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.
