It was a great talk that went by fast, so there wasn’t enough time to go into everything.
Big takeaway: To persuade somebody else, focus on the lesser harm of your proposal, and the greater harm of the alternative, or current. Gray’s current work has shifted away from the Agent – Patient discussion, which might be because it seems fairly accepted, towards the issue of harm. In papers available that I haven’t read yet.
The uncertainty of harm was not discussed. I think the best example to be more explored would be drunk driving, and drunk driving laws, combined with other driving laws. The drunk driver was the agent in deciding to drink, and drive, and to risk harming themselves and others. Note that the vast majority of drunk drivers do NOT cause fatal accidents; far more are arrested for DUI than cause accidents.
There was an example of rich man who, in dying, left his house and his rich art collection to the city of Philly, on the condition that the art stayed in the house, a few miles outside of the city. Later city officials moved that art into the city, under the theory that it caused “no harm”, since the prior owner had died. One mother of such an official disagreed, claiming all people wanting to put restrictions in their wills have been harmed, with the precedent that violating the express wishes of people who are now dead causes no harm.
The idea that violating some rule or prior agreement, because of “no harm”, seems nearly certain to be rationalization that uses a specific instance of claimed non-harm to stop enforcing some accepted norm. The loss of such a rule might well cause some harm to others. In the “art move” example, it seems clear to me that there is real harm in violating the agreement. But I can also understand those who claim it’s not harm.
For society, it seems certain that there are rules, laws, and cultural norms which result in some social optimal. Deviation from this results in a sub-optimal society, tho it might not be clear to identify exactly who was harmed, or by how much.
Children being harmed by the divorce of their parents is one I’m very familiar with – and now believe that “no-fault” divorce is a sub-optimal policy for society. Normalizing consent-based promiscuous sex is another socially sub-optimal norm.
Trying to measure, and compare, alternate moralities based on comparing the harms of those moralities seems a way to allow more fruitful discussions of comparative societies. But making harm the basis of morality might shut down those discussions. I’ve ordered a book and so I’m now waiting in Slovakia.
"Contra Jonathan Haidt, Gray believes that harm-avoidance is the essence of moral reasoning. That is, if someone says that “X is wrong,” you can be pretty sure that the person will say that “X causes harm.”"
Nope. Ask your husband or wife, "Honey, if I cheated on you and had a one night stand while away on a business trip, if you never learned about it, would it be morally ok, because no one was harmed?" - "No! It would not be morally ok! You moron!"
Or consider how nine years ago Lansburg got into some hot water asking if unconscious sex (not resulting in physical injury or pregnancy) should be a serious felony, because, after all, what was the 'harm', the situation being perhaps analogous to the kind of trespass that gets nominal damages because no actual damages. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/03/20/censorship-environmentalism-and-steubenville/
Well, it doesn't take reading many of the comments to see that people insist that 'harm' in terms of actual physical injury or damage or even from traumatic memories is absolutely not the point for many people, who say this is obviously extremely immoral behavior.
The trouble is that since harm *can* be used to justify moral opinions, such a story will be crafted as a rationalization to try and justify those views and to raise the status of those attitudes. Because, if you want to use the law to coercively impose them on others, the test is damages, so you have to pretend there *are* actual harms, even when there really aren't.
The danger (or 'opportunity' depending on your perspective) inherent in giving weight to 'offense' and 'emotional distress' and making them actionable in court is that innocent people can't easily defend themselves by disproving damages as it allows people to insist you take their word for it regarding subjective states of mind. If you make states of mind determinative, you will get many more cases of those states of mind, and hypersensitivity about everything will skyrocket - as Haidt has observed.
The point is, this is the obvious trouble with taking all these 'harm' stories at face value as if it really was the basis of morality. It isn't. It's just the only way we are now allowed to promote morality into law, so it's all one will ever see, especially in the intellectually respectable world.
The law is an exercise of power by domination, but one that conditions use and access through language, symbols, and ideas. But language and ideas are not some fixed stars in the heaven, and subject to all kinds of manipulations. One can open a lock with the key, or one can pick the lock, or just change the lock so it now opens with a different key. It is in this way that the lust for the power of law has a highly corrupting influence on the words and thoughts that are the key to opening that door, which has profound ripple effects throughout the whole culture.
Historically the law protected property, rights, health, welfare, and public morality. Some of those involved the deterrence of or remedy for injuries that were damaging harms in direct, clear, uncontroversial ways. Others had a more tenuous or indirect relationship to or justification in 'harm', and some *none at all*. But as those harm-indifferent exceptions were swept away, harm was all that was left, and so, everything must be framed in terms of harm now, even if those explanations are bogus, like they would be for examples above.
