One of the biggest challenges of our time is not people without morals, according to philosopher Tim Dean. It is often those with unwavering moral convictions who are the most dangerous. Tim challenges us to change the way we think about morality, right and wrong, to be more adaptable in order to solve the new and emerging problems of our modern lives. Tim Dean is a Sydney-based philosopher and science writer. He is the author of How We Became Human, a book about how our evolved moral minds are out of step with the modern world. He has a Doctorate in philosophy from the University of New South Wales on the evolution of morality and has expertise in ethics, philosophy of biology and critical thinking. This talk was given at a TEDx event using the TED conference format but independently organized by a local community. Learn more at https://www.ted.com/tedx

or you spend any time on social media, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there's a lack of morality in the world today.

There's Certainly no shortage of really serious social and moral problems that we face.

There are people who are discriminated against based on just the colour of their skin.

There are women who don't feel safe in their own homes or their workplace.

There are 500 million children around the world who don't have access to clean water and there are entire industries that cause untold suffering to animals.

We're developing new technologies like artificial intelligence to produce autonomous weapons and people receive death threats for expressing themselves online.

I think from this, it would be really easy to conclude that if only people had stronger moral convictions, the world would be a better place.

Now, this might sound strange coming from a moral philosopher, but I think

a lot of the time, the problem that we face is not that there is too little morality,

it's that there's too much, particularly moral certainty.

Because the most dangerous people in the world are not those with weak moral convictions.

They are those who have the strongest moral convictions.

These are the ones who see the world in Black and white, good versus evil.

They're the ones who are willing to fight and to kill and to die to bring about their vision of utopia.

So I haven't given up entirely on morality quite yet.

for a philosopher to come out here and say we should abandon it.

It helps us decide the difference between right and wrong.

What I am worried about is how morality can inspire black and white thinking.

And we're all prone to this, not just the extremists.

Is it wrong to murder someone just because you don't like the look of their face.

I'm really hoping you're going to say it is wrong.

And the reason I ask is because when we look at why,

it can help us understand a little bit about how we think about morality.

Because when we say it's wrong, It's not a matter of personal preference.

It's not a matter of like, I just prefer not to murder, but I'm all right if you do.

to say that it's wrong for all people at all times.

It's not just a subjective thing like chocolate or strawberry, murder or not murder.

It's just true that you shouldn't murder people for silly reasons.

And when someone doesn't get that, when someone disagrees with us, it's tempting to say they're not just mistaken, there must be something wrong with them.

There's something they don't fundamentally understand, They're immoral people.

it comes to the easy moral problems like murdering for silly reasons, but it is a problem when it comes to the difficult moral problems.

And that's, you know, basically all of them, particularly the moral problems that we are facing today.

So this black and white thinking, it can stifle our ability to engage with other moral perspectives.

It can lock us in to our moral views, whatever we grew up with, we carry with through our lives.

It can create a huge amount of inflexibility.

It can create more conflict than it solves.

And we end up with these really big important debates that just go nowhere.

Left versus right, science versus anti-vaxxers, free speech versus cancel culture.

This is why I think it's so important that we change the way we think about morality, that we get away from this black and white thinking and we start to take a more nuanced view of right and wrong.

the story of like where morality came from and how we evolved from being a bunch of pretty antisocial apes, only a few million years ago, to become the massively social, massive cooperative species that we are today.

no other species of primate would be sitting

here so politely and attentively right now.

And evolution plays a key role in this story.

Evolution didn't just shape our bodies, giving us like opposable thumbs and an upright stance.

So we care about those who are close to us.

We evolved outrage so that we are inspired to punish wrongdoers.

We evolved the ability to create moral rules so an entire community can keep the peace.

However, anyone who studies evolution will tell you that evolution doesn't always optimise.

Remember I said and we have an upright stance, We'll ask anyone over the age of 40 about their knees and their lower back to know that evolution doesn't always nail these things.

And the shortcut that it took around the way we think about morality is by co-opting the way that we see the world.

So when you look at a strawberry, what do you see?

You're going to see a bright, vibrant colour.

If you're not colour blind, that colour is going to be red.

a burst of flavour, a burst of sweetness.

The thing is, that colour, that redness, that sweetness is not built into the strawberry.

Strawberries are just a bunch of chemicals arranged in a certain way.

It's our eyes and our taste buds that interpret those chemicals as sweet or as red.

And Our mind tricks us into thinking that these are features of the strawberry, not something that actually came from us.

So, philosophers like David Hume have called this projectivism because we project our subjective experiences onto the world

and we see them as being objective features of the world.

