Ch. 7: The Moral Foundation of Politics
Posted: Tue Dec 10, 2019 3:28 pm
Ch. 7: The Moral Foundation of Politics
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I totally agree, DWill.DWill wrote: . . . So maybe it isn't entirely true that liberals are stuck in their Care and Fairness cage.
Well, actually, there is harm involved and Haidt has to resort to Mill's "autonomy framework" to argue that liberals don't get the violation of Sanctity. What he sweeps under the rug is the question of whether sanctity is a standard that needs to be enforced by law and courts. The means of pursuing Sanctity may have primitive appeals as motivation, but it is still subject to evaluation. Maybe shunning and expressions of disgust are sufficient "enforcement" of violations of sanctity. This gets into theological issues of what "sanctity" "really means" as opposed to how it has been traditionally handled. Unless you are willing to grandfather in honor killings because they mean "sanctity" to someone, you have to accept some engagement with the question.DWill wrote:He has already made the point that WEIRD morality relies mostly on Care and Fairness. This reliance can lead to us WEIRDos trying to deny the urging of a dominant, irrational sense that something about an action just is not right, that it is repugnant. The extreme case is represented by the murder/suicide pact described in gory detail on p. 146. Not to say that what occurred between these two men--although consensual and not harming anyone else--is wrong seems blatantly morally wrong, indeed a violation of a sacred principle. Restricting moral judgment to Care and Fairness results in moral dumbfounding when an individual confronts such a violation of the Sanctity module.
I think that's a great insight. Not that I am desperate to have liberals be supporting some version of authority, but if authority serves some function, then it makes sense to ask whether our cultural interpretations of proper authority and its proper exercise are really promoting that function.DWill wrote:Haidt's major point that when we look at politics, we see different triggers activating the same module goes a way toward explaining our political divisions. Authority/Subversion is prominent in the partisanship over President Trump. His supporters seem to view his exercise of authority as a righteous cause, spurning objections that he tramples on longstanding democratic values. Trump's opponents have exalted an alternate authority--rather surprising, perhaps. coming from the liberal side--which is the rule of law (having an echo of law and order). That is the authority whose existence Trump threatens. So maybe it isn't entirely true that liberals are stuck in their Care and Fairness cage. During the impeachment proceedings we also saw the Democrats stressing the sanctity of virtue in our politics, and attacks on Republicans were largely based on their degradation of the same.
Agreed that there is harm involved in the German example, and Haidt isn't that clear on whether he saw real-world examples of people saying that this wasn't wrong because of its consensuality. The law did find that it was wrong; "most people" feel that such a thing should be against the law, Haidt says. Haidt is vague on whether he did run this scenario by the Penn students. So who was morally dumbfounded isn't clear.Harry Marks wrote:Well, actually, there is harm involved and Haidt has to resort to Mill's "autonomy framework" to argue that liberals don't get the violation of Sanctity. What he sweeps under the rug is the question of whether sanctity is a standard that needs to be enforced by law and courts. The means of pursuing Sanctity may have primitive appeals as motivation, but it is still subject to evaluation. Maybe shunning and expressions of disgust are sufficient "enforcement" of violations of sanctity. This gets into theological issues of what "sanctity" "really means" as opposed to how it has been traditionally handled. Unless you are willing to grandfather in honor killings because they mean "sanctity" to someone, you have to accept some engagement with the question.DWill wrote:He has already made the point that WEIRD morality relies mostly on Care and Fairness. This reliance can lead to us WEIRDos trying to deny the urging of a dominant, irrational sense that something about an action just is not right, that it is repugnant. The extreme case is represented by the murder/suicide pact described in gory detail on p. 146. Not to say that what occurred between these two men--although consensual and not harming anyone else--is wrong seems blatantly morally wrong, indeed a violation of a sacred principle. Restricting moral judgment to Care and Fairness results in moral dumbfounding when an individual confronts such a violation of the Sanctity module.
I suppose the question might be whether pressure should be brought to bear on Modi's govt., since some see him as subverting India's constitution invalidating caste. I wouldn't favor that, but I see the Care and Fairness foundations as unquestionably a basis for individual opposition to that system.I am going to be reading the next chapter with an eye to Modi's India, where many Hindutva advocates are "true believers" that Dalits are reincarnated from base and vile people who abuse others. Sure, they have a cultural sense that Brahmins are infused with the divine but Dalits are so debased that they must not be touched or allowed to marry out of caste. So what? If we cannot apply acid tests of reason to such judgments then we start falling into the morass of accepting the vicious methods used to suppress them, including falsely accusing Muslims of slaughtering cows, accusations which seem justified by the way Muslims sometimes converted just to escape their lower caste and thus subvert the order of things created by reincarnation.
I will look at the next chapter again, and the comment you've already made, and see if I can figure out a conundrum.If the advantage of conservatives is that they refuse to second-guess moral judgments that "everybody knows" are right, while liberals go out on the limb of enunciating more sustainable principles using reason, I'm going to be even more confirmed in my liberalism.
Haidt is very good at choosing examples. I am not sure it matters whether he has found actually dumbfounded people - we have all heard silly claims about how it doesn't matter whether someone beats their dog/squanders the environment/wastes their own money/speaks evil of their acquaintances behind their back, etc. "None of your business" is a go-to phrase in American life, and it is hardly limited to America. "It's a free country" works the same way. I recently read an opinion piece on how a mother was going to let her kids put in minimal time on education during the coronavirus lockdown. "Judge me all you want" was her version. It's how we push back against moral rules that we consider silly, or more about competition for esteem than about morality. And that pushback is part of the process.DWill wrote:So who was morally dumbfounded isn't clear.
Well, that's one more dilemma. A meta-quandary, perhaps. Do we always go with our feelings, or do we adapt our culture to the problems we are actually trying to solve? Is the second idea too bloodless? Is the first idea too mindless? Or is it, as I suspect, something we have to work out on a case-by-case basis? I mean, isn't that why there are both liberals and conservatives, because the answer is not inevitable?DWill wrote:I suspect that Haidt might have a comment on "subject to evaluation." Could that rider activity itself be something culturally produced, yes, a part of WEIRD outlook? Will cultures low on individuality and high on authority see to it that evaluation is discouraged? Unreflecting adherence to cultural norms sounds bad to us, but it's reflection that sometimes causes liberals to rule against their feelings.
I always used the rule of explaining to my sons. If I couldn't explain the reason for a rule, I would think twice about whether it should be a rule. Very rarely did I resort to "How dare you?" or "That's just the way it is." It led to a lot of what the family came to refer to as "litigating" but we all share a deep sense that there are reasons for the way we do things. My father was quite the other way, and I am sure I reacted against him in doing things the way I do. But I have come to realize that he was frequently baffled by life's refusal to fit his simplicities, and that there was a certain amount of past trauma in his reaction to having his authority challenged.DWill wrote:Social harms are the fly in the ointment. Liberals highlight these less. It's fair to say that conservative cultures evaluate ours harshly because of the social harms we don't punish. Haidt uses the example of the cab driver who plans to plans to return to India because he doesn't want to raise his new-born son in a culture where the son might grow up to say "fuck you" to him.
I am still of the opinion that Haidt has done good work and uncovered some aspects of morality that might have stayed hidden, at the level of intuition, if not for his work. That doesn't mean I have to agree with all the claims he makes in explaining what it means.DWill wrote:I always associated refusing to condemn as more of a liberal attitude. But now I'm inclined to see the matter in terms of on which side the bread is buttered.