I also think that they're obviously tracking various biases. A drowning child is much more salient than a far away child with malaria. One reason we think that morality can't be so demanding that people would be required to spend all their time saving children is that would be super inconvenient--we're biased by self-interest. Another reason is scope neglect--just as most people would spend similar amounts to save 2000, 20,000, and 200,000 birds (hilariously they'd spend more to save 20,000 than 200,000) they also don't care much more about saving a dozen children than just one. The third nameless faceless child is not salient--and is thus ignored.
Comments on the ACX post, and personal experience with nationalist/localist types, suggest that cheater detection modules are firing off: if someone in need isn't near me to be regularly observed, then they're probably delinquent, looking for me to bail them out, and will respond to this incentive by creating more delinquency. I wonder how strongly this attitude toward distant aid correlates with measures of cheater detection in close personal relationships, whether romantic, familial, or employment on either side.
Brilliant. And it also makes sense overall, in that:
1) it fits with morality as that something evolved because of humans living in groups with massively benefited from cooperation beyond kin preference and had to deal with all kind of cheaters/free riders etc. From this pov, the key function of a "natural" moral judgement is PRECISELY to asses whether we can trust a person, ie to asses their character.
2) the latter explains very nicely why people attribute moral and competence traits rather differently based on individual acts (eg many fewer moral transgressions are sufficient to attribute a negative moral trait than it's for competence traits)
3) and historically it also fits the trajectory of the development of formal ethics / moral philosophy. Virtue ethics goes back millennia.
VE makes profound sense for an individual who on the one hand wants to have a tool for vetting potential allies or enemies, on the other wants to be seen as a desirable ally (or occasionally a formidable enemy, I guess). It even deals (at a stretch) with the whole mess of "when obligation isn't quite the right thing" concerning the most intimate relationships.
On the other hand it's of course almost entirely useless for big scale decision making about fungible units of sentience/suffering, because in those situations all that matters is beneficence. But we have not evolved to deal with those situations because they just didn't occur for the vast majority of people until fairly recently. Thus the need to "invent" rational obligation based systems (and also incidentally, why so called "ethics" of care feels so insanely regressive).
Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). "A Person-Centered Approach to Moral Judgment." Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72–81.
I also think that they're obviously tracking various biases. A drowning child is much more salient than a far away child with malaria. One reason we think that morality can't be so demanding that people would be required to spend all their time saving children is that would be super inconvenient--we're biased by self-interest. Another reason is scope neglect--just as most people would spend similar amounts to save 2000, 20,000, and 200,000 birds (hilariously they'd spend more to save 20,000 than 200,000) they also don't care much more about saving a dozen children than just one. The third nameless faceless child is not salient--and is thus ignored.
Comments on the ACX post, and personal experience with nationalist/localist types, suggest that cheater detection modules are firing off: if someone in need isn't near me to be regularly observed, then they're probably delinquent, looking for me to bail them out, and will respond to this incentive by creating more delinquency. I wonder how strongly this attitude toward distant aid correlates with measures of cheater detection in close personal relationships, whether romantic, familial, or employment on either side.
Brilliant. And it also makes sense overall, in that:
1) it fits with morality as that something evolved because of humans living in groups with massively benefited from cooperation beyond kin preference and had to deal with all kind of cheaters/free riders etc. From this pov, the key function of a "natural" moral judgement is PRECISELY to asses whether we can trust a person, ie to asses their character.
2) the latter explains very nicely why people attribute moral and competence traits rather differently based on individual acts (eg many fewer moral transgressions are sufficient to attribute a negative moral trait than it's for competence traits)
3) and historically it also fits the trajectory of the development of formal ethics / moral philosophy. Virtue ethics goes back millennia.
VE makes profound sense for an individual who on the one hand wants to have a tool for vetting potential allies or enemies, on the other wants to be seen as a desirable ally (or occasionally a formidable enemy, I guess). It even deals (at a stretch) with the whole mess of "when obligation isn't quite the right thing" concerning the most intimate relationships.
On the other hand it's of course almost entirely useless for big scale decision making about fungible units of sentience/suffering, because in those situations all that matters is beneficence. But we have not evolved to deal with those situations because they just didn't occur for the vast majority of people until fairly recently. Thus the need to "invent" rational obligation based systems (and also incidentally, why so called "ethics" of care feels so insanely regressive).
Relevant from moral psych:
Uhlmann, E. L., Pizarro, D. A., & Diermeier, D. (2015). "A Person-Centered Approach to Moral Judgment." Perspectives on Psychological Science, 10(1), 72–81.
https://static1.squarespace.com/static/4ff4905c84aee104c1f4f2c2/t/55143051e4b0d8254390352b/1427386449045/Uhlmann+Pizarro+Diermeir+2015.pdf
Very relevant! Thanks for the pointer :-)