Thanks yet again to all three respondents for a stimulating discussion. I’m sure my closing comments won’t do justice to your closing contributions, but I’ll try to respond to the most salient points.
I’m delighted to hear Richard Joyce agree that we all tend to form a negative image of threatening people and a positive image of people who might benefit us. I’d of course put a finer point on it: The “negative” or “positive” image formation involves subtle value judgments that (a) we’re often not aware of; and (b) may be unrelated to the nature of the threat or the benefit. Thus, we may negatively judge the clothing style or taste in music of someone who competes with us for a job—and may be unaware that these judgments are a function of the perceived threat.
And please note that the related argument I make in The Evolution of God goes well beyond this simple and (as Joyce suggests) fairly obvious fact about human psychology. That argument is twofold:
(1) These simple biases of judgment account for many of the belligerent and tolerant passages in the scripture of all three Abrahamic religions. And this in turn tells us something about how we might bring out the best and worst in religions today.
(2) These simple biases of judgment may impede comprehension of the forces that motivate our enemies.
And here I’d like to correct Joyce’s interpretation of me: “If I understand Wright correctly, he is not advocating that we extend our moral imagination to our real enemies; he is not arguing in his essay that we should overturn our unflattering and understanding-hindering antipathy towards terrorists.” Actually, I’m arguing exactly that (among other things). I think it’s in our interest to understand what circumstances created these terrorists—not so that we can then change circumstances to moderate their behavior (unlikely) but so that we can change circumstances in a way that reduces the chances that others who are now moderate will follow in their footsteps and become terrorists.
Joyce raises the interesting question of why I depict our unflattering view of enemies as more of a distortion than our flattering view of allies: “When we form a flattering image of an ally—when we choose to overlook his past misdemeanors, for example—why is this not equally a kind of distortion, a kind of inaccuracy in our thinking?” The answer is that I’m not talking about the moral judgment we render (e.g., whether we deem a given behavior a transgression) but rather about the cognitive process that biases us toward a given moral judgment. Our favorable moral judgments tend to be facilitated by successfully “putting ourselves in the shoes” of a given person-recalling feelings we’ve had (e.g., a sense of grievance at being disrespected) that are in fact comparable to the feelings that in this person motivated acts that might otherwise be deemed inexcusable. Our unfavorable moral judgments tend to be facilitated by denying such comparisons even when they exist. This isn’t an absolute pattern, but I maintain that it applies often enough so that we can say that on balance our views of the motivations of allies are literally truer than our views of the motivations of enemies. (Note that I’m confining the analysis to “misdeeds”—cases where the behavior to be explained is one that, in the absence of an exculpating motivation, would be deemed bad.)
As for what Joyce thought I was saying-that our favorable moral judgments of allies tend to be less distorted than our unfavorable moral judgments of enemies: I can see how this might seem implicit in the asymmetry I see in the cognitive processes leading to moral judgment. But in fact I have a somewhat different view, as suggested in an elaborative footnote to my chapter on the moral imagination. This quote from the footnote captures my sense that when it comes to moral judgments our skepticism should fall symmetrically on our views of enemies and allies:
Our moral judgments feel as if they’re evaluating the past in light of moral truth, but they were actually designed by natural selection to serve our future in light of strategic calculation. We unconsciously assess our zero-sum and non-zero-sum relationships, unconsciously decide whether payment will serve self-interest, and then our inner accountant generates the moral judgments that will justify the payment, or not… In this view, the moral imagination subordinates the truth about the actual moral facts to the larger goal of navigating the landscape of zero-sum and non-zero-sum relationships. It shrinks or expands in response to judgments about whether a relationship is auspicious and, if so, on what terms. Our ensuing convictions about who is to blame and who isn’t to blame are self-serving illusions.
Now for some quick and, perhaps, concise-to-the-point-of-cryptic reactions:
(1) I agree with Jonathan Sheehan that compassion can be carried too far (though, strictly speaking, I’m less interested in abetting compassion than in abetting its frequent corollary, a kind of empathetic illumination of the motivations behind acts).
(2) I agree with Timur Kuran that social factors outside of the core cognitive tendency I focus on can reinforce the bias I describe. (And, more broadly, I concur with all three respondents that things are invariably very complicated in the real world and that any game theoretical rendering-certainly including mine-will be an oversimplification. But there is such a thing as fruitful oversimplification.)
(3) Richard Joyce emphasizes the importance of intentionality, as distinct from the zero-sum vs. non-zero-sum distinction, saying that the former may have “nothing to do” with the latter. He writes: “If X is out to harm me intentionally then I’ll likely form a negative image of X; but if X hurts me by accident then I’ll be much more forgiving.” Yes, but I submit that the (Darwinian) reason we make this distinction is because intentional harm is an indicator of likely future zero-sum interaction with the person, whereas accidental harm is not. So the “negative image” and the forgiveness are appropriate responses to proxies for, respectively, zero-sum and non-zero-sum (or perhaps not-zero-sum) interaction.
