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Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:05 am
by Dexter
I think most people would say that their morality is based on reason rather than emotion, but perhaps we are all biased. A few things come to mind:

Thinking about how my own political/moral/religious views developed, it was certainly not merely copying my parents or other family, as they are quite different, and have changed since childhood. So I'm wondering how much I can attribute to reasoning, or perhaps I was prepared to be influenced by those particular views. So far in Haidt any theory or evidence on the origins of peoples' views seems to be lacking (maybe he will address this more later).

Also, should we strive to override these moral prejudices that we might have? For example, I don't consider myself left-wing, but I sympathize with their reaction against such characteristics of the right as blind patriotism and their opposition to gay marriage. Obviously, those holding such views do not see them as something to be overcome. So where does that leave us? What is the role of reasoning then, which according to the evidence is so subordinate to the emotion center of the brain?

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 12:07 pm
by LevV
Well said, Dexter. I think it makes perfect sense that, in most cases, we would believe that our views are based on sound clear reasoning. After all, we reinforce our beliefs in so many ways. We tend to read the books that support our views, we spend more time with people who think as we do, and apparently, we focus on anything we see and hear that supports our views, while dismissing or playing down anything we disagree with.
At this point, Haidt is helping me to understand the development of other people's belief systems. I look forward to seeing what else he has to say about riding that elephant.l

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Wed Jul 11, 2012 9:04 pm
by DWill
Dexter wrote:I think most people would say that their morality is based on reason rather than emotion, but perhaps we are all biased. A few things come to mind:

Thinking about how my own political/moral/religious views developed, it was certainly not merely copying my parents or other family, as they are quite different, and have changed since childhood. So I'm wondering how much I can attribute to reasoning, or perhaps I was prepared to be influenced by those particular views. So far in Haidt any theory or evidence on the origins of peoples' views seems to be lacking (maybe he will address this more later).

Also, should we strive to override these moral prejudices that we might have? For example, I don't consider myself left-wing, but I sympathize with their reaction against such characteristics of the right as blind patriotism and their opposition to gay marriage. Obviously, those holding such views do not see them as something to be overcome. So where does that leave us? What is the role of reasoning then, which according to the evidence is so subordinate to the emotion center of the brain?
Thanks for opening this thread. Of course, Haidt has thrown out the reason-emotion dichotomy, and the science appears robust enough to allow him to do this. There is almost nothing that we perceive that doesn't produce an affective nudge in our brains--or an affective boost in many cases. So he probably would want to qualify your statement about the reasoned base of morality. He chose the elephant to represent our unconscious processes not only because its size was right for the relative size of the unconscious vs. the evolutionarily later conscious thought, but because an elephant is smarter than some other animal we might ride, like a horse. Haidt stresses the power and intelligence of the automatic processes. Therefore I'm not sure he would object to anyone saying that his moral position is "based on reason," since we can see reason, of a sort, in something like our our intuitive reaction to stealing. Sometimes our moral reasoning, what he calls "strategic reasoning," is a gloss on our intuitions that actually holds up. It's just the priority of intuition that he insists on. He's more concerned with the nature of the process. Intuitions come first.

Looking at the incest scenario again, he wasn't trying to prove that many of the condemners of Mark and Julia had no good basis for disallowing incest, just that their particular rational arguments concerning what the brother and sister did were flimsy due to the provisos in the story. But these subjects felt they had to insist on a logical, consequential reason for strategic purposes. We usually don't like to admit that we can't put our finger on why we don't like something.

That's a great question you end with. I don't know how I'd like to answer that now. I'm sure it'll be coming up again.

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 12:30 am
by Robert Tulip
LevV wrote:Well said, Dexter. I think it makes perfect sense that, in most cases, we would believe that our views are based on sound clear reasoning. After all, we reinforce our beliefs in so many ways. We tend to read the books that support our views, we spend more time with people who think as we do, and apparently, we focus on anything we see and hear that supports our views, while dismissing or playing down anything we disagree with. At this point, Haidt is helping me to understand the development of other people's belief systems. I look forward to seeing what else he has to say about riding that elephant.l
This claim that most people believe their views are based on sound reasoning is not true. Most people actually have other motives for belief, including blind loyalty to what their community and family believe, and what they think will serve their personal interests. Any match between these motives and logical reasoning is a bonus.

