A response to the Theory of Dyadic Morality

 

The Theory of Dyadic Morality (Schein and Gray, 2017) is a theory of moral psychology / judgement / cognition.  It states that things that are intentionally harmful are seen as immoral, and crucially, that things that are immoral are seen as harmful.  There is hard data to back up this assertion:  

https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1088868317698288#fig3-1088868317698288

This shows that perceptions of harm and perceptions of immorality, of a particular topic, match up closely.  

The definition of harm is extended from harm to the person, to harm to other things like society or abstract principles.  

The Theory of Dyadic Morality (TDM) thereby rests on the "dyadic" causal relationship between harm and immorality.  It predicts that: 1) perceived harm (and therefore perceived immorality) are on a continuum of severity, instead of being "all or nothing"; and 2) harm and immorality form a self-reinforcing spiral, so that a perception of immorality lead to a perception of harm, leading to a higher perception of immorality, leading to a higher perception of harm, etc., etc.  

This mutual reinforcement may be related to the "Smoke Detector Principle" (Nesse, 2004).  This states that we pay much more attention to potential threats than to potential opportunities, for good evolutionary reasons: it is better to give a false alarm than to be dead or injured.  Potential harm is a threat.  

Over the course of human history, there has been a general trend towards greater general compassion and social justice (Pinker, 2011).  Human morality seems to be "self-correcting", in a sense, like science.  TDM seeks to explain this, at least partially, through the mechanism of harm being seen as more immoral which is seen as more harmful and therefore more immoral (to some potential maximum level).  

An alternative, complementary explanation for this phenomenon is increased sympathy for suffering victims because of the removal of restrictive norms.  If someone breaks a moral norm, we tend to disapprove of them, and disapproving of someone leads us to have less sympathy for their pain (Decety, 2011).  We literally feel someone's pain less, if we disapprove of them or their actions.  Over time, sexual norms have become relaxed, leaving norms of compassion and justice intact, and if no norm has been broken, no disapproval is warranted, and we may then have emotional resonance with the pain of previously persecuted groups such as gay people.  

Dill and Darwall (2014:22) describe a number of times throughout history when public social disapproval of unethical behaviour made it more expedient to behave ethically rather than unethically.  

This historical drift towards greater compassion and social justice is consistent with the self-maximising nature of well-being, which itself is consistent with maximising "win-win".  There is a biological pressure on every organism to do the things that will allow it to thrive, survive, and reproduce.  For example, the Smoke Detector Principle is consistent with this pressure.

 

The case for moral dumbfounding

TDM appears to be an excellent and realistic theory of moral psychology.  The one place it falls down in my opinion is its treatment of moral dumbfounding, and this gap is a result of the theory of moral psychology not having an adequate theory of morality to respond to.  

Moral dumbfounding is where you ask someone why they think something is immoral, and they cannot tell you.  Famously, Immanuel Kant said that he knew that masturbation was wrong, but he didn't know why.  Jonathan Haidt (2013) and other researchers have presented subjects with a number of "harmless" wrongs and asked them to say what was wrong about them: such as consensual incest between adult siblings; having sex with a roast chicken and then eating it; or smearing faeces on a Bible.  Typically, people were unable to say exactly what was wrong with these things.  TDM maintains that this was because they were "not allowed" to say they were harmful.  In contrast, experiments by Schein and Gray (2017) have shown that people define the immorality of these things in terms of harm.  

However, the explanations in terms of harm are unconvincing.  

 

For example, Anita Bryant believed that the “purity” violation of gay rights would convince kids to be gay, which would not only destroy their vulnerable immortal souls but also undermine procreation and hence the American family, which would bankrupt the nation and eventually lead to anarchy (Bryant, 1977).

Anita Bryant (1977) - The Anita Bryant story: The survival of our nation’s families and the threat of militant homosexuality. through Schein and Gray, (2017)

 

Anita Bryant is a Christian, and religious people are well known for their opposition to homosexuality in itself, never mind for other reasons.  Religious people disapprove of gayness full stop.  But if you ask them why, they are not able to come up with convincing reasons.  Ultimately they are likely to point to the male-female pair-bond as being "God's way".  But why this should be God's way - is unknown to them.  

