This blog post is a little bit different to the other ones because it concerns not with the technical nature of markets, but morality. I've been seriously pondering over morality of markets ever since i entered the finance industry years ago. I have questioned human intentions and actions taken by people in the stock markets . The book "Moral tribes: emotion, reason, and the gap between us and them joshua d. greene" gave me a fresh perspective on life and on financial markets. Here are some of my notes from the book.

Chapter 1

1. Tragedy of the Commons Explained: This concept, developed by Garrett Hardin, highlights how shared resources get overused and depleted when individuals prioritize their own interests. Imagine herders using a common field for their animals. Each herder keeps adding more animals to gain personal benefits, but this eventually exhausts the shared resource, harming everyone involved.

2. Challenges in Cooperation: Cooperating isn't always simple, especially when individual and collective interests don't fully align. For example, while rowing a boat in a storm demands perfect alignment of self-interest and group interest, sharing a single life vest shows where cooperation can fail. The real dilemma is in situations where individual and group interests partially overlap but also conflict, risking the erosion of shared resources.

3. Evolution of Social Behavior: Life on Earth demonstrates that entities often achieve more together than alone. This principle has driven the evolution from complex cells to social animals, including humans.

4. Balancing Morals and Economics in Human Cooperation: Human cooperation usually involves a mix of self-interest and collective interest, particularly evident in economic transactions. These require trust and mutual benefit. However, the tension between individual and collective interests can undermine these cooperative relationships.

5. Morality as a Cooperation Mechanism: Morality evolved to foster cooperation among inherently self-interested individuals. It encourages altruism and personal sacrifices for others' benefits, helping avoid the tragedy of the commons by placing collective interests above individual ones.

6. The Limitations of Morality: While morality effectively promotes cooperation within a group, it was not designed for intergroup cooperation. It's great at preventing self-destructive behaviors within a group but may not always encourage universal cooperation.

7. Metamorality for Contemporary Challenges: Today's world, with its diverse groups and moral ideals, needs a metamorality. This higher-level moral system would help resolve conflicts between groups with different moral views. Metamorality goes beyond basic morality, which primarily addresses cooperation within a group.

Chapter 2

Moral Machinery: Morality is depicted as a collection of psychological capacities and dispositions that promote and stabilize cooperative behavior. Understanding why we fight and why our moral machinery sometimes fails is crucial.

1. Prisoner's Dilemma: This classic scenario is used to illustrate the tension between individual and collective interests. It shows how rational, selfish individuals might not cooperate, even when it's in their best interest to do so.

2. Cooperation and Self-Interest: Various strategies like familial love, reciprocity, and tribalism are explored as means to foster cooperation. Familial love is tied to kin selection, where genetic relatedness promotes cooperative behavior.

3. Reciprocal Altruism and Tit for Tat: Reciprocity, where individuals cooperate based on mutual benefit, is a significant theme. The 'Tit for Tat' strategy in repeated Prisoner's Dilemma scenarios demonstrates how reciprocal altruism can lead to cooperative outcomes.

4. Emotional and Social Mechanisms in Cooperation: Human emotions play a crucial role in fostering cooperation. Feelings of anger, disgust, gratitude, and guilt can incentivize cooperative behavior or deter non-cooperation.

5. Tribalism and Group Identity: Humans have an innate tendency to favor those within their social group (tribalism), which can influence cooperative behavior. This in-group bias is a fundamental aspect of human social interaction.

6. Role of Authority and Punishment: The presence of an authority figure or a system of punishment can also enforce cooperation. Credible threats from a powerful third party can compel individuals to cooperate.

7. The Limits and Challenges of Cooperation: The document acknowledges the complexities and challenges in achieving cooperation, especially in larger, more anonymous groups where individual relationships and reputations are less clear.

8. Implicit Bias and Social Categorization: It delves into how humans categorize others and how this impacts cooperation, including discussions on implicit biases and how they can shape our interactions and decision-making.

