geo wrote:

DWill wrote: . . . .what drives people to such loyalties? I like some people who support Trump. Of course, we avoid politics.

I wonder what moral foundations, if any, are triggered by Trump's political messages. What does Make America Great Again mean in terms of Haidt's theory? The commonality seems to be a collective loathing of liberals and Hillary Clinton, in particular. It seems driven by us-versus-them. Trump has called Fed chair, Jerome H. Powell, an “enemy” of America. It seems primarily a connection to the loyalty/betrayal foundation.

Could another possibility be Sanctity/Degradation? That Trump himself is triggered by filthy, disease-bearing, and criminal people he thinks are invading the country is unmistakable. It's as though his germphobia extends to people of certain "shithole" countries; and it's not even unlikely that dark skin contributes to his visceral dislike. What kind of America is being harkened back to with MAGA? At least part of the appeal is the image a whiter America and thus a purer America.

I was surprised that what I saw as a tired old slogan--MAGA--had so much traction. After all, it implies that America isn't great now. That doesn't seem patriotic. But after Trump's "American Carnage" inaugural speech, it was clear that he was holding responsible all the political elites (foreshadowing the deep state) for some unspecified crimes against the nation. Perhaps the key in Trump's mind was that America wasn't a winner anymore, had been shorn of its power by internationalists who wanted the U.S. to fit in more than dominate. Steve Bannon, who was in Trump's ear at this time, wrote the speech along with immigrant hater Stephen Miller.

DWill wrote:. . . Could another possibility be Sanctity/Degradation? That Trump himself is triggered by filthy, disease-bearing, and criminal people he thinks are invading the country is unmistakable. It's as though his germphobia extends to people of certain "shithole" countries; and it's not even unlikely that dark skin contributes to his visceral dislike. What kind of America is being harkened back to with MAGA? At least part of the appeal is the image a whiter America and thus a purer America.

It just occurred to me that the anti-vaxxer movement may touch upon Sanctity/Degradation as well. I can imagine a visceral feeling of disgust at having a needle inserted into your child's arm. Obviously there's a genuine fear of Big Government too, although that might just be a fabrication by the anti-vaxxer elephant drivers. Just a thought in passing.

geo wrote:

DWill wrote:. . . Could another possibility be Sanctity/Degradation? That Trump himself is triggered by filthy, disease-bearing, and criminal people he thinks are invading the country is unmistakable. It's as though his germphobia extends to people of certain "shithole" countries; and it's not even unlikely that dark skin contributes to his visceral dislike. What kind of America is being harkened back to with MAGA? At least part of the appeal is the image a whiter America and thus a purer America.

It just occurred to me that the anti-vaxxer movement may touch upon Sanctity/Degradation as well. I can imagine a visceral feeling of disgust at having a needle inserted into your child's arm. Obviously there's a genuine fear of Big Government too, although that might just be a fabrication by the anti-vaxxer elephant drivers. Just a thought in passing.

Haidt mentions the fetishes (if that's the right word) that sophisticated people have about certain foods, and the repulsion they feel for other foods, based on unhealthfulness or maybe on unsustainability. That reaction probably is in line with Sanctity/Degradation, though "foodies" (I'm not making fun) might defend their views as completely rational. I'm the same way with some of my preferences and dislikes. I associate plastics with degradation, but paper bags make me feel virtuous.

geo wrote:

. . . when you travel, or become a parent, or perhaps just read a good novel about a traditional society, you might find some other moral intuitions latent within yourself. You might find yourself responding to dilemmas involving authority, sexuality, or the human body in ways that are hard to explain.

I believe the main point of this section is: there's more to morality than harm and fairness. Haidt does a pretty good job informing us about what moral diversity really is before trying to convert us, as he was converted, (to a more understanding and less judgmental state).

So, I think I have settled in on my main problem with this material. Haidt neglects a main line of thinking imposed by philosophical investigation, namely the difference between morality of ends (which purposes make society more liveable) and morality of means (what methods may we use to pursue our endorsed goals). As part of the psychology profession and its tendency to trust "raw data" about how the brain functions, such an abstract distinction is easy to dismiss. But in doing so he ends up essentially proposing that caste and the subjugation of women are "just different goals", more sociocentric rather than more individualistic.

