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