Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

Moral Tribes begins with the story of multiple tribes that have different ways of organizing themselves. Things work well for each of the tribes alone (though some work better than others.) However, large amount of conflict arises when the tribes compete with other tribes for the same resources. This is a similar to what we have today with differing values and morals. There are many "morals" that are held by all, but others that differ from one to another.

The author then spends a lot of time looking into morals and utilitarian philosophy. The trolley problem is analyzed from a number of different angles. People are reluctant to push a person to his death to save other peoples, but are more willing to do other actions that would incidentally lead to his death. People also are much more likely to be attracted to a cause when there is single person that can be identified. A lot of these odd differences are related to the difference between the "automatic" and "manual" mode of the human brain.

The conclusion was a disappointment. He analyzes the abortion debate. Appeals to "rights" are seen as a cop out for looking at the distinct moral arguments. He presents many of the issues with each argument. (When does a fetus have a soul? Should we protect a mother vs. a child? What about sentience and animals? Would making abortions more difficult discourage more risky sexual behavior.) After exploring this, he goes on to express his preferred view. Wait. Wasn't the point of this to be able to help us to resolve conflict among different moral views? Declaring one view to be better just takes us back to where we started.