I can hear Professor Joyce demanding that I corroborate this rank conjecture about the Darwinian logic underlying this reaction. Maybe another time. Right now all I have time to do is thank all three of you again.
Read: Concluding Remarks
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All sorts of things can affect one’s tendency to like or dislike other individuals. Some are unexpected. A subliminal hint of lemon odor can influence one’s evaluation of a stranger’s likeability (Li et al. 2007). Inducing a feeling of disgust–by placing a dirty kleenex nearby, for example—can boost the severity of a negative moral judgment (Schnall et al. 2008a). Allowing a disgusted individual to wash her hands will prompt her to tone down her negative moral assessment (Schnall et al. 2008b). A person’s evaluation of stimuli can even be influenced by whether he is encouraged to press down with his hands on a table top at which he is sitting or pull up on its underside (Cacioppo et al. 1993).
Other influences on our interpersonal likes and dislikes are far more obvious. If a person is threatening to harm me, or is actually intentionally harming me, then I’ll likely form a negative image of him or her. If the person is promising to act in ways that improve my welfare, or is actually intentionally acting in such ways, then I’ll likely form a positive image of him or her. This seems so obvious that one doesn’t need to cite psychology literature to back it up. And if convincing us of this truism is “the heart” of Wright’s essay, then he certainly won’t meet any resistance from this quarter.
The issue is the extent to which Wright takes this truism and tries to draw more substantial conclusions from it. One concern I have regards the role of intentionality in our attitudes towards other individuals (or groups). If X is out to harm me intentionally then I’ll likely form a negative image of X; but if X hurts me by accident then I’ll be much more forgiving. Now, something important to note about zero-sum games versus non-zero-sum games is that intentionality has nothing to do with it. Even insects and plants can play these games with each other. So long as two parties both have interests and can causally affect each other’s interests, then the possibility of a game is on. The parties do not have to encounter each other spatially or even be aware of each other’s existence: If a nocturnal insect and a diurnal insect are competing for the same foodstuff, then they are playing a zero-sum game.
We can imagine scenarios where intentions and outcomes come apart. Well-intentioned aid packages sent to distant lands can end up in the hands of corrupt local warlords, who are thereby bolstered in their capacity to victimize those very individuals whose interests the charity was supposed to advance. Similarly, someone who seeks to harm another through spreading malicious rumors, say, may end up prompting sympathy for the subject of the gossip in a manner that actually ends up benefiting him or her. Putting this in more abstract form: Sometimes two parties intend to play a zero-sum game but end up playing a non-zero-sum game, and sometimes vice versa.
An interesting question to ask is: When intentions and outcomes come apart, where do our sympathies and antipathies lie? I hazard to suggest that the answer is that they generally go along with intentions.
If I hear that some distant person’s actions are harming my welfare then I naturally won’t be too pleased; but if I learn, further, that this occurs only through a complex causal chain of which this person is ignorant—if I learn that in fact this distant person thinks quite well of me and intends me good things—then my attitude won’t suffer the distortions and failures of imagination of which Wright speaks. In other words, it is not the belief that I am in a zero-sum game with X that causes the failure of “moral imagination,” it is the belief that X intends me harm—a belief that I may have even while knowing that I am in fact playing a non-zero-sum game with X. By symmetrical reasoning: If I believe that some person Y is really out to get me, but in fact Y’s actions are inadvertently benefiting me, then this may be sufficient for me to consider Y an “enemy” and have the usual range of hostile attitudes towards him. (Of course, I will also be pleased about the benefits that I am accruing through his actions, and probably consider Y not only an enemy but also an idiot for failing to see that I profit from his hostility.) In other words, it is not the belief that I am in a non-zero-sum game with Y that causes the expansion of my “moral imagination,” it is the belief that Y intends to act for my benefit—a belief that I may have even while knowing that I am in fact playing a zero-sum game with Y.
Another point to which I would like to draw attention is an apparent assumption of asymmetry in Wright’s argument. When we believe ourselves to be engaged in a zero-sum game, Wright claims, “our mind naturally impedes clear comprehension of [our interactant's] motivations.” The detection of zero-sumness apparently distorts perception and blocks accuracy. But why is the same point not made of our attitudes towards non-zero-sumness? When we form a flattering image of an ally—when we choose to overlook his past misdemeanors, for example–why is this not equally a kind of distortion, a kind of inaccuracy in our thinking? Why is my unflattering portrayal of my enemies any less true to reality than my flattering portrayal of my allies?