In religion, politics and morality, most people are of the view that it is best not to think too much about their views, as that involves the risk of giving credence to dangerous ideas. George Orwell explained this well in his novel 1984, where he describes the irrational psychology of protective stupidity as follows:
George Orwell wrote: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crimestop
Crimestop is a Newspeak term taken from the novel Nineteen Eighty-Four by George Orwell. It means to rid oneself of unwanted thoughts, i.e., thoughts that interfere with the ideology of the Party. This way, a person avoids committing thoughtcrime. In the novel, we hear about crimestop through the eyes of protagonist Winston Smith: "The mind should develop a blind spot whenever a dangerous thought presented itself. The process should be automatic, instinctive. Crimestop, they called it in Newspeak. He set to work to exercise himself in crimestop. He presented himself with propositions -- 'the Party says the earth is flat', 'the party says that ice is heavier than water' -- and trained himself in not seeing or not understanding the arguments that contradicted them. Orwell also describes crimestop from the perspective of Emmanuel Goldstein in the book The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism: Crimestop means the faculty of stopping short, as though by instinct, at the threshold of any dangerous thought. It includes the power of not grasping analogies, of failing to perceive logical errors, of misunderstanding the simplest arguments if they are inimical to Ingsoc, and of being bored or repelled by any train of thought which is capable of leading in a heretical direction. Crimestop, in short, means protective stupidity.

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:15 am
by Dexter
Robert Tulip wrote: This claim that most people believe their views are based on sound reasoning is not true. Most people actually have other motives for belief, including blind loyalty to what their community and family believe, and what they think will serve their personal interests. Any match between these motives and logical reasoning is a bonus.

In religion, politics and morality, most people are of the view that it is best not to think too much about their views, as that involves the risk of giving credence to dangerous ideas.
It may be true that people have blind loyalty and do not think about their views, but I doubt if people would see it that way. Don't you think religious believers would say that they have good reason to believe what they do, that it is consistent with the evidence? They're not going to say, "well, it conflicts with logic and evidence, but I believe it anyway." People with certain political beliefs are not going to say "I believe this because it's in my self-interest."

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 10:05 am
by Robert Tulip
Dexter wrote: Don't you think religious believers would say that they have good reason to believe what they do, that it is consistent with the evidence? They're not going to say, "well, it conflicts with logic and evidence, but I believe it anyway." People with certain political beliefs are not going to say "I believe this because it's in my self-interest."
What and why people believe is only grounded in logic within scientific culture. In traditional culture, people often have not thought about why they hold beliefs. They believe what they are taught. This is a basic issue with the scientific revolution, which remains very partial.

False religious beliefs such as the virgin birth, miracles, the existence of heaven and hell, even the existence of Jesus, Moses, Abraham and God, do not stand up to any evidentiary scrutiny. Their apologists start to duck and weave as soon as any scientific logic is applied. They hold these beliefs as part of a fallacious acceptance of the teachings of cultural authority, not because of reason.

The other big factor is hypocrisy, where people say they believe something but actually don't. Hypocrisy is remarkably widespread. When people secretly hold beliefs that would cause arguments or ridicule if expressed, they conceal them with evasion and rationalization. Politeness means that people can avoid being pressed on their inconsistency and irrationality.

You are right that no one ever admits to believing something despite knowing it to be untrue (well hardly ever). But psychologically and politically, people display immense skill and cunning to avoid getting to this simple end game where a belief is shown to be illegitimate. Hope and ingenuity spring eternal when it comes to clinging to pleasant fictions.

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 10:39 am
by LevV
Continuing this theme of knowing or not knowing what one believes to be untrue. What are we to make of the spin doctors, advertisers etc. who make a career of manipulating language and ideas to sell a product or politician. I wonder what it might be doing to my conscious and unconscious mind as I listen to endless hours of people, not searching for truth, but trying to persuade me that black is white.

