Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them | Joshua Green | Talks at Google

Our brains were designed for tribal life, for getting along with a select group of others (Us) and for fighting off everyone else (Them). But modern times have forced the world's tribes into a shared space, resulting in epic clashes of values along with unprecedented opportunities. As the world shrinks, the moral lines that divide us become more salient and more puzzling. We fight over everything from tax codes to gay marriage to global warming, and we wonder where, if at all, we can find our common ground.

A grand synthesis of neuroscience, psychology, and philosophy, Moral Tribes reveals the underlying causes of modern conflict and lights the way forward. Greene compares the human brain to a dual-mode camera, with point-and-shoot automatic settings ("portrait," "landscape") as well as a manual mode. Our point-and-shoot settings are our emotions—efficient, automated programs honed by evolution, culture, and personal experience. The brain's manual mode is its capacity for deliberate reasoning, which makes our thinking flexible. Point-and-shoot emotions make us social animals, turning Me into Us. But they also make us tribal animals, turning Us against Them. Our tribal emotions make us fight—sometimes with bombs, sometimes with words—often with life-and-death stakes.

An award-winning teacher and scientist, Greene directs Harvard University's Moral Cognition Lab, which uses cutting-edge neuroscience and cognitive techniques to understand how people really make moral decisions. Combining insights from the lab with lessons from decades of social science and centuries of philosophy, the great question of Moral Tribes is this: How can we get along with Them when what they want feels so wrong to Us?

Ultimately, Greene offers a set of maxims for navigating the modern moral terrain, a practical road map for solving problems and living better lives. Moral Tribes shows us when to trust our instincts, when to reason, and how the right kind of reasoning can move us forward.

A major achievement from a rising star in a new scientific field, Moral Tribes will refashion your deepest beliefs about how moral thinking works and how it can work better.

[jenslyn]

The book was perhaps the best I've read all year. I highly recommend it. Greene understands how to synthesize ideas, and he understands how to present them, too. 

[philippawaller]

I agree - human behaviour needs to be part of human education

[michaelrorer]

one of the best, most important, most needed books of the decade. Will it find its readers? will it find a path to the heart and mind of those who need it most? Not sure

[danieljones]

A "Meta-Morality" expedites and harmonizes, as much as it can, the differences between the Tribal Moralities.

[babony]

I’ve heard this context of “tribalism” a lot in 2020.

[jrshipley]

You can give privately until it really hurts but only publicly support a less demanding policy (in order to light the fire). What you give and what you promote are two different choices. The strict utilitarian just needs to bite the bullet on demandingness.

[rebeccalanegullett]

What happens when someone has no desire to progress?

[HazeyWolf]

So on the one hand Greene presents support for "point & shoot" Kantian ethics for "tribal" life (the normative range of innate pro-social behavior supposed by Harris's 'Moral Landscape') & Utilitarianism as a global solution as undertaken by large groups or nations -  which seems to equate to continuing 20th C style international realpolitik with the hope that greater economic integration, security agreements, increased global living standards, information sharing will continue to correlate to increasing prioritized global investment that reduces human suffering

Wonder what Prof. Greene thinks about Benatar's Antinatal Asymmetry?

[qwerty-]

whats the point on that 10$ sharing and stuff?

[-taz-]

It's not a tough question!  Make the guy pay for his own care.  Make him pay the doctors and nurses who served him for 6 months.  They would know the situation when they help him.

[wulder]

I can't believe that he begins with the preposition that moral = altruistic, thus implying that acting in ones own self interest is immoral. How did he arrive at this seemingly arbitrary conclusion?
He also wants to say we can measure the moral worth of an action by looking at the consequences. Again this is clearly dubious as we can rarely anticipate the consequences. Indeed most of the worlds worst atrocities were perpetrated by people with the best intentions.
I would not push the man because in a liberal society we don't get to make moral decisions on behalf of others. Because we can not know what is "moral" or what would yield the "best" result.

[bjtjandra]

"Utilitarianism"? That's the answer? Man that's disappointing... I appreciate that he's trying to spread the concept but I thought it would get deeper than that.

[-taz-]

This guy is so arrogant. He's saying I need to pay taxes (which are collected at gunpoint by the way) to pay for roads?  Just bill me for the roads. I'll pay gladly for that.  I'd even pay for my own health insurance.  But I don't want to pay for NSA spying, for wars, torture, nuclear weapons, for ousting or assassinating foreign leaders, for assassinating Americans now, for Reaper drones, Hellfire missiles, for minefields, and depleted uranium rounds that are causing so many birth defects in war zones right now. There's a whole war in Africa going on right now we're not even being told about.