Morality Is for Choosing Sides, not for improving the welfare of families, friends or groups or for altruism

Morality Is for Choosing Sides. Peter DeScioli, Robert Kurzban. descioli.com/papers/descioli.kurzban.morality.choosing.sides.atlas18.pdf

Arguably still worse for altruism theories are moral rules that guarantee welfare losses. Across cultures, moral rules prohibit any number of victimless, mutually profitable transactions. Historically, an obvious example is the prohibition against charging interest, which preventts mutuaally profitable loans. In India, the prohibition against killing cows has long caused substantial harms (Suri, 2015). Any number of similar rules con. tinue to undermine potential welfare gains.

We suggest that the tremendous array of data showing that people's judgments are deontological, along witlh the ubiquity of welfare-destroying moral rules, all constitute serious evidence against welfare-based theories of morality. The side-taking hypothesis does not run afoul of these problems. This theory requires that a rule is known and that its violation can be recognized by observers; because rules are for coordinated side-taking rather than welfare-enhancement, they can include a wide range of contents, including welfare-destroying contents. In short, deontological judgment is a set of observations that is, we think, fatal for welfare theories but consistent with the side-taking theory. There are several other areas of active research that provide evidence relevant to the side-taking hypothesis. First, research has found that people's tendency to moralize an issue depends on their power and alliances [...]. This evidence supports the idea that moral judgernent is a strategy that people selectively deploy depending on whether they are m1ost advantaged when others choose sides according to moral judgment, power, or alliances.  Second, the side-taking theory points to impartiality as a core feature of moral judgment because it is designed as an alternative to partial alliances. Recent work on fairness judgments points to a similar role for impartiality in suppressing alliances in the context of allocating resources (Shaw, 2013). Third, the side-taking hypothesis emphasizes variability in moral rules and also people's debates and arguments about which moral rules will structure side-taking in their community. Consistent with this idea, research shows that people actively advocate for the moral rules that most advantage them over other people [...].