We do this in all sorts of different contexts where we mistake the subjective for the objective and it creates all sorts of debates around art and music or Marvel versus DC or that ever vexed question of whether pineapple belongs on a pizza.

The American moral psychologist Joshua Green

And that can make it hard for us to understand when other people see the world in different colours.

to kind of project things onto the world and see them as being objective can make morality feel fixed.

But There's something else I learnt from studying the evolution of our

You can think of the rules that people live by

in different societies as being like a toolkit.

And there are different tools to solve different social problems.

How do you prevent bullies from preying on the weak?

And there are different tools for different jobs.

It's really similar to how animals have different tools for different jobs as well.

Depending on whether you eat nuts or seeds or insects or fruit, got a different beak.

the environment changes, those organisms change.

As societies change, they use different tools as well.

Imagine you're living among the Kung people in the Kalahari around about 100 years ago.

So, you're in a small band of maybe 20 to 30 individuals with

Everyone has their role, hunting, gathering, raising the young to keep the band going.

What do you do if 1 of the members of your band becomes a troublemaker?

What if 1 of them, what if that bully murders your sibling?

How do you prevent that kind of behaviour?

How do you prevent others from thinking they can get away with it?

So 1 of the tools that the Kung used, 1 of their moral toolkit was revenge.

The idea that if you harm me, I'm entitled to harm you in return.

And the threat of revenge was very effective at keeping the peace.

That's why among the Kung, if someone murders a sibling, it's not just permitted, it's a moral duty for you to kill the murderer.

And we can see that different societies have talked about revenge in different ways.

We see from a lot of the great histories like the stories like the Iliad,

the Mahabharata from Beowulf, great stories that involve revenge.

Old Testament, Moses is told it's okay to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.

But as societies grew, as they changed, As more people were interacting, revenge started to cause more trouble than it was worth.

It starts triggering feuds that could last for generations and many people can end up being harmed.

This is why in the New Testament we're told to turn the other cheek.

And in the modern world, we have the resources to outsource punishment to

And when we can trust the law, it's a better solution than taking justice into our own hands.

This is how like organisms, societies adapt to changing circumstances.

The catch is it goes really, really slowly.

Our black and white thinking can put a break on this type of moral evolution, can put a break on moral progress.

That wasn't such a big deal 10, 000 years ago because society has changed very slowly back then.

You could go multiple generations without needing to update your moral toolkit.

Today, it's a big problem because our world is changing faster than ever before.

We have new problems that are emerging like around artificial intelligence.

is that there are many moral problems that don't have a single answer that's going to work in all circumstances.

Like how to punish wrongdoing, whether you should have free speech if

it allows people to say harmful things, whether people should be allowed to take their own lives when they're old or they're sick.

On the other side, there are many moral questions that have lots of answers.

Like think about 1 of the core questions at the

heart of ethics, how to live a good life.

There might be more than 1 valid answer to that question.

What we need to do is change the way we think about right and wrong.

So here's how I think we should think about morality.

The world is changing faster than ever before.

We are encountering greater diversity than ever before.

We're interacting with people from different cultures, different religions, different moral backgrounds.

People are commingling and new problems are emerging.

The first thing I'd suggest is forgive yourself and forgive everyone else for being basically primates wearing pants using smartphones, right?

We all carry the baggage of our ancestors.

forgive ourselves and others for feeling the same certainty that we feel, but we've got to push back against that certainty.

We've got to examine our own moral beliefs, the things that we inherited from our parents, from our community.

And we've got to realise that those tools from the past may not be the right tools for the future.

There are voices that we can hear now that have been silenced for most of history.

We need to think about the problems that we face today and engage with those problems and find new solutions.

We need to change the way we think about morality because the really important thing to remember is that moral evolution is possible.


Speaker 0: Hello, everybody.

Speaker 1: So if you read the news

Speaker 0: or you spend any time on social media, you'd be forgiven for thinking that there's a lack of morality in the world today. There's Certainly no shortage of really serious social and moral problems that we face. There are people who are discriminated against based on just the colour of their skin. There are women who don't feel safe in their own homes or their workplace. There are 500 million children around the world who don't have access to clean water and there are entire industries that cause untold suffering to animals.

We're developing new technologies like artificial intelligence to produce autonomous weapons and people receive death threats for expressing themselves online.

Speaker 1: I think from this, it would be really easy to conclude that if only people had stronger moral convictions, the world would be a better place.

Speaker 0: I'm not convinced. Now, this might sound strange coming from a moral philosopher, but I think

Speaker 1: a lot of the time, the problem that we face is not that there is too little morality,

Speaker 0: it's that there's too much, particularly moral certainty. Because the most dangerous people in the world are not those with weak moral convictions. They are those who have the strongest moral convictions. These are the ones who see the world in Black and white, good versus evil. They're the ones who are willing to fight and to kill and to die to bring about their vision of utopia.