9. Psychological Development of Morality: The development of moral reasoning and cooperation from infancy is examined, suggesting that certain aspects of moral cognition are innate and evolve early in life.

Chapter 3 : 

Moral Complexity in Modern Societies: The text discusses the moral complexities faced by modern societies, which are characterized by diverse values and beliefs. This diversity often leads to deep disagreements and conflicts, highlighting the challenge of coexisting with different moral outlooks.

1. Tribalism and Intertribal Conflict: A key theme is tribalism - the innate human tendency to favor one's own group (Us) over others (Them). This tribalism leads to conflicts, not only due to selfish group interests but also because of genuine differences in values and beliefs.

2. Biased Fairness and Moral Disagreements: Groups and individuals often exhibit biased fairness, favoring moral values that align with their self-interest. This bias is not always conscious, subtly influencing perceptions of justice and fairness and complicating conflict resolution.

3. Cultural Differences in Morality: Different cultures have varying moral values, often influenced by their social and economic structures. These differences manifest in diverse practices, beliefs, and approaches to cooperation, leading to conflicts when interacting with other cultures.

4. Local and Religious Moral Values: Local moral values, often rooted in religion, play a significant role in shaping moral perspectives. These values are deeply ingrained and can lead to significant conflicts, especially when they involve entities or beliefs revered within one group but not shared by others.

5. Psychology of Conflict: The text delves into the psychological aspects of conflict, including how groups perceive and react to threats, how biases influence perception and judgment, and the escalation of conflicts due to misunderstood intentions or actions.

6. Global and Societal Challenges: The text recognizes global issues like poverty, violent conflict, terrorism, environmental degradation, and climate change as significant moral challenges. These problems are exacerbated by the aforementioned factors and require a collective effort to address.

7. Need for Moral Reasoning and Understanding: The text emphasizes the importance of moral reasoning and understanding in navigating the complexities of modern societies. It suggests that recognizing and addressing our biases and understanding different cultural and moral perspectives are crucial for resolving conflicts and coexisting peacefully.

Chapter 4:

1. Background of Trolleyology: The Trolley Problem arises from moral and ethical debates. It encapsulates the tension between the rights of the individual and the greater good, posing situations where a decision must be made between sacrificing one life to save many or refraining from action that causes direct harm.

2. Utilitarianism in Debates: The concept of utilitarianism, pioneered by Jeremy Bentham and John Stuart Mill, plays a central role. This philosophy suggests that actions should be judged by their consequences, aiming for the greatest good for the greatest number.

3. Personal Experience in Debates: The document details the personal journey of the author into the world of moral psychology, beginning with participation in school debates, leading to a fascination with utilitarianism and its applications in moral reasoning.

4. Dual-Process Theory of Moral Judgment: The document explores a dual-process theory in moral decision-making. This theory posits that there are two types of responses to moral dilemmas: automatic emotional responses and controlled cognitive responses.

5. Role of the Brain in Moral Judgments: Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) studies have shown that different brain regions are activated in response to different types of moral dilemmas. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) is associated with emotional responses, while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is linked to cognitive control and decision-making.

6. Implications for Real-World Decision Making: The document discusses how these principles apply to real-world scenarios, particularly in the healthcare field. It highlights differences in moral reasoning between doctors, who are more individual-focused, and public health professionals, who lean towards utilitarian principles.

7. Impact of Emotional and Cognitive Processes: Research indicates that emotional responses, often mediated by the VMPFC and the amygdala, can lead to non-utilitarian judgments in moral dilemmas, while cognitive processes, associated with the DLPFC, tend to facilitate utilitarian judgments.

8. Exploring Philosophical Perspectives: The Trolley Problem engages with various philosophical viewpoints, primarily contrasting utilitarianism with deontological ethics, which emphasizes duty and rules over consequences.

9. Moral Emotions and Social Cooperation: The document suggests that moral emotions and intuitions, shaped by evolutionary processes, are crucial for enabling cooperation within groups.