Wright may respond that both attitudes are symmetrically inaccurate, but that one kind of inaccuracy is benign and the other pernicious. Our unflattering inaccuracy with respect to our enemies stands in the way of understanding, and a lack of understanding of enemies is a pragmatically bad idea. (How much more effectively we could defeat them if we could understand them!) By comparison, our flattering inaccuracy with respect to our allies may also stand in the way of true understanding, but no great harm ensues. After all, our allies are, by definition, not seeking our harm.
However, if I understand Wright correctly, he is not advocating that we extend our moral imagination to our real enemies; he is not arguing in his essay that we should overturn our unflattering and understanding-hindering antipathy towards terrorists. Rather, his point is that we have been sucked into interpreting people who are in fact allies as enemies. Wright’s central claim is that we should overturn the distorting influence of unflattering antipathy towards that vast majority of Muslims who are in fact not our enemies at all.
I wonder, again, if the point is supposed to be symmetrical. Suppose that instead of having been misled by the media into thinking that a group of friends is really our enemy, we have been misled by the media into thinking that a group of enemies is really our ally. If our (supposed) evolved mechanisms have kicked in to provide us with a distortedly flattering view of the virtues of these people, then by parity of reasoning we should strive to rein in our moral imagination; we should overturn the distorting influence of flattering sympathy towards these individuals who are in fact not our allies at all.
Well, the thoughts expressed in both the last two paragraphs seem plausible enough. Who could deny the platitude that we should see our friends as friends and our enemies as enemies (and cats as cats and dogs as dogs)? And note that the pragmatic asymmetry has disappeared: Neither kind of inaccurate thought could be claimed to be benign. Seeing our friends as enemies (which is Wright’s concern) deprives us of understanding that could be enormously useful. But seeing our enemies as friends is, if anything, even more dangerous.
I should like to close with a fairly obvious thought, but it seems to me an important one. Remember that the notions of “friend” and “enemy” that are relevant here are to be defined in game theoretical terms: based not on the intentions of the parties in question but on whether they stand to benefit or suffer from the other’s pursuit of its interests. The worry is that any claim of the form “We in the West stand to benefit/suffer from Muslims pursuing their own interests” is just far too simplistic to warrant endorsement. The idea these two complex, sprawling, nebulous entities are playing one grand game is a highly doubtful proposition–even allowing for a dose of idealization. They are playing a myriad of games at many levels: numerous non-zero-sum games (that are potentially zero-sum games), many zero-sum games (that are potentially non-zero-sum games). The globalized economy ensures that the costs and benefits traded among nations and cultures is of a magnitude of complexity that challenges (and in all probability defies) comprehension. Merely drawing our attention to one interaction that appears to be non-zero-sum (that “what’s good for Muslims broadly is bad for radical Muslims … [making the West] more secure from terrorism”)—an interaction, moreover, that appears more potential than actual, since Wright’s principal complaint is that the West is not acting in a way that’s “good for Muslims”—is insufficient evidence that the relation between these two parties is in general characterized by non-zero-sumness.
References
Cacioppo, J.T., et al. 1993. “Rudimentary determination of attitudes: II. Arm flexion and extension have differential effects on attitudes.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 65: 5-17.
Li, W., et al. 2007. “Subliminal smells can guide social preferences.” Psychological Science 18: 1044-1049.
Schnall, S., et al. 2008a. “Disgust as embodied moral judgment.” Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34: 1096-1109.
Schnall, S., et al. 2008b. “With a clean conscience: Cleanliness reduces the severity of moral judgment.” Psychological Science 19: 1219-1222.
Read: Distinguishing Friends from Enemies
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Adam Smith once commented that people, “though naturally sympathetic, feel little for another, with whom they have no particular connection, in comparison of what they feel for themselves.” He was onto something there. No doubt, as Wright suggests, it is much more difficult to think sympathetically about scholar A, whose theories and ambitions recklessly threaten my own and, than scholar B, the charming protégé.
So I agree entirely that it is easier to put up with even bad behavior from those who seem to offer more in benefits than in costs. More significantly–for Wright and for myself–I also agree that relationships of mutual exchange (of ideas, of values, even of currency) can expand the compass of the moral imagination.
Events in Iran these past few days have, I think, accomplished something like this for Americans. Fears of a nuclear Middle East have been overshadowed, in our minds (or in mine anyway), by the incredible bravery of Iranian men and women confronting the brutality of a police state. I can imagine myself in their shoes, and even things that might have seemed alien before–the nightly chants of “God is great” from the rooftops–are suddenly made sympathetic and moving.
My concerns are not, then, about these dynamics of sympathy and antipathy. Rather, like Timur Kuran, I am concerned about how we extrapolate beyond psychological mechanisms, either to the social world (in Kuran’s response) or to the political one (in my own).
