This document discusses morality and heresy. It argues that people are not inherently rational and are driven more by narratives and subconscious biases. Strict moral divisions can lead to problems. It examines how morality is used to dehumanize out-groups and how perceptions of good and evil are reductionist. Western religion paradoxically decreases empathy while increasing donations. Moral development is descriptive among hunter-gatherers rather than proscriptive.

1. Against Morality: A Case for Heresy

2. Heresy
● A belief that is strongly at odds with orthodox
beliefs
● Not just disagreement, but disruptive to the
point of being transgressive

3. 1)
2) …
3)

4. Do people have the intrinsic
capacity to do good works?
● Augustine
– Nope, only through
God's grace
– Original Sin
– Non-baptized going to
hell/can't do good works
● Everyone before Jesus
● Non-christians
● Babies
● Pelagius
– Yes
– Free will
– Salvation is
unnecessary
– Jesus was an good
example/Adam was a
bad example

5. A → !!A
A
!A

6. Bigger Picture
A
!A

7. Interrelated system of seeming
opposites

8. Strict division can lead to
● Binary thinking
● Less flexibility → confirmation bias
● Assumption of completeness/irritation with
incomplete
● Static objects versus dynamic subjects
– Abstraction versus ideography

9. Fundamental Attribution Error
● Good things I do/happen to me (my in-group)
because of my actions/character. Bad things I
do/happen to me because of circumstances.
● For people outside my group, good things are
often due to circumstances, bad things are due
to their actions/character
● Just World Hypothesis

10. Stanford Rapist
● “But where do we draw the line and stop worrying about being
politically correct every second of the day and see that rape on
campuses isn’t always because people are rapists.”
● “This is completely different from a woman getting kidnapped
and raped as she is walking to her car in a parking lot. That is
a rapist. These are not rapists. These are idiot boys and girls
having too much to drink and not being aware of their
surroundings and having clouded judgement.”

11. We are not rational
● Rationalizing
● Driven by narratives
● Most thinking/evaluation is done
subconsciously or outside main attention

12. Wason Card Test

13. Induced Emotional States
● Stimulus, conditioning, hypnosis, previous
interaction
● Can major consequences to cognitive
judgments
● Elephant and Rider

14. Narratives
● Established narratives
– Selective/false memory
– Mobs
● Rationalizing narratives

15. Internal lawyer
● Only need one reason to accept something you
want to accept
● Only need one reason to reject something you
want to reject

16. We're not rational, but we can be
● Cognitive Behavioral Therapy
– Become conscious of your thoughts/narratives
– Challenge them
– Condition yourself away from them
● Athletes watch film
● Add an internal cross-examiner (heretic!)

17. Disordered thoughts?
● Disconnect between what the narrative is/what
the elephant wants and what the
rider/consciousness is aware of or is willing to
admit
● Different level narratives
● Repeated outcomes are usually sign of
effective strategy

18. What is the purpose of morality?
● Split positive and negative morality
● Negative morality has the primary purpose of
dehumanizing people so that it is okay to hurt
them

19. Why do people behave badly?
● Big question: What do we mean by “badly”?
– Jonathan Haidt – The Righteous Mind
(http://righteousmind.com/)
● Good versus evil
– Manichaeism
– Reductionism

20. ● When will a man guilty of any crime or sin accept with a tranquil mind that his
wickedness is a product of his own will, not of necessity, and allow what he now strives to
attribute to nature to be ascribed to his own free choice? It affords endless comfort to
transgressors of the divine law if they are able to believe that their failure to do something
is due to inability rather than disinclination, since they understand from their natural
wisdom that no one can be judged for failing to do the impossible and that what is
justifiable on grounds of impossibility is either a small sin or none at all.[21]
●
● Under the plea that it is impossible not to sin, they are given a false sense of security in
sinning...Anyone who hears that it is not possible for him to be without sin will not even try
to be what he judges to be impossible, and the man who does not try to be without sin
must perforce sin all the time, and all the more boldly because he enjoys the false security
of believing that it is impossible for him not to sin...But if he were to hear that he is able not
to sin, then he would have exerted himself to fulfil what he now knows to be possible when
he is striving to fulfil it, to achieve his purpose for the most part, even if not entirely.

21. Hierarchy of needs

22. Sad Lamp
● Ikea commercial

23. Selishness versus Empathy

24. What decreases empathy
● Threat/injury
– Pressure
● Milgram experiment
● In-group/out-group
– Robber's Cove
● Narrative
– Stanford Prison Experiment

25. Western Religious paradox
● On average, less empathetic and compassionate
● However, even exempting donations to their religion,
still donate more to charity
– Narrative supports it
● Gordon Allport
– The problem with averages
– curvilinear relationship
– Highly intrinsic religious people show least in-group/out-
group bias

26. The progress of gay rights

27. Who doesn't develop moral stories
● Hunter-Gatherers
– Egalitarian
– Moral myths
● Descriptive and interactive instead of proscriptive
● Foolishness, selfishness, consequences instead of evil
● Psychopaths
– No empathy
– Other people don't exist

28. Development of American slavery

29. Ancient Slavery
● Near ubiquitous
● Debt
● Conquest

30. Conquest - Religious

31. Christopher Columbus
● “They are artless and generous with what they
have, to such a degree as no one would believe
but him who had seen it. Of anything they have,
if it be asked for, they never say no, but do
rather invite the person to accept it, and show
as much lovingness as though they would give
their hearts.”

32. Religious->Racial

33. It's not “those people”