10. Challenges in Moral Psychology: The complexity of moral decision-making is highlighted, underscoring the challenges in reconciling intuitive emotional responses with more deliberate, rational considerations in ethical reasoning.

Chapter 5

1. The Dual-Process Brain: The human brain is compared to a dual-mode camera with both automatic and manual modes. This analogy illustrates the trade-off between efficiency and flexibility in our cognitive processes. Automatic settings, like instincts in animals, are efficient but inflexible. The manual mode, however, allows for more flexibility and adaptability in complex, changing environments.

2. Efficiency vs. Flexibility: The efficiency of automatic processes is contrasted with the flexibility of manual, controlled processes. Automatic processes are typically quicker and require less cognitive effort but are less adaptable. Manual processes, while more flexible and adaptable to new situations, are slower and require more cognitive resources.

3. Emotion and Reason: The document discusses the interplay between emotion and reason in decision-making. Emotions are described as automatic responses that often guide efficient behavior without conscious thought. Reasoning, on the other hand, involves the conscious application of decision rules and is seen as critical for making more complex, long-term decisions.

4. Neural Substrates of Emotion and Reasoning: It highlights the different brain regions associated with emotion and reasoning. The ventromedial prefrontal cortex (VMPFC) and the amygdala are implicated in emotional responses, while the dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is crucial for reasoning and higher-level cognitive processes.

5. The Role of Emotions in Decision-Making: Emotions, while automatic, are not always simplistic or undesirable. They often incorporate lessons from past experiences and can be crucial for quick, effective decision-making in familiar contexts. Emotional responses can also precede conscious awareness and guide decisions in a beneficial way.

6. Balancing Immediate and Future Rewards: The document explores how our dual-process brain navigates choices involving immediate gratification versus long-term benefits. Cognitive load, for instance, can influence our tendency to favor immediate rewards (like choosing chocolate cake over fruit salad).

7. Managing Cognitive Flexibility: It's emphasized that humans need to balance their instinctual, automatic responses with the more deliberate, manual mode of thinking to adapt to diverse and changing environments. This flexibility is key to our success in varied and complex situations.

8. Cultural and Personal Experience: The shaping of our automatic responses through genetic, cultural, and personal experiences is discussed. These experiences help form our 'instincts' or automatic settings, making them adaptive based on past lessons.

Chapter 6

1. Tragedy of Commonsense Morality vs. Tragedy of the Commons: The document contrasts two moral tragedies. The Tragedy of the Commons, where selfishness threatens cooperation, is addressed by morality, which enables us to prioritize the group over the individual. The Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, however, deals with the challenge of different groups (Us vs. Them) getting along, for which there is no natural solution.

2. Moral Machinery in Our Brains: Our brains are equipped with automatic programs like empathy, vengefulness, and tribalism that balance our selfish impulses and foster within-group cooperation. These innate impulses are efficient in managing in-group dynamics but less so for inter-group relations, which often involve competition and bias.

3. Dual-Mode Brain Functionality: The human brain operates in two modes. The automatic mode is driven by emotional responses based on past experiences, while the manual mode involves conscious, explicit reasoning. This dual-process is evident in moral dilemmas where instinctive reactions often clash with reasoned decision-making.

4. Philosophical and Psychological Solutions to Moral Problems: The document suggests that both philosophical and psychological perspectives converge on a single solution to moral issues on the new pastures. This solution seems to align with utilitarianism, which proposes that actions should be judged based on their consequences.

5. Utilitarianism as a Metamorality: Utilitarianism is presented as a suitable metamorality for modern times, capable of resolving inter-group moral conflicts. It's a philosophy that prioritizes actions based on their overall benefit or harm, aiming to maximize happiness or minimize suffering.

6. The Role of Happiness in Utilitarianism: Happiness, in the utilitarian sense, is a broad concept encompassing all aspects of positive experiences. The utilitarian philosophy argues that the ultimate value lies in the effects of our actions on our collective experiences.