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:01 pm
by DWill
Robert Tulip wrote: What and why people believe is only grounded in logic within scientific culture. In traditional culture, people often have not thought about why they hold beliefs. They believe what they are taught. This is a basic issue with the scientific revolution, which remains very partial.

False religious beliefs such as the virgin birth, miracles, the existence of heaven and hell, even the existence of Jesus, Moses, Abraham and God, do not stand up to any evidentiary scrutiny. Their apologists start to duck and weave as soon as any scientific logic is applied. They hold these beliefs as part of a fallacious acceptance of the teachings of cultural authority, not because of reason.
This is giving far too much credit to people based merely on their belonging to a 'scientific culture,' as if that would give them immunity from the influence of their intuitions. Even if you eliminate Christian, Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist, etc. beliefs in the supernatural, you're still left with many possibilities for motivated thinking. On a scale of potential harm, it's not clear that belief in the virgin birth or Buddhist reincarnation have an especially harmful result.

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:24 pm
by geo
DWill wrote:
Thanks for opening this thread. Of course, Haidt has thrown out the reason-emotion dichotomy, and the science appears robust enough to allow him to do this. There is almost nothing that we perceive that doesn't produce an affective nudge in our brains--or an affective boost in many cases. So he probably would want to qualify your statement about the reasoned base of morality. He chose the elephant to represent our unconscious processes not only because its size was right for the relative size of the unconscious vs. the evolutionarily later conscious thought, but because an elephant is smarter than some other animal we might ride, like a horse. Haidt stresses the power and intelligence of the automatic processes. Therefore I'm not sure he would object to anyone saying that his moral position is "based on reason," since we can see reason, of a sort, in something like our our intuitive reaction to stealing. Sometimes our moral reasoning, what he calls "strategic reasoning," is a gloss on our intuitions that actually holds up. It's just the priority of intuition that he insists on. He's more concerned with the nature of the process. Intuitions come first.

Looking at the incest scenario again, he wasn't trying to prove that many of the condemners of Mark and Julia had no good basis for disallowing incest, just that their particular rational arguments concerning what the brother and sister did were flimsy due to the provisos in the story. But these subjects felt they had to insist on a logical, consequential reason for strategic purposes. We usually don't like to admit that we can't put our finger on why we don't like something.
I'm vicariously enjoying this book discussion.

It's my sense that our "reasoned base of morality" is no more than post hoc rationalization of the way we already are. We have an instinctive disdain towards killing or at least towards killing those in our in-group. But because we sometimes need to kill (during war, for example), we can rationalize that someone is less than human or demonize them in some other way to make it okay to kill them. I would imagine we have an instinctive disdain towards incest as well, although there are probably instances of state-sanctioned incest such as in cases of keeping the royal line pure. I would suspect that all of these "instinctive" feelings conferred a survival advantage at some point in our past. And because we are storytellers, we come up with "just-so" stories to explain it. Many people believe our goodness stems from God or our religious beliefs, but at most religion reinforces the way we already are. Our mutual beliefs or shared stories also provide group cohesion.

Bruce Hood, a British psychologist, coined the term "supersense" to describe this instinctive underlay that helps us make sense of the world while also giving us a propensity towards supernatural explanations. Our "supersense" explains why, for example, why we might be hesitant to wear a sweater that belonged to a mass murderer (even if we know the sweater was never worn during an actual murder). We might explain this natural aversion as we don't want to touch something that was so closely associated with "evil." But perhaps it's basically an aversion to touching something that may be contaminated. Such an aversion may have conferred a survival advantage in the past by keeping persnickety people away from germs or other contaminants like Bubonic plague and small pox.

This article explains how "supersense" is akin to biological essentialism or as Dawkins likes to call it, "the dead hand of Plato."

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/bruce-hoo ... 16869.html

Re: Some thoughts on reason and morality

Posted: Thu Jul 12, 2012 8:59 pm
by DWill
Moral reasoning as a type of story-telling is something I didn't think of. But this might parallel the myths that we created by taking measure of the way our world is (or the way we want it to be), and forming a story that gave with great authority the original reason for the world we found ourselves in.