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Inside the Moral Black Box

2009-01-05T02:47:00.001+11:00

That we make moral judgements is uncontroversial enough, but how we do so - how we go from a particular stimulus to a moral judgement and subsequent behaviour - remains a matter of great conjecture. What exactly goes on inside the Moral Black Box?

We can start by graphically representing the process of moral judgement in its simplest terms (all diagrams go from the bottom up, with yellow indicating a change from the previous diagram):

Figure 1

At the bottom of Figure 1 is the raw stimulus: the sights, sounds and smells that confront our senses. At the top is the moral judgement, such as whether it's permissible or not to cause harm to another person. In between is the Moral Black Box, the inner workings of which have been the subject of much debate and speculation of late.

However, we don't just want to know how we form moral judgements, but we want to know how moral judgements lead to behaviour. So we expand our diagram slightly in Figure 2:

Figure 2

One solution to the workings of the Moral Black Box comes from Immanuel Kant, who suggested it is reason that plays the pivotal role in making moral judgements:

Figure 3

Thus, when you observe an act, you consider it in light of moral principles and subsequently judge it as permissible or impermissible. Only after that does emotion come into play to motivate behaviour.

Another solution comes from David Hume, who saw the moral faculty in almost the exact opposite light to Kant:

Figure 4

Instead of reason being the primary arbiter of moral judgement, Hume suggested it is the emotions or sentiments - feelings of approval or disapproval. This is because reason alone can not motivate moral judgement, all it can do is evaluate facts - the is but not the ought of a situation. However, once the moral judgement springs from the sentiments, reason provides options and alternatives for subsequent behaviour.

Hybrids

However, these aren't the only models of the workings of the Moral Black Box. Marc Hauser has suggested a possible 'hybrid' model incorporating elements of both Kant and Hume, “a blend of unconscious emotions and some form of principled and conscious reasoning,” (Hauser, 2006):

Figure 5

The two faculties of reason and emotion may be in accord or they may conflict, in which case another mechanism must interject to resolve the conflict and arrive at a moral judgement. (Note: Hauser's model stops at moral judgement; I've added the extra step to behaviour to keep it consistent with the other diagrams.)

Hauser then goes on to suggest a new, more sophisticated, model incorporating some insights from John Rawls, Hauser's so-called 'Rawlsian creature':

Figure 6

According to Hauser, “perception of an action or event triggers an analysis of the causes and consequences that, in turn, triggers a moral judgement... Emotions, if they play a role, do so after the judgement,” (ibid.).

Hauser then draws on Rawls' linguistic analogy to talk of the 'action analysis' as a 'moral grammar'. This moral grammar automatically gives structure and meaning to a situation, such as attributing intentionality to observed agents, and inspires moral judgement. Reason and emotion engage only after the moral grammar has done its work.

Moral Psychology

Which, if any, of the above diagrams is the correct model? Thankfully, we needn't speculate entirely from the armchair because moral psychologists have performed experiments intended to probe the moral faculty and establish whether reason or sentiments play the pivotal role. Here is what one of them found (Haidt, 2001):

Figure 7

Evidently, Hume was pretty close to the mark. According to the research, emotions (which, for the time being, will be used synonymously with 'sentiments' when applied to moral judgement) come first and inspire moral judgements. This process is rapid, automatic and not mediated by conscious deliberation. Only after the judgement springs forth does reason come into play to justify the judgement (although it's not always successful or consistent) and to direct behaviour.

(It should be pointed out that Haidt's experiments dealt with a fairly restricted set of situations, and other more complex situations such as moral dilemmas might yield different results, and a different moral model - although this will be factored into the moral diagrams further down.)

Questions

Assuming this model is accurate, it still raises a few key questions:

Why are certain emotions elicited by certain stimuli rather than others?
Given a particular stimulus experienced by two individuals, how can we account for variations in moral judgements made by those individuals?
How do moral judgements lead to behaviour?
What role, if any, do reason and moral beliefs play in the formation of moral judgements?

Moral Grammar

For a solution to the first question, we can turn to Hauser's 'Rawlsian creature' of Figure 6 and appeal to the notion of a moral grammar. This is a faculty is not unlike our language faculty, with a universal grammar that automatically and systematically structures sensory stimuli and orders them according to certain moral principles. One example of the moral grammar in action is the attribution of intention to agents, such as whether person A intended to do action X to person B, or whether it was accidental - a distinction that is crucial to forming a moral judgement.

However, instead of the moral grammar leading directly to a moral judgement, perhaps we can bring Hauser's (Figure 6) and Haidt's (Figure 7) models together and create a new one:

Figure 8

In this model, the moral grammar then inspires particular emotions/sentiments that lead to moral judgement - all automatically and without conscious intervention. Only after the initial moral judgement is made does conscious reflection kick in.

One of the big questions in this area is whether there is but one universal moral grammar that operates in much the same way in all humans, or whether there are multiple specific moral grammars that might vary from person to person, culture to culture. I'll remain fairly agnostic on this question, although I wouldn't be surprised if there was only one moral grammar with fairly minimal variation between individuals and cultures, and the variation in moral judgement springs from another source, which I'll discuss next.

The Lens

It's clear that there is an enormous variability in moral judgements and moral perspectives around the world, and any model of the Moral Black Box needs to account for this. One possibility is that the emotional responses vary from one individual to the next. Another is that there are many moral grammars, each informed by biology and culture, and these account for variation in moral judgement.

However, I think there may be another approach that could account for a great deal of moral variability without tinkering too much with the moral grammar - which can remain relatively uniform amongst all humans - and the emotions.

I call it the Lens:

Figure 9

Psychology is already very familiar with the notion that the raw input from our senses is heavily edited before it reaches our conscious awareness. We pick out shapes, faces, objects and even apply stereotypes or gauge threats in the barest moments after we've perceived something.

Perhaps we can draw upon this notion to propose a Lens through which the raw stimulus is filtered, even before it reaches the moral grammar. In fact, the Lens could determine which things are processed by the moral grammar, and which are processed by regular non-moral cognitive faculties.

It's the Lens that gives meaning to the raw sense data, and it's this meaning that could end up doing a majority of the work in forming a moral judgement. For example, we know that we make near instantaneous judgements about who belongs to our in-group and who to our out-group well before we have a chance to reflect on our judgement. Certainly, we can redirect this impulse, as many of us do, but the impulse is there.

So if we do have a Lens that plays a role in moral judgement, what could be the influences on it?

Figure 10

The Lens may be shaped by a variety of influences. One may be biology and evolution, such as the fact that we sort people into in-groups and out-groups at all.

Another influence could be culture, which could provide much of the content of the Lens, such as to whom we attribute in-group and out-group status.

A third influence could be experience, a trivial example of which is if you get food poisoning from an oyster buffet, you'll never look at oysters the same way again. The same might be said if you're assaulted by a member of a particular ethnic group, you might find yourself with automatic aversion responses or an automatic mistrust of other members of that ethnic group.

A final influence (although there could easily be more) on the Lens could be mood. Have your bag stolen and suddenly everyone looks like a thief. Or have a wonderful relaxing day, and everyone suddenly looks like a friend.

It's even possible that Hauser's moral grammar itself is a component of the Lens - although one that I believe must trigger later than some other elements of the Lens.

So, a certain stimulus is passed through the filter of the Lens, which sorts and orders the stimulus, discarding useless information and applying meaning to specific elements that are of significance. It could determine whether a certain action triggers the further moral faculties or passes through non-moral faculties.

If a certain stimulus triggers moral responses, it could then be processed by the moral grammar, which applies rules such as the principle of double effect. Depending on the outcome, this could trigger certain emotions, such as empathy or outrage, leading to a moral judgement. All in a matter of moments.

Reason

What of reason? Surely it plays some role in moral judgement? According to Haidt's research, “moral reasoning is an effortful process, engaged in after a moral judgement is made,” (Haidt, 2001, my italics). This places is somewhat later in the chain:

Figure 11

Once the initial moral judgement has been made, such as having someone push in front of you in line and responding with outrage and disapproval, reason may interject. An impulsive response to an injustice might be to enact retribution against the protagonist, but reason might give us pause to reflect on whether that action is in our best interests. Reason gives us a unique capacity to imagine future consequences of our actions and evaluate which are desirable and which are not. It also allows us to employ abstract concepts and moral beliefs, such as that 'violence is wrong', thus blunting the potential retribution.

Reflection using reason might yield multiple possible behaviours and enable us to balance them against each other via their various possible consequences. Should some of these consequences go against our explicit moral beliefs, or should we consider a more suitable behaviour that yields an optimal consequence, we can redirect or inhibit our original impulsive behaviour (although, of course, this may not always be successful).

A big question here is the role of explicit moral beliefs, their origin and their voracity. I'll leave these questions open for the time being, but it's a topic I will develop further later.

Moral Dilemmas

As we all know, moral judgements are not always straight forward affairs. Moral conundrums abound, as we can see in the plethora of moral dilemmas concocted by philosophers throughout the ages. To account for conflict within the moral faculty, we need to adjust our notion of the roles of emotions:

Figure 12

Here we have a slightly more complicated model, where the Lens and moral grammar contribute to multiple emotions - such as happens in trolley dilemmas. We could also have self-interested emotions arising at the same time. Perhaps the individual who pushed in front of you looks to be a dangerous sort. Perhaps our sense of danger battles with our sense of outrage, yielding conflicting judgements and conflicting possible behaviours.

Figure 12 is only a very simplistic rendering of these processes, which I think could take place both in the emotions and in reason. But it does start to explain the sources of moral conflict, which could be as follows:

Conflicting moral emotions (eg empathy for the various bystanders in the trolley dilemma)
Moral emotions conflicting with self-interested emotions (eg outrage versus self-preservation)
Moral judgement conflicting with moral beliefs (eg outrage versus belief in non-violence)
Moral judgement conflicting with possible consequences for behaviour (eg desire to help but anticipation that behaviour will cause harm and/or guilt)
Multiple possible behaviours (eg only possible behaviours have negative consequences)

I have no doubt this is far from a comprehensive list. It will only be through empirical endeavour that we will be able to tease the various sources of conflict out of our moral faculty.

Emotion

Bryce Huebner, Susan Dwyer and Marc Hauser recently posted an opinion piece in Trends in Cognitive Science questioning the role that emotion plays in moral judgement. In some ways, it's directly questioning Haidt's findings, as shown in Figure 7. Huebner suggests that emotion may play a role at multiple points in the moral faculty, not just at the beginning as the font of moral judgement.

While not directly suggesting a concept such as the Lens, Huebner comes quite close:

“We suggest instead that our moral judgments are mediated by a fast, unconscious process that operates over causal-intentional representations. The most important role that emotions might have is in motivating action.”

This places the emotions after the Lens, as in Figure 9. However...

“Emotion could modify the inputs into distinctively moral circuits rather than modulating the operation of these moral circuits themselves.”

This could parallel the role of mood in the Lens in Figure 10.

I think Huebner is referring to the moral grammar in the article when he mentions "a fast, unconscious process," but I think the Lens could be a better fit for what he's looking for. And that's not to say the moral grammar isn't one component of the Lens. But I do think his criticism of Haidt's research - or at least Haidt's interpretation of the results - is valid. We don't yet know the role of emotion in moral judgement for sure.

In fact, 'emotion' may actually refer to several things that interact with the moral faculty at several differet points. For example, mood might affect the Lens; moral emotions like outrage or empathy might affect the initial moral judgement; and guilt might come into play when we imagine possible outcomes of actions or after we've acted. So 'emotion', in all its guises, might occur throughout the process, not just at one specific point.

Also, consider that we never get a single stimulus and the time to reflect on it in isolation. We have a continuous stream of stimuli and a corresponding continuous stream of emotions. So positing emotion at one particular point is a gross simplification, albiet hopefully a useful one for the purposes of understanding the workings of the moral faculty.

The Moral Black Box

Figure 13

So the Moral Black Box may not be impenetrable to scrutiny after all. We are accumulating an ever-increasing amount of evidence that reveals the ways in which we make moral judgements, and in recent years we've seen a resurgence of Humean and Rawlsian approaches to our moral faculty.

However, as far as I know, no-one has gone as far as to propose a Lens through which our sensory input is filtered; a Lens that may play a substantial part in forming moral judgements by giving meaning and significance to the objects of perception.

From there (or as a part of that process) a moral grammar may apply specific rules, such as the principle of double effect, which leads the way to initial moral judgements, fuelled by emotions. Up until now, everything has happened nearly instantaneously and without conscious reflection. Perhaps even higher primates and other social animals possess similar moral faculties to this point.

But only humans have reason. Which, at this point, steps in and causes us to pause and reflect and consider possible consequences of our action. This is a slow and taxing, process, however. It may also introduce new complexities and threaten to paralyse action through conflict with explicit moral beliefs.

But ultimately, we settle on a considered moral judgement, which may be the same as one of the initial moral judgments, or could be revised. And this leads to a course of action. Although even that action might trigger further moral consideration, such as through triggering guilt.

This is only an early model of the moral faculty, and I have no doubt it will be contested and revised many times before it gains even occasional agreement. And it'll ultimately be up to empirical science to test this and other models to see whether they actually work, and if they do, how they differ in structure and/or function from one individual to the next.

These models also raise a great number of questions, such as:

How is the lens constituted?
To what extent is the lens fixed (i.e. attributing in-group/out-group) and to what extent is it variable (i.e. who is assigned to in-group/out-group)
What are the influences on the lens (biology, culture etc)?
How do conscious thought, reason and explicit beliefs affect the lens, if at all?
What role does emotion and mood play in the lens?
Is there one universal moral grammar or are there multiple moral grammars?
To what extent do they account for variation in moral judgement and moral competence?
How are conflicting moral sentiments resolved?
How do moral beliefs form and how do they influence moral decision making?
How does the flow through the model differ for various moral dilemmas?
Which faculties are domain-specific and which are domain-general?
How do individuals with psychopathy or other neurological disorders (such as VMPC) differ from normal individuals in their moral faculty?
How does the human moral faculty differ from that of social animals or primates? Is it similar except for our capacity to reason and inhibit behaviour?
And many more, I'm sure...

I welcome any comments, criticism or feedback, or any suggestions of changes to the models. I also have the original file used to create these diagrams, in OpenOffice Draw format, and I'll be happy to forward the file to anyone interested in tinkering with them. Just email me: the [dot] tim [dot] dean [at] gmail [dot] com.

