Transcriber: Eunice Tan Reviewer: Tanya Cushman
I try to be a good person,
and I'm sure that you do too.
But figuring out how to be good is not easy.
What's the difference between good and bad,
right and wrong,
moral and immoral?
Philosophers have struggled in vain with these questions for millennia.
And still today, most people are so baffled by morality
they think it must have a supernatural origin.
But the good news is there's now a thriving science of morality -
a science that incorporates insights from evolutionary biology,
animal behaviour, psychology, and anthropology.
And this science says there's nothing mysterious or magical about morality.
It's merely a collection of cooperative rules:
rules that help us work together, get along, and promote the common good.
Morality is all about cooperation.
[Morality is all about cooperation]
The basic idea is that humans are social animals.
We've lived together in social groups for 50 million years.
And throughout that period,
we've faced and continue to face
a range of problems, or opportunities, for cooperation,
for mutually beneficial social interaction.
And we have evolved and invented a range of solutions to those problems,
ways of unlocking the benefits that cooperation provides.
These solutions come in different shapes and sizes.
So sometimes they're instincts - the legacy of evolution.
Other times, they're cultural innovations:
they're norms and rules and laws.
But together,
these biological and cultural mechanisms motivate us to cooperate
and they provide the criteria
by which we evaluate the behaviour of others.
And it's this collection of cooperative traits -
these instincts, intuitions, institutions -
that philosophers and others have called 'morality'.
This is what morality is made of.
So if morality is a collection of cooperative rules,
what are the rules?
Well, science has the answer here too.
Game theory is the mathematical analysis of social behaviour.
It distinguishes between competitive, zero-sum interactions,
where one player's gain is another's loss,
and cooperative, non-zero-sum interactions,
which are win-win situations from which both players can benefit.
What's more,
it distinguishes between different types of non-zero cooperation,
different types of cooperative interaction.
And each of these different types explains a different type of morality.
So kin selection explains why we love and care for our families.
Mutualism explains why we form groups
and why we value loyalty, solidarity, and unity.
Social exchange explains why we feel obliged to return favours
and punish those who don't.
And conflict resolution explains why instead of coming to blows,
we compete for status
through costly displays of bravery and generosity,
why we defer to the winners of those contests,
why we divide disputed resources rather than fight to the death over them,
and why we respect prior ownership - other people's property rights -
and refrain from stealing.
These seven types of cooperation explain seven types of morality:
love, loyalty, reciprocity, bravery,
deference, fairness, and property rights.
In each case, we can explain how these behaviours emerged.
We have ample evidence that people do, in fact, cooperate in these ways,
and we can find examples of philosophers
extolling the virtue of one or other of these cooperative traits
as an important part of what it means to be moral.
Now, you might be thinking,
'Well, this sounds very good, Oliver.
But surely this is just a Western view of morality.
Surely it's the case that different people in different parts of the world
have radically different understandings of what it means to be moral.'
Well, that's a very good question.
So good that I dedicated years to answering it.
My colleagues and I went to the archives.
We read through 600 ethnographic accounts of ethics
from these 60 societies all around the world,
looking to see whether people in these different places
regarded these seven cooperative behaviours as morally good or not.
And what did we find?
Well, first, we found that these cooperative behaviours
were considered morally good in 99.9% of cases
in the 1,000 cases that we found.
There was a single exception:
a case where open theft was considered admirable
because it displayed the bravery of the thief.
So even this exception kind of proves the rule.
We also found examples of most of these morals in most places.
And crucially, there were no counterexamples -
no societies which, overall,
found any of these behaviours to be morally wrong, to be bad.
And third, we found these morals
were equally distributed across continents -
they were evenly spread all over the world.
So they weren't the exclusive preserve
of the West or the East or the North or the South.
Instead, these seven moral rules are not Western inventions:
they seem to be part of a common core of universal moral principles.
Morality is always and everywhere a cooperative phenomenon,
and everyone, everywhere, seems to agree
that cooperating in these different ways is the right thing to do.
So if this scientific account of morality is correct,
what does it mean for how we ought to behave?
What does it mean for how to be good?
Well, many scientists would say 'nothing at all'
because you can't go from facts to values.
But these aren't just any old facts:
these are facts about morality,
about the nature and content of those moral values.
Surely, these facts have something to say about how to be good -
how could they not?
So what are the implications?
Well, if morality is a collection of cooperative rules,
then acting morally means acting in accordance with those rules.
Simply put,
if you want to be moral, then you ought to cooperate.
So you should view moral problems as cooperative problems
because that's what they are.
Don't ask what's the right thing to do.
Ask what's the cooperative thing to do,
and the route to the answer will be clearer.
Specifically, if you find yourself making a moral decision,
first ask, what's the problem?
What kind of cooperative situation am I in?
Is this a case of kinship or mutualism or reciprocity or conflict resolution?
Or some combination?
Second, think about what would constitute a solution to that problem.
What's the cooperative move to make here?
Does this situation call for an act of love or loyalty
or fairness or bravery or what?
Relevant questions here include,
well, what's best for me, for my family, for my country?
What have I promised?
What am I owed?
Would I be proud or ashamed of acting in this way?
Is this a resource that can be divided fairly or not?
And who was here first?
If you find yourself in a situation
where you have to choose between two or more cooperative options,
then you should choose the more cooperative move,
the one that generates the most benefits, the greater good.
And third, once you've discussed and deliberated and decided on what to do,
you should do it and see what happens.
Nobody's perfect,
and you won't always make the right decision,
but you can learn from your mistakes and resolve to do better next time.
That's what moral progress looks like.
So -
call your mum,
commit to a cause greater than yourself,
write to thank your old teacher,
stand up to a bully,
ask an elder's advice,
split the cheque,
and return that borrowed book.
Do these things,
and you will be a better person
and the world will be a better place.
Thank you.
(Applause)