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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_isk6ifg wrote

Reply to comment by Bookswinters in Philip Kitcher argues that morality is a social technology designed to solve problems emerging from the fragility of human altruism. Morality can be evaluated objectively, but without assuming moral truths. The view makes sense against a Darwinian view of life, but it is not social Darwinism. by Ma3Ke4Li3

I appreciate this take a lot! I actually have an episode with Patricia Churchland exploring this exact topic! I think she focuses to much on caring and altruism at the expense of the kinds of issues that you mentioned. But still very relevant.

https://on-humans.podcastpage.io/episode/1-origins-of-our-warm-blooded-morality-patricia-churchland

Also, do you know of the work of Oliver Scott Curry? his work is very relevant to your take. For him, morality is all about cooperation (non-zero-sum games). I would press against this extreme, too, and say that care and altruistic concern for others plays a role, too. But anyway, both are interesting scholars.

The best scholar who roots the evolution of morality to both care and sympathy (altruism), as well as mutualism and interdependence (cooperation), is Michael Tomasello. The Natural History of Human Morality is a masterpiece!

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Bookswinters t1_isk88db wrote

I haven't heard of any of these folks! I'm looking into them right now, thank you for the recommendations!!

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Ma3Ke4Li3 OP t1_iskflks wrote

My pleasure! For Churchland I would obviously recommend my own interview ;) Oliver Scott Curry has some good youtube videos, just em out.

I'd love to get Tomasello on the show but haven't asked yet. Currently, I think the easiest entry is to check out Ricardo Lopes' interviews of him. You can watch the video on Youtube or just listen to the audio in podcast style (links below). But really, if you have the patience to read Natural History of Human Morality then do! It's relatively short, but super dense. So it's good to start with an interview, anyway. But a masterpiece.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yt9eS0pCsgo&ab_channel=TheDissenter

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https://anchor.fm/thedissenter/episodes/422-Michael-Tomasello-Interdependence--Shared-Intentionality--Culture--and-Morality-enmd65

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