The Racial Time Bomb

2009-01-04T17:40:00.003+11:00

In 1994 psychologist Richard J. Herrnstein and political scientist Charles Murray published a book that started a war. The book was The Bell Curve, and the war was one of ideas, with nature on one side and nurture on the other. But that war is far from over - in fact, it's only just begun, and the front lines are about to expand dramatically.

At least, they are according to Jonathan Haidt in an editorial over at the ever-thought-provoking Edge.org.

I believe that the "Bell Curve" wars of the 1990s, over race differences in intelligence, will seem genteel and short-lived compared to the coming arguments over ethnic differences in moralized traits.

Haidt is speaking of an issue that I consider to be a ticking time bomb of Homerian proportions that is bound to detonate some time in the next decade or so. While The Bell Curve dealt specifically with differences in intelligence between various racial groups, the coming controversy is about far more than just smarts.

As Haidt explains:

Skin color has no moral significance, but traits that led to Darwinian success in one of the many new niches and occupations of Holocene life — traits such as collectivism, clannishness, aggressiveness, docility, or the ability to delay gratification — are often seen as virtues or vices.

And if not only individuals differ in these capacites, but entire racial groups do, then we're not only talking about intelligence or abilities, we're talking about morality.

Virtues are acquired slowly, by practice within a cultural context, but the discovery that there might be ethnically-linked genetic variations in the ease with which people can acquire specific virtues is — and this is my prediction — going to be a "game changing" scientific event.

I agree. Not that we will find evidence that there are ethnicaly-linked genetic variations in moral competence, but that if we do, then there'll be trouble. Should evidence for such variations be discovered tomorrow, we as a society will be wholly unequipped to deal with the ramifications.

That's also not to say that there will necessarily be negative ramifications to such a finding. But that without a clear philosophical understanding of the issue and its implications - and reasons for why there aren't negative ramifications - then there'll be many who will effortlessly slip into a potentially devastating form of genetically-justified racism against ethnic groups they perceive to be 'less morally capable'. It could also fuel existing racial tensions and advance the cause of racist groups around the world (probably irrespective of the individual findings themselves).

Human genome pioneer, Craig Venter, posted a similar cautionary editorial on Edge.org a couple of years ago, although it didn't get a whole bunch of attention back then. Venter was concerned that our burgenoning knowledge of genetics would reveal a plethora of biologically-influenced inequalities:

It will inevitably be revealed that there are strong genetic components associated with most aspects of what we attribute to human existence including personality subtypes, language capabilities, mechanical abilities, intelligence, sexual activities and preferences, intuitive thinking, quality of memory, will power, temperament, athletic abilities, etc.

We can now add morality to that list.

I think that as a matter of utmost priority, scientists, philosophers, politicians and community groups need to engage with the issue of the biological and genetic basis of behaviour - and morality - and formulate some considered responses to the various possible discoveries yet to be made. We need to arm ourselves to respond to this issue in a measured and rational way rather than let it fall to those with their own extreme agendas to set the tone of the debate, by which point it may be too late.

And we may not have years to figure all this out. We may have a matter of only months. So we'd better get to it.

New Moral Psychology Compendium

2008-12-30T19:05:00.008+11:00

I'm excited. This morning saw the thud of a sizable delivery from Amazon.com - the brand spanking new Moral Psychology, volumes 1, 2 and 3, edited by Walter Sinnott-Armstrong. And what a collection!

Only a few years ago, literature on moral psychology (particularly incorporating evolution and neuroscience) were hard to come by. The field was a disparate collection of fragmentary sparks of insight, with no overriding framework to tie it all together. But no longer.

These three volumes represent the emergence of moral psychology as a serious and burgeoning field of enquiry, as significant, perhaps as the Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology, edited by Robin Dunbar.

The rollcall in these volumes is impressive: Casebeer, Cosmides, Tooby, Mikhail, Ruse, Sarkissian, Joyce (from ANU and USYD, just around the corner from me), Haidt, Hauser, Greene, and many many more.

And I'm excited. Having started a PhD on the evolution of morality, a compendium such as this will prove invaluable. Not only will it save an enormous amount time tracking down scattered papers in various journals, but the volumes include replies to papers and subsequent responses by the original author. Being relatively new to the field, such material is incredibly valuable, not only when it comes to familiarising myself with the research, but also in understanding the state of play of the debates.

If you're at all interested in the newest and (I think) most exciting field of psychological and philosophical research, then this looks to be an essential volume. I'll be adding more detailed individual comments on specific papers as I wade through the various tomes.

Is the US More Liberal than Conservative?

2008-12-23T17:44:00.003+11:00

According to the Norman Lear Center in the US, it is. This goes against the grain of much contemporary commentary suggesting that the United States is a fundamentally conservative, or at least Centre-Right, nation.

The Lear report found 34% of Americans are 'liberal', 41% 'conservative', which might support the notion that America is more conservative. However, crucially, the Centre - or 'purples' - occupied a significant 24% of the population, and this group leaned more to the Left. As a result, the US tilts to the Left more than the Right.

Interesting notion. However, I find the report, and commentary on the Huffington Post by Marty Kaplan, far from convincing.

Firstly, and most obviously, the poll was conducted during the build up to a what was to be a stunning victory by the Left. Given political sentiments are hardly etched in stone, it's quite likely that some individuals had found themselves either disillusioned with the ideals of the Right over the previous several years, or found themselves caught up in the liberal tide of the day. The very fact Obama won indicates a shift of sorts was already on the cards. Either way, this might suggest the US (or its Centre) is swaying to the Left now, but it says nothing about whether it might sway Right back again in a few years time.

Secondly, the response to the following question is telling:

Freedom is more important than equality.

To which a vast majority replied in the affirmative. Should one consider the United States' political leanings from an international perspective, then it most certainly isn't Centre-Left on this point alone, and that's not even considering the responses to guns and religion.

But to me, the most interesting thing is what this means for Moral Diversity. This is the notion that there are two broad strategies for approaching social life and cooperation: egalitarianism and authoritarianism - or Left and Right. These strategies are, to some extent, hardwired in our genes, so it's no surprise that in every liberal democracy there's some manifestation of the Left and the Right on offer - and not two opposing parties that represent a different mix of values.

According to Moral Diversity, it's expected that each individual has a range of sentiments that in sum tilt them one way or the other, but this doesn't mean we're likely to find individuals who are entirely Left or Right. This prediction is supported by the findings of the Lear report:

"Reds didn't always endorse the red position, and blues didn't always pick the blue position. There were four instances where the majority of reds endorsed the blue position (including the 55% of reds who said that 'foreigners immigrate to America for the chance to work for a better life'), and only one instance where blues endorsed a red position (52% agreed that 'freedom is more important than equality').

It's an interesting study, although I'd recommend a pause before taking to the streets declaring the culture wars over and the Left (or Centre-Left) the victor. Obama's policies and other concerns such as security and unemployment could easily disrupt the current balance of political sentiments in the US. Although Obama might have more chance than most of keeping the fulcrum in the Centre instead of pushing it Left only to have it snap back in four or eight years time. Guess we'll have to wait and see about that.

Human Rights in the 21st Century

2008-12-10T14:06:00.002+11:00

Happy birthday to the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, which turns 60 today.

It's truly a remarkable document. Despite the countless cases of human rights abuses that have transpired since its inception, it's a testament to fact that humanity appears to be on a path towards betterment. Not a smooth or well signposted highway by any means - more a rugged track carved through the wilderness of our fears, mistrust and folly.

And even though the 20th century was by far the most violent in the planet's history, it also saw immeasurable improvements to the liberty, wealth and standard of living of billions of people - more than any other century in our history.

My question, as a philosopher, is whether the Universal Declaration is robust enough to see us through the 21st century. For it is not just threatened by the same avarice and malice that have challenged it in the 20th century, nor the rising tensions of a world pitted in competition over diminishing resources. But the Declaration may be threatened by science itself.

Article 1 states:

All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights. They are endowed with reason and conscience and should act towards one another in a spirit of brotherhood.

As we learn more about the role that genes and heredity play on behaviour, the more we realise we may not all be created equal in ability. This, for some, will challenge the notion that we're also born equal in dignity (whatever that means) and rights.

The issue of the biology and genetics of ability, and how this crosses so-called 'racial' and gender lines, is one of the most important topics to be actively ignored by the vast majority of academics and intellectuals in the 20th century. Instead, it is left up to extremist groups with radical agendas to fill the void. This can't go on. We must engage this topic actively, and explore the potential ramifications of biology and ability, and ensure that we can build a solid bridge between the facts, and a notion of equality of rights in the Declaration.

The other primary challenge that may face the Declaration comes from a seemingly unlikely source: artificial intelligence and transhumanists. The current declaration explicitly focusses on 'human' rights. There's already concern that it doesn't give adequate concern to animal rights. But what of transhumans or artificial life?

Not only would we expect sentient non-humans to demand rights of their own, it would be naive to think they would have the same values we do. Or that they would not compete with us for resources. If evolution has taught us anything, it's that genes (or their artificial equivalents) are geared towards survival, and if that survival (or flourishing) sees humanity as a barrier, then there may be conflict. Possibly mortal conflict.

So what should we do? I consider the Universal Declaration to already be a superb document, but it needs critical analysis in anticipation of a number of scientific advances. We needn't modify the document, or create any new ones, until such time as it's necessary to do so, but we should anticipate the impact various changes might make - such as if there is a breakthrough in longevity treatment that might extend life to 500 years or more, but it's available only to the very rich. Such a shift could have significant ramifications on morality and human rights.

We should be equipped if not with answers, then with the right questions ready to ask when the time comes. For on the 160th birthday of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, we are sure to be living in a very different world.

Knowing That is Knowing How

2008-12-08T19:50:00.006+11:00

At first, I saw mountains as mountains and rivers as rivers. Then, I saw mountains were not mountains and rivers were not rivers. Finally, I see mountains again as mountains, and rivers again as rivers.

It has come to my attention that contemporary epistemology is entirely arse-backwards. This is because it's caught in the uncompromising grip of an obsession with knowledge-that. This, over half a century after Gilbert Ryle famously made a strong case that knowledge-that is not all there is to knowledge as such.

Philosophy, you disappoint me sometimes. Not that I'm angry. Just disappointed.

All the way back when I was writing my honours thesis - which applied knowledge-how to Frank Jackson's Knowledge Argument in the philosophy of mind - it appeared as though there was at least a modicum of debate going on over the nature of knowledge.

But I turn my back for a decade, and what happens? Knowledge-that comes back to the fore and puts the brakes on any progress on some of the most important questions in epistemology: what is knowledge; to what does it apply; how is it acquired; can we really know anything? These are important questions - more-so than many in metaphysics - because they virtually underpin every other philosophical endeavour, as well as relating to a number of very significant real-world issues, such as ethics (and metaethics), politics, science, and philosophy of mind.

So, what I'd like to do here is espouse an alternative view to the paragon view of knowledge-that espoused by Stanley and Williamson, who recently suggested that knowledge-how is a species of knowledge-that. In fact, I'd like to espouse the entirely opposite view: that knowledge-that is a species of knowledge-how. An arse-forwards view, one might say.

Knowing How and Knowing That

I'll kick off with a very cursory summary of the debate as it stands today. In his 1949 book, The Concept of Mind, Ryle mades a concerted attack on what he called the Official Doctrine, which was the prevailing mind-body dualism that had influenced philosophy since the days of Descartes.

As a part of his assault, he also gave a new treatment of knowledge, one which introduced a new distinction. To know the sky is blue is to possess some knowledge-that, whereas to know how to ride a bicycle is to possess some knowledge-how. And, crucially, they were different.

Philosophy of Ryle's day (as it sadly is today) was obsessed with knowing-that to the exclusion of knowing-how. Ryle saw this as another throwback to the Cartesian dualism he was attempting to dispel. For in the Cartesian paradigm, the mind wore the pants - it was prior to and more reliable than the body or material objects. Where the latter could be doubted, the former were the very essence of what it meant to exist - cogito ergo sum.

All activity, whether that be thinking something, knowing something or doing something, involved the mind - and not just background mental processes, but active thought. Certain things like walking or riding a bicycle were seen as mere mechanistic processes of the body, and not considered in mental terms. Thus was knowledge-that the only type of knowledge explored by philosophers. But, as Ryle pointed out, one can learn how to ride a bicycle in the same way they can learn that the sky is blue. Furthermore, in order to learn the sky is blue, one must have some kind of ability to learn, to think and to know, and one can do this poorly or well.

But in the same way that early practitioners of artificial intelligence focussed on singularly intellectual tasks, such as playing chess, while they ignored the far bigger issues of sensing or locomotion, epistemologists busied themselves exploring the bounds of knowledge-that, mostly ignorant that they were missing out on a substantial piece of the knowledge pie.

Since Ryle, very little has been written on this immensely important topic, besides a few acknowledgments that knowing-how was somehow different from knowing-that. Then came the latest blow when Jason Stanley and Timothy Williamson published their paper, Knowing How, in 2001, which advanced a radical intellectualist thesis that all knowledge was knowing-that, and that knowing-how was simply a species of knowing-that.

It seems to me that Stanley and Williamson have made the fundamental error of mistaking the description of some knowledge-how as being the knowledge itself. One might describe Hannah's knowledge-how to ride a bicycle in one, 10 or 1,000 propositions - none of which might have ever occurred to Hannah, or that she might even agree that she holds. Ceci n'est pas une pipe.

To attribute some propositional knowledge to someone must mean more than that you can describe their knowledge in propositional terms. What ever happened to justified, true, belief?

Furthermore - on a slightly mad dog, but no less sincere note - I'd suggest that no finite number of propositions will ever completely capture an instance of knowledge-how, such as the knowledge-how to ride a bicycle. Think of all the physics and biomechanical propositions in bicycle riding alone that must be implicit in knowing-how to stay aloft on one. Then we can talk about propositions about contingencies ('if a car pulls out in front of Hannah, going at 17.5 kph, swerve 22.7 degrees to the right unless the road is slippery or there is a pothole in the way'), or propositions about every nomically possible state of the world and how they might be handled. There's a lot tied up in the knowledge-how to ride a bike, but it doesn't seem to be ably captured in its entirety by even a very long list of propositions. Hmmm, that sounds like a disposition...

