides, people's preferences may differ, so the most satisfactory type can vary with individual preferences. However, whether some set of moral statements is correct or not depends on whether any such statements are objectively true or not. If any moral statement, S, is objectively true, then any other moral statements that are true must be consistent with S, and any other moral statements that are inconsistent with S are false.
Morality is an experiment filled with imperatives and moral high grounds. The inequality of morality is implicit in belief systems, and a key ingredient in getting people to go to war.
Morality is simply an experiment, and why one is superior to another....a case of survival, or instinctual survival/programming? To justify actions.
Reminds me oddly of a Ricky Gervais joke about, as an atheist, debating over the existence of God. Gervais estimated there's like 3,000 "gods" in the world, and in the debate they really just disagreed on 1. Like to see us treat morality this way.
Ricky Gervais says there are 3,000 gods, but he's "debating" people who say there are 3,000 views of the one God. It is easier to get along with others when you see them as similar to you in many ways but different in others. Moral absolutism is the problem, and atheists are often the biggest proponents of that.
And religious people, 3,000 moralities and they are all centered on one god? Lots of them view multiple "gods" or no gods at all. Who knows?
It's easier to get along for sure, but countries today don't tend to get along. But I'm in the US where morality is an echo chamber, and we use it to attack whoever doesn't agree with the one running the show.
Though I've met many atheists who don't share that moral absolutism at all, quite the opposite, but they also don't post on social....though Gervais of course does.
I suppose it comes down to whether or not you believe that there is only one right universal morality. If you believe that, then all other moral systems are in fact immoral and should conform to the One Right Way. You need to get humans to instead believe that actually there is more than one way to be Right. I'm... not sure that's possible?
Immanuel Kant believed in universal morality, yes. And right on the spot, he was following that it should lead to The Euthanasia of Judaism. The concepts of League of Nations and later the United Nations also go back to Kant. However, there are obvious problems with Kantian or neokantian world view and morals. But your question was more if it is at all possible to avoid choosing one right belief? I thought English Civil War settled that?
I try to tell my students in cross-cultural psychology, you will encounter many obstacles and traps if you try to debate or prove that one culture's set of practices, beliefs, values (etc) is correct or superior to those of another culture. But what you can always do, in full sincerity, is to acknowledge what problems are being solved by that culture's practices. And then you can decide, for yourself, whether you want to live with those practices and values.
An argument for moral relativism on the grounds of the adaptive value of diversity. But we don’t look to the gods for guidance on universal truths, we look to centuries of struggle to overcome arbitrary violence and suppression through both the expression of radical ideas of what it means to be human and the sacrifice of thousands or millions of individuals in the idea of some better version of human relations. This is true, at least, for we in the parts of the world that have in one form or another enshrined the sovereignty and dignity of the individual into the heart of our societies. However flawed these societies are in many respects. Murder is wrong everywhere; but only in a perhaps minority of societies is murder by the state severely proscribed. Now, if you’re mostly talking about anodyne yet important concepts of culture, like art, food, family structures, and so on, then yes. We should be open-hearted and prepared to adapt. But we should retain moral clarity where it matters.
So you are very confident in your culture's morals because of "centuries of struggle"? Other cultures didn't struggle?
For instance, an ethic that centers community and family has gone missing in the West, where in other parts of the world it remains. Replaced with an obsession on individual identity based not on anything collectivist in a positive social sense but on separation from others.
I think you're attributing to individualism an effect that was deliberately cultivated by collectivists. Marxists from Marx to BLM have attacked the family as a competitor with the State for the devotion of individuals. This traces all the way back to Jesus, Plato's Republic, and Sparta.
Yes, agreed, but the notion’s evolved over the centuries. Individualism today might as often mean flying the flag of your tribe, complying with its shibboleths, organizing online, and using social media/AI to wield outsized influence. Versus being an autonomous individual living life according to one’s own set of principles.
There's some irony that your substack is titled "That Doesn't Follow": it seems to me like your response is a non-sequitur. Hanson asked two yes-or-no questions, and you didn't answer either of them.
He wrote a commentary with some interesting ideas about moral confidence and moral variety. I agree with the basic idea and I in turn commented because I think moral confidence is warranted where it matters. That’s not a non-sequitur, in my view, but hey, you’re entitled to your read on it.
