The Leaning Tower of Morality

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https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/28/th...-morality/

EXCERPT: There’s an image that’s taken root in my mind recently that I can’t seem to shake. I picture humanity living in a large, rickety tower, tilting at a precarious angle to the ground — like so: [image]

The tower represents our capacity for moral behavior. Lower levels are more base; higher levels, more virtuous. We don’t need an exact floorplan, but here’s the kind of thing I’m imagining:

Ground floor: Perfect zero-sum selfishness. Aggression and exploitation. The war of all against all.

Middle floors: Various flavors of mutualism. “I’ll help you if you help me.” Reciprocity. Tit for tat.

Higher floors: Empathy and compassion. Turning the other cheek. True virtue (not just signaling). A tendency to cooperate in one-shot prisoner’s dilemmas.

Penthouse: Perfect self-sacrificing altruism. A willingness to give time, energy, money, or even one’s life to help a stranger for nothing in return.

Now, some people inhabit higher floors than others, but with the exception of bona fide psychopaths, all of us live somewhere in the tower, happily above ground. Here’s the question I want to explore today: How does this structure remain standing? On what ultimate explanatory principles do our moral instincts rest?

Let’s take a look at three possible answers....

MORE: https://www.ribbonfarm.com/2017/11/28/th...-morality/