Moral Tribes, Joshua Greene

Essentially, this book is about getting past partisan divides and trying to find some kind of objective overarching morality that everyone can apply and understand, a “metamorality”. For Greene, the answer is very clearly utilitarianism, and he makes a spirited defence of that point, countering many of the standard objections to utilitarianism and clearing away the misconceptions. He starts by defining the problem, of course: discussing how we make moral decisions, using trolley problems (“trolleyology”) as the “fruit fly” of morality experiments.

He talks about ideas you’ve probably read elsewhere, sounding very much like Jonathan Haidt’s “rational tail wagging the emotional dog”, and talks about the basis of this in the human brain. There’s a lot of unpicking of why we have two levels of response to moral situations, and when each one comes into play, which is fascinating in itself, but not new to me. The defence of utilitarianism was, for me, the important part of the book. I’ve always had a bit of a kneejerk reaction against it, and Greene does a good job of dissecting why that happens, and countering that perception.

He also has some very good discussion of how to balance the ultimate aims of utilitarianism with being a fallible human being with emotional wants that feel like needs (even in cases where they’re not).

Overall, worth the read, and I do think he has a good solution here for a system of metamorality that isn’t perfect (he doesn’t seem to think a perfect metamorality exists or is possible), but can be applied and understood by everyone, and which serves our needs for 99.999% of our problems in the real world.

Rating: 4/5

Ancestral Journeys, Jean Manco

This is a multidisciplinary synthesis of all kinds of information about the populations of Europe and how they got here. There have been trends in understanding the movement of peoples that anyone dipping into the topic will know about, largely the great argument over migration and whether it’s ever really occurred or not. I think Manco’s book shows that, in the end, it’s the middle road that’s the answer: sometimes there has been movement, sometimes not; usually, there’s been some movement, whether of traders or invaders.

The book presents tons and tons of evidence, drawing from genetic analysis, written records, archaeological remains and linguistic traces. No doubt some of the details are wrong here and there, but I strongly suspect that the overall sweep of it is a good picture of how Europe was populated, and how populations interacted and lived together. It’s quite attractively presented, too: it’s printed in colour throughout, with colours used to good effect to produce heatmaps and all sorts illustrating the density of certain genetic markers or linguistic groups.

It’s also, to my mind, a pretty easy read. I did get a little lost at times when it fell to listing the markers that characterise this or that population, but for the most part Manco remembers to keep all the evidence in mind, and not simply regurgitate strings of haplogroup identifications. She also explains how the genetic analysis techniques used work, which helps — not in enormous detail, so nothing new to me, but enough to contextualise the work she’s presenting.

Interesting stuff, and while I wouldn’t call it a pageturner as such, I read it in two days.

Rating: 4/5

Think Again: How To Reason and Argue, Walter Sinnott-Armstrong

I always meant to take the Coursera class this is based on, but I never quite got round to it, so when I saw it’d been made into a book, well, that seemed likely to be a format that would work for me (and wait for me to get round to it, though as it happened, it didn’t have to wait long). I think it does have some good suggestions and some good analysis of ways to argue, but there are a couple of things I find difficult.

One is the claim that the world is increasingly polarised and things were better, people were more polite, in ye olde days of yore. Sure, it’s very clear that the discourse has changed, and Sinnott-Armstrong does have the receipts to show that we are more polarised in terms of our political view. On the other hand, I have a hard job seeing that as just a symbol of our current times: countries have been split by civil war before. People haven’t always been more polite or known how to argue or how to disagree civilly, and maybe the less-polarised times he’s holding up as a better time had their own problems (like people feeling unable to express their opinions, perhaps even feeling unsafe to do so, in the cases of a lot of minorities).

The other thing is the way Sinnott-Armstrong pushes always being civil, always giving the other person the benefit of the doubt. On the one hand, it feels like the right thing — I would love more civility in debates. But there are some views which are legitimised by being engaged with, and there are some things that are indefensible. Now it’s true that he does say that it’s not always the time to argue, but it really wasn’t clear to me that he understood the position his insistence on civility and hearing both sides would put some people in: debating with someone who believes that it’s simply a fact that they and everyone like them should be cleansed from the world, and asking them why, charitably reframing their argument… Ew. No. It comes across as very “good people on both sides”, and it’s not true.

Perhaps it’s a fault of it being a rather short book and limited space, but given he’s constantly framing the issue in terms of the political divide in the US, I wonder. I don’t feel that he quite gets out of it by simply stating that sometimes it isn’t the right time to argue. Maybe it’s just a matter of saying that you just can’t argue productively with some people/views, and he’s automatically discounting those right away. It didn’t feel like it, though, with some of his examples.

The book did make me want to try debating more instead of constantly either passing arguments by or dismissing people as too biased to bother. I do think it could be pretty useful when both parties are willing to argue in good faith. I doubt it’ll be an antidote to political polarisation right now, though, for most people — I think for many people, the other side (whichever that is) just isn’t willing to talk anymore. There’s too much at stake, and it’s too exhausting.

Rating: 3/5

Think Like An Anthropologist, Matthew Engelke

This book is less “how to think like an anthropologist” and more “how do some anthropologists think, and what do other anthropologists think about that”, and so on. Which isn’t a bad thing, but it goes into the history of anthropology and various examples and at times it just seems to get lost a bit. If the primary aim is to give a bit of context around anthropology and suggest how it’s relevant to everyday life, I think it succeeds in some ways, but it’s not always clear what exactly it is trying to do. At times it seems like it’s going to avoid anecdotes like “x culture thinks y” and what anthropology thinks about those, and the next it delves right in.

It’s not without interest, but I couldn’t keep my mind on following the thread at times. Possibly that means something’s wrong with my mind (or at least the way I in particular think), but history shows I’m generally pretty good at following a well put-together argument through a book, so maybe it’s the book. Regardless, while I had fun with some aspects of it, I don’t think it’s a great book.

Rating: 3/5