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civilization is a relatively new development for human beings

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for most of evolutionary history, and that of our line of primates, we live in small-scale societies

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usually groups of no more than 150

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most of them relatives or at least others known to us

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you could generally keep track of others within the group

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this is how primates still live

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around 12,000 years ago, there was a transition to anonymous, large-scale agricultural communities

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interacting with strangers

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having one-off interactions with people we may not see again

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this was a completely novel way of living compared to the history of human beings up to this point

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99.9% of human beings today live in this kind of environment

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cooperation puzzle based on:

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1. kin selection

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you tend to cooperation with relatives because they tend to be trustworthy and because they are carrying copies of your genes

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2. reciprocal altruism

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"I do you a favor, you do me a favor"

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these two features of relationships function throughout the animal world

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but something more than these two features has to be going on in large-scale human societies, since:

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we interact trustfully with many strangers throughout every day

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many of these interactions are one-off without any guarantee that you will see that person again

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claim #1: institutional hypothesis

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our hot psychology, system 1 systems, have remained unchanged

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on a "hot" level, we are still basically tribal animals and so this coherence in large societies is based on instincts and intuitions re-channeled through external institutions

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laws which act to suppress our hot cognitive nature, encourage our cold cognitive processes to reason why it is to our benefit to obey the laws

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e.g. hot cognition encourages me to favor my family and my friends, but there is a law that says I will get punished if I do this

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so cold cognition comes in and I refrain from doing this

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how people went from tribal society to civilization is one of the main themes in early Chinese history

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they were very worried about this problem and as a society solved it with two general approaches

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1. rule by law

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Mohists and Legalists

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pushing institutional solutions

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human nature is unchangeable, selfish and tribal

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but we can set up these new institutional incentive systems that will change the way people behave

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rational calculation

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cognitive control

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depend on reward and punishment

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2. rule by virtue

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Confucianism and Daoism

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pushing a commitment model

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emotions, virtues

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allows for spontaneous reactions

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depends on internalized values

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what it means to live in civilization is to acquire new virtues, a virtue being a socially desirable disposition

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a spontaneous way to act, if you have the virtue of honesty, you are not honest based on a rule, but out of your nature, spontaneously

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a hot cognitive reaction, a reflex

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in practice, all successful societies seem to involve a mix of both

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virtue-based Confucian societies also have many rules, punishment-reward mechanisms

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becomes the normative model in China

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in the Han Dynasty, Confucianism gets established as the state religion

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institution-based societies still value virtues such as honesty, loyalty, and courage

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e.g. the Qin dynasty's model unified China, but was seen by the Han Dynasty as harsh and inhuman

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but the Han Dynasty inherited many of the institutional structure from the Chin Dynasty

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modern democracies are institution-based societies ruled by law

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we still value virtues but they play a second role to laws

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cognition and ethics

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ethical reasoning

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when you think about ethics

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ethical behavior

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when you act ethically or unethically

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ethical education

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when ethics is taught

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three models of ethics

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1. deontology

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rule-based ethics

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you have duties, typically in the form of maxims

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ethical reasoning and behavior involves knowing those maxims, how to rank them, e.g. is it ok to lie if you can prevent a murder, etc.

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concerned with ethical dilemmas

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cold-system based

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associated most prominently with Immanuel Kant

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2. utilitarianism

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maximize desirable outcomes

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e.g. happiness or pleasure

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who it is for: individual, society, etc.

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consequentialism

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like another cold-system, all about reasoning and involves analysis:

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course of action #1 results in this payoff

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course of action #1 results in that payoff

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you do the math and figure out the better one

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John Stuart Mill

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as an ethical being, you are a "rational calculator of payoffs"

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once you cognitively decide what the best payoff strategy is, you have to force this on your desires

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3. virtue ethics

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a hot cognitive model

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ethics is about cultivating desirable dispositions in the self

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as an ethical teacher, you are trying to get people to have "new hot reactions" to the world, i.e. instead of cold cognitive thought of how to act, they act spontaneously and virtuously

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training perception, emotion and desires

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Aristotle is the prominent example

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also early Confucians and Daoists

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it relies on the power of hot cognition, but not the hot cognition we're born with