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25 Apr 09

Evolutionary Ethics « gonepublic: philosophy, politics, & public life

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brooks philosophy

Brooks finds much in this view to be nice: it emphasizes our social nature and our tendency toward cooperation; it also “explains the haphazard way most of us lead our lives without destroying dignity and choice”; and it turns our focus to how people are in fact motivated more by “feelings of awe, transcendence, patriotism, joy and self-sacrifice, which are not ancillary to most people’s moral experiences, but central.

08 Apr 09

Op-Ed Columnist - The End of Philosophy - NYTimes.com

As our brain sorts out of the thousands of bits of info it takes special note of those things your system of values and interest. We take note of those things that have been socially enriched objects and concepts

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morality philosophy brooks

Think through moral problems. Find a just principle. Apply it.
Today, many psychologists, cognitive scientists and even philosophers embrace a different view of morality. In this view, moral thinking is more like aesthetics. As we look around the world, we are constantly evaluating what we see. Seeing and evaluating are not two separate processes. They are linked and basically simultaneous.
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- Everything that we look at, we form an implicit preference. Some of those make it into our awareness; some of them remain at the level of our unconscious, but ... what our brain is for, what our brain has evolved for, is to find what is of value in our environment.”
- Most of us make snap moral judgments about what feels fair or not, or what feels good or not. We start doing this when we are babies, before we have language. And even as adults, we often can’t explain to ourselves why something feels wrong.
- We don’t just care about our individual rights, or even the rights of other individuals. We also care about loyalty, respect, traditions, religions. We are all the descendents of successful cooperators.
- They link themselves together into communities and networks of mutual influence.

20 Feb 09

Op-Ed Columnist - Money for Idiots - NYTimes.com

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obama propeller heads bailout brooks

But at least they seem to be driven by a spirit of moderation and restraint. They seem to be trying to keep as many market structures in place as possible so things can return to normal relatively smoothly.

19 Jan 09

An Economy of Faith and Trust - Readers' Comments - NYTimes.com

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brooks comment

The Federal Reserve, as a private corporation owned by our banks, creates money and loans it to the government and its member banks (and increasingly everyone else it would seem) at interest. This is not a conspiracy; it is the result of an act of Congress in 1913. At the origin of these loans the principle is created, but the interest required to pay back the loan is not created.
You couldnt print more money than you had gold. Economists would likely argue that this search for the interest to pay the loans is what drives growth.
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- So the irrational behavior that you describe is the only behavior that the system would tolerate as everyone attempted to create more and more wealth to pay the interest and keep the system in balance. One might conclude that the system is irrational and not the people. I would suggest that when the environment is rational and, yes, based on real trust, people are more than happy to behave accordingly. Lurching into the idea that we are all somehow wacky and cant be trusted is not an acceptable conclusion to draw in the absence of understanding economic construct that got us here in the first place.

Op-Ed Columnist - An Economy of Faith and Trust - NYTimes.com

www.nytimes.com/...16brooks.html - Preview

brooks nytimes

In this new body of thought, you get a very different picture of human nature. Reason is not like a rider atop a horse. Instead, each person’s mind contains a panoply of instincts, strategies, intuitions, emotions, memories and habits, which vie for supremacy. An irregular, idiosyncratic and largely unconscious process determines which of these internal players gets to control behavior at any instant. Context — which stimulus triggers which response — matters a lot.
A thousand mental shortcomings contributed to the financial meltdown. Republicans have tried to explain it by pointing to irresponsible policies at Fannie Mae. But that only explains a piece of what’s happening.
This crisis represents a flaw in the classical economic model and its belief in efficient markets. Republicans haven’t begun to grapple with the consequences.