For it seems to me that compassion easily becomes absorption. It becomes a way to frame one’s pragmatic interests as if they were the interests of another. Few histories testify more clearly to this than the histories of religion, where extension of the “we” has, more often than not, played a powerfully aggressive role.
Christians have been trying to compassionately absorb the Jews for millennia, for example, and they are still doing it today. The Jew cannot simply ask the Christian to give up on conversion, however, as if this would be an easy thing. Conversion is something essential to the Christian project, and giving it up would be a major sacrifice, a major blow the self-interest of the Christian.
Instead Jews have endlessly struggled against this deadly compassion. And this struggle–this insistence that what the Christian sees as a good (conversion), the Jew sees as an affliction–is more than psychological. It is political, and importantly so.
I’d like, then, to put this question to Wright: how does the game theory model accommodate politics, and especially the politics that attend real divergences in worldview and even existential needs? When something important must be sacrificed to reach agreement with another, in other words, what does the gaming model have to offer? Does it teach us how we should make difficult moral and political choices, or does it rather (as I confess that I suspect) tend to hide these choices behind appealing but thin façades of mutual interest?
Read: Compassion and Aggression
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Robert Wright asks us to reflect on whether we notice a professional rival’s flaws more readily than we notice those of an ally. In presenting the scenario he characterizes the relationship with the rival as zero-sum and that with the ally as non-zero-sum.
Various psychological mechanisms make us particularly receptive to evidence of blemishes in a rival’s record and of virtue in the record of an ally. I may well ascribe unflattering motivations to a professional rival more readily than to a colleague who shares my own academic tastes, interests, and methodological orientation. But do the biases in question stem solely from cognitive distortions? There are also social processes at work, and in practice they may be relatively more significant.
The books and articles that I read will tend to praise the writings of my ally and to criticize those of my rival. Likewise, the people who give talks at seminars that I organize, or choose to attend, are more likely to think highly of my ally’s works than of my rival’s writings. For these reasons, information favorable to my ally is relatively more available to me. The same is true of information about my rival’s failures and dark motivations.
The bias that Wright mentions is undoubtedly pervasive. My point here is that it has an important social component that may work independently of the psychological mechanisms in question.
Am I likely to see the relationship with my rival as a zero-sum contest? Not necessarily. I might see it as a negative-sum struggle involving much wasted energy on both sides. Alternatively, I might view the relationship as a positive-sum contest that makes each of us think harder and write better in anticipation of possible criticisms from the other side. Wright’s scenario appears realistic, then, only in a probabilistic sense: a rivalry is more likely than a cooperative relationship to appear zero-sum.
Read: Judging Others Is Partly a Social Process
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Thanks to all three of you for your latest round of feedback.
So far we haven’t spent much time on what I view as the heart of my essay, and I’m wondering if I can lure you three into an introspective thought experiment that bears directly on it.
First, a recap: I argued that when we perceive people in zero-sum terms (e.g., as enemies), our mind naturally impedes clear comprehension of their motivations—especially the motivations behind behaviors we find particularly objectionable. Thus, we have trouble “putting ourselves in the shoes” of terrorists and so shedding light on the causes of terrorism, even though understanding those causes might be in our interest.
I haven’t yet won any of you over to this thesis, so, in a last-ditch effort, I’d like to see if a little introspection could make you more sympathetic to it. And, assuming this effort fails in that regard, maybe your reactions will help clarify exactly where most of the resistance lies.
OK, here’s the thought experiment:
Scenario 1: First, imagine yourself in the kind of zero-sum game that scholars sometimes find themselves in—a relationship with a scholar whose theories are fundamentally incompatible with your own. To the extent that his/her theories gain followers, your own stature within academia suffers. Imagine that the debate between you has gotten prominent and intense. And imagine that you both have your eyes on a single tenured position at a particularly prestigious university.
Scenario 2: Now imagine yourself in a highly non-zero-sum relationship—with, say, a junior scholar who shares your views and spends his/her time singing your praises and pointing to the flaws in the thinking of the rival described in Scenario 1.
Tell me if these seem like outlandish conjectures:
(1) In thinking about the rival, your mind fastens onto unflattering features more readily than flattering features, and in the case of your ally this pattern is reversed. Thus if you learn that, coincidentally, both your rival and your ally (a) last year donated $1,000 to help feed the poor and (b) once cheated on a final exam, you’re more likely to remember and repeat (a) in the case of your ally than in the case of your rival.
(2) In pondering the cheating incident, you’ll be more receptive to exonerating information (e.g. extenuating circumstances) in the case of the ally than in the case of the rival. In particular, you more readily relate your own experience to the ally’s experience—e.g., you compare the temptations that overwhelmed the ally to temptations that you yourself have succumbed to in the past.
