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Changing How We Choose: The New Science of Morality
The "new science of morality" that will change how we see each other, how we build our communities, and how we live our lives.
In Changing How We Choose, David Redish makes a bold claim: Science has "cracked" the problem of morality. Redish argues that moral questions have a scientific basis and that morality is best viewed as a technology--a set of social and institutional forces that create communities and drive cooperation. This means that some moral structures really are better than others and that the moral technologies we use have real consequences on whether we make our societies better or worse places for the people living within them. Drawing on this new scientific definition of morality and real-world applications, Changing How We Choose is an engaging read with major implications for how we see each other, how we build our communities, and how we live our lives.
Many people think of human interactions in terms of conflicts between individual freedom and group cooperation, where it is better for the group if everyone cooperates but better for the individual to cheat. Redish shows that moral codes are technologies that change the game so that cooperating is good for the community and for the individual. Redish, an authority on neuroeconomics and decision-making, points out that the key to moral codes is how they interact with the human decision-making process. Drawing on new insights from behavioral economics, sociology, and neuroscience, he shows that there really is a "new science of morality" and that this new science has implications--not only for how we understand ourselves but also for how we should construct those new moral technologies.
In Changing How We Choose, David Redish makes a bold claim: Science has "cracked" the problem of morality. Redish argues that moral questions have a scientific basis and that morality is best viewed as a technology--a set of social and institutional forces that create communities and drive cooperation. This means that some moral structures really are better than others and that the moral technologies we use have real consequences on whether we make our societies better or worse places for the people living within them. Drawing on this new scientific definition of morality and real-world applications, Changing How We Choose is an engaging read with major implications for how we see each other, how we build our communities, and how we live our lives.
Many people think of human interactions in terms of conflicts between individual freedom and group cooperation, where it is better for the group if everyone cooperates but better for the individual to cheat. Redish shows that moral codes are technologies that change the game so that cooperating is good for the community and for the individual. Redish, an authority on neuroeconomics and decision-making, points out that the key to moral codes is how they interact with the human decision-making process. Drawing on new insights from behavioral economics, sociology, and neuroscience, he shows that there really is a "new science of morality" and that this new science has implications--not only for how we understand ourselves but also for how we should construct those new moral technologies.
384 pages, Hardcover
Published December 6, 2022
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
March 22, 2023
In Changing How We Choose, David Redish makes a bold claim: Science has "cracked" the problem of morality. Redish argues that moral questions have a scientific basis and that morality is best viewed as a technology--a set of social and institutional forces that create communities and drive cooperation.
This is what the book claims to offer. But having finished it, I can confidently claim that the book fails woefully in its stated claims. In this book, you will gain an understanding of the structures of morality. But this is only DESCRIPTIVE. You can pause a moral system and analyze its internal structures, but you cannot generate morality PRESCRIPTIVELY by reassembling these structures. Why? Because a successful moral structure may fail when transplanted into a different society and one that failed in one society can succeed in another. Morality can not be "cracked" scientifically and moral questions do not have a scientific basis. At least, the author failed to demonstrate it.
Many people have tried in vain to draw out prescriptions (ought) from descriptions (is) and the author sashays confidently into an arena where angels fear to tread. Did he succeed? Absolutely not. There is a necessity to physical causation that one does not find in moral causation. A stone falls to the ground under the necessity of the law of gravity. But moral laws do not issue from such ironclad natural laws. When people say that you cannot extract an ought from an is, what they mean is that there is no physical fact or event that can lead by pure necessity to a certain moral action. That is because human beings are not machines. They have choices grounded in various reasons such as religion, law, and personal preference. This takes their moral actions far beyond the realm of scientific analysis. Hunger does not necessitate eating because the human actor might be fasting or might be watching his or her weight. The fear of death does not necessarily provoke a flight or fight response because the human actor might be desiring matyrdom and glory in the afterlife. This does not imply moral relativism; it only means that moral systems can only be compared transcendentally not scientifically.
That is only one of the two major flaws in the book. The second is that morality is decidedly more than the question of cooperation in society. Questions of cooperation in and between societies are undoubtedly part of morality, but they are not all. There is also the question of what people believe to be right and wrong according to transcendent standards. You may use assurance games to describe the morality of sharing meat after a hunt but can you use it to solve the problem of whether an adulterer should be stoned to death or whether homosexuality is unacceptable in a society? The answers to these questions can be right or wrong but we cannot use science (that is science properly defined) to answer them.
This is what the book claims to offer. But having finished it, I can confidently claim that the book fails woefully in its stated claims. In this book, you will gain an understanding of the structures of morality. But this is only DESCRIPTIVE. You can pause a moral system and analyze its internal structures, but you cannot generate morality PRESCRIPTIVELY by reassembling these structures. Why? Because a successful moral structure may fail when transplanted into a different society and one that failed in one society can succeed in another. Morality can not be "cracked" scientifically and moral questions do not have a scientific basis. At least, the author failed to demonstrate it.
Many people have tried in vain to draw out prescriptions (ought) from descriptions (is) and the author sashays confidently into an arena where angels fear to tread. Did he succeed? Absolutely not. There is a necessity to physical causation that one does not find in moral causation. A stone falls to the ground under the necessity of the law of gravity. But moral laws do not issue from such ironclad natural laws. When people say that you cannot extract an ought from an is, what they mean is that there is no physical fact or event that can lead by pure necessity to a certain moral action. That is because human beings are not machines. They have choices grounded in various reasons such as religion, law, and personal preference. This takes their moral actions far beyond the realm of scientific analysis. Hunger does not necessitate eating because the human actor might be fasting or might be watching his or her weight. The fear of death does not necessarily provoke a flight or fight response because the human actor might be desiring matyrdom and glory in the afterlife. This does not imply moral relativism; it only means that moral systems can only be compared transcendentally not scientifically.
That is only one of the two major flaws in the book. The second is that morality is decidedly more than the question of cooperation in society. Questions of cooperation in and between societies are undoubtedly part of morality, but they are not all. There is also the question of what people believe to be right and wrong according to transcendent standards. You may use assurance games to describe the morality of sharing meat after a hunt but can you use it to solve the problem of whether an adulterer should be stoned to death or whether homosexuality is unacceptable in a society? The answers to these questions can be right or wrong but we cannot use science (that is science properly defined) to answer them.
September 11, 2025
A new science?
Science is more than asking questions, and a new science is more than asking questions in a new way. Postulating that a new morality is an assurance game is, as Radish says, a hypothesis. Much psychology needs to be included before this hypothesis becomes a theory of morality. It seems to me that the book can be summarized while standing on one foot: get people to follow the golden rule. But how? Just as in his previous book, wish Radish had waited to publish until he had come up with a few tentative answers to explore, instead of just questions.
Science is more than asking questions, and a new science is more than asking questions in a new way. Postulating that a new morality is an assurance game is, as Radish says, a hypothesis. Much psychology needs to be included before this hypothesis becomes a theory of morality. It seems to me that the book can be summarized while standing on one foot: get people to follow the golden rule. But how? Just as in his previous book, wish Radish had waited to publish until he had come up with a few tentative answers to explore, instead of just questions.
May 9, 2024
I met this author in person, and he writes the way he talks. I had fun listening to him, it makes sense I enjoyed his book.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews