| BookTalk.org News |
| • BookTalk.org News will soon go out via email in HTML format. The goal will be to keep people posted on our current book discussions and other relevant news items. |
| Donate & Support BookTalk.org |
Please support our free community by making a credit card donation through our secure PayPal account. We appreciate and depend on the generosity of our members. Thank you! •
See who supports us
|
| Show us where you live! |
 |
|
| Author |
Message |
JulianTheApostate 
Sophomore
Joined: 23 Jul 2005
Posts: 286
Gender: 
|
 Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 1:54 am Post subject: The Moral Instinct
|
 |
|
Steven Pinker has an essay, The Moral Instinct, in today's New York Times magazine.
It's pretty long, and I'll wait until I'm less tired before reading it. However, it sounds quite interesting, at least from the first few paragraphs. And it's relevant to some of the books about morality we've discussed lately. |
|
| Back to top |
|
 |
bradams
I can enter The Chamber
Joined: 03 Jan 2008
Posts: 61
Gender: 
|
| Posted: Mon Jan 14, 2008 3:35 am Post subject:
|
|
|
Ah, I see Pinker is trotting out Jonathan Haidt and moral dumbfounding again. Psychologists aren't usually very good philosophers and Pinker isn't any exception. His treatment of the philosophical issues involved in morality is quite shallow.
| Quote: |
| Most people immediately declare that these acts are wrong and then grope to justify why they are wrong.... Eventually many people admit, “I don’t know, I can’t explain it, I just know it’s wrong....” People don’t generally engage in moral reasoning, Haidt argues, but moral rationalization: they begin with the conclusion, coughed up by an unconscious emotion, and then work backward to a plausible justification |
Unfortunately for Pinker, people tend to respond in the same manner to questions about scientific beliefs. They immediately declare that, for instance, the earth is round and grope to justify it. Most of them end up saying "I don't know, I can't explain it, I just know it." Some of the smarter ones might say that scientists have an explanation. A few might even be able to give a justification. Do a straw poll at work and see for yourself. I asked about thirty university educated friends (several with masters degrees in science and engineering) and one person managed to come up with "satellite pictures." None could even tell me that when a ship comes over the horizon you see the top of the mast first and then the mast, etc etc, let alone come up with a scientific or mathematical proof.
The fact that an area of the brain associated with emotions doesn't mean that emotion causes the judgment. It's most likely that people have been brought up at a young age to believe such things are wrong, and they feel a strong emotion because of this belief that the act is wrong! The belief causes the emotion, not the other way around.
If you want far better treatments of emotivist/expressivist theories of ethics I'd suggest you turn to Simon Blackburn or Alan Gibbard rather than Steven Pinker. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
JulianTheApostate
Sophomore
Joined: 23 Jul 2005
Posts: 286
Gender:
|
| Posted: Thu Jan 17, 2008 7:15 am Post subject:
|
|
|
| Dissident Heart started another thread about this essay. Since that thread has more posts, let's abandon this one. |
|
| Back to top |
|
|
|
|
| Recent Topics |
|
|
|
