As readers would know, "Politics for the New Dark Age" lays out a socialist approach to politics and governance, embedded in a liberal political and social framework. It explicitly endorses the modern, Rawlsian version of social contract theory, which posits that members of a society can be thought of as have an implied agreement with one another that establishes the ground rules for interaction. The social contract is a thought experiment, but the fact that it is merely a convenient fiction is irrelevant if it is useful. Many other social and religious systems are of course based on fictions, but that does not stop them from serving valuable public purposes. What matters in evolutionary game theory for the success or failure of a given strategy is whether it is effective, not whether it is true, or good. 

The problem of implied consent

One of the classical problems with social contract theory is its reliance on implied, or what Locke called ‘tacit’, consent. In other words, there is not a literal contract to which members of a society give their explicit agreement, but rather a tacit understanding or expectation that individual behaviour will follow social norms. We are talking less about conscious consent and more about unconscious beliefs and practices. In the sense of cultural evolution, these are stable expectations about the behaviour of the self and others. It is philosophically challenging, to say the least, to reconcile implied consent with a philosophies grounded in the free will of individuals. Politics, and other similar works, take the view that tacit consent is legitimate since anyone, upon encountering injustice, is entitled to consciously challenge a norm and work actively to change it. Implied consent requires a right to dissent. Moreover, if we ever did stop to deliberate on the rules that should govern our lives, we would, after much time and effort, settle on norms that look very much like the ones we already have.

In evolutionary terms, the establishment of the rules and norms of society by the acquiescence of its members is not difficult to understand. Rules, norms and behaviours respond to selection pressures and the most useful strategies are imitated and replicated. Evolved cultural constructs exist outside the individual, and individuals are socialised into those constructs during the process of their formal and informal education. Moreover, since evolved cultural constructs must, by definition, be adaptive (or at least, neutral) in the context of their environment, they will tend to work [fairly] well most of the time for [most of] the members of that society. Note, further to my last blog,  that putting tacit consent in evolutionary terms does not impart evolved rules with independent moral virtue: everyone is free to try different strategies, and their success or failure will determine whether the proposed change or mutation is replicated into the next generation. A great many traditional norms have been challenged with positive net results: that’s progress in a nutshell.

Norms and the Self

One of modern philosophy’s most difficult challenges, in an era in which much of what individuals believe and how we act can potentially be explained in terms of biological and evolutionary processes, is deciding the basis on which a social rule can be considered valid. We are forced to revisit age-old questions of free will and determinism. If we throw out the abstraction of homo economicus, the universally rational utility-seeking individual, what is left? Most writers exploring this area draw heavily on cognitive psychologist and Nobel Prize in Economics winner Daniel Kahneman’s work showing that humans have [at least] two different modes of thinking: ‘System 1’, which is fast and instinctive, and ‘System 2’ which is slower, more energy intensive and deliberative.

It seems to me that the future of moral philosophy will revolve around interpreting the differing moral roles played by each of these systems. Already, perspectives differ wildly. Joshua Greene (author of ‘Moral Tribes’) believes that the only possible meta-morality for a diverse society occurs when Mode 2 reasoning dominates Mode 1 instincts. Jonathon Haidt (author of “The Righteous Mind”) argues that true moral principles lie in our evolved moral tastes and that Mode 2 thinking is a trickster, which exists primarily to rationalise and justify our innate preferences (a position also contemplated by Greene is his more critical moments). John Jost’s takedown of Haidt’s book rebuts this argument well.

My own perspective lies somewhere between the two extremes. I distrust the capacity of individuals to cognitively reason their way around their instincts and towards a moral solution that is also binding on others. But nor do I accept the conservative proposition (or naturalist fallacy) that because a System 1 moral system evolved (either genetically or culturally) in the past it is also necessarily adapted to solving modern social and political problems. Instead, I advocate for a dynamic political and social system which allows, and indeed encourages, mutant strategies to throw themselves into competition with the status quo and stand or fall on their salience to the voting public. In other words, explicit System 2 innovation creates the very variation and selection pressures needed for System 1 rules to be judged adaptive or maladaptive. 

How do we know what we know?

Where does that leave the individual? How sure can we be of the correctness of our own moral beliefs, and why? Let’s think of our personal beliefs from the perspective of the implied consent principle. The instinctive systems that we are equipped with by our genes and by our upbringing work perfectly well most of the time – up until the point that they don’t. We acquiesce to our in-build moral prejudices by acting in accordance with them, and if we ever stopped to think about our actions using our System 2 capabilities, we could and would probably construct elaborate arguments and philosophies justifying them in abstract or universal terms. Our System 2 thinking also gives us the capacity to override those instincts and adjust our behaviour upon encountering contrary signals of sufficient salience.

In other words, we give implied consent to our own moral beliefs. We do have choice and free will but don't [need to] exercise it most of the time. You could probably therefore place me in the camp of the philosophical compatabilists or self-determinists.

And that is why Chapter 16 of Politics, regarding moral aesthetics, is of such critical importance to the overall argument of the book. It’s always important to recognise that while we have innate ideological preferences, there exists the possibility of making different moral choices at any time. Regardless of whether we choose to act in accordance with our instincts, or in opposition to them, the decision to employ or not employ System 2 reasoning, and how we do so, is an aesthetic or personal one about which no universal moral laws can be drawn. Morality is at its root, a subjective art.