I guess it doesn’t speak highly of me that my own introspection renders these conjectures plausible. And maybe the three of you are made of better stuff. Anyway, I’d appreciate it if you could look deep within your souls and tell me what you find.
Read: A Plea for Introspection
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In his reaction to Robert Wright’s thoughtful response, Jonathan Sheehan takes issue with Wright’s assumption that “all players are free to define gain for themselves.” I, too, will critique that assumption, though from a different angle.
The processes that prevent us from trying to achieve particular gains may also distort perceptions about available opportunities. This is because the very social pressures that keep us from acting in our perceived self-interest also discourage us from articulating accurate knowledge about our opportunities. Hence, the body of information that determines whether we recognize or overlook any particular opportunity emerges through interconnected individual decisions concerning what to say, write, share, and intimate. In relaxed environments the publicly available information about opportunities corresponds to the perceptions in our heads. In emotionally charged and politically repressive environments, much useful information remains private and, hence, inaccessible to others. This makes it difficult to think straight and to identify potential gains accurately.
Once again, the final years of the Soviet Bloc offer a striking illustration. Prior to Gorbachev’s reforms of 1985 informed citizens of the Soviet Bloc refrained from criticizing official economic policies, for fear of reprisals. They also refrained from publicizing the gains achievable through privatization and liberalization. Under the circumstances, the majority of the population believed that communism offered a better future than capitalism. Once Gorbachev’s restructuring (perestroika) and openness (glasnost) campaigns got under way, people already conscious of the prevailing inefficiencies took to speaking their minds in increasing numbers. In the process, awareness of the advantages of reforms started to spread. Thus, two dramatic transformations unfolded in tandem: a meteoric rise in awareness of the potential gains from reforms and a vast expansion of public discourses pointing to those gains. Each transformation reinforced the other.
Why is this history relevant to the present challenge of improving Muslim-Western relations? Like Soviet Bloc players of the past, those engaged in present struggles over Muslim-Western relations “define gain” through interactions with others. A Pakistani growing up in a Taliban-dominated region does not form his opinions about the costs and benefits of local policy options freely, or by himself. Likewise, the Christian who believes that a “zero-sum” religious war is under way does not learn about Islam in isolation from others. What these adversaries read, hear, investigate, and discuss is constrained by their respective social environments. Each is bombarded with information selected to support a particular perception of what is right and beneficial. And each is surrounded by people who are reluctant to question dominant opinions. Thus, where ignorance about the potential gains from Muslim-Western cooperation is widespread, a major reason is that information consistent with those gains is getting filtered out of critical public discourses.
Ignorance and misperception are hardly the preserves of the pious or the poorly educated. In rich countries many secular and well-educated people believe earnestly that agricultural subsidies protect the family farm; in fact, the benefits go overwhelmingly to huge corporations whose shareholders live mostly in cities. Many Western misperceptions about Islam and Islamic history, like Muslim misperceptions about the West, are shared by privileged elites.
These observations do not diminish the importance of publicizing the commonness of mutually beneficial interactions, in other words, of interactions with a positive-sum outcome. They do reinforce my earlier point that to reduce global tensions we must weaken the political coalitions that benefit from those tensions. Policies that split and weaken groups promoting a Huntingtonian clash of civilizations, such as the Taliban and Christian churches hostile to Islam, make it easier for individuals to pursue potential gains that they already know about. They also facilitate learning about the enormous advantages of peaceful coexistence, trade, and cooperation.
Read: Perceiving Gain Is Itself a Social Process
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I agree with Wright that there’s a time and a place for “tossing out a hypothesis on the basis of little evidence and then letting people argue about it.” What is vital, though, is that in subsequent discussion the conjectural nature of the hypothesis is not forgotten. This is the trap that sociobiologists of yore all too often fell into: They offered a purely speculative hypothesis about the evolutionary history of some piece of human psychology (which is okay) and then proceeded to build all subsequent discussion on the assumption that the hypothesis is true (which is not okay). Thoughts of how the hypothesis might be tested were often far from their minds, leading Stephen Jay Gould to admonish them for creating a pseudo-science in which “virtuosity in invention replaces testability as the criterion for acceptance” (1978, “Sociobiology: The art of storytelling” New Scientist 80, p. 530).
In the present instance, Wright argues that there is solid evidence for the hypothesis that human psychology contains a mechanism for distinguishing non-zero-sum from zero-sum games and responding accordingly. He cites “a large empirical literature on reciprocal altruism” and also some primatological work. I am familiar with and impressed with much of this research, but I should like to urge caution in deciding just which hypothesis the data supports. In particular, I’d like to draw attention to the problem of identifying at which level of generality it is appropriate to describe the putative adaptive mechanism.