So, here I'd like to present an alternative thesis, although one that doesn't springboard directly from Ryle, but takes things back a step and builds knowledge up from a concrete foundation. And one that, hopefully, doesn't fall foul of the fallacy of description-being-knowing.

What Do You Know?

Let me start by posing a few paradigmatic sentences regarding knowledge of one kind or another:

1) Hannah knows 2 + 2 = 4

2) Hannah knows the sky is blue

3) Hannah knows how to ride a bicycle

The first two are commonly accepted examples of knowledge-that, while 3) is an example of knowledge-how. There are also many other more exotic examples of attributions of knowledge, like knowing how to do 1,000 push-ups or knowing how to locate Hesperus but not how to locate Venus. I'll get to these in another post in detail, but I'd suggest most are knowledge-that about knowedge-how.

The first point I'll make is we should treat our language in this field as largely suspect, as we should our intuitions about what counts as knowledge. We use terms like 'knows...', 'believes...', 'can...', 'forgot...' in many contexts, not all of which might be proper attributions of knowledge of some kind. Consider the tendency in nature documentaries to attribute knowledge to animals: "the spider knows how to weave an intricate web"; "the baby turtles know how to find the sea". They are certainly saying something interesting, but it we need to be cautious of all usages of language when it pertains to knowledge in case we're actually talking about several things and only using one word, or talking about one thing and using several words etc.

This is one reason why I'm not swayed by Stanley and Williamson's paper. A thorough analysis of the language of knowledge it might be, but that doesn't convince me that our language and intuitions correspond to anything terribly special.

So, on with the show.

Bottom Up and Top Down

In laying down my alternative approach to knowledge, I'm going to start up in the air and make my way down to the ground. Why? Because I think contemporary theories of knowledge are backwards already, I hope this will make my theory more intelligible by starting somewhere familiar.

1) Hannah knows 2 + 2 = 4

This kind of sentence expresses knowledge-that, or propositional knowledge. It's a statement about the agent (Hannah), a proposition (2 + 2 = 4) and establishing the relation of 'knowing' between them. Nothing too controversial here. There are reams of epistemology papers exploring this kind of stuff.

That's not to say this picture of knowledge is without its problems. For one, the 'justified true belief' model of propositional knowledge has been batted around for centuries, to the point that it's looking quite battered these days. It seems to be mostly accurate, but niggling problems keep cropping up, whether they be Gettier problems or understanding the truth conditions of such knowledge.

I won't deal with these issues here - because ultimately I don't think they're problems at all. This is because these kinds of propositions are never going to be unambiguously true, at least of the world. That's because these propositions are ultimately vague abstractions from the concrete world - a world I'm going to talk about shortly. And as abstractions, they've already abandoned some crucial information about the world, so they'll never be able to perfectly represent that world. No two ducks are exactly the same, so the word 'duck' represents a vague collection of things.

But wait, isn't 1) a priori - independent of experience? Yes, it is. The proposition '2 + 2 = 4' is an abstract proposition about other abstract propositions. As such, they can be 'true' - or 'consistent' - within that particular 'proposition-' or 'concept-space', such as the space of mathematics. However, I'd suggest - in true empirical tradition - that such a proposition needs to be related to the world in order for it to say something true of the world.

Mathematics started from abstractions from experiences of the world, from which point lots can be said within mathematics - and even new mathematical knowledge discovered within that system - but maths (or any axiomatic system) will never be entirely consistent and complete. Godel told us that. So when it comes time to relate maths back to the world, it won't relate perfectly. And I'd suggest this is the case with all abstract systems, including language, propositions and thus knowledge-that.

I call this a priori propositional knowledge 3rd-order knowledge. And I'm using the term 'knowledge' reservedly here, in a more psychological sense, as I don't believe a priori knowledge can ever be perfectly true when related back to the world. And even when analytic, it's only a weak form of 'truth' (there might be a better name for it) since it's only true within its abstract a priori system, and not of the world.

Knowledge-that

2) Hannah knows the sky is blue

This sentences expresses knowledge from the next tier - 2nd-order knowledge. This is another example of propositional knowledge, except in this case it's a posteriori rather than a priori; the truth of this statement depends on some fact about the world.

However, like 3rd-order knowledge, this kind of propositional knowledge involves abstraction about the world. 'The sky' and 'blue' are vague abstractions from the concrete world. That's not to say that there isn't something in the concrete world we're talking about when we mention 'the sky' or the colour 'blue'. But the proposition 'the sky' and 'blue' will never perfectly capture or represent that thing we're talking about in all its detail.

Big deal? Yes. Abstractions are useful, but they're also deceptive. I'll talk about the concrete world in a moment, but whenever we abstract from the concrete world we make at least one error - we draw distinctions. A and not-A. The sky and not-sky. Blue is not red. Yet these distinctions don't exist in the concrete world, which is single and contiguous, but not homogeneous. As such, any proposition based on such an abstraction will only ever be a vague approximation of some aspect of the real world - like a stereotype, not 100% accurate, but useful none the less.

I don't think this in any way prevents us from using such propositions - I just think we need to stop short of talking about 'knowledge' about the world (and from that, knowledge within a proposition space abstracted from the world) in black and white terms. If, by 'truth', we mean perfect correspondence with some aspect of the world - that's impossible.

Knowing-how

3) Hannah knows how to ride a bicycle

Now we're in knowing-how territory. This is 1st-order knowledge, under this model. Knowing-how is non-propositional. However - and this is one reason I think we need to be careful with our use of language - whenever we talk about knowing-how we use propositions: the language of knowing-that. And these propositions will never completely describe the knowing-how.

So 3) could be translated into saying:

4) I know that Hannah knows how to ride a bicycle

I'd characterise 3) in a similar way to Ryle. 3) means that Hannah has a disposition to perform a certain action under the right circumstances, and she possesses this disposition by virtue of possessing certain mental and physical properties. The mental properties needn't be conscious, and in fact, I'd suggest a vast majority of 1st-order knowing-how is non-conscious. Heck, think about the last time you drove home. Can you really convince yourself you were conscious of your gear changes, or indicator usage, or lane changes?

And this is where I think a lot of confusion crops up when talking about knowing-that and knowing-how. Because knowing-how can also be abstracted away into knowing-that. So when I say something like 3), this could also be stated in terms of a long ream of propositions about pedals, balance, applying pressure to the breaks, inertia, wind resistance etc. However, I'd suggest these propositions would never a) perfectly describe the knowing-how (see above) and b) they are not what we're talking about when we say Hannah knows how to ride a bicycle.

Hannah riding a bicycle is concrete, not abstract. She knows how to ride the bike because she does (in the appropriate circumstances). Any description of her riding is abstract, thus cannot capture the activity in its entirety.

Now, an objection is often raised at this point, one that Stanley and Williamson raise against Ryle. They suggest one of Ryle's premises is:

If one Fs, one employs knowledge-how to F.

And they provide an example in this vain:

If Hannah wins a fair lottery, she still does not know how to win the lottery, since it
was by sheer chance that she did so.

But, I'd suggest this is a not an example of 1st-order knowledge, because winning the lottery requires no mental activity. They could have just as easily said that Hannah knows how to use gravity to stay attached to the Earth. I would suggest that any 1st-order knowledge requires intentionality, and as such, has mental properties upon which to base the dispositional nature of this species of knowledge-how. And that rules out lotteries and gravity from being knowledge-how.

But... I do think we attribute 'knowledge' to people, animals and even things even when we're talking about non-intentional acts. The spider knows how to weave a web. The plant knows how to angle its leaves towards the sunlight. The seeds know to germinate when the 10 year flood arrives. Etc.

Now, we may well be mistaken to call this knowledge in any of the above senses. But we're talking about something interesting here, and something I think is often overlooked. For if you explore what we're talking about, we're still talking about dispositions. Except instead of requiring mental properties, they require physical properties alone.

No difference in kind, just degree - properties by virtue of which that thing possesses that disposition. Which brings me to the ground floor.

Abilities

While I'm happy to call 1st-, 2nd- and 3rd-order knowledge 'knowledge' (at least in a psychological sense, if not justified, true, belief), I still would like to admit a species of disposition that I think underlies all of our knowledge-how: 0th-order 'abilities'.

Abilities are much like 1st-order knowledge in that they're dispositions. Something has the ability to x if it will x under the appropriate circumstances. So yes, a glass has the 'ability' to break. (Maybe there's a better word than 'ability', I don't know. I'm reluctant to use 'disposition' as it's a complex term that appears in the other orders of knowledge. But it is the foundation of those orders of knowledge, so perhaps it's more suitable. I'm open to suggestion.)

We can talk about thinking as one example of an ability possessed by humans. Ryle even seems to hint that we need some kind of prior account of cognition in general before we start talking about the font from which knowledge springs. I'd suggest thinking, and all its related faculties, are abilities held by an individual by virtue of their physical properties, namely their possession of a brain structured so.

Nothing really remarkable about 0th-level abilities, but I think it's important to have them on the ground floor to give a foundation to the higher orders of knowledge. And again, a word of caution not to mistake the description of an ability (in terms of knowledge-that) for the ability itself.

Know what?

So there you have it. A four-tiered model of 'knowledge'. One that places abilities and knowledge-how at the base, and dethrones propositional knowledge from its foundational status as found in Stanley and Williamson. Furthermore, knowledge-that requires knowledge-how and abilities to exist. For one cannot abstract without the ability to do so.

I'll state one counter-example that is often cited to deny that knowledge-how is prior to knowledge-that.

4) Hannah knows how to do 1,000 push-ups

Hannah might be quite capable of doing one push-up, and she might be able to imagine doing 1,000 push-ups, but she is a long way from being able to actually do 1,000 push-ups. According to the Stanley-Williamson account, Hannah could know-how to do 1,000 push-ups without actually being able to do them. This is because she knows a number of propositions that could constitute her knowledge of how to do 1,000 push-ups, were she physically able to do them.

Under my alternate model of knowledge, Hannah doesn't know-how to do 1,000 push-ups, because she cannot do them. She might know-how to do one push-up, or 10. But this knowledge-how is dispositional, depending on her mental and physical properties (the only difference with 0th-order abilities is they depend on physical properties alone).

Yet she might possess some knowledge-that abstracted from past experiences of push-ups, along with some theoretical knowledge of human physiology and physics. With this knowledge-that, she could perhaps describe to someone how to do 1,000 push-ups in the same way she might describe how to ride a bicycle to a learner. Yet the person receiving the exhaustive list of propositions about riding a bicycle or doing 1,000 push-ups may quite plausibly be unable to actually do either one. The learner wouldn't acquire the knowledge-how to do the 1,000 push-ups.

The Zen of Knowledge

You also might be wondering why I chose that particular quote at the beginning of this post. That's a Zen proverb that I think captures the spirit of this model of knowledge. For in Buddhism it is acknowledged that the world beyond our senses is unitary and contiguous, and it's us that break it up into discrete chunks and apply labels to things like mountains, rivers and bicycles.

These labels are descriptions - incomplete descriptions - that don't perfectly represent the objects to which they refer. So if we're to look at mountains, we shouldn't fall for the illusion that that's all they are - a bundle of discrete things as represented by our propositions. Our labels, our propositions, are alluring, but they're not enough to represent reality. Thus, to see mountains as they really are requires us to unshackle ourselves from the distinctions and propositions we project on to the world.

But - and there's the zen twist - those propositions are still necessary to our understanding of the world. We might escape our constrained perspective on the world for fleeting moments - and in those moments we might even see things as they are - but when it comes to making sense of the world, we need those limited, clunky, inaccurate labels and propositions. So we get on with it, and mountains become mountains, rivers become rivers, and bicycles become bicycles again.

Moral Diversity part 2

2008-11-29T16:50:00.002+11:00

So, after the background waffle, let’s get to the crux of Moral Diversity: what it means, how it works and why I think it’s significant to moral philosophy and politics.

It’s natural to think of the moral spectrum in terms of a single one dimensional spectrum from good to evil, or moral to immoral. That’s how I think we intuitively reflect on morality, and this flavours much moral literature, such as in talk of ‘the good’, as if there is but one quality of ‘goodness’ (even though it might be composed of many individual elements). But I think the real moral spectrum is more complex than this and speaking of one ‘good’ is misleading.

We’ve already seen from George Lakoff that liberals and conservatives (using the terms in the American political sense) see the world in different ways – from a nurturant parent and strict father mentality respectively – and these perspectives flavour their moral outlook. In fact, it flavours it to the extent that many liberals see conservative values as immoral (overt nationalism, insularism, nepotism etc), and vice versa (permissiveness, the nanny state etc).

We’ve also seen Jonathan Haidt elaborate on this thesis by revealing the five moral foundations, and demonstrating how self-reported liberals and conservatives respond to them differently. And this isn’t just a local phenomenon restricted to American university students (as is much non-scientific moral speculation); this is a global phenomena, according to Haidt.

So on this perspective, there doesn’t appear to be a single one dimensional moral/immoral spectrum with a terminus in a single ‘good’. Perhaps instead we should visualise the moral spectrum terminating in at least two ‘goods’, if not fanning out into an arc of ‘goods’.

Good = Pro-Social

Why? Because ‘good’ in the broadest possible sense means ‘pro-social’. Consider some traditional moral imperatives: don’t murder; don’t steal; don’t lie etc. All of these regulate social behaviour and enable or encourage cooperation, or discourage self-interested behaviour when it can harm others and hinder cooperation. There are also other moral imperatives surrounding tradition and purity, but these, too, serve to enhance social cohesion through shared traditions.

But while ‘good’ might generally equate to ‘pro-social’, there’s more than one way to mow your lawn (I avoid cruel cat aphorisms).

Pro-sociality encourages cooperation between individuals. But cooperation is a funny game. Cooperation often entails making oneself vulnerable to exploitation by free riders. If you’ve participated in a shared assignment at school or university, you’ll probably remember how tempting it was to sit back and let the others do all the hard work – or conversely, how infuriating it was when someone else on the team didn’t pull their weight.

As such, a successful moral strategy (i.e. one that could have evolved over many generations) will be one that can promote the maximum amount of cooperation without leaving itself vulnerable to free riders. But here’s the kicker.

There is no one strategy that can manage this perfectly.