In the more religious past, few would have had any trouble with the idea that something can be deeply morally sinful even if it is merely thought (e.g., lust, envy, etc.), even if it causes no harm, indeed, even if it's a net benefit in material terms. This would not have struck them as somehow at odds or inconsistent with the underlying theme of their moral instincts and impulses. They wouldn't have felt any need for there to be a showing of harm to enforce such norms with law.
And it is still that way today, whether people recognize it or not, though the prevailing 'religion' especially regarding sexual morality is quite different.
Only after this great talk did my copy of The Mind Club arrive in Slovakia. It was indeed a great book and extremely relevant in these times of crybully victim/ patients being the victims of thinking/ acting agents. Such agents who knowingly cause harm are considered evil today.
Recently I saw a related Drama Triangle, that added a third role "rescuer". Like NATO to rescue Victim Ukraine from Villain Putin. (From a socialist site I mostly don't agree with.)
My takeaway is that Prof. Gray and his research colleagues (a) conceptualize and elucidate fresh psychological mechanisms that have intuitive plausibility and empirical bite; and (b) overstate the explanatory scope of their concepts and mechanisms.
A hallmark of science is to explain much with little -- the twin ideals of fullness and parsimony. But there is also a trade-off between fullness and parsimony.
Psychology is more like chemistry than physics, so to speak.
A few examples:
1) A psychological mechanism that Prof. Gray calls "dyadic completion":
"we should be compelled to complete the moral dyad when it appears incomplete. This dyadic completion can occur in two complementary ways. First, when we see someone blameworthy—an apparent moral agent—we should complete the dyad by inferring the presence of another mind to suffer—a moral patient. Second, when we see a suffering patient, we infer the presence of another mind to take responsibility as a moral agent." (p. 111)
I say that dyadic completion happens sometimes, and perhaps often, but not always. Prof. Gray has provided an insight, not a law, and not an empirical generalization.
There are many situations where many people perceive moral ambiguity, rather than a dyad of agent and patient. Examples are blackmail, addiction, suicide, vice markets.
2) Prof. Gray's belief that harm-avoidance is the essence of moral reasoning. (See Arnold Kling's blogpost.)
Again, this is an important insight, not a law, and not an empirical generalization.
A poignant, fundamental counter-example: Many (most?) people believe harm-infliction is a moral imperative of justice. The psychology of retributive justice is to restore a balance in the universe, by making the wrongdoer suffer a harm (e.g., loss of liberty for X years) commensurate to the crime.
Moreover, there are many who perceive retribution as a means to rehabilitate the wrongdoer. They construe the wrongdoer as a patient, so to speak, and harm-infliction as the therapy.
3) Prof. Gray's belief that rival moral philosophies jointly reduce to his theory of morality. See Kurt Gray and Chelsea Schein, "Two Minds vs. Two Philosophies: Mind Perception Defines Morality and Dissolves the Debate between Deontology and Utilitarianism":
"the phenomenon of dyadic completion suggests that deontological and utilitarian concerns are not only simultaneously active, but also typically compatible and reinforcing: wrong acts have harmful consequences, and harmful consequences stem from wrong acts. The cognitive fusion of acts with consequences suggests that normative conflicts between deontology and utilitarianism are not reflected in everyday moral judgment."
I say that 'everyday Kantianism' is a counter-example that has empirical bite. Many a person sometimes makes a private moral decision or a private moral judgment by asking herself, 'What if everyone did that?', although she knows that her decision won't determine what everyone else will do. For example, I might form a moral judgment that I should take time and care to vote, because democracy would collapse if no one votes. Now, in point of fact, I know that I am nobody, and know that my decision to vote (or not to vote) has no influence on whether others choose to vote (or not to vote). Everyday Kantianism is a real moral psychology that is founded in counterfactual speculation, and is contrary to consequentialism.
Another counter-example: At Thanksgiving dinner, when it is time to wash dishes, a person who is motivated by fairness morality will pitch in, even if doing so gets in the way (too many cooks in the kitchen) and indirectly diminishes after-dinner conversation. By contrast, a utilitarian will adjust her behavior 'at the margin,' and so might nurture after-dinner conversation of a subset of guests at table whilst an optimal subset of other, fair-minded guests wash dishes. (Or so she might conveniently tell herself?) The point is that each morality (fairness, utilitarianism) has a different implication for behavior.