An imaginary example. Suppose we observe that in the course of its natural development a type of monkey will reliably manifest a fear of leopards. Noting that this fear seems to come on-line in advance of any learning from its kin or peers, we might think it reasonable to conclude that natural selection has endowed the monkey with an adaptive mechanism for dealing with this kind of threat. But what, precisely, is the “kind of threat” that the monkey needs to deal with? Does it have a mechanism devoted to fear of leopards, or is the mechanism devoted to fear of big cats, or perhaps devoted just to fear of predators, or maybe just large animate objects? It would be difficult to say without having more detailed data. If, for example, the monkey’s fear response is triggered not just by leopards but also by lions or tigers, but not by canines or bears, then it might be reasonable to call it a mechanism for dealing with big cats. If the response is triggered by leopards but not by lions or tigers, then it might be more reasonable to call it a mechanism designed to cope with leopards in particular. (That’s too quick, but you take my point.)
This observation problematizes Wright’s citation of evidence in support of his favored hypothesis. It may be granted (if only for the sake of argument) that human psychology contains a suite of mechanisms for dealing with certain kinds of interpersonal reciprocal relations. Perhaps we are designed for engaging in the trade of concrete goods, for example. Trade is a ubiquitous and truly ancient human practice, stretching back at least to the Upper Paleolithic, making it reasonable to suspect that the human brain comes with some design features dedicated to governing trade relations. A sense of distributive fairness in exchanges, emotions of anger at unfair exchanges, a sense of ownership (”This is mine and that is yours“) all might be expected to emerge in the course of the evolution of the human mind in order to enable and enhance trade. The few grand social experiments that have attempted to expunge the notion of ownership from the human psyche—such as in the Soviet Union or the kibbutzim of Israel—have encountered an extremely stubborn opponent, suggesting that these utopia-builders were up against a human trait entrenched by natural selection.
But then one faces the problem of how, precisely, to describe the mechanism. Assuming that there is an adaptive mechanism in play, is it devoted to governing trade of concrete goods or just trade (which may include exchange of favors, of information, of access to sexual partners, etc.)? Or perhaps we should describe the mechanism as devoted to reciprocity, or perhaps to non-zero-sum games. Leaping to the very last of these descriptions would be hasty—though it may be the correct conclusion to come to after careful consideration of the data. In short, the fact that humans may have an inbuilt mechanism for dealing with one kind of non-zero-sum game doesn’t mean that we have a mechanism designed to deal with non-zero-sum games in some general sense. Therefore I remain unconvinced that the empirical evidence at which Wright gestures in his response should be interpreted as supporting the hypothesis that the human mind contains a mechanism for distinguishing non-zero-sum from zero-sum games and responding accordingly.
Read: On Just So Stories
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Let’s think a bit more about this game idea. If you assume, as Wright says he does, that “all players are free to define gain for themselves,” then you are making things too easy on yourself, I think.
In the first instance, Wright’s book is aimed at persuading us that in fact we do (or at least can) have a non-zero-sum relationship with Muslims, and vice versa. As such, it needs to affirm the objective reality of gain, right? If the merchant in his thought experiment were paid with counterfeit bills, for example, we would hardly call this a non-zero-sum game, even if the merchant were perfectly satisfied with the deal.
In an economic model, you can argue that this will work itself out: as soon as the merchant takes his gains to the bank, he’ll realize that the game was zero-sum. How? Because the bank will tell him that, in fact, the money was fake. But in the real political world, this last instant of evaluation never takes place. The values and interests that are being exchanged are not commensurable, and there is no bank to pass the judgment.
Take, for example, the loaded issue of Islam and women’s rights. Forgetting about the Taliban, let’s just look at contemporary France.
Over here, Americans are totally incredulous at the head scarf ban. For us, it makes religious difference into a zero-sum game, forcing women to choose between their religious beliefs and the benefits of state education. Why not just let them choose for themselves? Wouldn’t everyone benefit if the state just stayed out of the way?
The answer, if you are French (or a certain stripe of French), is “no.” They would argue (disingenuously or not, it does not matter) that women are not choosing, but are forced to conform by their husbands and fathers. Our non-zero-sum game, in other words, is really a zero-sum game.
Moreover, they would insist, French citizenship entails a strict secularism: public culture must be free of religious symbolism, since this latter always interferes with the free exercise of civic rights and responsibilities. Secularism is, in other words, a good to the French state whose value is diminished by head-scarves in schools.
The US, on the other hand, simply does not care if parents force their children to wear scarves, or sandals, or anything else. We don’t put any value on protecting people’s rights not to be religiously coerced in this way. Nor do we put any value on secularism—it simply does not weigh into the calculations we make about the nature of the game.