7. Practical Application of Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is not about constantly calculating the costs and benefits of every action but rather about understanding general patterns in policy and decision-making that tend to increase overall happiness.

8. Moral Intuitions vs. Manual Mode Thinking: While our moral intuitions are useful for navigating day-to-day social interactions, the complex moral problems of modern society require a shift to manual-mode thinking, which is more flexible and capable of considering a broader range of consequences.

9. Challenges and Critiques of Utilitarianism: The philosophy faces critiques, such as the concern that it might justify morally questionable actions if they are deemed to have the best consequences. These objections and the tension they create are acknowledged as part of the ongoing moral discourse.

Chapter 7

1. Common Currency in Moral Decision-Making: The necessity for a universal metric in moral decisions is highlighted, emphasizing the importance of finding a common ground or 'common currency' for moral judgments that transcend specific cultural, religious, or personal beliefs.

2. Challenges from Diverse Perspectives: The document acknowledges the difficulty in establishing a universal moral standard due to the variety of moral viewpoints, including religious beliefs, relativism, and different moral philosophies.

3. Religion and Morality: The text discusses the role of religion in moral decisions, outlining the challenge of translating religious values into universal moral principles. It also addresses the limitations of relying on divine commands for moral guidance, citing Plato's dilemma about the nature of divine command and morality.

4. Moral Reasoning vs. Mathematical Reasoning: The comparison between moral reasoning and mathematical reasoning is explored. It is argued that unlike mathematics, morality lacks a set of self-evident axioms from which substantive moral truths can be derived.

5. Science and Morality: The document evaluates the role of science in understanding morality. It suggests that while science can describe the evolutionary and psychological aspects of morality, it cannot prescribe moral truths or provide a definitive guide to moral decision-making.

6. Evolutionary Perspective on Morality: Morality is discussed as a set of psychological adaptations that promote cooperation within groups. However, the document argues that deriving moral truths from evolutionary functions is problematic.

7. The Is-Ought Problem: The text touches upon the issue of deriving moral obligations ('ought') from naturalistic facts ('is'), emphasizing the pitfalls of equating the natural with the morally right.

8. Utilitarianism as a Common Currency: The document proposes utilitarianism, which emphasizes maximizing happiness and minimizing suffering, as a potential common currency for moral decision-making. It asserts that utilitarian values might form a basis for shared moral understanding across different cultures and belief systems.

9. Role of Shared Values: The importance of identifying and building upon shared values in the quest for a common moral currency is emphasized. However, it also cautions that shared moral rhetoric does not always equate to shared moral values in practice.

10. Objective Improvement of Moral Thinking: It is suggested that a scientific understanding of morality can help objectively improve moral thinking, potentially leading to a more universal adoption of utilitarian principles.

Chapter 8

1. Fundamental Questions of Happiness and Morality: Utilitarian thinking often starts with basic inquiries into happiness and its role in moral decision-making. Questions range from personal happiness to considering the net happiness of others and the implications of making moral choices based on these considerations.

2. Trade-Offs in Happiness: An essential aspect of utilitarianism is the willingness to make trade-offs, accepting a loss in happiness for a greater gain, and evaluating these trade-offs in terms of overall net happiness.

3. Concern for Others' Happiness: Utilitarianism extends beyond personal happiness to include the happiness of others, even strangers. This involves moral decisions that consider the well-being and happiness of people one may not personally know.

4. Increasing Happiness for More People: A utilitarian perspective values increasing happiness for a greater number of people. This is evident in scenarios where decisions are made to benefit the majority, even at the cost of the minority.

5. Total Happiness Across People: Utilitarianism often focuses on the sum of happiness across individuals. This involves considering both the amount of happiness for each person and the number of people affected by a decision.

6. Utilitarianism as a Metamorality: Utilitarianism is proposed as a foundational moral framework that can potentially resolve disagreements by focusing on maximizing happiness impartially.