Prof. Gray certainly got me thinking!
Thank you, Arnold, for your gracious conversation-making.
in the new edition of The Tablet. Clearly, Kurt Gray and other intellectuals you refer daily lack the much broader context (no pun intended on Tyler's recent discovery of the relevance of context) of liberalism in human history.
Also, in relation to how to overcome political divisions, today's fight between Dems and Putin is not a question of "cognitive empathy" (a term used by reader MikeDC and taken from Bob Wright) but of the perceptions of immediate gains. In conflicts between two governments, resort to violence still is a legitimate option, and we could expect the parties to have a much stronger incentive to know each other and perhaps develop serious "cognitive empathy" but most of these conflicts are created by the two parties intending to take advantage of an opportunity (Putin to gain territory lost in the breakout of the Soviet Union, the Dems to divert attention from serious failures related to their collusion with the barbarians to grab power). People familiar with the history of Ukraine --before, during, and after the Soviet Union-- know well that Ukraine's several post-Soviet Union crises led in 2014 to an Obama's intervention that didn't solve the conflict but was enough to delay Putin's response.
He says this failure is because the Blob (the US foreign policy establishment) lacks "cognitive empathy". Which is pretty similar to what Gray is saying. Because it can't imagine what Russia wants, it simply can't seriously negotiate and devolves into tired tropes of "appeasement" and "irrationality" on the part of Russia.
Isn't a more likely story (and one that can be replicated in other situations) that while the Blob could have made more concessions to avoid war, it simply sees war as the preferred outcome?
That is, we have to grapple with the fact that simple "exposure" to the "pain" of the other side isn't enough. It's a conscious choice to hear and to believe. How does one cross that hurdle of humanizing the opposition?
It was a great talk that went by fast, so there wasn’t enough time to go into everything.
Big takeaway: To persuade somebody else, focus on the lesser harm of your proposal, and the greater harm of the alternative, or current. Gray’s current work has shifted away from the Agent – Patient discussion, which might be because it seems fairly accepted, towards the issue of harm. In papers available that I haven’t read yet.
The uncertainty of harm was not discussed. I think the best example to be more explored would be drunk driving, and drunk driving laws, combined with other driving laws. The drunk driver was the agent in deciding to drink, and drive, and to risk harming themselves and others. Note that the vast majority of drunk drivers do NOT cause fatal accidents; far more are arrested for DUI than cause accidents.
There was an example of rich man who, in dying, left his house and his rich art collection to the city of Philly, on the condition that the art stayed in the house, a few miles outside of the city. Later city officials moved that art into the city, under the theory that it caused “no harm”, since the prior owner had died. One mother of such an official disagreed, claiming all people wanting to put restrictions in their wills have been harmed, with the precedent that violating the express wishes of people who are now dead causes no harm.
The idea that violating some rule or prior agreement, because of “no harm”, seems nearly certain to be rationalization that uses a specific instance of claimed non-harm to stop enforcing some accepted norm. The loss of such a rule might well cause some harm to others. In the “art move” example, it seems clear to me that there is real harm in violating the agreement. But I can also understand those who claim it’s not harm.
For society, it seems certain that there are rules, laws, and cultural norms which result in some social optimal. Deviation from this results in a sub-optimal society, tho it might not be clear to identify exactly who was harmed, or by how much.
Children being harmed by the divorce of their parents is one I’m very familiar with – and now believe that “no-fault” divorce is a sub-optimal policy for society. Normalizing consent-based promiscuous sex is another socially sub-optimal norm.
Trying to measure, and compare, alternate moralities based on comparing the harms of those moralities seems a way to allow more fruitful discussions of comparative societies. But making harm the basis of morality might shut down those discussions. I’ve ordered a book and so I’m now waiting in Slovakia.
"Contra Jonathan Haidt, Gray believes that harm-avoidance is the essence of moral reasoning. That is, if someone says that “X is wrong,” you can be pretty sure that the person will say that “X causes harm.”"
Nope. Ask your husband or wife, "Honey, if I cheated on you and had a one night stand while away on a business trip, if you never learned about it, would it be morally ok, because no one was harmed?" - "No! It would not be morally ok! You moron!"
Or consider how nine years ago Lansburg got into some hot water asking if unconscious sex (not resulting in physical injury or pregnancy) should be a serious felony, because, after all, what was the 'harm', the situation being perhaps analogous to the kind of trespass that gets nominal damages because no actual damages. http://www.thebigquestions.com/2013/03/20/censorship-environmentalism-and-steubenville/
Well, it doesn't take reading many of the comments to see that people insist that 'harm' in terms of actual physical injury or damage or even from traumatic memories is absolutely not the point for many people, who say this is obviously extremely immoral behavior.
