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What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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

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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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Do you think that "people like us" can be so used to thinking that we don't track very well our very first or intuitive reaction? Haidt and others would be wrong about the evolutionary origin of the sense of disgust (part of the sanctity/degradation foundation) if the basic sex with a dead chicken idea--without our doing any thinking or rationalizing--doesn't trigger a universal response (minus a few deviates) of at least mild revulsion. Is it at least yucky? That is enough to qualify as a moral response. What we say about it isn't, for Haidt, our true moral response, it's our press release of sorts, straight from our rider. That doesn't make it irrelevant or unimportant. We're just trying to understand what comes first and what is deepest.

Your example is a fine one. I think it indicates that we might be somewhat hampered if we restrict our moral matrix to just harm and fairness. We then seem to have no means of judging as you have judged this S & M club at Columbia. We'd have to say it's none of our business what shape society at large takes, unless harmful things are done to unwilling people or unless acts are illegal. That would seem to be the worst kind of apathy, not to care about whether our society is characterized by qualities such as dignity and moderation. But the fact is that I think that everyone does care, and very few really believe, or rather feel, that people should be left to do whatever they want as long as no one is harmed. But without our granting that other moral foundation areas can be valid, we are tongue-tied.

Haidt mentions an Islamic scholar who studied in the U.S. in the 40s (I can't find the passage). This scholar ended up being disgusted with some parts of our culture and returned to his country to continue writing. He believed that Western/American culture took pleasure in celebrating the lowest aspects of our nature instead of elevating it. He later became Osama bin Laden's favorite philosopher. I'm not talking about about justifying terrorism, but I think the repulsion that Muslims feel is in some respects justified.
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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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DWill wrote:Your example is a fine one. I think it indicates that we might be somewhat hampered if we restrict our moral matrix to just harm and fairness. We then seem to have no means of judging as you have judged this S & M club at Columbia. We'd have to say it's none of our business what shape society at large takes, unless harmful things are done to unwilling people or unless acts are illegal. That would seem to be the worst kind of apathy, not to care about whether our society is characterized by qualities such as dignity and moderation. But the fact is that I think that everyone does care, and very few really believe, or rather feel, that people should be left to do whatever they want as long as no one is harmed. But without our granting that other moral foundation areas can be valid, we are tongue-tied.
For me, this is as much about practicality as anything else (my rational brain at work). I see so much harm being done to people because of the excesses of our economic system, bad government policies or simply cruelty or meanness to fellow humans that I don't see the point of getting concerned about victimless activities.

As for those Columbia students. They won't be going up in flames on graduation. Like the graduates before them, they will be guiding governments, running businesses, taking care of our health and teaching our children.
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DWill

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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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LevV wrote:
DWill wrote:Your example is a fine one. I think it indicates that we might be somewhat hampered if we restrict our moral matrix to just harm and fairness. We then seem to have no means of judging as you have judged this S & M club at Columbia. We'd have to say it's none of our business what shape society at large takes, unless harmful things are done to unwilling people or unless acts are illegal. That would seem to be the worst kind of apathy, not to care about whether our society is characterized by qualities such as dignity and moderation. But the fact is that I think that everyone does care, and very few really believe, or rather feel, that people should be left to do whatever they want as long as no one is harmed. But without our granting that other moral foundation areas can be valid, we are tongue-tied.
For me, this is as much about practicality as anything else (my rational brain at work). I see so much harm being done to people because of the excesses of our economic system, bad government policies or simply cruelty or meanness to fellow humans that I don't see the point of getting concerned about victimless activities.

As for those Columbia students. They won't be going up in flames on graduation. Like the graduates before them, they will be guiding governments, running businesses, taking care of our health and teaching our children.
Thanks, LevV. I suspect you might be more liberal politically than I am (or maybe libertarian?). When I read about the S & M group, the brain modules that constitute the sanctity/degradation foundation were triggered for me. I'm not able to just not care about this kind of thing. I wouldn't mount a campaign to ban this Columbia group, but I do think it's a lot of foolishness, and to use a word that Jonathan Haidt thinks is very relevant to morality, in very poor taste. You're probably right that these students will outgrow their exhibitionism. I have an idea to post separately on Haidt's Sanctity/degradation foundation, because it seems central to some of the current issues in the liberal-conservative divide.

Edit: I guess libertarian isn't a possibly for you, looking again at your list of harms.
Last edited by DWill on Sat Aug 04, 2012 4:48 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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DWill wrote:
lindad_amato wrote:I took Haidt's quiz and was off the charts liberal. Is sex with a dead chicken any more repugnant than sex with a jar of vaseline or a blow up doll? I am way past the point of becoming more conservative, thankfully, and don't care what people do in private.
One of Haidt's main points is that morality is not something produced in our frontal lobes, but is more closely tied into our affective responses in the older parts of the brain. The question you asked about the equivalence of dead chicken sex and other forms of masturbation makes sense, but are you saying that you truly have no intuitive reaction of aversion to the chicken, as opposed to the more sanitized practices? Is your question a post hoc rationalization that covers up your first thought?

Haidt has a truly horrifying example of what two men did in private consensually. It's on page 146. While we might say anything done in private consensually is okay, I think this example shows there are limits for everybody.
No, DWill, my question wasn't a post hoc cover-up. I truly believe that what consenting adults do in private is their own business, no matter what others think. I wasn't saying that I wouldn't personally find it repugnant, but that it doesn't matter as long as it's in private. I don't see that there is any difference on a scale of one to ten, as to what any given individual finds offensive. We all just should keep it private and not pass judgement on others.
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DWill

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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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I thought I ran the risk of offending you, and I'm sorry if I did. I think that what Haidt wanted to get at was whether people would let their personal, gut reactions to the scenarios stand by themselves, or instead claim that reason (or perhaps God) was ruling them, as if their gut reactions had nothing to do with the judgment they delivered. He didn't ask them to say whether they would allow people to do those things, or if the people had a right to do them. He was interested in whether they would put their instantaneous moral reactions out in the open, or massage these in some way that did cloak the primary feeling that came up. He tells us that those of us with WEIRD morality are much more likely to offer rationalizations of our gut reactions, while non-WEIRD people are more comfortable with going with the feeling. You seem now to offer a two-part response: yes, you feel repulsed by the scenarios, but no, you don't believe it's right to legislate your emotion. I don't think that's a rationalization. I admitted to a similar view toward sexual intercourse between males. I do find it repulsive if I think about the act, and I truly can't seem to help that. But if asked to sign a petition or vote against something to do with homosexuality, I won't do it.
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Re: What Is Your Moral Matrix?

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DWill, no offense taken
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