My view looks at this material against a long time frame. The Gospels contrast a morality based on emotion, giving primacy to selfishness and revenge, against a morality based on reason, giving primacy to love and objectivity. The argument, as I see it, is that human culture is captured in a maelstrom of emotion, and that salvation requires evolution out of emotion into reason as the basis of culture. The problem is that this is a call for messianic transformation, and the Bible observes that when Jesus advocated that (in the story), he was crucified. The resurrection is a signal of the long term necessity of the ethics of the Sermon on the Mount, within a recognition that our world is governed by the values of the crucifiers.

Well actually there is an immense amount of moral dumbfounding in this example. Most people will say it would be nice if wishes were horses and beggars could ride. But that is because it looks mean to observe that wishes are not horses. Most people would put life before property if asked, except they then vote for politicians who uphold patent law regarding intellectual property for pharmaceutical innovation, so the generic pirates who steal knowledge can be prosecuted. And if you think about it, patent law reflects a higher rational morality, based on the evidence that no company will put the investment into discovery of new drugs if it thinks it will not turn a profit. Emotional people will demand the right to steal their property, but judges support patent law because they respond to a higher rational morality than the immediacy of emotional situations.

That is speculative. In poor countries, defective children are allowed to die because the society cannot afford to keep them alive. "Instinctive recoil" from such practices tends to be a learned response. People have an "instinctive recoil" from eating cats, rats, dogs and cockroaches, but in poor countries these are delicacies. Brutality was regarded as great fun in days gone by, in gladiator fights, public executions and the like. Only once an abstract notion (do unto others) is widely taught do people come to claim that a moral theory whose origins are actually rational is based on emotion.

At the base of all value judgments, there is an assumption that cannot be proved, an axiom. My view is that the core axiom of morality is that human life is good. But really, as Hume saw with his pitiless logic, this axiom is just a statement of sentimental emotional preference, a statement of passion, not reason.

Correct physical statements are those that can be proved true by observation and the consistency of natural laws. All other statements rely on something other than physical observation for us to assent to them as true in any ultimate sense. This 'something other' is our capacity to form synthetic judgments about necessary truths of experience, as Kant put it, following Plato.

If we want to say it is necessarily true that people should think human life is good in itself, then this 'goodness' does not derive from any physical observation alone, but interprets the evidence through the lens of our sentimental values. These emotional values are what make us regard anyone who disagrees as an inhuman monster. But this valuing of loyalty to our genetic kith cannot be justified by physical evidence alone. It draws in something other than the physical, namely moral ideals that can only be properly understood as metaphysical.

the idea that there is a dichotomy between reasoned moral judgment and emotion. I don't see how you'll get anywhere with this when scientific understanding has passed this by.

A divorce of moral reasoning and emotion is impossible in the sense that emotion usually gives rise to moral reasoning. The reasoning will be an attempt to give socially acceptable or useful justification to an emotional reaction.

The identification of love with reason rather than emotion also seems rather strange to me.

Moral dumbfounding is a specific term Haidt thought up to describe people's failure to come up with logical reasons for their decisions about certain kinds of moral problems. You've run your own way with it.

we acquire certain automatic reactions. Whether these are learned or innate doesn't make a difference.

But don't disparage 'sentiment' or 'passion', since both evolved to aid us in survival. Reason comes in afterwards, also to aid us in survival by being of usefulness to the core of automatic responses that form the biggest part of our constitution.

If moral reasoning is post hoc rationalizing coming from intuition or emotion, the 'truth' doesn't have to be anywhere in statements themselves. The truth can be in the emotions or sentiments

Honestly, I find that an astounding comment. You may be familiar with Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman. Fast thinking relies on emotion, getting us immediately out of a situation where we have to react, whereas slow thinking relies on reason, in which we carefully weigh all the factors of a decision against the evidence and the likely outcomes. Law courts use this distinction between snap and considered judgments as a matter of course, so deprecating it as unscientific seems rather shallow.

And sometimes that reasoning will be sound and sometimes it will be unsound. Sound reasoning is dispassionate, impartial, evidence based and logical. Unsound reasoning is passionate, biased, prejudiced and illogical. There is a difference.

If love is reverence for the identity of something, it can be a completely rational thing. The context of the Sermon on the Mount was an unconditional love, whereby a spark of divinity is seen in everything, even in things that are corrupted and evil. It is a rational abstract love, not an emotional partiality.

My use seems compatible with Haidt's as I understand him. You are saying people get dumbfounded when asked to explain why stealing drugs is wrong. I just think this example fails to consider the situation at all coherently, as to why people regard rule of law as more important than individual exceptions. 'Just this once' is the start of a slippery slope to relativism.

Yes it does make a difference. Innate reactions are hardwired into our genes, whereas learned reactions are taught and so in principle can readily be changed by rational argument.

Sentiment is the basis of 'fast thinking' and is essential for all quick responses. But building a theory of morality on immediate reactions is fraught with peril. It makes far more sense to consider views very carefully and build on precedent.

I'm finding that statement hard to comprehend. Moral reasoning is not post hoc, it starts from universal principles that have been refined by long precedent and experience and assesses actions against this framework. 'Post hoc' implies we newly invent our moral response after every event instead of having a consistent and coherent moral compass.

The book is not about general reasoning, but about our minds being in a divided state as we behave morally however we do, and then present the reasoning for that behavior. The divided state refers to the controlled processes of moral reasoning against the automatic processes of intuition, which is ruled by emotion. Haidt's metaphor is the rider and the elephant.

experimental design to force people ... into moral dumbfoundedness. None of reasoned, evidence-based justifications could work ... their reasoning ... was bad because it skirted the facts.... moral judgments ... reside deep in our emotions

I don't believe in "rational abstract love."

moral reasoning is the rider serving the elephant.

You quoted Haidt in the intro thread as saying “the mind is divided, like a rider on an elephant, and the rider’s job is to serve the elephant. The rider is our conscious reasoning…the elephant is the other 99 percent of mental processes—the ones that occur outside of awareness but that actually govern most of our behavior.” Where does he get this from? The elephant's job is to serve the rider. He has it backwards. Good morality is logical, with the elephant serving the rider, while bad morality is illogical, with the rider serving the elephant. Is he saying there is no good and bad in morality?

As a relative newcomer to this list, I cannot say with certainty that I belong to any of the three camps discussed in this thread but I have thought for some time about Haidt's arguments pertaining to the underlying science and philosophy guiding its application. It seems to me he argues that intuitions come first and that our emotions motivate and guide the rational arguments we make in defense of our intuitions. Thus, if a particular proposition or position elicits a positive reaction from me then the position I take in subsequent reasoning is "can I believe this?" and I will look at all available information through the lens of selecting evidence which does support my favored position (Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow describes the heuristics underlying such a selection). If, on the other hand, the position evokes a negative reaction my analysis becomes "must I believe this?" and my unconscious filters lead me to select evidence refuting the position (while avoiding seeing any supportive data lying about). So we use rationality in daily life to justify our beliefs and to wonder why the idiots on the other side fail to see the obvious supporting evidence so apparent to us.