The trouble is that since harm *can* be used to justify moral opinions, such a story will be crafted as a rationalization to try and justify those views and to raise the status of those attitudes. Because, if you want to use the law to coercively impose them on others, the test is damages, so you have to pretend there *are* actual harms, even when there really aren't.
The danger (or 'opportunity' depending on your perspective) inherent in giving weight to 'offense' and 'emotional distress' and making them actionable in court is that innocent people can't easily defend themselves by disproving damages as it allows people to insist you take their word for it regarding subjective states of mind. If you make states of mind determinative, you will get many more cases of those states of mind, and hypersensitivity about everything will skyrocket - as Haidt has observed.
The point is, this is the obvious trouble with taking all these 'harm' stories at face value as if it really was the basis of morality. It isn't. It's just the only way we are now allowed to promote morality into law, so it's all one will ever see, especially in the intellectually respectable world.
The law is an exercise of power by domination, but one that conditions use and access through language, symbols, and ideas. But language and ideas are not some fixed stars in the heaven, and subject to all kinds of manipulations. One can open a lock with the key, or one can pick the lock, or just change the lock so it now opens with a different key. It is in this way that the lust for the power of law has a highly corrupting influence on the words and thoughts that are the key to opening that door, which has profound ripple effects throughout the whole culture.
Historically the law protected property, rights, health, welfare, and public morality. Some of those involved the deterrence of or remedy for injuries that were damaging harms in direct, clear, uncontroversial ways. Others had a more tenuous or indirect relationship to or justification in 'harm', and some *none at all*. But as those harm-indifferent exceptions were swept away, harm was all that was left, and so, everything must be framed in terms of harm now, even if those explanations are bogus, like they would be for examples above.
In the more religious past, few would have had any trouble with the idea that something can be deeply morally sinful even if it is merely thought (e.g., lust, envy, etc.), even if it causes no harm, indeed, even if it's a net benefit in material terms. This would not have struck them as somehow at odds or inconsistent with the underlying theme of their moral instincts and impulses. They wouldn't have felt any need for there to be a showing of harm to enforce such norms with law.
And it is still that way today, whether people recognize it or not, though the prevailing 'religion' especially regarding sexual morality is quite different.
Only after this great talk did my copy of The Mind Club arrive in Slovakia. It was indeed a great book and extremely relevant in these times of crybully victim/ patients being the victims of thinking/ acting agents. Such agents who knowingly cause harm are considered evil today.
Recently I saw a related Drama Triangle, that added a third role "rescuer". Like NATO to rescue Victim Ukraine from Villain Putin. (From a socialist site I mostly don't agree with.)
https://thepeoplescube.com/peoples-blog/liberals-conservatives-and-russia-the-drama-triangle-t22711.html
I also added a link to here to my own substack post on twitter and responsibility.
https://tomgrey.substack.com/p/tabs-and-tweet-like-thoughts?s=w
Thanks for organizing this - I enjoyed listening.
It was a delight to meet Kurt Gray and learn more about his fascinating research (and a bit about his background).
Here is an un-gated link to a clear statement of his ambitious theory of morality: Gray et al., "Mind Perception is the Essence of Morality" (2012):
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3379786/
My takeaway is that Prof. Gray and his research colleagues (a) conceptualize and elucidate fresh psychological mechanisms that have intuitive plausibility and empirical bite; and (b) overstate the explanatory scope of their concepts and mechanisms.
A hallmark of science is to explain much with little -- the twin ideals of fullness and parsimony. But there is also a trade-off between fullness and parsimony.
Psychology is more like chemistry than physics, so to speak.
A few examples:
1) A psychological mechanism that Prof. Gray calls "dyadic completion":
"we should be compelled to complete the moral dyad when it appears incomplete. This dyadic completion can occur in two complementary ways. First, when we see someone blameworthy—an apparent moral agent—we should complete the dyad by inferring the presence of another mind to suffer—a moral patient. Second, when we see a suffering patient, we infer the presence of another mind to take responsibility as a moral agent." (p. 111)
I say that dyadic completion happens sometimes, and perhaps often, but not always. Prof. Gray has provided an insight, not a law, and not an empirical generalization.
There are many situations where many people perceive moral ambiguity, rather than a dyad of agent and patient. Examples are blackmail, addiction, suicide, vice markets.
