Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them
The neuroscience of why moral disagreements are so difficult to resolve
"Our brains are like dual-mode cameras, with point-and-shoot automatic settings and a manual mode."
— Joshua Greene
My Review
Greene digs deeper into the neuroscience of morality than Haidt. His 'dual-process' model of moral cognition - fast emotional responses vs. slow deliberative reasoning - maps directly to how organisms balance quick reactive responses with considered strategic action. Essential for understanding why organisational values conflicts feel so intractable.
Why It Matters
Understanding why moral conflicts are hard - different tribes have different automatic settings - helps design organisations that can navigate value differences.
Key Ideas
- Morality evolved for within-group cooperation, not between-group harmony
- Automatic (emotional) and manual (reasoning) modes of moral cognition
- Tribalism is a feature, not a bug, of human psychology
- Utilitarianism as a 'meta-morality' for resolving tribal conflicts
How It Connects to This Framework
The tribal dynamics concepts and the challenge of coordination between groups with different moral foundations.
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