Well, no. They are not just a result of awareness of authority that WEIRD people have somehow talked themselves out of. They are authority constructs, created for purposes and by deliberate actions, and the sociocentric goals they pursued are now outmoded and were morally suspect from the start. When WEIRD morality breaks down old structures, it does so on a reasoned basis, not because of an essentially arbitrary gut level "elephant" in the room. And if you are not willing to admit such reasoned arguments as data, then you bias a very important set of decisions about how we should live.

Some of the same issues arise with respect to purity and divinity. I am all for a sense that some ways of doing life are more elevated, and elevating, than others. As those who have read my comments know, I am a believer. But Jesus, whom I seek to follow, argued most forcefully about the means to be used, and gave us a sense of grace and inclusion to replace judgment and condemnation. So when I hear a discussion reduced to "dimensions of moral intuition" about which ways society should be, I have trouble having divinity put forward as a basis for judging and condemning people (think of honor killings, for example, or female genital mutilation) as if it is just a vital aspect of life that WEIRD people have lost any sense of. No, in fact it is a set of conventions that Jesus and Paul exposed as conventions in the interest of a truer sense of divinity. And reason has the power to give us such a perspective in a way that Haidt's raw data does not give us access to.

I think, in other words, that he is smuggling a lot of polemic arguments, as someone put it above, in under the guise of scientific analysis. And, since I appreciate much of his analysis and his message, I am also appreciating the chance to break down where it is that I find my dissatisfaction with this series of arguments.

Harry Marks wrote: So, I think I have settled in on my main problem with this material. Haidt neglects a main line of thinking imposed by philosophical investigation, namely the difference between morality of ends (which purposes make society more liveable) and morality of means (what methods may we use to pursue our endorsed goals). As part of the psychology profession and its tendency to trust "raw data" about how the brain functions, such an abstract distinction is easy to dismiss. But in doing so he ends up essentially proposing that caste and the subjugation of women are "just different goals", more sociocentric rather than more individualistic.

Well, no. They are not just a result of awareness of authority that WEIRD people have somehow talked themselves out of. They are authority constructs, created for purposes and by deliberate actions, and the sociocentric goals they pursued are now outmoded and were morally suspect from the start. When WEIRD morality breaks down old structures, it does so on a reasoned basis, not because of an essentially arbitrary gut level "elephant" in the room. And if you are not willing to admit such reasoned arguments as data, then you bias a very important set of decisions about how we should live.

I think I mentioned at the start that if children independently apply reason to moral judgments about harm and fairness, as Haidt says they do, then there is justification for making the Care and Fairness foundations the ones that aren't constructed by culture. They are primary, in other words. We don't then need to censure our elephants when we feel our righteous minds rolling into action when confronting something like honor killing, dismemberment for crimes, FGM, and others. It does happen at some point to all cultures that despite our reasoned sense that harm and cheating are wrong, cultures still institutionalize violations of Care and Fairness (I'll skip the reasons for this). They basically brainwash everyone that these violations are necessary or, amazingly, even moral. Whether we are on the outside of such a situation looking in, or waking up to a situation in our midst (e.g., racial discrimination), it is debilitating to raise relativistic cautions.

For me, it's not that Haidt denies any of this; it's just that he is not interested in moral self-help for the individual. That fact is shown by the swerve to politics in Chapter 4. But you could also say that, at least to this point, he almost denigrates moral judgment entirely. He says we are all really Glaucons, out only for ourselves, a ruling that ignores our considerable conflicts between self-interest and what we know to be right. It's not only our valuing reputation that keeps us from being bad, cheating people. He puts down Kant's insistence on invariably following principle as a symptom of Asperger's syndrome, as though Kant's belief shows him lacking insight into the emotions that make exceptions to principle inevitable in real life.