Chapais (2008) hypothesises that the human family tree went from multi-male, multi-female mating as in our closest relatives, the chimpanzees and bonobos, to polygynous pair-bonding in the australopithicines (see Roberts, 2011), to the largely monogamous pair-bonding of the modern human race. Monogamous pair-bonding is egalitarian for both sexes and therefore was the case for most of the past 2 million years (see Perry, 2021:110). Pair-bonding, whether polygynous or monogamous, is the evolved way for humans to reproduce.  

Organised religion has a society-building function (Norenzayen, 2013) and as such, we hypothesise that it sacralised reproduction and pair-bonding (polygynous or monogamous) so that no other type of sexual activity is permissible.  In addition, religion is patriarchal as it is a power structure that males can take advantage of to be patriarchal (controlling and coercing women as a way for men to acquire and retain mates) (Smuts, 1995).  Patriarchy despises women and by extension, men who act like women by having sex with other men, especially in the passive role.  

Hence, the religious prejudice against homosexuality may be a combination of sacralising the male-female pair-bond, and patriarchy.  Religious people are not moral philosophers or scientists, and therefore cannot be expected to know this.  

 

Realistic model of evolved morality

MAC/GM model summarised in a table, here:  

https://orangebud.co.uk/morality_as_cooperation.html#summary

The MAC/GM (morality-as-cooperation / goals-methods) model of morality specifies five evolved moral domains, each with its own goal and method of achieving that goal.  Benefit and harm, or compassion, belong in the cooperative domain, as its goal is win-win mutualism, and helping non-kin is believed to have evolved within the context of close interdepence: what is good for you is good for me, because I depend on you to survive.  

We may observe that the morality of groups/teams/partnerships is parallel to the morality of families.  The goal of each is the inclusive fitness of individuals, and altruism is in proportion to the value the recipient can bring to the donor (whether utility value, or genetic value).  In a group, the Stakeholder Principle dictates that "I will help you when the benefit I gain from your well being is greater than the cost I incur in helping you."  In a family, Hamilton's Rule states that "I will help you to the extent that we share genes" (Perry, 2021:48).  

 

Harmless harms

So, in some cases of immorality, what is being harmed is sacred values.  If a value is either something we value in itself (i.e., a goal), or a policy for achieving a goal, then it is possible to damage it through the "wrong" behaviour.  

 

Legitimate harm

This article makes the point that intentional, self-serving harm is immoral unless it is done for "legitimate" reasons.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0010027721004030

 

References

Chapais, Bernard – “Primeval Kinship – how pair-bonding gave birth to human society”; Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts 2008

Decety, Jean – “The Neuroevolution of Empathy”: Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 1231, 2011

Dill, Brendan; and Stephen Darwall - "Moral Psychology as Accountability"; [In Justin D’Arms & Daniel Jacobson (eds.), Moral Psychology and Human Agency: Philosophical Essays on the Science of Ethics (pp. 40-83). Oxford University Press, 2014

Haidt, Jonathan – “The Righteous Mind – why good people are divided by politics and religion”; Penguin Books, London 2013

Nesse, Randolph M – “Natural selection and the elusiveness of happiness”: The Royal Society, 31 August 2004

Norenzayan, Ara – “Big Gods – how religion transformed cooperation and conflict”; Princeton University Press, Princeton NJ 2013

Perry, Simon - "Understanding morality and ethics", 2021 https://orangebud.co.uk/Understanding morality and ethics.pdf

Pinker, Steven – “The Better Angels of our Nature – A history of violence and humanity”; Penguin Books, London 2011

Roberts, Dr Alice – “Evolution – the human story”; Dorling Kindersley, London 2011

Schein, Chelsea; and Kurt Gray - "The Theory of Dyadic Morality: Reinventing Moral Judgment by Redefining Harm", Personality and Social Psychology Review, 2017, https://doi.org/10.1177/1088868317698288