Very Bad Wizards Episode 329: Why We Suffer
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Mar 31, 2026 They dissect competing ways people explain suffering: moral, communal, and divine frameworks versus biomedical accounts. They debate a provocative paper claiming monogamy may be impermissible and the emotional, practical pushback to that idea. They explore cross-cultural interviews showing rich folk causal stories and argue for deeper qualitative methods in moral psychology.
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Three Moral Orders Explain How Cultures Make Sense Of Suffering
- Richard Shweder's 'Big Three' links three moral orders to three causal ontologies for suffering: autonomy maps to biomedical causes, community to interpersonal causes, and divinity to moral/metaphysical causes.
- The paper argues different cultures emphasize different ontologies, explaining why most of the world uses interpersonal, karmic, or spiritual explanations while Western contexts privilege biomedical narratives.
Moral Foundations Grew From Shweder's Ethnographic Texture
- Jonathan Haidt and colleagues built moral foundations theory on Shweder's idea that autonomy, community, and divinity are universal intuitive systems emphasized differently across cultures.
- Shweder's ethnographic richness (interviews in India) provided the multidimensional content later simplified into foundation questionnaires.
Folk Causation Picks Causes For Practical Reasons
- 'Folk causation' in Shweder's account accepts influence at a distance and unobservable forces; causes are chosen based on practical concerns, not strict scientific necessity.
- Examples include blaming driver, road, or car for an accident depending on which explanation serves practical or moral purposes.