If the strategy strongly encourages cooperation, all it takes is one free rider to disrupt the system, with the eventual result of increasing the proportion of self-interested individuals in the populations. However, if the strategy is to guard itself against free riders, it must pare back the level of cooperation. If it does so, then it will not be as productive as a population with greater levels of cooperation. Then, all it takes is for a small number of cooperators to invade the population, and the balance will start to tilt back again.

This is all modelled in detail in economic game theory through the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Hawk-Dove game, and others. In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, if a player chooses to cooperate, they leave themselves open to exploitation by the other player, thus copping the ‘sucker’s payoff’. However, if they both defect, thus protecting themselves from the sucker’s payoff, then they forfeit the advantages of cooperation.

In iterated Prisoner’s Dilemma games, strategies that cooperate – so-called ‘Nice’ strategies – have the potential for the maximum payoff when interacting with other Nice players. However, a ‘Nasty’ player will be able to take advantage of a Nice player (at least once…) to the Nice player’s detriment. But if one adopts a very cautious/suspicious strategy (not necessarily Nasty, but one more likely to defect if it suspects the opponent might defect first), it might protect against sucker’s payoffs, but it reduces the possible payoff from cooperating.

And there we have the two broad approaches to encouraging pro-social behaviour, and the reason why there’s not just one ‘good’. If ‘good’ means opposing self-interest, there’s no one way to go about it.

Moral Politics

How does this all relate to ‘liberals’ and ‘conservatives’? I’d suggest that liberals represent individuals who are more Nice - or what I dub 'egalitarian'. They are willing to promote cooperation, even at the risk of exploitation by free-riders. Hence, they’re more ‘optimistic’ about other players’ intentions.

In contrast, conservatives are more pessimistic about other players’ intentions, and are more concerned with preventing exploitation by free riders, even at the cost of some cooperation. I call this strategy 'authoritarian'. However, it’s not just that simple.

Conservatives also have another strategy up their sleeves: they promote the establishment of groups of closely knit individuals whom they can trust – such as family, racial, church, social groups etc. Within these groups they behave more like liberals – they’re relatively far more trusting of other members of their own groups, and are thus more likely to act Nice towards them. However, as a consequence, betrayal of that trust is punished severely – another method to encourage pro-social behaviour.

I’d also suggest that this behaviour isn’t only learned, but that each of us are born predisposed towards being either liberal or conservative, or somewhere in between. There’s scope to move around a bit, but our sentiments are mainly hardwired, and these for the most part decide to which end of the political spectrum we belong.

As an example, think about the first time you reflected on your personal political affiliation. Was it because someone argued a point that you had never considered? Or was it because someone argued a point that resonated with you already? I’d suggest for most people it would be the latter.

Also, one of the features of moral sentiments is that they feel universal. They feel like they need to apply to everyone. So if two individuals, say a liberal and a conservative, have a different perspective on a moral issue based on their varying sentiments, they both feel as though their own sentiment is pointing towards some objectively true feature of the world that should apply to everyone. Hence, the moral outrage that liberals and conservatives feel towards each other. Even though they're both ultimately promoting pro-social behaviour, the fact they're going about it in different ways makes the other appear to be morally wrong rather than just another strategy. I think to some extent this is a necessary 'evil', so to speak, because if morals weren't seen as being universal, then they wouldn't pack the motivational mojo they have and would be seen more as conventions.

Where to?

I think there are a lot of ramifications to Moral Diversity, and not only in our conception of the good. One great empirical project will be to determine the nature and extent of this spectrum, and to what extent different individuals fall into the various portions of the spectrum. I suspect it will be around a third of the population will be liberal-leaning, a third conservative-leaning and a third with sentiments from both approaches - but we'll have to wait and see what the science says.

I also think Moral Diversity raises what I call the Fallacy of Enlightenment, which is that ‘if everyone is just nice to each other, then we don’t need laws’. While ostensibly, this is true, I see it as being virtually inevitable that free riders will invade such a population. As such, we can never rely on an 'enlightened' population for a moral or political theory. This is one reason why I think strong socialism will never succeed – it’s overly optimistic about human nature and is not resistant to invasion by free-riders.

It’s also one reason why liberal democracy is a very strong form of government: it allows for both liberal and conservative strategies to keep each other in balance (at least over the long term in some kind of dynamic equilibrium), without letting any one take over.

There’s also one further element of the moral spectrum that I haven’t discussed yet, but I think is worth raising in light of Moral Diversity. This is ‘evil’ behaviour that is not just self-interested, but 'heinous'. Things like murder for the sake of it, wanton destruction, aggression and violence – acts that don’t necessarily promote an individual’s self-interest, thus aren’t adequately covered by Moral Diversity’s definition of ‘evil’ as typically self-interested.

What I’d suggest is that these kinds of acts are not a strategy to promote one’s own interest, nor, obviously, are the pro-social – but they are an aberration of the sentiments that promote pro-social behaviour. One of the strongest of these is empathy. However, some people, whether they’re psychopaths or conditioned in a particular way, can eliminate or suppress empathy, thus leading to these particularly heinous acts. This means the moral spectrum is somewhat more complex, but this can still be accommodated in Moral Diversity by examining the sentiments that encourage various strategies, and looking at what happens when those sentiments are warped or missing, as in the case of psychopaths.

There are many avenues yet to explore within this thesis, and I welcome any thoughts or criticism. I’ll also continue to refine the thesis and update this site as I go.

Knee Deep in Reality

2008-11-17T12:37:00.007+11:00

There are a number of hotly contested ongoing - and often thoroughly perplexing - debates in contemporary philosophy that hinge on there being a distinction between an internal and external world.

One example is the debate between externalist and internalist conceptions of mental content. In this debate, the externalist school suggests that the content of a belief about water - which we know is H2O - can only be true if it actually is about H2O. If the belief was referring to another substance that looked and tasted like water but was actually XYZ rather than H2O, then it's not strictly a belief about water.

An internalist denies this distinction, and is happy to accept a belief is about water based only on intrinsic properties to the individual possessing the belief. Whether it's about H2O or XYZ in the external world is irrelevant to attributing the belief to the person.

Another example is the even older debate surrounding realism versus anti-realism. Realism is the fairly intuitive thesis - uncritically accepted by the vast majority of us, including science as a whole - that things exist, and that they do so independently of us. Thus the world doesn't blink out of existence every time we blink.

Intuitive enough, but it's a bag of monkeys when it comes to determining what exactly realism means, to what it applies (objects, concepts, numbers, morals etc) and what its implications are. So trees might exist, but what makes a tree a tree? Is there some special quality possessed by all trees that non-trees don't possess? So is there some Platonic form of tree that itself exists independently of all individual trees that we know? If our sun goes nova and destroys the Earth, and along with it all the trees in existence, what does this mean for the existence of the concept of tree? Etc etc ad nauseum...

However, I suspect there's a ruddy great weakness to all these arguments, and to the debates in general.

I've tended not to get involved in the hurdy gurdy world of the metaphysics of realism or externalism, mainly because I've implicitly never really accepted the fundamental distinction between internal and external. I didn't really reflect on this much until recently, when discussing the implications of evolutionary ethics on metaethics - and I was bombarded with challenges concerning externalism versus error theory etc. I found myself unable to navigate this issue easily and ended up uncharacteristically speechless. A little homework later and I realise it's just because I think these debates start from a fallacy, and are so doomed to tie themselves in a knot.

Perhaps it's time to cut this Gordian knot...

Inside Out

What if the distinction between an internal and external world was fallacious? What if there were not two worlds to be reconciled, but only one? What if there's no intangible barrier between our bodies and minds and the world around us, but our bodies and minds are a part of the world?

The Stanford Encyclopaedia of Philosophy has a short definition of the internal/external distinction:

"Many contributors to the debate over externalism take internal properties to be physical properties of a creature that do not depend for their instantiation on any property instantiated outside the boundary of the creature’s body and brain." [my emphasis]

But I would suggest this distinction is far from self-evident. There appears to me to be an arbitrary boundary drawn between the body and the 'outside world'. But it seems to me that our bodies are part of the world. As are our brains. An as I'm an unapologetic physicalist about the mind, thus our minds are also a part of the world.

Vagueness is a crucial concept here. If you accept that it's impossible to draw any hard boundaries between physical objects, then you accept that the abstract definitions we give to those objects - be they 'hand', 'apple', 'water' - are also at some level vague when applied to the world. So there are no nice, absolute, unambiguous types that be cleanly applied to physical objects. Putnam himself acknowledged this point in The Meaning of Meaning (1973), before introducing Twin Earth.

there are things of which the description ‘tree’ is clearly true and things of which the description ‘tree’ is clearly false, to be sure, but there are a host of borderline cases. Worse, the line between the clear cases and the borderline cases is itself fuzzy.

So the fallacious distinction between internal/external appears to be based on our intuitions about there being non-vague distinctions in the world. There are also a bunch of intuitions about what constitutes self, as well as other illusions that contribute to our sense of consciousness. Dennett has spoken at length about the Cartesian theatre, and the intuitive impression we have of being somehow distinct from the world; that we're onlookers rather than participants. And it's possible to erode the sensation that we are distinct from the world.

So I'd contest that we're a part of the world; that we're not separate from it, but instead we're knee deep in reality.

It might not sound like much of a thesis, but I really think it fundamentally changes the way you look at debates such as those discussed earlier.

Now, that's not to say that distinctions and abstractions about 'trees' are not important. Or that notions of 'self', 'cause', 'meaning' or 'belief' aren't important. But they have to be seen in their proper context. We can abstract away and talk about 'trees' as if they existed as an independent entity rather than being just a vague set - and it might be useful to do so occasionally - but we can only take the metaphor so far before it breaks down. And we can only take the abstract notions of cause or mind or beliefs or a distinction between internal and external worlds so far before they break down.

So in some sense this perspective is anti-externalist. It's a kind of error theory: there really aren't any such things as 'trees' according to a hard and fast definition, and that has an impact on what someone means by 'tree'. But meaning is necessarily vague. Trying to pin meaning down is like trying to capture the reflection of the moon in a barrel full of water.

Just ask the practitioners of artificial intelligence. They've been trying to get machines to understand meaning for decades, and the best they can do is get a machine to seek out striped blocks because they taste 'good'. No-one would suggest the robots have any sense of what 'good' means, but they behave in a way that could give us the impression they do. Perhaps we're not so different.

Moral Diversity part 1

2008-11-14T10:15:00.002+11:00

A few years ago I read a most remarkable book. I stumbled across it while stricken by a fierce hangover while in Seattle, on the tail end of a media junket. I was wandering through a book store, killing time before the car arrived to take me back to the airport. And while browsing, I spied this book with the simple but intriguing title Moral Politics, by a chap named George Lakoff, from UC Berkeley.

What could it be about? I read the back, and it immediately drew me in.

In Moral Politics, the first full-scale application of cognitive science to politics, George Lakoff analyzes the unconscious world-views of liberals and conservatives, explaining why they are at odds over so many seemingly unrelated issues - like taxes, abortion, regulation, and social programs. The differences, Lakoff argues, are not mere matters of partisanship, but arise from radically different conceptions of morality and ideal family life - meaning that family and morality are at the heart of American politics, in ways that are far from obvious.

It sought to answer some perplexing questions that I had been ruminating over for years, not least of which were:

why was the liberal/conservative spectrum so enduring in politics?
why were they so violently opposed to each other's world views?
why couldn't they agree on some seemingly basic things, like taxation?
why did conservatives consistently resist things like environmentalism - what did that have to do with being conservative?
why did people seem to fall into one camp or the other so reliably?
and possibly more perplexing of all: why did members of each camp often hold contradictory views?

On this last point, I was often mystified as to why conservatives were often so strongly 'pro life', yet they also supported the death penalty. Or why conservatives would blame the poor for not giving their children a decent upbringing, yet would refuse to support the social programmes that were intended to give them a fighting start. Which is not to say liberals were without their contradictions, such as supporting freedom of expression and association, but they were also laced with conformist unionist collectivism such as compulsory student unionism.

Lakoff's book explained all this, and more. His was the first work that explained to me the underlying psychology of the political spectrum.

I had long thought liberals and conservatives saw the world in different ways: liberals saw the world as a generally safe place and people as generally good natured; conservatives saw the world as a dangerous place and people as generally bad. Liberals were idealists and optimists; conservatives were realists and pessimists. Liberals were also more inclined to take the environment (in the general sense, not the 'green' sense) into account when apportioning praise and blame - hence the strong leftist tradition in this country of the 'Aussie battler' and sympathy for those who are 'doing it tough'. And our converse tall poppy syndrome that leads many of us to consider a rich person as no better than we were, just lucky (at least until the Howard government started to erode this sentiment and replace it was a more vigorous aspirationalism).

Compare this to the more conservative tendency (seen in American more than Australia) to attribute more agency to the individual themselves. Hence a rich person deserves their praise, under the assumption they had worked harder to achieve it. Whereas a homeless person deserved their condition because they hadn't worked hard enough, and if they did turn themselves around, they could pull themselves back out of poverty. Thus their poverty is somehow a product of their choice.

However, until Lakoff's book, I had never understood why liberals and conservatives saw the world in these different ways. Then Lakoff revealed his metaphor of the family as a model for moral thinking:

Liberals are like a nurturant mother/parent, caring and compassionate, encouraging and relaxed, open and egalitarian. The nurturant parent encourages the best aspects of their children and is reluctant to punish them when they stray, preferring to steer them back on course.

Conservatives, on the other hand, adopt a strict father perspective. The strict father is the undisputed head of the family and the final moral authority. The strict father knows his children are wild and untamed, and works to instil in them discipline and self control through a model of reward and punishment. The strict father perspective sees hard work as the path to rewards, and deals harshly with those who don't earn their keep. He can't stand freeloaders and coddling, which encourages laziness rather than endeavour. The strict father also respects authority and order, and is suspicious of chaos or unrestrained hedonism.

So, from this metaphorical framework one can see the different perspectives of liberalism and conservatism emerge. One can also start to see a resolution to some of the perplexing questions raised above. For example, conservatives believe in protecting the innocent unborn as a moral imperative, yet they don't back child support programmes once the babies are born because these go against the principle of 'effort leads to reward'.

Conservatives also don't support big government or welfare because they see that as meddling in the natural order, and undermining self discipline and an ethic of hard work. They would rather let those who work hard succeed and reap the rewards, and can't abide the idea that the government would strip them of those rewards to give them to less deserving folk. Just trawl news stories where conservatives were interviewed before the presidential election - and all the fuss they made about Obama's statement to 'Joe the Plumber' about 'spreading the wealth around'.