Of course, everyone struggled, everywhere, under a frequently brutal ruling class. Not everywhere has all human life and agency been deemed valuable. There are obviously many other morals, explicit or less so, that are more interchangeable.
>That one winning culture would then drift and decay into maladaption.
This is wrong. The winning culture would expand into new niches and diversify, as the British Empire did. American culture is quite distinct from British culture.
Besides, no one could manage to kill *all* rival cultures. Can't we at least destroy the bad, sick, or maladapted ones? Culling the herd maintains its strength, after all. If you want to make an evolutionary analogy at least do it correctly.
And in our culture, we have the strange phenomenon of elite class members who are certain that their/our culture is WRONG, and are given (through education and status signals and messaging) a kind of masochistic sense that their countries/histories/cultures are somehow far worse than they actually are.
When it comes to policymaking, these kind of perverse (insincere) displays are a disaster.
https://jmpolemic.substack.com/p/the-ignoble-savage
They are told that their culture has internal factions, and that their faction is right and the others are very wrong.
I remember being at a conference once where you were a speaker and in the Q&A section, some libertarian made some grand ideological claim such as "governments shouldn't do X" and your pithy and profound response was along the lines of, "that sounds nice, but governments are going to continue to do X as long as they have power which seems highly likely."
So to throw this back: how much of these sorts of ideas to increase cultural diversity are just arguing with a hailstorm?
It seems like the main possibilities of having an impact are: 1) create a movement that carves out a piece of land (legally) like an Amish enclave and then implements a community that rewards cultural diversity, or 2) focus nearly completely on getting the ear of some head of state who's willing to try something.
The problem may well be insurmountable. But until I'm more sure of that, I feel we should keep trying.
With more cultural diversity in the US, more people understand that other cultures may have superior solutions to human moral issues. Example -- many white and otherwise mono-cultural Americans embraced Buddhist values starting in the 1960s and in the decades since.
https://www.overcomingbias.com/p/libertarianism-as-deep-multiculturalism
I do like the distinction between shallow and deep multiculturalism, which I didn't have a name for, although when I teach cross-cultural psychology, students learn rapidly that those shallow cultural markers are the tip of the iceberg of what we will learn about. What you imply is that when the Americans embraced Buddhism in the New Age and other late 20th century spiritual awareness movements, they may have mostly adopted the shallow makers.
But, the whole idea of adopting Buddhism is to take on the take deeper values, like compassion, generosity, tolerance, nonmaterialism. Experts say American Buddhism (or Western Buddhism) wasn't a monolithic phenomenon. Some interpretations leaned towards more individualistic or secular adaptations, but there was a definite adoption of deeper Buddhist values like social responsibility, particularly evident within "Engaged Buddhism" social movements.
Regardless of what happened with American Buddhism, deep culture features are strongly and rapidly converging worldwide, even if we see variety of shallow markers.
I agree that being uncertain of the truth of one's moral beliefs (moral humility) is of utmost importance in getting along with others, and that being aware of and comparing others' different beliefs to one's own is equally important. However, I don't see moral values converging at all, even if some other aspects of culture might be. And, as a nonmoral statement, I have no qualms about my certainty that nothing even close to a world - or even a million person - monoculture could ever happen.
https://substack.com/@natlawinstitute fixes this.
Seems like more moral overconfidence to me.
Maybe I am misunderstanding, how about some concrete examples? Sobriety culture is superior to intoxication, and there is nothing good in tolerance for human sacrifice religious rituals. Results of moral action are measurable in competition between systems.
"Results of moral action are measurable in competition between systems."
Sorry, not even close. The most moral society could easily be obliterated by a less moral one.
Good point, I was thinking in terms of non violent competition, where society treating more people better, has greater potential.
I see. Of course, by excluding violence, you've pretty much solved morality. 🤣
Wow, I m a genius! 😂
this is very similar to John Stuart mills argument that we need free speech in order to be aware of the best ideas.
Yes it is.
You have used reason to uncover objective moral principles! (Killing all prey at once is bad. Killing off all other cultures is bad.) That’s a great start. There are probably more.