7. Manual Mode and Utilitarianism: The concept of 'manual mode' in human cognition aligns with utilitarian thinking. This mode involves deliberate, rational thinking and planning, contrasted with automatic, instinctive responses.

8. Impartiality and Happiness Maximization: The impartial maximization of happiness is a core tenet of utilitarianism. This involves acknowledging that one's interests are not inherently more important than others'.

9. Optimizing Consequences: Utilitarianism is concerned with actions that produce optimal consequences, defined in terms of happiness or welfare, for the greatest number of people.

10. Utilitarian Challenges: Utilitarianism faces criticism for potentially endorsing actions that seem morally wrong in pursuit of greater happiness. Examples include the classic trolley problem, issues of rights, and demanding moral obligations such as the expectation to act as a 'happiness pump'.

11. Understanding Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is not just a philosophical stance but also rooted in psychological and biological understanding. It resonates with a part of our brain that seeks rational solutions but also clashes with our instinctive moral emotions.

12. Trade-offs in Moral Decision Making: Utilitarianism involves complex decision-making where trade-offs must be considered, taking into account intended effects, side effects, and the uncertainty of outcomes.

13. Moral Psychology Behind Utilitarianism: Understanding the moral psychology behind utilitarian objections is crucial. This involves exploring whether gut reactions against utilitarian solutions reflect deeper moral truths or limitations in our moral cognition.

Chapter 9

1. Complexity of Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism, which aims to maximize happiness, faces significant challenges. It can, in principle, justify actions that seem morally reprehensible, like harming individuals for the greater good.

2. Accommodation and Reform Strategies: To address these challenges, two strategies are employed: accommodation, which aligns utilitarianism with common sense by showing its real-world implications are not absurd, and reform, which challenges conventional wisdom through scientific understanding of moral intuitions.

3. Trolley Problem Insights: The Trolley Problem, particularly in its 'switch' and 'footbridge' scenarios, highlights the conflict between intuitive moral responses and utilitarian thinking. People generally accept sacrificing one life to save five in the switch scenario but not in the more personal footbridge scenario.

4. Dual-Process Explanation: This difference in moral judgment between the switch and footbridge scenarios is explained by a dual-process theory, involving automatic emotional responses and utilitarian cost-benefit thinking. Emotional responses typically override utilitarian thinking in the footbridge case.

5. Personalness in Moral Decision-Making: Studies suggest that the 'personalness' of an action, like the direct physical involvement in causing harm, significantly influences moral judgments.

6. Means and Side Effects: Another critical factor is the distinction between harm as a means to an end versus harm as a side effect. People are more accepting of harm as an unintended side effect (as in the switch scenario) than as a means to an end (as in the footbridge scenario).

7. Modular Myopia Hypothesis: This hypothesis proposes that our moral judgments are influenced by a cognitive subsystem in the brain that is sensitive to planned actions involving harm. This system is 'myopic' as it focuses on harms that are directly intended and overlooks side effects.

8. Doctrine of Double Effect: This doctrine, widely respected and applied in various moral and legal contexts, distinguishes between directly intended harms and those that are merely side effects. However, this distinction may be more about cognitive processing limitations than moral principles.

9. Doing and Allowing Distinction: This moral distinction, between actions and omissions, is critical in moral decision-making. However, it might stem from cognitive processes that privilege actions over non-actions, rather than from inherent moral differences.

10. Real-world Implications: These insights into moral psychology have significant implications for real-world issues like medical ethics, criminal justice, environmental policy, and international law.

Chapter 10

1. Justice vs. Greater Good: A central theme is the tension between pursuing the greater good and maintaining justice and fairness. Utilitarianism, which advocates for maximizing happiness, often clashes with our intuitive sense of justice.

2. Demanding Nature of Utilitarianism: Utilitarianism is often criticized for being too demanding, requiring significant sacrifices from individuals to alleviate global suffering. However, this critique is mitigated by the understanding that being a perfect utilitarian is impractical and unrealistic for most humans.