I'd have to allow for another possibility, which is that Haidt only wants to demonstrate, through science, that people do moralize other aspects of life besides Care and Fairness. He thinks that our WEIRD worldview blinds us to that fact, and that we would not dismiss other cultural values as mere social conventions if we expanded our insight. And we'd understand why so many people look to politicians who reinforce other moral foundations like Authority and Sanctity. Such appeals aren't merely pandering.

DWill wrote:I think I mentioned at the start that if children independently apply reason to moral judgments about harm and fairness, as Haidt says they do, then there is justification for making the Care and Fairness foundations the ones that aren't constructed by culture. They are primary, in other words. We don't then need to censure our elephants when we feel our righteous minds rolling into action when confronting something like honor killing, dismemberment for crimes, FGM, and others.

Yes, I have noticed a critical process in your posts as well as others, from the beginning of this series. The apparent original choice to reference a critical review helps with that. The book is so much of a landmark that going over it again should indicate an interest in re-thinking the insights and presentation, and I have been glad to have the observations that others bring. I agree that harm and fairness have advantages in terms of innate perceptions that this is what moral judgment "means", so that the WEIRD analysis of what is "really going on" with moral perception tends to reinforce our most basic sense of how morality works.

DWill wrote: It does happen at some point to all cultures that despite our reasoned sense that harm and cheating are wrong, cultures still institutionalize violations of Care and Fairness (I'll skip the reasons for this). They basically brainwash everyone that these violations are necessary or, amazingly, even moral. Whether we are on the outside of such a situation looking in, or waking up to a situation in our midst (e.g., racial discrimination), it is debilitating to raise relativistic cautions.

Yes, I think that is really insightful. Relativistic cautions can be helpful for broadening the scope of our ability to communicate across cultural boundaries, which I think is becoming a more obvious problem with global warming and concern over immigration becoming salient issues of divisiveness.

I wouldn't use "brainwash" myself, since FGM and other processes using amoral means for supposedly moral ends are inevitably combining many strands of social moralism and children (or adolescents) pull together a picture of how those strands fit together, rather than mindlessly adopting whatever society tells them must be true.

DWill wrote:For me, it's not that Haidt denies any of this; it's just that he is not interested in moral self-help for the individual. That fact is shown by the swerve to politics in Chapter 4. But you could also say that, at least to this point, he almost denigrates moral judgment entirely. He says we are all really Glaucons, out only for ourselves, a ruling that ignores our considerable conflicts between self-interest and what we know to be right.

I will give this some thought. I took it that he was downplaying the role of moral reflection because he wants to highlight the value of his "raw data" approach, which *is* useful in my opinion. But there may be more to it, and a subtler agenda, at work.

DWill wrote:It's not only our valuing reputation that keeps us from being bad, cheating people. He puts down Kant's insistence on invariably following principle as a symptom of Asperger's syndrome, as though Kant's belief shows him lacking insight into the emotions that make exceptions to principle inevitable in real life.

It's a devilishly complex topic, which has vexed every culture since culture manifested itself in writing, and probably before that as well. But putting Kant's inflexible analysis into a category of social impairment is certainly a drastic step that needs much more thought than Haidt is inclined to bring to such philosophical questions. In Christianity we have a framework for this question, the parable of the Pharisee and the Publican, which is almost koan-like in its raising a question without being able to state a clear answer. Do we endorse Righteousness (which, in the original Hebrew I am told was the same word as Justice) or Penitent Self-Criticism? Which raises the question whether Haidt is dismissing the question with an appeal to pragmatic acceptance of people's self-duplicity. To a Christian this is putting the cart of forgiveness ahead of the horse of remorse.

DWill wrote:I'd have to allow for another possibility, which is that Haidt only wants to demonstrate, through science, that people do moralize other aspects of life besides Care and Fairness. He thinks that our WEIRD worldview blinds us to that fact, and that we would not dismiss other cultural values as mere social conventions if we expanded our insight. And we'd understand why so many people look to politicians who reinforce other moral foundations like Authority and Sanctity. Such appeals aren't merely pandering.

Yes, this is the key to why we should read the book and how we should integrate it with other considerations, in my view. I think you have said it well.