2) Prof. Gray's belief that harm-avoidance is the essence of moral reasoning. (See Arnold Kling's blogpost.)
Again, this is an important insight, not a law, and not an empirical generalization.
A poignant, fundamental counter-example: Many (most?) people believe harm-infliction is a moral imperative of justice. The psychology of retributive justice is to restore a balance in the universe, by making the wrongdoer suffer a harm (e.g., loss of liberty for X years) commensurate to the crime.
Moreover, there are many who perceive retribution as a means to rehabilitate the wrongdoer. They construe the wrongdoer as a patient, so to speak, and harm-infliction as the therapy.
3) Prof. Gray's belief that rival moral philosophies jointly reduce to his theory of morality. See Kurt Gray and Chelsea Schein, "Two Minds vs. Two Philosophies: Mind Perception Defines Morality and Dissolves the Debate between Deontology and Utilitarianism":
https://www.researchgate.net/publication/257797409_Two_Minds_Vs_Two_Philosophies_Mind_Perception_Defines_Morality_and_Dissolves_the_Debate_Between_Deontology_and_Utilitarianism
The authors write:
"the phenomenon of dyadic completion suggests that deontological and utilitarian concerns are not only simultaneously active, but also typically compatible and reinforcing: wrong acts have harmful consequences, and harmful consequences stem from wrong acts. The cognitive fusion of acts with consequences suggests that normative conflicts between deontology and utilitarianism are not reflected in everyday moral judgment."
I say that 'everyday Kantianism' is a counter-example that has empirical bite. Many a person sometimes makes a private moral decision or a private moral judgment by asking herself, 'What if everyone did that?', although she knows that her decision won't determine what everyone else will do. For example, I might form a moral judgment that I should take time and care to vote, because democracy would collapse if no one votes. Now, in point of fact, I know that I am nobody, and know that my decision to vote (or not to vote) has no influence on whether others choose to vote (or not to vote). Everyday Kantianism is a real moral psychology that is founded in counterfactual speculation, and is contrary to consequentialism.
Another counter-example: At Thanksgiving dinner, when it is time to wash dishes, a person who is motivated by fairness morality will pitch in, even if doing so gets in the way (too many cooks in the kitchen) and indirectly diminishes after-dinner conversation. By contrast, a utilitarian will adjust her behavior 'at the margin,' and so might nurture after-dinner conversation of a subset of guests at table whilst an optimal subset of other, fair-minded guests wash dishes. (Or so she might conveniently tell herself?) The point is that each morality (fairness, utilitarianism) has a different implication for behavior.
Prof. Gray certainly got me thinking!
Thank you, Arnold, for your gracious conversation-making.
I have just read
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/professor-of-apocalypse-blake-smith
in the new edition of The Tablet. Clearly, Kurt Gray and other intellectuals you refer daily lack the much broader context (no pun intended on Tyler's recent discovery of the relevance of context) of liberalism in human history.
Also, in relation to how to overcome political divisions, today's fight between Dems and Putin is not a question of "cognitive empathy" (a term used by reader MikeDC and taken from Bob Wright) but of the perceptions of immediate gains. In conflicts between two governments, resort to violence still is a legitimate option, and we could expect the parties to have a much stronger incentive to know each other and perhaps develop serious "cognitive empathy" but most of these conflicts are created by the two parties intending to take advantage of an opportunity (Putin to gain territory lost in the breakout of the Soviet Union, the Dems to divert attention from serious failures related to their collusion with the barbarians to grab power). People familiar with the history of Ukraine --before, during, and after the Soviet Union-- know well that Ukraine's several post-Soviet Union crises led in 2014 to an Obama's intervention that didn't solve the conflict but was enough to delay Putin's response.
Bob Wright's post on why the US didn't negotiate more seriously with Russia over Ukraine plays strongly to this theme. https://nonzero.substack.com/p/why-biden-didnt-negotiate-seriously?utm_source=url
He says this failure is because the Blob (the US foreign policy establishment) lacks "cognitive empathy". Which is pretty similar to what Gray is saying. Because it can't imagine what Russia wants, it simply can't seriously negotiate and devolves into tired tropes of "appeasement" and "irrationality" on the part of Russia.
Isn't a more likely story (and one that can be replicated in other situations) that while the Blob could have made more concessions to avoid war, it simply sees war as the preferred outcome?
That is, we have to grapple with the fact that simple "exposure" to the "pain" of the other side isn't enough. It's a conscious choice to hear and to believe. How does one cross that hurdle of humanizing the opposition?