Speaker 1: So I haven't given up entirely on morality quite yet. That would be a pretty weird talk

Speaker 0: for a philosopher to come out here and say we should abandon it. Morality is still super important. It sits at the heart of ethics. It helps us decide the difference between right and wrong. What I am worried about is how morality can inspire black and white thinking.

And we're all prone to this, not just the extremists. To show you what I mean, let

Speaker 1: me ask you a question. Is it wrong to murder someone just because you don't like the look of their face.

Speaker 0: All right. I'm really hoping you're going to say it is wrong. And I'm going to agree with you there.

Speaker 1: And the reason I ask is because when we look at why,

Speaker 0: it can help us understand a little bit about how we think about morality. Because when we say it's wrong, It's not a matter of personal preference.

Speaker 1: It's not a matter of like, I just prefer not to murder, but I'm all right if you do. We kind of want

Speaker 0: to say that it's wrong for all people at all times. Right? It's not just a subjective thing like chocolate or strawberry, murder or not murder. It's something that's objective, right? It's just true that you shouldn't murder people for silly reasons.

And when someone doesn't get that, when someone disagrees with us, it's tempting to say they're not just mistaken, there must be something wrong with them. There's something they don't fundamentally understand, They're immoral people.

Speaker 1: This is the kind of black and

Speaker 0: white thinking that comes very naturally

Speaker 1: to us. And it's not a big deal when

Speaker 0: it comes to the easy moral problems like murdering for silly reasons, but it is a problem when it comes to the difficult moral problems. And that's, you know, basically all of them, particularly the moral problems that we are facing today. So this black and white thinking, it can stifle our ability to engage with other moral perspectives. It can lock us in to our moral views, whatever we grew up with, we carry with through our lives. It can create a huge amount of inflexibility.

It can create more conflict than it solves. And we end up with these really big important debates that just go nowhere. Left versus right, science versus anti-vaxxers, free speech versus cancel culture. This is why I think it's so important that we change the way we think about morality, that we get away from this black and white thinking and we start to take a more nuanced view of right and wrong.

Speaker 1: Sounds easy, right? Of course, it's not. Turns out, it's actually in our nature

Speaker 0: to think about morality this way. So, as a philosopher,

Speaker 1: I've been Really interested in

Speaker 0: the story of like where morality came from and how we evolved from being a bunch of pretty antisocial apes, only a few million years ago, to become the massively social, massive cooperative species that we are today. I can guarantee you

Speaker 1: no other species of primate would be sitting

Speaker 0: here so politely and attentively right now.

Speaker 1: And evolution plays a key role in this story.

Speaker 0: Evolution didn't just shape our bodies, giving us like opposable thumbs and an upright stance. It also shaped our minds. It made us smarter. It gave us language. We evolved the capacity for empathy.

So we care about those who are close to us. We evolved outrage so that we are inspired to punish wrongdoers. We evolved the ability to create moral rules so an entire community can keep the peace. However, anyone who studies evolution will tell you that evolution doesn't always optimise. It often takes shortcuts, cuts corners.

Speaker 1: Remember I said and we have an upright stance, We'll ask anyone over the age of 40 about their knees and their lower back to know that evolution doesn't always nail these things. And the shortcut that it took around the way we think about morality is by co-opting the way that we see the world. Let me give you an example. So when you look at a strawberry, what do you see?

Speaker 0: You're going to see a bright, vibrant colour. If you're not colour blind, that colour is going to be red. When you bite into it,

Speaker 1: what are you going to experience? You're going to get

Speaker 0: a burst of flavour, a burst of sweetness. The thing is, that colour, that redness, that sweetness is not built into the strawberry. Strawberries are just a bunch of chemicals arranged in a certain way. It's our eyes and our taste buds that interpret those chemicals as sweet or as red. And Our mind tricks us into thinking that these are features of the strawberry, not something that actually came from us.

Speaker 1: So, philosophers like David Hume have called this projectivism because we project our subjective experiences onto the world

Speaker 0: and we see them as being objective features of the world. We do this in all sorts of different contexts where we mistake the subjective for the objective and it creates all sorts of debates around art and music or Marvel versus DC or that ever vexed question of whether pineapple belongs on a pizza. And we do it with morality too.

Speaker 1: The American moral psychologist Joshua Green

Speaker 0: says, we see the world in moral colours. And that can make it hard for us to understand when other people see the world in different colours.

Speaker 1: So this ability for us

Speaker 0: to kind of project things onto the world and see them as being objective can make morality feel fixed. It's black and white. It's unchanging. It's just right or wrong.