I think Lakoff's moral metaphor is impressive and has some real explanatory potency when it comes to a lot of perplexing political phenomena. However, even after I'd finished the book, I felt as if this wasn't the end of the story. There must have been some reason why these two moral worldviews emerged, and why they were so persistent.

It was in evolutionary psychology that I found the answers to the first part of that question, and it is from a combination of moral psychology, evolutionary biology and economic game theory that I think we can find the answer to the second part of that question.

The first part, as I've mentioned before, is that we have hardwired moral intuitions that encourage pro-social behaviour and lent our ancestors a selective advantage in our evolutionary past.

The second part is that there are multiple strategies to promote social cohesion and cooperation, and these can be modelled very effectively by game theory. Broadly, the two strategies are egalitarianism and authoritarianism (although they can go by many names and they each consist of many individual moral dimensions). So, it appears that evolution didn't just endow us with one set of sentiments - either the egalitarian or authoritarian - but endowed us with both, and set them in tension with each other.

This enabled humans to generate a wide range of responses to environmental pressures, and apply the strategy that was most appropriate at the time. This is by no means a perfect system, but it has worked to get us this far. And it also accounts for the stubborn persistence of the political spectrum.

This is the background for my thinking about what I call 'moral diversity' - the thesis that intuitions promoting egalitarianism and authoritarianism are both hardwired into human nature, but not equally in all people. In future posts I'll flesh this view out, drum up more evidence in support, and explore some more implications.

Evolutionary Intuitive Ethics

2008-11-10T15:50:00.015+11:00

It’s time I cried havoc and let slip the beast. And that beast I call ‘evolutionary intuitive ethics’. (I also call it 'the next several years of my life' as I develop it into my doctoral thesis.) It’s really a hybrid of evolutionary psychology and Jonathan Haidt’s intuitive ethics, with a little Marc Hauser thrown in.

The central thesis is that morality springs from a bunch of evolved intuitions that promote pro-social behaviour, and that these intuitions lent our ancestors a selective advantage in our evolutionary past. It also suggests that there are two broad streams of pro-social intuitions - egalitarian and authoritarian - and that these work in tension to provide a diverse range of possible responses to a wide range of situations. This last thesis I call ‘moral diversity’, and I think its significance is largely overlooked in the current literature.

Evolutionary intuitive ethics has a broad range of implications on a wide range of disciplines, just two of which are moral philosophy and politics. Regarding the former: every moral theory espoused over the past two and half odd millennia has made assumptions about our psychology, whether it be that we’re largely rational, or that we have some kind of reliable access to our inner thoughts and preferences. Recent studies appear to undermine both of these notions, and instead detail a very different mechanism for making moral judgments.

The other area of significance is political philosophy. Wherever political spectra appear, such as in contemporary liberal democracies, they tend to form into a predictable left/right dichotomy. According to evolutionary intuitive ethics, this is no accident, and is to be fully expected. This is because a certain proportion of the population will have intuitions that favour one side of the egalitarian/authoritarian dichotomy. Furthermore, attempts for one side to promote a comprehensive political philosophy - be it based on Marxist collectivism or Randian individualism - will consistently fail to convince a significant proportion of the population. This is because they are coming from two fundamentally opposed moral perspectives in terms of values and worldview, so no matter how much reason is stacked on top, those with the opposite moral intuitions will just reject it outright.

But before we get too far into the implications, I'd best lay out the basic framework of evolutionary intuitive ethics. This will be a very rough outline, little thicker than gauze in many parts, but the intention of this post is not detail, but to give a quick and dirty overview of the main thesis. I will also leave out many of the references at this stage, but I'll add them in as I flesh out each area down the track.

Cognitive Shortcuts

Recent research in psychology paints a very different picture of the mind to what we held even a century ago. The role of reason and conscious deliberation appears to take a back seat to a slew of heuristics - i.e. quick and dirty shortcuts - that enable us to make very quick decisions in a wide range of circumstances. These heuristics enable everything from facial recognition to perception of converging lines indicating perspective to fear responses to snakes and spiders.

Many emotions also fall into the category of heuristics to motivate behaviour without a lot of conscious deliberation. For example, outrage may motivate retribution for an injustice, and all without lengthy reflection on the nature or extent of the outrage - by which point the antagonist might have made a hasty getaway. Pleasure and pain also serve to encourage or discourage certain behaviours etc.

These heuristics are the product of evolution, and served to lend our ancestors an adaptive advantage in our evolutionary past by enabling them to make quick and (mostly) accurate decisions involving navigating the world, securing food and shelter, finding a mate, raising young and defending themselves from threats.

Yet, as useful as these heuristics are, they are far from foolproof. The thousands of optical illusions that abound are ample evidence for how easily our visual heuristics can be tricked. And our other heuristics can be likewise tricked or co-opted into triggering in circumstances other than those for which they were 'designed' (and I use that term loosely, by no means implying that evolution is teleological).

We have also evolved a capacity for abstract reasoning, but contrary to popular belief, it plays little role in the direct motivation of behaviour. Instead, it allows reflection and abstraction from our intuitions into general principles. These then inform the circumstances under which our intuitions fire - but it is still the intuitions that motivate the behaviour.

At this point it's worth stressing that this view doesn't say there is any such thing as an evolved beahviour, just evolved intuitions. These intuitions do lead to behaviour, but it'd be wrong to say, for example, that 'men have evolved to read maps better than women' or 'women have evolved to gossip about relationships'. There may certainly be sex differences in the intuitions that motivate these various behaviours, but the behaviours are not themselves evolved, and the evolved intuitions go through many twists and turns before they result in a behaviour.

Another point worth making is that these intuitions aren't always in accord with each other. It is not uncommon at all to have two or more intuitions competing to steer a particular behaviour. Should I lie and tell my friend their haricut is fantastic, even though I feel uncomfortable about being dishonest? In fact, it is the tension between various intuitions that yields such a diverse range of possible behaviours given any particular circumstance. This is because different strategies can lend a greater or lesser selective advantage in different circumstances. So instead of us being wiring with a limited number of intuitions that might function exceptionally well in limited range of circumstances, we are wired with a large number of more fallible intuitions that can combine to deliver a vastly greater range of behaviours.

This is similar to the contemporary view of personality theory - that we have evolved a range of possible personalities that gives us a wide range of approaches to dealing with the world. Some may not be ideally suited for some environments, but they might excel in others. And by having such diversity lends a measure of insurance against settling on a narrow range of strategies that might result in extinction should the environment shift.

Moral Intuitions

So our intuitions are shortcuts that have evolved to enable us to make quick and dirty decisions that will ultimately improve our fitness. Some of these intuitions promote self-interest, such as greed, fear, competitiveness, jealousy etc. Arguably, these are the more 'primitive' intuitions - the self preservation and survival instincts that all animals have developed to enable them to survive particularly when in competition with other individuals from their own or other species.

But we have also evolved 'pro-social' intuitions, such as empathy, guilt and outrage. These serve to encourage cooperation which can benefit all individuals and improve fitness more than if they were self-sufficient. However, with cooperation comes risk of free riders. As such, we have also evolved a range of intuitions to not only promote pro-social behaviour, but punish those who exploit cooperation.

Now, one crucial point that differentiates evolutionary intuitive ethics from other forms of evolutionary ethics - not all intuitions are moral intuitions! One mistake made by many previous thinkers was to assume that if evolution has endowed us with morality, and morality serves fitness, then all intuitions that serve fitness must be moral. That's wrong. In fact, Thomas Huxley noted as much in 1893:

As the immoral sentiments have no less been evolved, there is so far as much natural sanction for the one as the other. The thief and the murderer follow nature just as much as the philanthropist.

So, core to evolutionary intuitive ethics is that only the pro-social intuitions are the ones we call moral.

So all those fitness enhancing intuitions that promote violence, competition, cheating etc are not moral intuitions. This point requires a lot more elaboration for me to make it convincing - which I'll do at a later date - but it requires us to remember that for over two millennia we've been terribly confused about what is moral and what is not. As such, various thinkers have mistakenly taken the self-interested intuitions as being moral intuitions. Arguably, if they've been called moral, then to some they are. But I still want to make a hard distinction between the pro-social and the self-interested intuitions and only admit the former into the moral world.

There are also other characteristics of moral intuitions that distinguish them from other intuitions - such as feelings of universalisability, impartiality, non-negotiability etc - and I'll elaborate on that more down the track too.

Moral Diversity

Another crucial distinction to make is between the two broad streams of moral intuitions: egalitarian and authoritarian. (Note: they could go by many other names, such as communitarian and hierarchical, or even liberal and conservative, but I'll use egalitarian and authoritarian as they are clear enough for use here).

While we have evolved pro-social intuitions, there are two broad strategies for going about getting people to cooperate. One is the egalitarian route, which promotes equality, fairness, reciprocity and encourages cooperation through empathy, trust, tolerance etc. It's the classic dove strategy from game theory. The benefit of the egalitarian approach is if a majority of individuals also apply the same strategy, they can all benefit for a low cost. However, the weakness of the strategy - as it is a weakness to doves in the iterated prisoner's dilemma - is free-riders. As such, egalitarians have a strong emphasis on justice and cheater detection, but tend to be more trusting until betrayed rather than guarded from the start.

The contrasting approach is authoritarian, which promotes tight group cohesion, strong leadership, powerful emotional bonds based on group identity, a cautious - or even downright mistrusting - attitude towards outsiders and strangers, promotion of family ties (and nepotism) and is less likely to encourage challenges to authority or breaking from ranks. It also encourages fairness, but sees it in a different light to that of egalitarians. To authoritarians fairness relates more to an individual getting the rewards of their toil, and not having others take that away.

It's important to note that while the egalitarian approach might be the dove in game theory, the authoritarian approach isn't the hawk. The hawk represents more of a self-interested doctrine than a pro-social doctrine. The authoritarian approach is more a grudger or a suspicious tit-for-tat, since it still encourages cooperation, but doesn't trust outsiders to play fair. It's also worth noting that authoritarians would employ different strategies when interacting with those within their in-group than those outside it.

The strength of the authoritarian approach is that it's resilient, particularly in the face of a hostile environment and many outsiders who would hope to exploit cooperation. It's also close knit and resistant to change over time, at least more so than egalitarians.

There's a lot more to say about these two strategies - which will occupy a significant part of my thesis - but I'll leave it here with this introduction, which should be more than enough to give you the basic idea. More fascinating research backing up the notion that there are two broad perspectives on morality can be found on Jon Haidt's page.

One final note: I'm not suggesting that there are two and only two moral perspectives. I'm suggesting there is a broad spectrum to our moral intuitions, with egalitarianism on one side and authoritarianism on the other. Each individual will have dozens of moral intuitions that will fall somewhere on this spectrum, and most will balance each other out. However, there appears to be a percentage of people who do consistently tilt one way or the other, but the majority would be somewhere in the centre. It will be a great empirical project to explore this spectrum and where people fall on various issues.

I'd also like to stress that these intuitions aren't purely instinctive. They are informed to a great extent by experience and environment. So while emotions like embarrasment, disgust or righteous anger might be very similar for everyone, the triggers for them will vary depending on experience. This is one of the areas where reason does play a role: reason and reflection shape the lens through which we see the world.

New Ethics

So that's the crux of evolutionary intuitive ethics. I won't explore the implications in detail now - I'll leave that to another day, not least because I'm still trying to figure out what the implications are.

In general I think the implications on politics particularly interesting. This thesis suggests that any one political theory informed by only one side (and most political philosophers have egalitarian intuitions themselves) will be doomed to be rejected by a significant percentage of the population. There may be no ultimate reconciliation - certainly not through reason alone - of the moral perspectives. But this could be why liberal democracy is so robust; it gives voice to both sides of the moral spectrum and allows them to keep each other in check.

I also think the implications on moral philosophy could be significant. There are a lot of metaethical concerns about morality, such as the ontological status of moral statements. If evolutionary intuitive ethics is correct, then we might be forced into some kind of error theory, because moral statements are ultimately based on intuitions to promote fitness - but not all fitness-promoting intuitions.

There's also the question: what are our cardinal values? According to evolutionary intuitive ethics, they appear to be closely linked to the evolutionary notion of fitness. But if we ally them too closely then we might be on a slippery slope to social darwinism. I think that's avoidable, but I need to think more about exactly why.

Then there's the naturalistic fallacy... I happen to feel the naturalistic fallacy is itself a fallacy - mainly because if it's not, then we spiral into a hard problem of ethics: what makes moral facts moral if not natural facts? Non-natural facts? Not according to evolutionary intuitive ethics.

In any case, I'll leave it there for now. I welcome any comments, criticism or feedback. I still have a long way to go before I deliver my doctoral thesis, so there's plenty of time for me to correct my mistakes! Send all correspondence to the [dot] tim [dot] dean [at] gmail [dot] com.

Ockham's Beard

2008-11-07T16:52:00.003+11:00

It is a maxim itself of such parsimonious economy:

Entia non sunt multiplicanda praeter necessitatem
Entities should not be multiplied unnecessarily

Also told as:

The simplest explanation is often the best

Or, simpler still: Ockham's razor.

Ockham's razor is wielded with enthusiasm and gusto across countless disciplines, and not without some success. However, there is a weakness in Ockham's razor that calls to be addressed. Or rather, it's less a weakness than a necessary counterpoint that places Ockham's razor in context and defines its limits and bounds.

And that is the principle of Ockham's beard, which goes a little something like this:

The least abstract explanation is often the most accurate

This says that the simplest explanation will likely be imperfect when applied to the concrete world.

This is already trivially acknowledged when, for example, we talk about the application of mathematics or geometry to the real world. It's folly to seek a perfect triangle or circle in the real world, although employing the concept of 'circle' or 'triangle' can often be terribly useful in describing natural phenomena.

Yet Ockham's beard goes beyond this example to universalise the notion that any abstraction will likely imperfectly represent its concrete counterpart. Or in other words, the bristles of Ockham's beard will continue to break through the layers of abstraction, inevitably introducing either inconsistencies within the abstraction or incompatibilities with other abstractions. So we can never have a complete and consistent abstraction of the entirety of reality.

Just roll up Gödel's theorem, vagueness and leaky abstraction, and you're led to Ockham's beard.