So, does the head-scarf ban violate Muslim women’s rights? Well, from where I stand, personally, yes. And certainly for many Muslim women in France, the answer is the same. But this is because I am committed to a certain concept of a “right,” and one that systematically excludes others. More than that, my notion of right destroys other notions, insisting that their value is, politically speaking, nothing, or so little as not to need addressing.
This is not a bad thing. This is just how it is. Note, however, that two games are being played at the same time in France, a non-zero-sum game (for French secularists) and a zero-sum game (for their opponents). The game goes on, despite their fundamental disagreements about its rules. Luckily, this disagreement does not just disappear. Instead, it remains important, and it conducted through politics, the struggle over the nature of the game.
And politics has distinct winners and losers. Not always, of course, but usually, and especially when dealing with things that really matter. Secularists will have to sacrifice something precious—a certain concept of citizenship—to grant the right that I feel is due to Muslim women, and they will not get anything in exchange.
Like Wright, then, I don’t have any hope for some final authority to determine how games are played between us and them. But also I have little hope that strong differences of value can be magically transformed into non-zero-sum games without loss and political conflict. “Rights,” “markets,” and the “rule of law,” just to name three, are not universal currencies. Rather, they are systems of value that aggressively challenge other ones. Realizing this—realizing what exactly we are asking people to give up to play our game—is, it seems to me, the real act of moral imagination that we face.
In another post, I want to take up explicitly the evolutionary model of religion, but this will have to do for now.
Read: The Many Games People Play
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Thanks to all three scholars for taking the time to read and critique the excerpt from my book The Evolution of God. A few thoughts in response:
Richard Joyce’s critique has convinced me that I should have been clearer about a few things. In particular: I’m not, as he asserts, “[morally] justifying tolerance by appeal to self-interest.” I’m trying to sell the idea of tolerance to, e.g., Americans on grounds that it would be in their self-interest. To the extent that I would morally justify tolerance, it would be on the utilitarian grounds that symmetrical tolerance will increase overall welfare. (And I might locate a slightly different kind of justification for tolerance in my view that tolerance can entail a literally truer view of the other—truer in a sense that space doesn’t permit me to spell out.) This clarification renders some of Joyce’s critique moot—at least as a critique of my views, though his analysis is valuable in clarifying various issues (and in convincing me that I haven’t been clear enough).
Joyce also complains that I’m telling a “just-so story” in suggesting that, as he accurately paraphrases me, it “was adaptive for our ancestors to be able to distinguish non-zero-sum from zero-sum games and respond accordingly.” He says that “someone who claims that there is such a mechanism needs to do much more than tell a plausible story about why such a skill would have been adaptive.” I beg to differ. I think I should be free to toss out a hypothesis on the basis of little evidence and then let people argue about it. That’s how a lot of progress in science has started. As it happens, in this case there is evidence that I could have invoked but didn’t–e.g., a large empirical literature on reciprocal altruism (i.e. on psychological mechanisms conducive to playing non-zero-sums) and on the derogation of rivals (i.e. on opinions we express and/or believe regarding people we perceive ourselves to be playing a zero-sum game with). There is also a large literature suggesting that our close relatives, chimpanzees, quite naturally distinguish between zero-sum (rivalrous) and non-zero-sum (coalitional) relationships and seem to have a suite of tactically appropriate behavioral responses. Though it’s not impossible that these behaviors result from conscious calculation, it seems much more likely that they are governed fundamentally by emotions; and it’s not very easy for me to imagine a plausible scenario in which these emotions, in so functioning, aren’t biological adaptations (i.e., aren’t “designed” by natural selection to facilitate the successful playing of non-zero-sum and zero-sum games).
Jonathan Sheehan is definitely right that the various players in a game may differ on the question of what constitutes a gain for each. My essay implicitly assumes that all players are free to define gain for themselves. Thus when I buy something the exchange is non-zero-sum because I would rather have the merchandise than the money and the merchant would rather have the money than the merchandise; our respective opinions about our own welfare are all that matters, and any objective “truth” about the value of the merchandise is irrelevant.
Sheehan concludes that “modern conflicts between ‘the West’ and ‘the Muslims’ have less to do with misfiring mental machinery, and more to do with the absence of any recognized authority for determining the kinds of games we are playing.” Well, I can certainly imagine a recognized authority with enough influence to settle these conflicts—but in most cases I can’t imagine such an authority showing up in the real world anytime soon. And, in the absence of such an authority, it seems to me that the mental machinery of the players is almost by definition central to solving the conflict (though whether I’m right that the machinery is misfiring is of course another question altogether).
