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fubarobfusco comments on What is moral foundation theory good for? - Less Wrong
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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.
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.
Don't forget pathological altruism for the harm equality foundation.