The Philosophers' Cocoon

The following is a true story:

Several years ago, my mother took our family dog (R.I.P.) out in the backyard to do his 'nightly business.' An unexpected rustle in the dark led the dog to growl and confront the intruder. It turns out the intruder was a mother raccoon with several of her babies. To protect them, the raccoon attacked the dog. To protect the dog, my mother the screamed and attacked the raccoon–and the raccoon attacked her. My father, who was in the shower, heard her screams and rushed outside naked with a baseball bat to protect my mother, who he feared was being assaulted by burglars. At that point, a next-door neighbor heard the commotion, and called to police to protect my mom "from a naked man wielding a baseball bat." Several minutes later, a number of police stormed the house like a SWAT-team with guns drawn, ordering my dad to drop then weapon. Finally, animal control showed up to capture and put the raccoon to sleep–and my mom and dog got driven to the hospital and emergency vet.

What a disaster, right? Yet here's the thing: so much of human life seems sadly analogous to it. Time and again, we see violent escalations arise from each side of a disagreement insisting that their standpoint is right–that they and they alone have discovered the God's Honest Truth. We see this throughout human history up to the present. In the Crusades, Catholics and Muslims both claimed to be 'in the right'–and so they fought. In the European religious wars, Catholics, Protestants, etc., claimed to be in the right–and so they too fought. More recently, both sides of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict argue that their side is in the right–and so they fight. Democrats and Republican think they are in the right–and so we fight. And, of course, on blogs, social media, etc., we see broadly the same thing. Wherever we look–on the news, in politics, in academia, etc.–everyone argues they are in the right…and so we constantly fight.

When will we ever learn? Better yet, what do we need to learn if we want these kinds of horrible cycles to cease? Allow me to offer up an answer to the latter question, and then return to the former question.

Let us return to the true story I recounted above. How did it happen? What was the cause of the escalation that ended up harming everyone involved? Here's a rough quick answer: the tragedy unfolded the way it did because everyone was approaching the issue from (A) their own standpoint, (B) acting in ways that seem perfectly reasonable or 'justifiable' from their point-of-view, while (C) seeming dead-wrong and threatening from others' standpoints. Indeed, while this admittedly anthropomorphizes a great deal, consider the 'maxims' (or principles of action) that each party to the above conflict could be most plausibly described as acting upon:

• Dog 'Buster': "I must protect my mother/owner."
• Racoon: "I must protect my babies."
• My Mother: "I must protect my dog."
• My Father: "I must protect my wife."
• Neighbor: "I must protect my neighbor."
• Police: "We must protect citizens and ensure law and order."
• Animal control: "We must protect citizens from violent animals."

Taken each on their own, it is hard not to sympathize with every individual's standpoint here. If I were my dog, I would want to protect my mom. If I were the raccoon, I would want to protect my babies. If I were my mother, I would want to protect my dog. If I were my dad, I would want to protect my mom. And so on. Yet each of these seemingly reasonable standpoints (and the interests attached to them) ended in disaster for everyone. Why?

The problem, I believe, is that the various parties in the situation were unable to reconcile their opposing standpoints. If only my dog had been able to recognize the standpoint of the raccoon (her simply wanting to protect her babies), and if only the raccoon had only been able to recognize my dog's standpoint (him wanting to protect my mom)–and if only they had then been able to work together to reconcile their opposing standpoints–the disaster would never have occurred. Everyone could have just gone about their night happily. The problem, though, the dog and raccoon weren't able to do any of this: they weren't able to arrive at common ground. Why? The most obvious thing is they can't talk or reason like we can. But this, surely, is not the whole story. Why? Because, as we see in human history and our human present, we too fail to reconcile our standpoints with others', leading to the very same kinds of violent, mutually harmful escalations. The real question is: why are we so unable to do it? Why do we so often 'behave like animals'?

The answer, I have argued here and in much more detail in some unpublished work, is that we human beings are habitually attracted to a seductive but nevertheless harmful conception of morality–one that has dominated all of human history up to the present, and inherently (and perpetually) makes us enemies. Allow me to explain.

When we look at human history as well as at our human present, we see that people commonly presuppose that moral truth can be discovered: either by reading, feeling, thinking, or arguing. To devout Christians, morality is to be discovered by reading the Bible. To devout Muslims, it is to be discovered by reading the Quran, etc. To philosophers, moral truths are to be discovered by reflecting on 'reasons' and principles, and of course, giving arguments. Similarly, on social media and politics, we see ordinary people doing the same thing: each person arguing that they and they alone have discovered 'the moral truth.' Yet here is the fundamental problem with this 'discovery' model of morality. Whenever anyone thinks they have discovered 'the moral truth', everyone who doesn't believe what they believe immediately becomes their enemy. And, of course, this problem is compounded by the phenomenon we see in the story I recounted above: there are always multiple sides to issues, each of which believes that they and they alone have made the 'right moral discovery.' As we see repeatedly throughout history and in the present, since each side thinks their moral discovery is right, all other sides become their mortal enemies. Both sides regard the other side 'evildoers', 'deplorables', etc., and escalation–often up to the point of violence–results.

