Lightwave comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong

9 Post author: novalis 12 August 2012 05:03AM

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Comment author: Lightwave 12 August 2012 08:41:49AM 7 points [-]

I would actually go further and say that they are necessary for any sort of organized human society.

While they are likely necessary for organized human society, I think the argument is that their purpose is purely instrumental. It's sort of like how in the prisoner's dilemma, the concept of 'trust' ('tit for tat with forgiveness' variants) is an instrumentally useful strategy for winning points in a group of a certain kind of agents. Even if humans have loyalty, authority and sanctity built-in, they can still recognize their instrumental role and can only instrumentally optimize for those.

Comment author: Vladimir_M 12 August 2012 07:18:50PM 5 points [-]

Even if humans have loyalty, authority and sanctity built-in, they can still recognize their instrumental role and can only instrumentally optimize for those.

The trouble is, absent certain unusually favorable circumstances, attempts at such optimization run into insurmountable practical problems. For start, such analysis would be tremendously difficult even for a superhumanly unbiased intellect. And then there is the even worse problem that realistic humans will be under an almost irresistible temptation to bias their analysis in favor of their own particular authority, sanctity, and in-group norms.

Comment author: fubarobfusco 12 August 2012 04:59:11PM *  2 points [-]

I wonder if the topic of "moral foundations" would better be considered as "human universals that sometimes contribute to some of the things that get labeled 'morality'." Because plenty of the time, the instrumental ones also contribute to things that get labeled "immorality". The purity universal includes the sexual jealousy of the abusive spouse; the loyalty universal includes Milgram's subjects; and so on. We recognize that these are morally significant, but in a negative sense: the abuser is not merely pursuing a positive purity ideal in ill-chosen ways, and Milgram did not find people longing for something to be loyal to, but people who responded with obedience even in situations where doing so was immoral.

Comment author: GLaDOS 12 August 2012 05:10:18PM 2 points [-]

I wonder if the topic of "moral foundations" would better be considered as "human universals that sometimes contribute to some of the things that get labeled 'morality'." Because plenty of the time, the instrumental ones also contribute to things that get labeled "immorality".

Don't forget pathological altruism for the harm equality foundation.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 13 August 2012 03:29:35PM *  1 point [-]

Perhaps fairness could also be interpreted as a sacred value, and a useful heuristics to reduce harm.