I’m looking forward to speaking at HBES in June. Here’s the abstract of my talk:
The Science of Morality
What is morality? What is the difference between right and wrong, and how can we tell? Where do our morals come from? Which morals do we have? How do people make moral decisions and judgements? Why is there good and evil in the world? How and why do morals vary across cultures? And is moral progress possible? The cooperative theory of morality provides scientific answers to all these questions. Individual interests sometimes align, creating common interests, or common goods. Morality is the set of 'all possible ways of promoting all possible common goods', or in game-theoretic terms 'all possible cooperative strategies in all possible non-zero-sum games'. Game theory show that there are many such games, and many ways to cooperate, hence many ways to be moral. Whether something is morally good (or not) depends on whether it is cooperative (or not); game theory provides the mathematical tools to test moral claims rigorously. Our moral knowledge, like all knowledge, comes about through trial and error – initially biological, then psychological and cultural, and now increasingly scientific. The moral rules that humans have discovered so far include: help your family, help your group, return favours, be a hero, show deference, divide resources, and respect first possession. These basic moral 'elements' can also combine to form a large number of more complex moral 'molecules'. Individuals value these types of cooperation (moral character); these values determine whether they ought to cooperate or not (moral decisions), and which cooperative opportunities they should take (moral dilemmas). Their choices reveal their values to others (moral judgements). Individuals differ in the value they place on cooperation, hence some are more cooperative than others, some are downright uncooperative; and some people cooperate to do uncooperative things to others. People in all societies face similar cooperative problems, and so follow similar moral rules (moral universals). However, the value of different types of cooperation varies under different socio-ecological conditions, and so people who face different cooperative problems – hunters, herders, farmers – have different moral priorities. Moral progress will come about not through attempts to 'expand the circle' of altruism – because altruism is an unstable strategy – but through the discovery of new and better ways to cooperate. Science, then, tells us not only how to be good, but how to be better.