For these reasons, I like to call this the Discovery Model of morality, and suggest that we might sum up its basic problem as follows: "'I'm right', 'No I'm right.' Let's fight." 

Interestingly, I believe the solution to this flaw in Discovery Model is embedded in the very 'escalation problem' it gerates. The fundamental problem of the Discovery Model is that it sees morality as fundamentally a matter of 'winning'–of discovering why you are right and others wrong. I believe, and have argued in detail in my 2016 book Rightness as Fairness: A Moral and Political Theory, that once we reconceptualize morality as fundamentally a matter of a kind of concern for the future (specifically, our possible futures, including how our choices in the present can backfire!), we can see that diachronic rationality (i.e. rationality across time) requires rejecting the Discovery Model in favor of a Negotiation Model model of morality–one that requires us to approach moral truths not as things we can 'discover' unilaterally (i.e. through thinking or argument), but instead as things we must create together through negotiating compromises between our opposing standpoints and legitimate interests (at least so far as they are consistent with Four Principles of Fairness).

I initially came to first entertain these ideas–that we need to reconceptualize how we understand morality away from 'discovering moral truths' in favor of a Negotiation Model–when watching Steven Spielberg's heartbreaking film Munich. The film, which devastatingly depicts the carnage caused by escalating violence between Israelis and the Palestine Liberation Organization, has a haunting ending. At the end of the film, the main character on the Israeli side (played by Eric Bana) finally decides to walk away from fighting. He walks away not because of some moral argument or principle, but above all because he's seen the terrible future that each side's 'moral arguments' led to: a future ever-increasing escalation and death. [Incidentally, something like this is also an implied lesson in the 2016 film Arrival, where world war is averted by the main character having access to the future (which enables her to reconcile opposing standpoints of different nations in the present)].

Anyway, Munich got me wondering. Could it perhaps be that our biggest problem as humanity (well, besides hate) is 'morality' as we have always understood it? Is it 'morality' that fundamentally makes us enemies? If so, should we perhaps radically change how we conceptualize morality itself? This, in essence, is what I argue in my book. Using emerging empirical work on moral cognition and motivation, I argue that we should stop seeing morality as a matter of 'discovering' what reasons we have, or giving arguments to each other–the very things that lead diachroncally (across time) to escalation, violence, etc. Instead, I argue that once we properly understand how our actions in present can reverberate in the future to our own disadvantage (viz. escalation!), we can see that the only rational solution to the problem is to abandon the Discovery Model and instead see morality as fundamentally a matter of realizing a future of a certain sort: a future whereby we negotiate fair compromises between our opposing standpoints…as this is the only way to realize a future that is fair to all, rather than a future where each group is seeking to impose its own 'moral discoveries' on the others.

This is, obviously, a very different vision of morality than we are accustomed to. We are accustomed to giving moral arguments–of arguing at people (though, again, as we see every day, this usually just makes our own side happy and the other side unsatisfied and angry). On my model, we should instead see morality itself as fundamentally not a matter of argument but rather of negotiation, compromise, and conflict-resolution (at least in most cases, i.e. whenever disagreements are consistent with Four Principles of Fairness). 

While negotiating and compromising with others does not come easily to us (and rarely leaves us wholly satisfied), would such a model of morality make for a better world? I leave it for you to think about–but suffice it to say, if my dog and the raccoon had (somehow) been able to negotiate a compromise so that both could enjoy their night well enough, things might have turned out a bit better in their case. Similarly, what if–on social media, message boards, in politics, and world affairs–we slowly began to stop thinking we could arrive at 'the moral truth' unilaterally by making arguments at people, and were instead willing to 'work across the aisle' to arrive at compromises with them, seeing them not as our moral enemies but simply as people who have different standpoints and priorities that we need to work with rather than against? Would that be a better world: one where we began to treat each other more kindly, more charitably, more fairly–without the cycles of escalation and violence that have so dominated human history and our human present? I cannot help but hope that it might just be. And indeed, there is an increasing about of empirical research that suggests that focusing on the future (which I argue is how we should understand morality) changes human behavior beneficially. Turns out, the more we think and worry about the future, the more fairly we treat others–and the more prudentially we behave in making a better future for ourselves.