I didn't claim that there are not objective moral truths.
Ok. My bad, and sorry for the snarky tone.
You're turning the idea of "collective interest" around backwards. Morals induce behaviors in the collective interest. It's in the collective interest for people to take altruistic actions, because altruistic actions increase the global welfare, even if they carry costs for the individual. It's in the collective interest for people to be tolerant of others, because intolerance leads to violence and discrimination, which decreases global welfare. Being nasty and selfish is not in the collective interest. What you call "drift" is people arriving at social agreements about behaviors in the collective interest - behaviors like, being kind to others, being tolerant of different cultures and races, using science and reason instead of dogma to decide policy.
>using science and reason instead of dogma to decide policy
At least, that's what they tell themselves.
Who is "they"? The people who rely on science?
One man's welfare is another man's dissolution.
I basically agree but there's something hilarious about calling for more moral variety
And that very fact illustrates our great moral overconfidence.
You make it sound like just calling for more variety in our cuisine. Do you not put a value judgement on morals? Are the morals of medieval europe just "different" than europe today, like mexican cuisine and italian cuisine, rather than "better" or "worse"?
What does moral variety look like? re-introduce the morals of medieval europe? isn't there high risk of harm from random moral variety? yes but that's what it might take to stabalize cultural drift?
Regarding "Different cultures have different morals, and you have at best only weak reasons to see your culture’s versions as best" --> but your culture's version of human morals is the version that underwent cultural evolution to fit the exigencies of your culture's history, ecosystem, subsistence method, and other cultural practices [which you already said here 'practical context-dependent and rather-random evolved strategies to make our culture more biologically adaptive']. So your culture's version of human morals has a strong reason to be the best fit for your culture.
I do agree with your analysis that most humans aren't thinking in terms of cultural fit, but instead, are absolutists and think there is one right set of morals for all humans.
Yes, if people merely guessed that their culture's morals are modestly more likely to be the best morals for their culture's situation, that would be great progress.
A good case can be made for there being a large variety of cultures: They can be compared over time to see which type of culture most people find satisfactory. Besides, people's preferences may differ, so the most satisfactory type can vary with individual preferences. However, whether some set of moral statements is correct or not depends on whether any such statements are objectively true or not. If any moral statement, S, is objectively true, then any other moral statements that are true must be consistent with S, and any other moral statements that are inconsistent with S are false.
Morality is an experiment filled with imperatives and moral high grounds. The inequality of morality is implicit in belief systems, and a key ingredient in getting people to go to war.
Morality is simply an experiment, and why one is superior to another....a case of survival, or instinctual survival/programming? To justify actions.
Reminds me oddly of a Ricky Gervais joke about, as an atheist, debating over the existence of God. Gervais estimated there's like 3,000 "gods" in the world, and in the debate they really just disagreed on 1. Like to see us treat morality this way.
Ricky Gervais says there are 3,000 gods, but he's "debating" people who say there are 3,000 views of the one God. It is easier to get along with others when you see them as similar to you in many ways but different in others. Moral absolutism is the problem, and atheists are often the biggest proponents of that.
And religious people, 3,000 moralities and they are all centered on one god? Lots of them view multiple "gods" or no gods at all. Who knows?
It's easier to get along for sure, but countries today don't tend to get along. But I'm in the US where morality is an echo chamber, and we use it to attack whoever doesn't agree with the one running the show.
Though I've met many atheists who don't share that moral absolutism at all, quite the opposite, but they also don't post on social....though Gervais of course does.
I suppose it comes down to whether or not you believe that there is only one right universal morality. If you believe that, then all other moral systems are in fact immoral and should conform to the One Right Way. You need to get humans to instead believe that actually there is more than one way to be Right. I'm... not sure that's possible?
There being one best truth is very different from your being confident you have found it.
did you mean "from from" as "far from"?
Immanuel Kant believed in universal morality, yes. And right on the spot, he was following that it should lead to The Euthanasia of Judaism. The concepts of League of Nations and later the United Nations also go back to Kant. However, there are obvious problems with Kantian or neokantian world view and morals. But your question was more if it is at all possible to avoid choosing one right belief? I thought English Civil War settled that?