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Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethica

Thanks for the response. This helped tremendously. I've been fairly engrossed recently in readings on moral relativism, in an attempt to understand what ethical behaviour might look like without the influence of social norms. Your response made me realize I've been forgetting to take off my academic hat - I should be evaluating this from the perspective of the society I'm currently in right now. Thanks for the reminder to go speak to actual humans again :)

TeMPOraL 7y ago
In terms of moral behavior without influence of social norms, it's also worth investigating morality as a dynamic system - if you'd erase all existing social norms from memory and gather a group of people, what norms would evolve over time?
- AkshatM 7y ago
  This is one of those questions which I actually think requires empirical investigation. Fortunately, Jonathan Haidt has excellent papers on the historical formation of moral systems in culture collision events, and the argument he has is that there are six different types of dichotomies moral taxonomies in societies exhibit, each driven by various kinds of evolutionary challenges individual societies faced. (https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=368001093110092112015018017070013085042059070013063074028008087113119010123125106005124031048107005109046067027010066099112117062013094005002085110004064091001094079061073003012083096102102081086117075065020098124095097031120104090031118070079097078087&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3680010931100921...) I think the conclusion that societies are built primarily on cooperative rather than antisocial behaviour is a picture based mostly in game theoretic analyses (per that wonderful webpage, The Evolution of Trust) - but empirically societies do really vary in how harshly they punish or value non-cooperative behaviour, which I don't think game theory is sufficient to explain. Some societies hold that maximising personal utility over group utility is a social norm, though usually personal doesn't mean individual but individual and smaller subgroup (such as family), so they're not likely to view non-cooperative behaviour as problematic - these societies tend to be not influenced as much by the fairness/cheating dichotomy but are high on the care/neglect and loyalty/betrayal dichotomy.

TeMPOraL 7y ago

In terms of moral behavior without influence of social norms, it's also worth investigating morality as a dynamic system - if you'd erase all existing social norms from memory and gather a group of people, what norms would evolve over time?

AkshatM 7y ago
This is one of those questions which I actually think requires empirical investigation. Fortunately, Jonathan Haidt has excellent papers on the historical formation of moral systems in culture collision events, and the argument he has is that there are six different types of dichotomies moral taxonomies in societies exhibit, each driven by various kinds of evolutionary challenges individual societies faced. (https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=368001093110092112015018017070013085042059070013063074028008087113119010123125106005124031048107005109046067027010066099112117062013094005002085110004064091001094079061073003012083096102102081086117075065020098124095097031120104090031118070079097078087&EXT=pdf https://poseidon01.ssrn.com/delivery.php?ID=3680010931100921...) I think the conclusion that societies are built primarily on cooperative rather than antisocial behaviour is a picture based mostly in game theoretic analyses (per that wonderful webpage, The Evolution of Trust) - but empirically societies do really vary in how harshly they punish or value non-cooperative behaviour, which I don't think game theory is sufficient to explain. Some societies hold that maximising personal utility over group utility is a social norm, though usually personal doesn't mean individual but individual and smaller subgroup (such as family), so they're not likely to view non-cooperative behaviour as problematic - these societies tend to be not influenced as much by the fairness/cheating dichotomy but are high on the care/neglect and loyalty/betrayal dichotomy.