Morality as Social Software

The dissertation research is a project to understand morality better through the concept of ‘Social Software.’ The dissertation is, consequently, to argue that the morality in a human society functions as a form of social software in the society. The three aspects of morality as social software are discussed in detail: the evolutionary, anti-entropic, and epistemic game-theoretic aspect. We humans ‘usually’ think that, for example, (a) killing other humans without any necessary reason is morally wrong, and (b) helping other humans in need is morally right. We want to know, in this dissertation research project, why we think in such ways. Myriads of answers to this question have already been offered. We will pursue an answer that has more explanatory power and enlightening lucidity. The term, ‘Social Software’ was coined by Rohit Parikh to connote, broadly, social “procedures that structure social reality” (van Eijck and Parikh 2009, p. 2). The term can be understood, “more or less equivalently,” (Parikh 2002-1, note 2) as ‘social procedure,’ ‘social algorithm,’ or ‘social game.’ (1) The first aspect of ‘morality as social software,’ to be discussed is the evolutionary: human morality has emerged and developed further through the process of evolution; (2) the second aspect is the anti-entropic: human morality is human resistance against the universal law of entropy that tends to annihilate everything from order to disorder; (3) the third aspect is the epistemic game-theoretic: human morality is understood better by epistemic game theory, which is a combination of ‘classical game theory’ and relatively new ‘epistemic logic.’ As more specific case studies for the epistemic game-theoretic aspect, the concepts of backward induction and “the less we know, the more rational and moral,” are discussed. Finally, a thorough discussion on the naturalistic fallacy instills more philosophical rigor into the dissertation

The Philosophical Foundations of PLEN: A Protocol-theoretic Logic of Epistemic Norms

In this dissertation, I defend the protocol-theoretic account of epistemic norms. The protocol-theoretic account amounts to three theses: (i) There are norms of epistemic rationality that are procedural; epistemic rationality is at least partially defined by rules that restrict the possible ways in which epistemic actions and processes can be sequenced, combined, or chosen among under varying conditions. (ii) Epistemic rationality is ineliminably defined by procedural norms; procedural restrictions provide an irreducible unifying structure for even apparently non-procedural prescriptions and normative expressions, and they are practically indispensable in our cognitive lives. (iii) These procedural epistemic norms are best analyzed in terms of the protocol (or program) constructions of dynamic logic. I defend (i) and (ii) at length and in multi-faceted ways, and I argue that they entail a set of criteria of adequacy for models of epistemic dynamics and abstract accounts of epistemic norms. I then define PLEN, the protocol-theoretic logic of epistemic norms. PLEN is a dynamic logic that analyzes epistemic rationality norms with protocol constructions interpreted over multi-graph based models of epistemic dynamics. The kernel of the overall argument of the dissertation is showing that PLEN uniquely satisfies the criteria defended; none of the familiar, rival frameworks for modeling epistemic dynamics or normative concepts are capable of satisfying these criteria to the same degree as PLEN. The overarching argument of the dissertation is thus a theory-preference argument for PLEN