Timur Kuran seems right to say that the terrorism-fomenting zero-sum perceptions I focus on are neither necessary nor sufficient to foment terrorism (though, obviously, I think they’re often very important). I find particularly valuable his emphasis on the social dynamics within Muslim societies, something he knows more about than I do. I’d be interested in his reaction to the speculation that sometimes the problem can be framed this way: The object of the game is to (a) get Muslim elites to view relations with the West as non-zero-sum (a task that in many cases has already been accomplished) and (b) get non-elites in that society to view their relations with these elites as non-zero-sum.
If that sounds too abstract, let me try to concretize it by reference to the fairly common phenomenon of populist nationalism. Populist nationalists gain traction by convincing lower-income people that they stand in a zero-sum relationship with some upper-income people who are gaining from non-zero-sum relations on the international front. The accusation, in other words, is that the upper class is doing business with foreigners at the expense of their lower-income compatriots. When attending international gatherings designed to soothe tensions between “the West” and the “Muslim world,” I’ve often noticed that the Muslim elites in attendance have abundantly cosmopolitan values, but I’ve wondered if they are resented by many non-elites in their societies, a resentment that then translates into anti-cosmopolitanism and anti-Westernism.
Thanks again to everyone.
Read: Response to the Responses
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Jonathan Sheehan, associate professor of history at the University of California at Berkeley, touches base with Blaise Pascal and reminds us that explicit game theory was first deployed as a religious argument aimed at conversion. In secular terms, a convert is a gain for one sect but a loss for another. But in religious terms, as Augustine noted, even the harsh coercion of heretics can be viewed as non-zero-sum—the heretic, whether he thinks so or not, has Heaven to gain. So, Sheehan argues “the real stakes of the game do not matter. Or, more precisely, the nature of the game is the real stake.” To characterize the game as in fact non-zero-sum, as Wright does, is to miss the real moral and political issue about how the stakes of the game will be determined in the face of deep disagreement about what the game is. “Modern conflicts between ‘the West’ and ‘the Muslims’,” Sheehan concludes, “have less to do with misfiring mental machinery, and more to do with the absence of any recognized authority for determining the kinds of games we are playing, and which interests should count in them.”
Read: The Game Is the Stake
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Timur Kuran, Professor of Economics and Political Science and Gorter Family Chair in Islamic Studies at Duke University, finds insight in Wright’s account, but argues that it is insufficient to really explain the sense of conflict between many Muslims and the West. Kuran argues that displays of hostility in conformance with local expectations and social pressures can pay off handsomely. An expansive sense of possible of positive-sum relations with distant others does nothing to change the incentives that arise from collective processes at the local level. Not even suicide bombers require a false picture of zero-sum conflict. They may martyr themselves simply to bring status to their families. Wright’s neglect of the such alternative causes of cultural conflict, Kuran argues, leads him to offer advice of limited value.
Read: More than Imagination: Collective Processes and Individual Opportunities
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In his reply to Robert Wright’s lead essay, philosopher Richard Joyce, author of The Evolution of Morality, emphasizes the distinction between potentially and actually engaging in mutually beneficial cooperation. That “the West” could be in a non-zero-sum game with the “Muslim world” doesn’t imply it is actually in one. Moreover, Joyce argues, “non-zero-sum” and “good” do not mean the same thing from the perspective of an individual’s or group’s interest. If there is gain to be had from conflict, reason may recommend it. Tolerance and understanding are wonderful, Joyce agrees. But he finds something “unsettling” and “morally troubling” in what he takes to me Wright’s “[attempt] to justify these attitudes purely by an appeal to self-interest.” There are psychological limits to what appeals to self-interest can accomplish, and the congruence of self-interest and cooperation is far from certain in many cases. Additionally, Joyce suspects that Wright may be guilty of a weakly-supported conjecture when he posits an evolved adaptation for distinguishing between zero-sum and non-zero-sum games.
Read: Tolerance and The Limits of Non-Zero-Sum Thinking
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This month’s Cato Unbound features an essay drawn from The Evolution of God, the ambitious new book by Robert Wright, author of Nonzero and The Moral Animal. In this essay, Wright explores the relationship between “moral imagination” and the possibility of religious tolerance and social cooperation. Wright argues that moral imagination is part of our evolved mental machinery. When we see others as potentially cooperative, moral imagination is awakened to better grasp the needs and interests of partners and allies. But when we see ourselves caught in a zero-sum game with others, moral imagination, and thus sympathy and the spirit of toleration, shrinks as we prepare for a fight. Wright argues that the widespread perception that “the West” and “the Muslim world” are playing a zero-sum game is an illusion created by a misfire of moral imagination. The media’s relentless focus on the truculent acts of a small minority of Muslim extremists encourages the sense that the larger, more moderate Muslim world is much more hostile than it really is. But this sense narrows moral imagination, making it harder still to grap the possibility of cooperation and the point of toleration.
Read: Why We Think They Hate Us: Moral Imagination and the Possibility of Peace
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