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Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

#169: Dec. - Mar. 2020 & #109: Jul. - Sept. 2012 (Non-Fiction)
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Chris OConnor

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Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?
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DWill

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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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Haidt doesn't begin by defining morality. That wouldn't be a good scientific approach, since it would influence what he would go looking for and what he would find. We just assume that for him morality is what people determine to be right or wrong. That differs from a couple of books I recall. In Primates and Philosophers, edited by Frans de Waal, the assumption is that morality concerns the degree to which people form cooperative and caring communities. In The Moral Landscape, Sam Harris dismisses issues such as homosexuality and abortion as societal judgments that are not moral because for Harris morality has to be about what helps human beings to flourish. Haidt tells us, sensibly, that people consider more than just that restricted menu to be fodder for moral judgments. It is only in the U.S. and in Western Europe, he says, that people are likely to restrict morality to matters of harm and fairness. Ours is an individualistic society in which people are seen as having the right to do whatever they want as long as no one else appears harmed. Socio-centric societies, by contrast, take away this prerogative from the individual to place it outside or above him. Even in the U.S., however, there are some differences in the scope of morality, depending on socioeconomic level.

Haidt brings in the great developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, to establish the principle of psychological rationalism: our ability to think abstractly is governed by stages that our developing brains go through. It is, however, by reasoning that we do finally progress to solving the hardest problems, whether they are purely intellectual or involve moral judgment. Kohlberg extended Piaget by matching up the stages of cognitive development with a child's ability to grasp moral logic in a progression of complexity. Haidt doesn't have an argument about the particulars of this pair's work, but he says with reference to both that it's a mistake for others to conclude that rationalism is the primary means by which we make our moral judgments. With regard to Kohlberg's six stages of moral reasoning, he says that the highest criterion, fairness and harm, is socially conditioned and not universal.

The rest of the chapter chronicles Haidt's journey as he discovers holes in Piaget and Kohlberg (and Turiel) and comes to be convinced that Richard Sweder offers a fuller theory that accounts for variations in moral outlook that are actually seen. Sweder found, in his research in India, "no bright line separated moral rules (preventing harm) from social conventions (regulating behaviors not linked directly to harm)... Indian practices related to food, sex, clothing, and gender relations were almost always judged to be moral issues, not social conventions." Haidt's own research on moral perspectives in the U.S as compared to Argentina revealed that the biggest differences were attributed to social class, not national culture per se.

What fascinated Haidt about his research results was how often his subjects, when there was no clear connection to their
judgment of right or wrong in terms of harm and fairness, would try to invent one anyway, floundering around in search of a victim, someone harmed or not treated fairly. They could not fully express their convictions, they just knew. Haidt calls their reactions moral dumbfoundedness, and for him it was a strong signal that what had happened is that the moral intuition had come first, followed by the post hoc rationale.

So in the chapter Haidt has surveyed three theories on the origin of morality: the nativist (innate) answer, the empiricist (social learning) answer, and the rationalist (reason assisted by developmental milestones). Haidt doesn't think any are adequate, so he is about to explain in the rest of the book "how morality can be innate (as a set of evolved intuitions) and learned (as children learn to apply those intuitions within a particular culture). We're born to be righteous, but we have to learn what, exactly, people like us should be righteous about."
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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Haidt's arguments seem very persuasive to me, he is arguing against certain writers but I wonder if his main points remain controversial among psychologists and related fields
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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I read my long-ago post on the chapter. Seems like a lot of work! Not sure I want to get to expounding or summarizing so much this go-round. I guess a discussion leader shouldn't anyway, so I have an out.

One difference between Haidt's approach here and that of other writers on the subject did strike me. Instead of polemics combined with analysis of previous thinkers, Haidt bases his conclusions on his own research. This gives him a certain higher credibility and objectivity, or it seems to, at least. It doesn't mean we have to accept his research, or the conclusions he draws from it, as definitive.

I'm looking forward to talking about the book again. Not to prejudice the discussion, but I found RM to have an exceptionally wide range simultaneous with high coherence of the elements--somewhat unusual. Haidt also structures the argument with clear logic, as a good teacher would. In few places did I have any trouble following him.

I note geo's and Dexter's decision to wait until after Christmas to begin discussing. I'll just throw down here a few of the questions that might emerge from the chapter. I'll miss a few.

1.How come kids can figure out the harm avoidance/fairness thing on their own, while most other moral feelings come through the culture?

2. How does it seem Haidt might be preparing us to re-examine the way many of us view the liberal/conservative split?

3. Does it seem that education might be the most important determining factor in whether people view morality as mainly harm avoidance/fairness, or as also consisting of other "tastes" such as authority and purity? Haidt doesn't mention education specifically. He does mention affluence, and I wonder if one is more influential than the other.

4. What should we think of Haidt's proof that we Western liberals, though we say morality is just about harm avoidance and fairness, in fact have intuitions rising from other moral taste receptors, such as purity and sanctity? (This gets into post-hoc rationalizations.)

5. After reading the chapter, how would we describe the difference between social conventions and moral beliefs?

6. What is the cause of rising individualism in cultures or certain segments of cultures?

7. Is there any way to figure out the innate proportion of moral feelings vs. those that are culturally instilled?

Off topic slightly: I picked up a book called The Riddle of Amish Culture and got into it. It is really easy to see how morality manifests in that culture in a very different way from in the mainstream.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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Excellent list of questions. Particularly #6. After the Colin Woodard’ American Character read I’m trending toward libertarianism as a culprit.