This is really just a consequence of employing abstractions in the first place. Any abstraction, by definition, is a subtractive process. It starts with some concrete thing and pares it back to some generalisation; to those things that all these concrete things appear to have in common. No two token stars are exactly alike, yet there is plenty that all token stars have in common; enough to call them all by the abstract denominator, or type, 'star'. Yet, inevitably, that type is vague. Should we strive for perfect accuracy, the singular abstraction, 'star', will not get us far.

The search for the most encompassing abstractions is the direction in which Ockham's razor aims. Yet if it's accuracy we seek, then Ockham's razor leads us up and away from concrete reality.

This is not to say that Ockham's razor is somehow flawed or that we should shy away from its use. In fact, Ockham's razor is a vital tool for us, specifically because we are finite beings with drastic limitations to our cognitive capacity. Were we to seek accuracy above all else, we would have as many abstractions and names for things as there are things - and there are a great many things.

And for those who feel Ockham's beard is too inductive, I claim it is no more or less inductive than Ockham's razor. It, too, is a rule of thumb, a heuristic. Less practical than Ockham's razor, but a valuable cautionary notion; to remember that before we employ the razor, we need to acknowledge the existence of the beard. And at the end of the day, we might find a happy medium in Ockham's five o-clock shadow.

Moral minds

2008-07-25T10:48:00.002+10:00

A review by Jonathan Derbyshire of Marc Hauser's book, Moral Minds, in The Guardian.

Regular readers of this blog will know that I'm an admirer of Hauser's work. Derbyshire, however, seems relatively unimpressed by Hauser's claims.

Hauser's extravagant promise, in the prologue, to "explain how an unconscious and universal grammar underlies our judgments of right and wrong" is therefore not fulfilled. In fact, he comes close to acknowledging this in a somewhat deflating conclusion when he concedes that the "science of morality" is still in its infancy. And there is nothing here to suggest that this nascent discipline will conquer the "proprietary province of the humanities" any time soon.

Hauser begs to differ. He presents a response entitled Did you actually read the book? here.

Though much of Jonathan Derbyshire’s review captures much of my book Moral Minds quite accurately, there are some egregious errors that I would like to flag.

I think there's a lot of work to be done in exploring the link between biology and morality, but I think contributions by the likes of Hauser have advanced our understanding of morality by leaps and bounds in the past decade. And the fact that this is only the beginning is exciting, not deflating. As Hauser states.

The field is abuzz, and the results are emerging quickly. I am glad to be alive to witness this renaissance, an inquiry into one of the most interesting aspects of human life.

I couldn't agree more.

My brain made me do it

2008-07-24T18:53:00.003+10:00

Two individuals, in separate incidents, stab another person to death. One individual is found guilty and sentenced by a judge to 20 years in prison. The other is found guilty and sentenced to seven years in prison. Is this fair?

According to the latest scientific evidence: yes - in certain circumstances.

And one of those circumstances is if the offender is a teenager. This is because teenagers' brains have been shown to lack the kind of impulse control that adults have (or are supposed to have).

The suggestion is that even if a teenager succumbs to an impulse to cause harm this may not necessarily reflect on their character later in life. As put by US Supreme Court Justice Anthony Kennedy, writing for the 5-4 majority that outlawed the execution of anyone under 18 in 2005:

It is less supportable to conclude that even a heinous crime committed by a juvenile is evidence of irretrievably depraved character.

Yet it has also been suggested that the lack of impulse control in teenagers, particularly males, including some up to their mid-20s, may be an evolutionary adaptation. This lack of impulse control might manifest in a willingness to engage in more risky behaviour. This might be beneficial to young bachelor males who are competing for resources and, ultimately, mates.

Risk taking - as anyone who has spent any appreciable time in Vegas will tell you - can result in big wins, but often at the expense of many losses. Abstracted across a population, the big winners are the males who end up with multiple offspring at the expense of males who have few or no offspring. (The same is true on the stockmarket - which is why it's not prudent to follow the advice of the broker with the highest returns. Chances are he or she [more likely a 'he' because of the risk taking] has gone risky and struck it lucky. He/she may not be so lucky in future.)

The question is: just because an individual's impulse control is hampered by an evolutionary relic, does that excuse them from immoral behaviour?

This starts to touch on problems with the naturalistic fallacy (as commonly conceived), i.e. that you can't derive an ought from an is. Were you able to do so, then if something is natural, then it can be conceived as being good. And murderous impulses might be natural, but I'm sure we'd be reluctant to accept them as good.

I'm not sure what the answer to this issue is - but I do think the answer can't come purely from reason. Even if we reason that an individual is unlikely to commit another crime in the future, it still remains that we have overpowering impulses towards retributionism and punishing moral transgressions - not necessarily for any reasonably or utilitarian ends, but just because we're outraged. Just listen to the pleas for 'justice' from the families of murdered individuals. Reasonable they may not be, but it's hard not to feel the pathos of their pleas.

Nature may not be necessarily good. But nature certainly influences good. And that's only going to be a continuing problem for courts and the legal system as a whole as science reveals more facts about our nature.

Foundations of morality - interview with Jon Haidt

2008-07-22T13:01:00.002+10:00

Bloggingheads has Will Wilkinson of the Cato Institute conducting a fascinating interview with Jonathan Haidt - one of the harbingers of the emerging science of morality.

You can view the whole thing here.

It goes for an hour, which it a touch indulgent in this 5 minute YouTube world, but it's well worth riding the whole thing out. If you do only have 5 minutes, however, then of particular interest is Haidt talking about his Moral Foundations Theory around 18 minutes in to the interview.

This is Haidt's theory that there are fundamentally five foundations of morality: Harm/Care; Fairness/Reciprocity; Ingroup/Loyalty; Authority/Respect; and Purity/Sanctity. Haidt suggests every moral issue falls into one of these five camps.

But what's most illuminating is that contemporary liberals (or 'social liberals') acknowledge and respond to the first two, but don't respond to the last three. Conversely, conservatives (specifically 'social conservatives') respond strongly to the last three and only weakly to the the first two. Haidt suggests this is one reason for the ongoing debate between the Left and Right that seems intractable - basically, they're talking different languages, they share different values, and they can't even see why the other side would believe what the do, thus the arguments rarely reach the minds, if not the ears, of the 'other side'.

Haidt highlights this point by making a very poignant observation: after researching perspectives on morality in many different countries and cultures, and finding that harm/care and fairness/reciprocity were only two of five moral foundations, he realised that his own tradition - the social liberal intellectual tradition - was but a minority.

I realised I was a member of an unusual subculture – and my subculture was doing all the writing on morality!

This is an incredibly significant point, and one not to be overlooked. Academic research on morality has been done predominantly by followers of the social liberal intellectual tradition. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it comes with moral baggage that prevents it from seeing the bigger moral spectrum. Thus the moral theories that have sprung from this tradition - Singer, Rawls, Bentham - skip entire chunks of what many people and many cultures would consider moral.

This means the challenge for the next generation of moral thinkers is to construct a moral theory, or a prescriptive moral system, that takes all the moral intuitions into account. It may well be impossible to construct a system in an entirely self-consistent way, but this may be a result of the simple fact that our moral intuitions are not themselves self-consistent. In my thinking, this is because we operate more as a result of tensions between opposing forces - self-interest versus other interest etc - rather than having singular guiding principles.

One more parting thought - I wonder whether there might be another moral foundation. Wilkinson and Haidt already wrestle with the distinction between social liberal (or old school socialist Left) and libertarian, acknowledging that they both score low on ingroup/loyalty; authority/respect; and purity/sanctity, and the socialist Left focus more on harm/care while libertarians focus more on fairness/reciprocity. But I don't know whether that fully captures the distinction.

I wonder whether there's another axis along self/other-agency.

Let me use an example. When you see a homeless person begging on the street, clearly disheveled and likely to be on, or coming down from, drugs, what do you think?

I think the important thing is whether you attribute that individual's condition to their own actions or to external forces.

I would suggest a pillar of the socialist Left was a stronger belief in external factors guiding our lives. A few wrong turns and even a good hard working person can become homeless. For that reason, they deserve compassion.

On the other hand the strong libertarian might see that person as being more individually responsible for their own fate. They made some bad calls, or they were slack or weak, and they therefore deserve to bare the responsibility for their actions. As such, they don't deserve as much compassion from us.

Certainly, self/other-agency is not as easily identifiable as a moral foundation like harm/care, but it does set up which conditions make a particular thing worthy of moral consideration. The idea needs to be fleshed out, but I think the distinction between communitarian and individualist sentiments needs more clarity in the Moral Foundations Theory.

Still, the Moral Foundations Theory is a triumph of thinking - it's amazing it took us so long to figure it out. I'll end by echoing a sentiment of Wilkinson's at the end of the video: "I'm a Haidtist!"

How to kill postmodernism

2008-07-18T10:26:00.002+10:00

Most art these days is crap. And that saddens me deeply.

But it doesn't have to be crap. I remember when growing up we had a much loved friend of the family who was an artist - a gifted and eccentric artist - who sat me down and explained in sombre but urgent tones why he did what he did. He was on a mission, for the sake of humanity, to explore what it means to exist, to live and to die. His medium was paint and canvass. He wielded his brush to create something that would reveal hidden truths to the viewer.

It wasn't about ego. It wasn't about money. And it wasn't about bringing down the establishment, empowering the oppressed or shocking for the sake of shock itself.

Sadly, it seems much of the gallery exhibited art that is produced these days is more about 'subversion' than creativity. It's more about so-called 'exploring' concepts that are either so confused or obtuse that they teach us nothing.

I blame postmodernism (as exemplified by the YBA).

Simply put, postmodernism is a movement that was only ever half-inspired, and it exhausted its value to art shortly after the movement began. Yet, by the astounding voracity of its meme, it's proven virtually inescapable for modern artists. And over time, it has become the very thing it sought to destroy.

Postmodernism has fostered a new elite and has reinstated the gallery as the only place 'true art' is shown. It is exclusive, presumptuous and deeply vacuous. In fact, I think Dada achieved nearly everything postmodernism sought to achieve, and things have regressed from there.

Why is postmodernism so voracious? Because it's conceived in such a way that the very act of rejecting it is a postmodern act. Postmodernism is all about reacting to those who come before, or around, you. So by even suggesting a new art movement in reaction to postmodernism just leads to more of the same.

So how to break free? The beginnings have already emerged, in the form of the Stuckists. The Stuckists want to recapture some of the values of modernism, hence their coining the term Remodernism. It's about returning to 'authenticity', without pretence and without the gagging desire to be avant-guarde. It's about re-injecting values into art - values that have not only been avoided, but overtly rejected by postmodernism and its rampant relativism.

Does Stuckism successfully break free from the pomo spell? Nearly, but not quite. I still find a hint of self reference and self consciousness to Stuckism, as shown in the last point of its manifesto:

Stuckism embraces all that it denounces. We only denounce that which stops at the starting point — Stuckism starts at the stopping point!

So what will it take to move on from postmodernism - or as it's called these days, with or without irony, 'post-postmodernism?

I think the only way to cut through the funk is to reject the pitiless relativism of postmodernism and acknowledge that there are some things that are common to all humans and that there is a reason why art is art, not soccer. It's no accident that paintings, sculptures and music have a profound effect on our psyche. In fact, recent research has been revealing startling facts about how our brains appreciate art, and why we respond to certain things in certain ways.

For example, there are clearly parts of the brain that are specialised in recognising faces, and perceiving emotions thereon. The same mechanisms are evoked by an artistic representation of a face (or a landscape, or a physical object, or even abstract entities like colours or textures). Thus, an artist can stir emotional responses through a representation, and they need not do so consciously - in fact, artistic intuitions are enough to create something with affect. And there is nothing inauthentic about this approach.

I firmly believe that art is ripe for a revolution, one that will make postmodernism seem childish, shallow and naive. It will be art that is intended to have an effect on the audience, whether it be happiness, sadness or simply exhibiting something aesthetically pleasing. Meaning can come back to art, and not in wildly presumptuous tangential ways. Representation, symbols, significance, culture can all return without fear of being called out for selling out to a dominant cultural paradigm or whatnot. That will be authentic art.

Already there are movements that are focussed on bringing art to the public, not keeping it seconded away for the art elite. This is exactly what we need: more art in homes around the world. We shouldn't be leaving people framing the same old prints from the art gallery store or hanging more art deco on their walls (not that there's anything wrong with either - but there should be an injection of new, wonderful art into the mix).

Now, I'm no artist myself, so I don't know what form art could take in the future. But conceptually, postmodernism is a decaying edifice, a house of cards, that is ready to collapse with the rejection of rampant relativism and subjectivism. And that can only be a good thing for art and culture as a whole.

Showdown: moral emotions vs moral reason

2008-07-17T16:14:00.002+10:00

It's been a chicken and egg debate for centuries: which comes first, the moral emotions or the moral reasons?

One side of the debate would have us think that moral judgments are the result of our moral reasoning, and our emotions then serve to motivate our behaviour after the fact. Thus, Fred thinks Mary shouldn't have lied to him, so he becomes angry.

The other school of thought paints the opposite picture: Fred is angered by Mary's lying, so he judges it as morally wrong.

Well, the latter school, called social intuitionism, is starting to rack up evidence in its favour, showing that we often make quick snap moral evaluations in the form of intuitions, and reason only kicks in afterwards to present a justification.

And this process kicks up some interesting side effects, like that many of us a moral hypocrites, as reported on MSNBC.

Most of us, whether we admit it or not, are moral hypocrites. We judge others more severely than we judge ourselves.

Another example comes from Live Science.

A new study finds that a sense of moral superiority can lead to unethical acts, such as cheating. In fact, some of the best do-gooders can become the worst cheats.

All this raises some interesting questions about how our moral faculty works - and what that means for our moral systems. Certainly we'd like to think that we're guided by moral principles that are rational and non-contradictory. Yet it appears that no matter what our reason says, our moral intuitions get involved first and motivate our moral behaviour, leaving reason to pick up the pieces.

So much for the categorical imperative, eh?...

The evolution revolution

2008-07-16T18:38:00.004+10:00

Two interesting articles, both worth a read. And both addressing the movement towards an evolutionary understanding of human nature - or at least, an understanding of human nature that doesn't exclude human nature, as did much of the social science of the latter half of the 20th century.

