- People are intrinsically moral and while this helped us create large groups that can cooperate, it also ensures moral strife
- 3 parts to the book -
- Intuitions come before reason and we therefore often have trouble changing our minds (separation of rider and elephant, reason and emotion)
- Moral intuitions can take on 6 "taste receptors" which change for every culture
- Morality binds and blinds
- Morality is about treating people well, more than simply not harming
- Society's moral rules tend to put either the individual or the group at the center
- Moral reasons and moral emotions are separate processes
- Moral reasoning has evolutionary roots but is also learned through culture by understanding what hurts others
- To truly change someone's mind you need to truly see things from their perspective
- The rider, reason, evolved after and in order to serve emotion. We feel an emotion and then rationalize it, not the other way around
- Appeal to emotion and intuition rather than people's reason
- Reason developed to rationalize, not to find truth
- Evolution shaped people to care more about looking good than being good (reputation so important)
- Most people cheat if given the opportunity and plausible deniability. But only but to a certain point where they can rationalize it
- The difference in the mind between can and must are profound
- The 6 moral receptors -
- Care / harm
- Liberty / oppression
- Fairness / cheating
- Loyalty / betrayal
- Authority / subversion
- Sanctity / degradation
- More to morality than harm and fairness
- Sacredness and disgust are different sides of the same coin.
- Disgust helps protect us from overstepping physical and moral boundaries and sacredness helps us rationalize that we are more than thinking meat
- Republicans are better at aiming their campaigns at the elephant whereas democrats target the rider
- Group selection exists and leads to occasional altruistic actions and strategic cooperation (true team players)
- People obsessed with their reputation and this helped stimulate altruistic actions
What I got out of it
- An interesting addition to The Happiness Hypothesis. Interesting to hear about the difference between the average democratic and republican campaign and the different moral "taste receptors" and how people/cultures differ based on which of the receptors are most important to them