Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap between Us and Them

MORAL TRIBES: EMOTION, reason, AND THE GAP BETWEEN US AND THEM, Joshua Greene, New York, NY: Penguin Press, 2013, Pp. 422. ISBN: 978-1-101-63867-5 Reviewed by Geoffrey W. Sutton (Springfield, MO). Joshua Greene invites us to consider the problem of morality by pitting the rights of one group against those of another group who must share common resources in order to survive. In a highly readable style, Greene leads us through classic runaway trolley dilemmas, philosophical conundrums, and neuropsychological investigations to an understanding of how moral psychology informs moral philosophy and offers a groundwork for a metamorality. Joshua Greene is an associate professor in the Psychology Department of Harvard University. He has a Ph.D. in Philosophy from Princeton.Early on Greene sets the social context for the importance of his work. We are members of different moral tribes-groups with different moral values. These values work pretty well most of the time within our tribe but when we encounter other tribes (think conservative vs. liberal political or religious groups) we have a problem which often seems impassable. Not surprisingly, Greene finds controversial issues are matters of sex and death.The tribal differences that erupt into public controversy typically concern sex (e.g., gay marriage, gays in the military, and the sex lives of public officials) and death at the margins of life (e.g., abortion, physician-assisted suicide, the use of embryonic stem cells in research). That such issues are moral issues is surely not arbitrary. Sex and death are the gas pedals and brakes of tribal growth . What's less clear is why different tribes hold different views about sex, life, and death, and why some tribes are more willing than others to impose their views on outsiders (p. 11). Greene's purpose is to understand morality. He wants to analyze the core of morality and how it works in our brains. Ultimately, he wishes to offer a solution-a way past the moral dilemmas of our time. The book is organized into 12 chapters spread over five parts. At the risk of being incomplete, I will summarize several subthemes, which I consider most relevant to readers of JPC. After making the case for the importance of resolving moral differences in a more amicable way than the history of war suggests, Greene offers a functionalist definition of morality as "a set of psychological adaptations that allow otherwise selfish individuals to reap the benefits of cooperation (23). " Greene postulates that humans learned to cooperate in order to survive, which sounds like a common sense speculation about the evolutionary origins of complex behavior. Presumably, those who are more altruistic and willing to consider the wellbeing of others will more likely survive than those who go it alone. But the problem is, we only cooperate with those we consider part of our tribe. And we do not naturally cooperate with those from other tribes.In Part I, Greene reviews a number of studies to illustrate the problems inherent in cooperating with others who do not easily resemble members of our tribe. Even 6-month old infants show a preference for those who speak with a local accent. Of course, as the trappings of culture accumulate so do the markers of Us vs. Them. Greene also concerns himself with explaining the psychology of cooperation within groups. We learn about reciprocity norms and the social punishments that can eventually force a person outside a group for violating tribal rules. Matters of honor, reputation, and free-riding are a few of the issues considered. In the end, we learn the importance of valuing moral diversity if we are to hope for peaceful interactions with those from other tribes. …