I’ll have my copy of “The Righteous Mind” this weekend, I’m looking forward to getting into this read.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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I just started re-reading, but I've probably absorbed Haidt's basic worldview already.

Morality is such an interesting topic. We want to be able to say "murder is wrong," but it's hard to give an objective reason. A consequentialist reason may be enough, but it doesn't give you a clean rule. Is it based on "natural" rights? That opens up a whole other can of worms.

After observing some basic examples where people are rationalizing their moral intuitions, it seems obvious. And yet we all do it, and most of the time are not aware that we are rationalizing -- even if you know the psychology, I suspect.

It seems non-Western cultures (or more conservative groups) that have broader notions of morality don't subject their worldview to much scrutiny, such as dietary rules or other purity rules. But then again, most Westerners/liberals don't either. I'm sure there's some random path dependence involved.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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Haidt wants liberal Westerners to be more liberal regarding what they'll accept as legitimate morality. I get that, I guess. But can we still say a hierarchy of morality exists, despite the risk of being seen as culturally insensitive to moral notions of purity, sanctity, and authority? I'm not sure whether Haidt makes a statement about this somewhere in the book. If every culture he looked at agrees that harming people and being unjust are wrong, regardless of other, different things that also are moralized, then these are the moral beliefs common to all that might trump others. I'm thinking of situations such as female genital mutilation, honor killing, and the Indian caste system--extreme examples admittedly. We should be able to declare these all to be wrong based on the moral duty to condemn harm. It doesn't matter that in the culture in which they exist, they stem from moral beliefs. It's harder to look at our own culture, of course, to identify harms we accept.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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DWill wrote:Haidt wants liberal Westerners to be more liberal regarding what they'll accept as legitimate morality. I get that, I guess. But can we still say a hierarchy of morality exists, despite the risk of being seen as culturally insensitive to moral notions of purity, sanctity, and authority? I'm not sure whether Haidt makes a statement about this somewhere in the book. If every culture he looked at agrees that harming people and being unjust are wrong, regardless of other, different things that also are moralized, then these are the moral beliefs common to all that might trump others. I'm thinking of situations such as female genital mutilation, honor killing, and the Indian caste system--extreme examples admittedly. We should be able to declare these all to be wrong based on the moral duty to condemn harm. It doesn't matter that in the culture in which they exist, they stem from moral beliefs. It's harder to look at our own culture, of course, to identify harms we accept.
I'm also not sure what Haidt says about this later in the book, but I suspect he would agree with you about harm taking priority. It's just that I think he is focusing on a descriptive theory of morality, rather than taking a position.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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DWill wrote: Haidt bases his conclusions on his own research. This gives him a certain higher credibility and objectivity, or it seems to, at least. It doesn't mean we have to accept his research, or the conclusions he draws from it, as definitive.
I would agree. Analysts who are able to formulate interesting questions and investigate carefully deserve extra respect because their perspectives have been, at least to some extent, validated by reality.
DWill wrote:I'll just throw down here a few of the questions that might emerge from the chapter. I'll miss a few.

1.How come kids can figure out the harm avoidance/fairness thing on their own, while most other moral feelings come through the culture?

2. How does it seem Haidt might be preparing us to re-examine the way many of us view the liberal/conservative split?

3. Does it seem that education might be the most important determining factor in whether people view morality as mainly harm avoidance/fairness, or as also consisting of other "tastes" such as authority and purity? Haidt doesn't mention education specifically. He does mention affluence, and I wonder if one is more influential than the other.
Haidt has put some spin on matters, and I think these are good questions for evaluating that process. As far as I know it is still an open question to what extent authority, purity and sanctity are "merely" culturally transmitted or have the same kind of primitive mammalian basis as fairness. I would personally like to see a lot of respect given to values of authority and sanctity, but in a reflective rather than an unquestioning way.

The essential contribution of education is not to lead us to oppose traditional values. Quite the contrary, in my view. If we can reflectively understand the reasons why traditional values and ideas are functional, we can make more reasonable decisions about revising or re-affirming these traditions. Harm avoidance and justice seem to me to be "bedrock" preferences, without which society becomes terribly difficult to sustain, and without which our spiritual life becomes vacuous and corrupt. Maybe it is just because I am a liberal, but it seems to me to be sensible to derive the values of authority and sanctity from these bedrock values, in such a way that we know how they contribute to basic social goals, rather than just being "preferences" whose origin we neither care about nor examine.
DWill wrote: 4. What should we think of Haidt's proof that we Western liberals, though we say morality is just about harm avoidance and fairness, in fact have intuitions rising from other moral taste receptors, such as purity and sanctity? (This gets into post-hoc rationalizations.)
I look forward to reading it, since I have not read it before.
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Re: Ch. 1: Where Does Morality Come From?

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After finishing Ch. 1, my thought is that it seems that many of the non-harm moral judgments seem quite arbitrary, given the differences across cultures. I know Haidt is going to talk about innate moral emotions, which certainly makes sense. I'll have to wait to see how he balances that with cultural influence (since I don't remember all of his arguments well enough).
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