The first is about the father of sociobiology (and hence, the veritable grandfather of evolutionary psychology), E. O. Wilson in The New York Times.

Wilson is a fascinating character, and one whom I greatly admire. I don't subscribe to his entire view of the role of evolution in behaviour though. I do agree that multi-level selection is likely superior to considering evolution only from the perspective of genes. And I agree that evolution shapes behaviour - but only indirectly through faculties and sentiments.

I also agree that moral philosophy didn't get terribly far in the 20th century. Heck, we're still reading the Greeks and Hume/Kant to get our main alternative views of morality. That's not to say there hasn't been some very important progress in the 20th century, but when it comes to broad, fundamental perspectives on morality, it falls short. My belief is this is because of two main reasons. First is that the underlying theories of human nature were flawed for much of the 20th century; moving from Freudianism to behaviourism to a belief in nurture to the exclusion of nature. Second is that, sadly, the 20th century became obsessed with definitions of morality rather than trying to advance moral thinking by proposing new moral systems. I blame G. E. Moore.

However, as the next article by Daniel Finkelstein in the Times Online states, a new movement is underway that is changing our view of human nature. And with this changed view should come a new perspective on morality - the topic of my own thesis.

Perhaps I'm biased, but I think this could be as significant a movement in morality as any we've had. All theories of morality make assumptions about human psychology, and to date, they've all been wrong. So with a new understanding of psychology we have an opportunity to find a new understanding of morality.

And it can't come at a better time - the world is changing faster than ever before, and society is very different to the way it was even 50 years ago, let alone 250. We also face new challenges not confronted by humanity before - challenges of finding the limits of human existence and building a sustainable society in a world filled to the brim with people. To get us through these challenges we need a moral system that is appropriate for the 21st century, not one that was developed two millennia ago, or even two centuries ago. And with the likes of Wilson and the researchers mentioned by Finkelstein, we might just be starting on the path to finding it.

Calamity or sustainability: the choice is ours

2008-07-16T11:46:00.003+10:00

The world population is expected to hit 9.2 billion by 2050, according to the UN's World Population Prospects report. That's up 2.5 billion over the next 43 years. The report puts this figure in context thus:

This increase is equivalent to the overall number of people in the world in 1950 and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.

Yet consider that the fundamentals of our market system, and the economics that underpin it, stem from before 1950, when 'natural' factors were abstracted away as immutable constants, and not considered as non-renewable resources.

There are already overwhelming signs that the world population is at its limits, not only in terms of sheer numbers, but also the level of resource consumption per individual. As Asia rises (again) and demands the standard of living the West has kept to itself for the past two centuries,
non-renewable resources will only be further stretched.

And even ignoring for a moment energy and food, one of the biggest issues the world faces is fresh water. Just about region in the world is suffering from some level of water shortages, and wealthy nations are not immune. And without water, not only do you get famine, but you also get war.

This is not just all idle speculation and environmental rhetoric, it's the words of Professor Jeffery Sachs, Director of the Earth Institute, and world renowned economist and advisor to the likes of United Nations Secretaries-General Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon and presidents and prime minsters around the world.

I had the privilege of attending a lecture by Sachs last night at the launch of Sydney University's Institute for Sustainable Development. Sachs spoke with his trademark passion about the crisis facing the world in terms of environment, climate change, population growth, resource consumption and the impact of the rise of China and India on the world economy. Simply put, our course at the moment, if left unchecked, is driving us towards the cliff.

While previous generations had their own watershed challenges - depression, world wars, the spectre of nuclear holocaust, just to name those from the 20th century - ours will be to find a way of living sustainably and peacefully through the 21st century. This is in the face of market forces that are - not by design but by principle - opposed to any measures that might curb growth.

Consider this chart of world wealth over the past 2,000 years. The different colours represent the wealth of various regions, but the overall trend is what is most important. Come the industrial revolution in the mid-19th century, and wealth skyrockets, particularly in Europe and the United States. We can thank two main things for this growth: 1) is readily available energy; 2) is capitalism and market economics.

There can be no question that market economics along with increased trade between nations is the lubricant that has enabled other innovations and technologies to flourish and wealth to grow.

However, as I suggested at at the beginning of this post, the very strength of market economics is its ability to steer itself towards the most productive ends, yet that could be our greatest problem. This system only works if there are no hard bounds to growth. Even if there are a few hard bounds, as long as there it at least one unlimited resource that itself is not dependent on finite resources, then it can continue to grow. Thus we've seen innovation and technology push growth to levels beyond what was thought possible even in the 1970s. But the sad fact is, there aren't any infinite resources that are not themselves bound by other factors. Not a one. Even technology is finite, as it's dependent on humans themselves, and human require an environment to live in, air to breathe and water to drink.

My biggest concern with developing a sustainable world is how to ween us from unchecked market economics without scuttling the market entirely. As Sachs said in his lecture "have no nostalgia for pre-industrial times." We certainly don't want to wind back the clock of health, information technology, food production, science or social liberalisation if we can help it. But how to create a new economics that is not dogmatically driven by the pursuit of short term growth?

The good news is, I think it can be done. People like David Suzuki have been harping on for years about the need to quantify environmental and relatively insubstantial factors so we can incorporate them in our economic thinking. For example, if we place a price on carbon emissions, then the market - instead of being the enemy - can be the most powerful weapon in our arsenal to combat carbon emissions. Hence: carbon trading.

This is no easy feat, however. It requires enlightened long term vision by politicians, and by the people who elect them. And it's notoriously difficult to encourage people to make a short term sacrifice for a long term gain. In psychology, it's called discounting.

But it's also immensely significant that economists - like Sachs and the editor of The Economist, John Micklethwait, who I saw speak a couple of weeks ago - are speaking so passionately about the environment. They are not individuals who necessarily place an intrinsic value on the environment for its own sake, as do many environmentalists. They place a value on the environment for our sake. This move does not diminish the environment, but it enhances it for millions of people in the world who don't share the sentiments of environmentalists. In fact, while I have deep respect for environmentalists, I believe it will be the pragmatic approach of economists who will actually motivate the world to change its behaviour and steer towards sustainability, not so-called 'treehuggers'.

However, making things all the more difficult are external forces of ignorance and dogma that only serve to drive the world closer to the cliff. Take Sydney's Catholic Cardinal George Pell and his recent appeal for the West to increase its population. As mentioned at the opening of this post, population is already reaching calamitous levels, and things are only going to get worse. What the world needs is not more people, but less. Add to this the Catholic Church's abominable policy against family planning and contraception, particularly in Africa - which as you can see by the fertility map at the top of this post, is undergoing dramatically unsustainable population growth, coloured in red - is causing untold misery for millions of people. Enlightened?...

Sachs made mention of Pell in his lecture too, suggesting in his characteristic droll manner that he "remains unconvinced" of this strategy of increasing population.

And on a closing note, in light of World Youth Day happening right here in Sydney at the moment, the Catholic Church is exactly what the world doesn't need. Besides its half-hearted (and philosophically dubious) attempts to update its Seven Sins to be relevent to the modern world, its dogmatic approach to the world is the way of the past, not of the future.

Any ideology that seeks to improve the lot of humanity in the future needs to go beyond religious singlemindedness and embrace empiricism along with reason and a moral code that is in accordance with the natural world, rather than being based on the supernatural.

Any ideology based on the supernatural will inevitably draw a line at some point of reasoning at some arbitrary point and appeal to faith. For example: contraception. The question of whether contraception is good or bad is a complex one, and requires us to explore the evidence for the harm or good it serves to humanity. Yet the Vatican doesn't care about the evidence for harm and care, it only cares about its interpretation of its religious texts - written many centuries ago in a very different world. This cannot be the way we seek answers.

In fact, some say you can't have morality without religion. I disagree. I think you can't have a complete moral system with religion. And right now, humanity has to develop a moral and ethical system that will help us find the right values that will enable us to survive this watershed moment in history - this quest to find a sustainable way to live.

Sachs finished his lecture on an optimistic note by referring to John F. Kennedy's Peace Speech, given only months after the Cuban Missile Crisis - and a catalyst for the first nuclear weapons treaty between the US and the USSR. In this speech he says we should certainly acknowledge our differences, but far more important are our commonalities. And we all want to live in a peaceful world, a sustainable world, a world we can pass on to our children knowing they can find happiness for themselves and their children.

Here is a passage from the speech that might just as well be about our great challenge as it was about finding peace in the age of nuclear war:

Too many of us think it is impossible. Too many of us think it is unreal. But that is dangerous, defeatist belief. It leads to the conclusion that war is inevitable - - that mankind is doomed - - that we are gripped by forces we cannot control.
We need not accept that view. Our problems are manmade - - therefore, they can be solved by man. And man can be as big as he wants. No problem of human destiny is beyond human beings. Man's reason and spirit have often solved the seemingly unsolvable - - and we believe they can do it again.

We are living through history right now. And we may be seeing a turning point for the world, starting in 2008. New leadership in Australia and the United States could be the start of a shift from 20th century thinking into 21st. There are still many pieces of the puzzle missing, but the beginning of the solution may be coming into focus. We just need to maintain our commitment and not be distracted in our quest to make this a sustainable and peaceful world.

Science of morality

2008-07-09T22:32:00.003+10:00

Robyn Williams at the ABC was kind enough to allow me to record an essay for its Radio National programme, Ockham's Razor.

You can listen to the podcast here.

The topic is a general look at the science of morality, covering such things as the origins of altruism, moral reasoning and the possibility of an innate moral faculty. I also refer to the groundbreaking work done by Jonathan Haidt and Marc Hauser on moral sentiments and an innate moral faculty, respectively.

Being an essay, it also gave me an opportunity to mention angle of great interest to me: if we indeed do possess an evolved moral faculty and innate moral sentiments, are entirely appropriate in today's world? One clear example is our tendency to classify people as us or them.

If it turns out that these tendencies contribute to conflict and general human suffering, should we look to actively contradict them? Certainly we do so when it comes to sweet foods. And yet we're undergoing an obesity epidemic in the West these days, so we're obviously not faring too well in that fight.

Reiterating my closing comments in the essay, I feel we're only scratching the surface of the science of morality. But it's a crucially important field, and even if we don't like the truths it might uncover - or refuse to confront them - we ignore them at our peril.

Creationism is deliberate ignorance

2008-07-09T21:29:00.002+10:00

David Kidd pointed me towards some fascinating research about scientific literacy amongst Americans.

And if you're interested, the raw data and actual questions asked can be found here.

One thing I found striking while digging through the results was that for most questions, often only around 10% provide the wrong answer (some of my favourites being that the sun doesn't shine at the south pole; the earth takes a month to go around the sun and all radioactivity is made by humans). That's actually quite heartening.

However, the big spanner in the data was the question about evolution. Here we have an almost 50/50 split between those who believe humans developed from earlier animals, and those who believe they didn't. What this says to me is it's not a case of lack of scientific literacy, it's a concerted attack on evolution by the religious fundamentalists. It appears as though there are individuals who are otherwise scientifically competent, except for their dogmatic rejection of one particular theory.

Now, I know it's all too easy to point one's finger at religious fundamentalists and wonder how they could be so misguided. I don't want to get into any discussions or commentaries about how ludicrous it is that the world's scientific leader can also have around half its population rejecting possibly the most powerful and sublime scientific theory ever concocted (I think I've said enough right here - and there's plenty more around if anyone wants to delve deeper). But it is worrying to think this is not a matter of lack of education. It's a deliberate ignorance. And I find that deeply troubling.

Two flavours of evolutionary psychology

2008-07-02T14:48:00.004+10:00

In many people’s eyes, evolutionary psychology (EP) has a bad rap. For some it’s methodology is questionable. For others the conclusions unpalatable. I actually tend to think many criticisms of EP are misguided, and either miss the point or attempt to build a straw man only to burn it down. But, I also acknowledge that EP has some criticisms that are clearly worthy of attention.

But I think a lot of the criticisms of EP are really targetted at just one approach to EP, and it's not the only approach one can take. In fact, I find it helpful to distinguish between what I see as two broad streams of EP; two streams that often perceived as being one and the same yet they are different enough to handle the criticisms in very different ways. And they both have significant implications on other fields, such as moral philosophy.

I'd even go so far as to say I was an enthusiastic subscriber of one version, while being but cautiously interested in the other. And I suspect a lot of EP critics would also find themselves in the same boat.

The first stream I call 'leaps and bounds', or 'top down', evolutionary psychology (let's call that TDEP). The other is, predictably enough, 'small steps', or 'bottom up', EP (here, BUEP). The fundamental distinction is between what they are trying to use evolution to explain behaviour.

TDEP is typified by the Leda Cosmides and John Tooby school of thought. Other exemplars would be David Buss, Robert Trivers and other 'sociobiologists' like E.O. Wilson. In my eyes, the common element running through all their research is the observation of behaviour and the positing of evolutionary explanations for it. So it draws a long thread from genes all the way through to individual, or even collective, behaviour.

As such, while the research often starts with behaviour and ends with genes, the theories travel the other way, starting with genes and ending with behaviour. If you get my drift. And this is where many of the criticisms of EP are targetted: at the link between genes and the end behaviours.

Just a few of those criticisms include the difficulty of 'reducing' complex behaviours to one or more genes; the assumption that this approach implies that genes determine behaviour, and the contrary observation that there are very few behaviours that are universal; the idea that genes 'fix' behaviour, not allowing for change or free will etc.

But the other school of thought, BUEP includes researchers like Robin Dunbar, Marc Hauser, Jon Haidt and others. BUEP doesn't necessarily stress the link between genes and behaviours rather than linking genes with faculties. This might seem a trivial difference, given that the faculties themselves (like the language faculty, or Hauser's moral faculty) lead to behaviour, but the key point is the genes enter the picture at the bottom and there is plenty of wiggle room before they hit the dry land of behaviour.

Some might also say this distinction is trivial because BUEP is not really that controversial (although some research in its field could be considered such, like Haidt's work on political sentiments). The idea that evolution has shaped our brains in the same way as our bodies is simple enough. Sure, we aren't born as a tabula rasa, because there has to be a tablet with certain properites to begin with, and evolution shaped those properties.

But even BUEP is important because it reminds us that biology and evolution are important in behaviour, even if they are several steps removed. And BUEP is a foundation of TDEP, so even if you question the findings of the latter, the former can still stand.

