Until recently, morality was largely the domain of philosophers. A typical debate might involve defining why killing another human being is wrong, with answers that might include: because it will destabilize society and lead to general unhappiness (the consequentialist position of Berkeley), or because it violates the Golden Rule of doing to others what we would want them to do to us (subscribed to by deontologists like Kant), or because people of good upbringing and hence virtuous character would not be inclined to do so (the position of virtue theorists like Aristotle). However, relatively little headway was made on such ethical issues because the standard philosophical toolkit of linguistic analysis, logical argument and introspection provided insufficient means to settle such arguments.
Currently, a variety of disciplines have begun to engage in empirical investigations into the nature of morality. Indeed, morality is currently a hot topic in biology, psychology, philosophy, law, primatology and the social sciences. Though controversies continue to rage, there is now general agreement about some aspects of morality. For example, it is thought to be a quintessentially human trait, although the behavioural roots of morality (such as loyalty to kin, intolerance of theft and punishment of cheats) can be seen in related primate species.
Debate continues, however, as to exactly what functions morality serves – except to say that moral judgments and action facilitate social cohesion in some way. In this project, I am exploring the problem of defining the proper domain of moral concerns. Why do we think of assault, theft, eating meat, abduction, public nudity, treason, rape, counterfeiting money and denying the Holocaust as all being wrong? I will argue these concerns all constitute violations of implicit social obligations to obey social rules. In particular, moral actions seek to control defections from public obligations by other members of large-scale social groups. This problem is acute because humans depend on each other – due to the division of labour – for everyday necessities, but can’t rely on shared genes or direct reciprocity to ensure ready supplies of what is needed to stay alive. Social organization in large groups of unrelated individuals instead depends on threats of retaliation for failures to abide by cooperative obligations, including fulfilling one’s own roles in the social group. These threats are made real by an underlying moral psychology that motivates the punishment of social infractions, even when the punisher can expect no direct benefit. In effect, anyone in such a social group can potentially punish (or reward) anyone else in the group for ‘bad’ (or ‘good’) behaviour. To the degree that moral threats and actions cause these large-scale groups to cohere and function, the resulting social groups can be called human ‘superorganisms’. My contention is that the function of morality, then, is to police defections from cooperative activities among individuals in their obligations as ‘cells’ in a human superorganism.
See the foundational theory paper here; an empirical demonstration of the theory's ability to extend the moral domain can be found here.