3. Real-World Application of Utilitarianism: In practice, utilitarianism does not necessitate extreme measures like forsaking all personal desires. It is about finding a balance, accommodating basic human needs and motivations while still promoting substantial societal reform.

4. Duty to Help and Empathy Limitations: The moral obligation to assist those in need, regardless of proximity, is a significant aspect. However, our moral intuition and empathy are limited, often influenced by physical distance and the identifiable victim effect.

5. Personal Commitments and Utilitarianism: While utilitarianism emphasizes the importance of helping others, it also recognizes the legitimacy of personal commitments and relationships. Balancing personal obligations with the duty to maximize overall happiness is crucial.

6. Human Values vs. Ideal Values: There is an acknowledgment that human values, such as personal relationships and interests, might not align with the ideal utilitarian values. However, understanding and striving to bridge this gap is essential for moral growth.

7. Punishment and Justice in Utilitarianism: The utilitarian approach to punishment focuses on its societal benefits, like deterrence, rather than retributive justice. This perspective often contrasts with our innate desire for retributive punishment.

8. Utilitarianism and Social Justice: Contrary to the belief that utilitarianism might endorse oppressive practices like slavery for the greater good, it is argued that in the real world, such practices do not lead to overall happiness and are, therefore, not supported by utilitarian principles.

9. Wealth vs. Utility Misconception: A common misconception is equating utility with wealth. Utilitarianism focuses on maximizing happiness or utility, which is not the same as accumulating wealth. Understanding this distinction is crucial in applying utilitarian principles effectively

Chapter 11

1. Deep Pragmatism: This philosophy advocates for translating learnings from biology, psychology, and philosophy into practical applications. It prompts questions about various societal and ethical issues like healthcare, wealth distribution, global warming, nuclear technology, and human rights​​.

2. Moral Compasses and Metamorality: Deep pragmatism emphasizes the need for a shared moral standard or metamorality to make difficult choices and trade-offs among competing tribal values. It rejects the reliance on independent moral authorities like God, Reason, or Science, instead proposing utilitarianism as a common currency to weigh competing values, focusing on happiness and suffering​​.

3. Moral Decision-Making: Deep pragmatism identifies two types of moral problems: 'Me vs. Us', solved primarily through emotions like empathy and guilt, and 'Us vs. Them', which involve complex moral problems and require a shift from gut reactions to manual-mode thinking (explicit reasoning). It suggests using moral emotions for simple selfishness and manual reasoning for complex, controversial issues​​.

4. Facing Complexity and Ignorance: In tackling divisive moral problems, deep pragmatism warns against the tendency to polarize and rationalize. It suggests that acknowledging our ignorance can lead to more moderate and informed opinions. This approach is based on experiments where people moderated their views after realizing their lack of understanding of complex policies​​.

5. Rationalization and Confabulation: The tendency to rationalize or make up stories to justify our actions is a common human trait. This is often seen in various experiments and clinical cases where people construct plausible narratives for their feelings and choices, even when unaware of the true reasons​​.

6. Rights as Rationalization: In moral debates, rights are often used to rationalize gut feelings, functioning as an intellectual free pass that makes evidence secondary. Rights and duties are seen as expressions of moral emotions and are often treated as non-negotiable and absolute, even though they are subjective in nature​​.

7. Rights as Weapons and Shields: The concept of rights is valuable in situations where moral matters have been settled and are beyond debate, such as issues like slavery, genocide, and rape. In these cases, rights serve as expressions of firm moral commitments. However, in most moral controversies, there are valid points on both sides, and relying solely on rights can be limiting​​.

8. Case Study - Abortion: The abortion debate exemplifies the challenges of deep pragmatist thinking. Both pro-choice and pro-life positions struggle to provide a coherent moral stand that withstands scrutiny. The debate often hinges on concepts like the right to life, viability, consciousness, and potential human life, which are complex and require careful philosophical consideration​​