Speaker 1: But There's something else I learnt from studying the evolution of our

Speaker 0: species in different societies. That's actually not how morality works.

Speaker 1: You can think of the rules that people live by

Speaker 0: in different societies as being like a toolkit.

Speaker 1: And there are different tools to solve different social problems.

Speaker 0: How do you prevent lying? How do you prevent cheating? How do you prevent bullies from preying on the weak? And there are different tools for different jobs. It's really similar to how animals have different tools for different jobs as well.

Depending on whether you eat nuts or seeds or insects or fruit, got a different beak. And as

Speaker 1: the environment changes, those organisms change.

Speaker 0: They have different tools for the job. As societies change, they use different tools as well. So, let me give you an example. Imagine you're living among the Kung people in the Kalahari around about 100 years ago.

Speaker 1: So, you're in a small band of maybe 20 to 30 individuals with

Speaker 0: a few extended families. Everyone has their role, hunting, gathering, raising the young to keep the band going. What do you do if 1 of the members of your band becomes a troublemaker? What if they become a bully? What if they turn violent?

What if 1 of them, what if that bully murders your sibling? How do you respond? How do you punish them? How do you prevent that kind of behaviour?

Speaker 1: How do you prevent others from thinking they can get away with it? So 1 of the tools that the Kung used, 1 of their moral toolkit was revenge.

Speaker 0: The idea that if you harm me, I'm entitled to harm you in return. And the threat of revenge was very effective at keeping the peace. That's why among the Kung, if someone murders a sibling, it's not just permitted, it's a moral duty for you to kill the murderer.

Speaker 1: And we can see that different societies have talked about revenge in different ways. We see from a lot of the great histories like the stories like the Iliad,

Speaker 0: the Mahabharata from Beowulf, great stories that involve revenge.

Speaker 1: We can see in the

Speaker 0: Old Testament, Moses is told it's okay to take an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth. But as societies grew, as they changed, As more people were interacting, revenge started to cause more trouble than it was worth. It starts triggering feuds that could last for generations and many people can end up being harmed. And so the societies change. This is why in the New Testament we're told to turn the other cheek.

Speaker 1: And in the modern world, we have the resources to outsource punishment to

Speaker 0: an entire class of specialists. It's their job to handle this. And when we can trust the law, it's a better solution than taking justice into our own hands. So this is moral evolution. This is how like organisms, societies adapt to changing circumstances.

The catch is it goes really, really slowly. Our black and white thinking can put a break on this type of moral evolution, can put a break on moral progress.

Speaker 1: That wasn't such a big deal 10, 000 years ago because society has changed very slowly back then.

Speaker 0: You could go multiple generations without needing to update your moral toolkit. Today, it's a big problem because our world is changing faster than ever before. We have new problems that are emerging like around artificial intelligence. We've never faced before. We need a new moral toolkit.

Speaker 1: The other thing that I learnt

Speaker 0: is that there are many moral problems that don't have a single answer that's going to work in all circumstances.

Speaker 1: Like how to punish wrongdoing, whether you should have free speech if

Speaker 0: it allows people to say harmful things, whether people should be allowed to take their own lives when they're old or they're sick. There's no single answer

Speaker 1: to those questions that's going

Speaker 0: to work in every circumstance. On the other side, there are many moral questions that have lots of answers.

Speaker 1: Like think about 1 of the core questions at the

Speaker 0: heart of ethics, how to live a good life. There might be more than 1 valid answer to that question. So morality is not black and white. It is flexible. It can evolve.

What we need to do is change the way we think about right and wrong. So here's how I think we should think about morality.

Speaker 1: The world is changing faster than ever before.

Speaker 0: We are encountering greater diversity than ever before. We're interacting with people from different cultures, different religions, different moral backgrounds. People are commingling and new problems are emerging. So we need to adapt quickly. The first thing I'd suggest is forgive yourself and forgive everyone else for being basically primates wearing pants using smartphones, right?

Speaker 1: We are all evolved. We all carry the baggage of our ancestors. We've got to

Speaker 0: forgive ourselves and others for feeling the same certainty that we feel, but we've got to push back against that certainty. We've got to examine our own moral beliefs, the things that we inherited from our parents, from our community. And we've got to realise that those tools from the past may not be the right tools for the future. We need to work to listen to others. There are voices that we can hear now that have been silenced for most of history.

We need to open up. We need to think about the problems that we face today and engage with those problems and find new solutions. We need to change the way we think about morality because the really important thing to remember is that moral evolution is possible. Thank you.

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Can you be too moral? | Tim Dean | TEDxSydney