I find this distinction useful for my own research into the the implications of evolution on morality. Certainly there's lots to talk about with Cosmides and Tooby's notions of a cheater detection module, or Trivers' talk about a biological basis to altruism. But there's another story that makes even BUEP significant for moral thinking.

First if, as Hauser suggests, evolution has endowed us with a moral faculty that works at the level of sentiments in cahoots with a number of hardwired cognitive heuristics, this could have potentially sweeping implications on morality. For example, if this picture is true, then where do we find our moral foundations? From whence come our 'cardinal values', as Dennett likes to say.

We normally think that our cardinal values - often including things like altruism, compassion, temperance etc - are rationally justifiable, or that they just are. But if evolution sticks its nose into our moral realm, it can stir things up.

If evolution has shaped our moral faculty, presumably because it lent some adaptive advantage to our ancestors, does this mean our values are ultimately reducible to those things that lend a selective advantage? This would be tantamount to a fierce naturalism, and would quickly fall foul of the is-ought problem (which is often called the naturalistic fallacy, although the two are different) as well as claims that it could lead to a form of Social Darwinism. But, if we dismiss such a naturalism, what's left? Do we pluck our cardinal values out of thin air, as suggested by G.E. Moore? Or are we left with moral nihilism, as Richard Joyce believes?

Another moral issue concerns utilitarianism, and that old chestnut of why maximise happiness or pleasure rather than some other value. If it turns out that evolution can provide an explanation for the existence of happiness or pleasure, and they turn out to be simply behavioural motivators to point us towards things that promote our survival - while pain serves the opposite role - then this, too, could ground morality in biology. For, if our biology was different, then so too would be our morality.

All this stems from BUEP, let alone the considerations of TDEP. So even if you have concerns about the leaps and bounds school, if you even but acknowledge that evolution plays some role in our behaviour, even by shaping our cognitive faculties, then there are still important issues that stem from that, particularly in the moral realm.

The Singularity isn't near

2008-06-27T12:21:00.002+10:00

One day we'll all be enslaved/liberated by superintelligent machines and/or uploaded/downloaded into vast computer matrices and freed from the evils of death. At least, that's according to proponents of the coming Singularity.

If you believe the Singularity is near or not, there's a wealth of fascinating material to read over at the IEEE Spectrum Online. For the faithful, it's a wellspring of hope that the rapture might be near. But for sceptics (like myself), it's still full of meaty chunks that should be considered, if only to spark articulations of why it's all fantasy.

Some highlights include Signs of the Singularity by Vernor Vinge, mathematician, computer scientist and sci-fi author. He helpfully signposts the way to the Singularity to ensure we don't miss it when it comes. Wouldn't that be embarrassing?

And Vinge is boundlessly optimistic about the whole project

I think it's likely that with technology we can in the fairly near future create or become creatures of more than human intelligence. Such a technological singularity would revolutionize our world, ushering in a posthuman epoch.

Now, I don't doubt our ability to expand human capacity, but it seems a bit of a leap to start talking about post-humans already. Especially when we don't really know what post-humans will be.

It all smacks to me of runaway utopianism based around the unexamined (and I think fallacious) assumption that progress = good. There's even swathes of text written by Singularitists that overtly suggest that evolution is a progression towards something better. From Vinge's essay:

there are a couple of trends that at least raise the possibility of the technological singularity. The first is a very long-term trend, namely Life's tendency, across aeons, toward greater complexity. Some people see this as unstoppable progress toward betterment.

This explicitly equates complexity with betterment. Yet wouldn't we be coy when a supervirus - one of the most simple of all organisms - wipes us out? Or should I say 'betters' us?

Another notion raised willy nilly by Singularitists is that intelligence is the answer to all our problems. Take this example from Robin Hanson, author of The Economics of the Singularity.

One of the pillars of the modern singularity hypothesis in its many forms is that intelligence is a general elixir, able to cure many if not all economic ailments. Typically, this belief is expressed in the form of an argument that the arrival of very intelligent machines will produce the next singularity.

I wonder what seemingly intractable problems we are faced with today that could be trivially solved by the brute force application of more intelligence? Take the Israel/Palestine conflict. Would a superintelligence yield some startling insight into the conflict that will cause both sides to sit back, shake their heads at their decades of folly, kicking themselves that they hadn't seen the solution before, then shake hands and make up?

I find that unlikely.

In fact, I suspect there is already more than sufficient intelligence to suggest an answer to even as intractable a conundrum as the Israel/Palestine conflict: both sides need to make concessions and sacrifices, both materially and symbolically, to the other side. But that ain't gonna happen, even if Deep Thought thinks it should. That's because there's more than intelligence at stake - there's emotion, pride, greed, ideology, outrage etc. And intelligence is a drop in ocean compared to their potency.

That is, of course, assuming the superintelligence doesn't just damn it all to hell and take over:

A few even imagine innovations so unprecedentedly potent that a single machine embodying the first innovation could go through the entire innovation series by itself, unnoticed, within a week, and then take over the world.

Sounds suspiciously like the old benevolent dictator argument to me. And sure a benevolent dictator would be great, but the problem is not the calibre of the leader, it's that there are no checks and balances, which are arguably more important that a good leader.

Thankfully the Singularity essays are not all by the faithful. In fact a fascinating one is written by American science journalist John Horgan about the challenges in producing a conscious machine - at least one based on our vast ignorance of the human brain.

Specialists in real rather than artificial brains find such bionic convergence scenarios naive, often laughably so.

Indeed, the more you learn about brains, the more you may wonder how the damn things work. And in fact, sometimes they don't. They succumb to schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression, Alzheimer's disease, and many other disorders that resist explanation and treatment.

The second point here is especially pertinent. If we're trying to emulate human intelligence, we're more likely to produce a nimrod like Corey Worthington than an Einstein. Would we really want an AI that would rather watch Big Brother and wonders whether its cooling units look fat in this colour?

And, more seriously, are we prepared for an AI that suffers from some psychopathology?

Just another reason I think the Singularitists are pushing a bridge too far with their AI speculations. We have a long way to go before marginal intelligence is possible in an AI, let alone superintelligence.

Hardware capable of superintelligence is not a sufficient condition for superintelligent AI, despite what Kurzweil might think.

Horgan sums up my sentiments towards the whole thing nicely:

Let's face it. The singularity is a religious rather than a scientific vision. The science-fiction writer Ken MacLeod has dubbed it “the rapture for nerds,” an allusion to the end-time, when Jesus whisks the faithful to heaven and leaves us sinners behind.

The escape from death seems such a powerful motivator for Singularity thinking, that I'm inclined to agree it's something to fill the void for the superintelligencia.

A tale of two liberties

2008-06-04T17:26:00.005+10:00

Last night I was lucky enough to attend a talk by American Historian, Eric Foner, on The Idea of Freedom in the US. Foner has written a huge number of very influential books on American history, notably Free Soil, Free Labor, Free Men: The Ideology of the Republican Party Before the Civil War, and more recently The Story of American Freedom, and Give Me Liberty!: An American History (see a pattern here?). In his talk he looked at the history of freedom in the US from 1779 to today.

His main theme was that, unsurprisingly, freedom has been a driving force in American discourse and politics to an extent not seen in any other democratic nation. Yet the notion of freedom is far from transparent and is envisaged in different ways by different individuals and ideologies.

And furthermore, freedom is often a very contradictory notion in American history, especially when one considers the role of slavery and race relations. Both sides of American politics invoke freedom as one of the primary imperatives, yet they do so in different ways.

Foner talked of the dual notions of freedom: one as freedom to...; and the other freedom from.... These two forces are far from identical. The former is more about an individual's rights to do what they damn well want. Or the "it's a free country" defence for shenanigans. The latter is more about fundamental conditions of living, which is more closely pegged to things like the labour movement.

Consider Roosevelt's Four Freedoms:

Freedom of speech
Freedom of religion
Freedom from want
Freedom from fear

Note the first two are freedoms to...; they're positive affirmations of something you can do. The last two are freedoms from...; they're negative affirmations about what can't be done to you. So, in some sense, the latter freedoms could impinge upon the freedoms of other individuals, particularly freedoms pertaining to economic practice.

How to mediate between the two? Arguably the muddied discourse in American politics makes it impossible, particularly because the axioms of libertarianism are in dispute. And it's a bummer when your assumptions are up for debate. Means you often get people talking across each other rather than being on the same track. Sound like political debates to you?

Another fascinating notion raised during the talk was why the US is fixated on liberty with little emphasis on the other two notions that accompanied it in the French Revolution: egalité and fraternité. Foner suggested it's because the US never really had a fully blown 'revolution'. Instead it had a war of independence, but it never experienced an uprising of the lower classes against a privileged elite. In fact, arguably, the wealthy landowners were more instrumental in the struggle than the labour classes. For this reason, liberty represented throwing off the yoke of Continental influence rather than individual liberty from oppression. The very lack of gross class-based inequality perhaps meant equality was less of a concern than liberty to pursue one's own ends. Perhaps another reason that socialism was never seriously considered in the US.

I find discussions of freedom fascinating. It's one of those concepts that is today uncritically considered a 'good thing'. It's even critically perceived such - Rawls is an example. He considers some things to be just plain good, in the sense that we naturally desire more rather than less of them. Freedom is one of the biggies. (Why? I ask...) But I digress.

Yet I'm entirely comfortably (some say too comfortable) with the notion that freedom is an illusion. Determinism is wearing the pants, and that leaves no room for a 'hard' free will, which would, IMO, amount to breaking causation. But, critically, it doesn't make one monkey of difference. If free will exists or it's just an illusion, nothing changes (except for a few spurious theories of moral responsibility - spurious because basing moral responsibility on uncaused or random actions isn't much better than basing it on deterministic actions, so it's psychological free will that counts, not physical determinism).

So, determinism aside, freedom is still a complicated notion. And we also have other values, such as equality, and they're not always in accordance.

Where my own research crosses over with this discussion is in the suggestion that we are born with a faculty for appreciating things like freedom/oppression and equality/inequality (read Jost, Haidt for more on this). Yet some feel them in different ways. Some individuals tilt more towards freedom, others towards equality. Certainly the feelings can be influenced by experience and imbibed ideology, but there is an innate tendency in many of us to sway more to one side than the other. (And evolution could be the reason for this variation - that's yet to be convincingly demonstrated, but I have a hunch it's correct.)

Yet freedom - perhaps because it's a difficult idea to pin down - can be adopted by both sides as a virtue, at least to some extent. This makes me pessimistic about a reconciliation between the Left and the Right, particularly in the US. But it makes me optimistic about taking a more nuanced centrist notion that acknowledges that neither side will ever be able to claim ideological dominance over the other.

Still, I'm pleased to live in a country where I'm free to blog about such things. Foner mentioned a lecture he gave in China about American freedom. The lecture title had to be changed to A Central Idea in American Politics (or something very similar). Funny, because it shows the Chinese organisers get the idea of freedom - but they just don't get it, at least, not yet...

P.S., Foner also has the honour of appearing on a very prestigious list. Not a list of prize winners for exception academic writing (although he does appear on those lists), but a list of the 100 People Who Are Screwing Up America - at least according to Bernard Goldberg.

It's possibly one of the funniest lists I've ever seen. It's like a frontal assault on intelligence, nuanced thinking and those who might think things other than freedom and God might also be important in the world.

I hope to appear on such a list one day. I probably need to be more outrageous (or vastly more talented) though...

Turing test 2.0

2008-05-28T20:52:00.004+10:00

We all know about the Turing test (an excellent philosophical overview of which can be found here). It's intended to be one measure of progress of artificial intelligence - at least of the weak variety. What I'd like to see is a variant of the Turing test, which I suspect might be even more illuminating than the original.

Basically it would involve three individuals: two having a conversation (A & B); and a third human observer (C). A and B could be human, or they could be AI, and C doesn't know one way or the other. The trick would be for the human observer, C, to pick which, if any, are AIs.

I'd imagine the AIs would have to be capable of passing the first Turing test to qualify for Turing 2.0, and other conditions of the Turing test would apply, such as passing only typed messages etc.

I wonder whether two AIs conversing would follow a conversational different path compared to talking to a human? For one, this could minimise the impact of dirty tricks played by AIs to encourage the human to steer the conversation. It might also reduce - or at least change the character of - unexpected turns in the conversation that might be a result of speaking to a n unpredictable human (and a human who knows they're trying to spot an AI).

Besides, wouldn't it be fascinating just to see what two AIs would chat about? Do they have any opinions on Big Brother? Who do they pick in the upcoming election? What do they think of the other AI's position? Would they become friends? Could they become outraged? (If so - that would be tremendous: an AI becoming 'outraged' at another AI.) Could it come to blows?

In some ways this parallels a thought I had while studying the philosophy of mind in my undergrad years. Sure grandmaster-clobbering chess programs are impressive, but they're surely not much sign of true artificial intelligence - even of the weak variety. However, if the chess program got frustrated at losing its queen, knocked the pieces off the table and stormed out to watch TV - THAT would be a sure sign of intelligence, if you can call whatever causes such strangely typical behaviour in us 'intelligence'.

I think the day someone builds an Artificial Idiot, then we're getting close to building a machine in the image of man.

Most undignified

2008-05-20T18:41:00.004+10:00

What is dignity?

Like many things, we find it hard to define, although we can effortlessly name a whole slew of things that are undignified. Like sneezing with a mouthful of coffee and having it shoot out one's nose. Or ordering a kebab at 2.30 AM and trying to sound nonchalant when even the pronunciation of basic consonants is beyond one's grasp.

Or as Harvard psychologist, Steven Pinker, suggests: getting out of a small car.

(I'd have to agree with that analysis. I own a small car, and had I not left my dignity at a Christmas party some time in the early 2000s, then I'd perhaps have bought a larger car by now.)

Pinker raises this point in reference to a recently-released report by the U.S. President's Council on Bioethics, called Human Dignity and Bioethics. This 555 page behemoth contains a series of essays informing the president on ethics and issues pertaining to biomedical innovation.

And as Pinker points out in a lengthy but compelling article in the centre-left journal The New Republic, it's rubbish - and even worse, it's vacuous and religiously-motivated rubbish that threatens to stifle a crucially important debate in science and ethics before it even has a chance to get off the ground.

This article is essential reading for anyone interested in bioethics and related matters, like stem cell research, therapeutic cloning and longevity research.