Reading on morality research had a paradoxical effect on me. Synthesis, understanding, sympathy has replaced polarization, frustration and disdain. All that useless polemicizing, ad hominem et al is now mostly out. So far it has had a very serene effect and made me immensely calmer. No wonder, I am still in awe of Haiti's and others morality research.
Another fascinating talk on Edge by Jonathan Haidt:
"1. I was recently at a conference on moral development, and a prominent Kohlbergian moral psychologist stood up and said, "Moral psychology is dying." And I thought, well, maybe in your neighborhood property values are plummeting, but in the rest of the city, we are going through a renaissance. We are in a golden age.
My own neighborhood is the social psychology neighborhood, and it's gotten really, really fun, because all these really great ethnic groups are moving in next door. Within a few blocks, I can find cognitive neuroscientists and primatologists, developmental psychologists, experimental philosophers and economists. We are in a golden age. We are living through the new synthesis in ethics that E.O. Wilson called for in 1975. We are living through an age of consilience.
2.Moral psychology is a descriptive enterprise, not a normative one. We have WEIRD chemistry. The chemistry produced by Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies is our chemistry, and it's a very good chemistry. And we have every reason to believe it's correct. And if a Ayurvedic practitioner from India were to come to a chemistry conference and say, "Good sirs and madams, your chemistry has ignored our Indian, you know, our 5,000-year-old chemistry," the chemists might laugh at them, if they were not particularly polite, and say, "Yeah, that's right. You know, we really don't care about your chemistry."
But suppose that same guy were to come to this conference and say, "You know, your moral psychology has ignored my morality, my moral psychology." Could we say the same thing? Could we just blow him off and say, "Yeah, we really don't care"? I don't think that we could do that. And what if the critique was made by an American Evangelical Christian, or by an American conservative? Could we simply say, "We just don't care about your morality"? I don't think that we could.
3.Morality is like The Matrix, from the movie "The Matrix." Morality is a consensual hallucination, and when you read the WEIRD people article, it's like taking the red pill. You see, oh my God, I am in one particular matrix. But there are lots and lots of other matrices out there.
We happen to live in a matrix that places extraordinary value on reason and logic. So, the question arises, is our faith justified? Maybe ours is right and the others are wrong. What if reasoning really is the royal road to truth? If so, then maybe the situation is like chemistry after all. Maybe WEIRD morality, with this emphasis on individual rights and welfare, maybe it's right, because we are the better reasoners. We had The Enlightenment. We are the heirs of The Enlightenment. Everyone else is sitting in darkness, giving credence to religion, superstition and tradition. So maybe our matrix is the right one.
4.Why is reasoning so biased and motivated whenever self-interest or self-presentation are at stake? Wouldn't it be adaptive to know the truth in social situations, before you then try to manipulate?
The answer, according to Mercier and Sperber, is that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That's why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, and it's here on your handout, "The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.
5. Hume was a pluralist, because he was to some degree a virtue ethicist. Virtue ethics is the main alternative to deontology and utilitarianism in philosophy. Virtues are social skills. Virtues are character traits that a person needs in order to live a good, praiseworthy, or admirable life. The virtues of a rural farming culture are not the same as the virtues of an urban commercial or trading culture, nor should they be. So virtues are messy. Virtue theories are messy.
If you embrace virtue theory, you say goodbye to the dream of finding one principle, one foundation, on which you can rest all of morality. You become a pluralist, as I've listed down there. And you also become a non-parsimonist. That is, of course parsimony's always valuable in sciences, but my experience is that we've sort of elevated Occam's Razor into Occam's Chainsaw. Which is, if you can possibly cut it away and still have it stand, do it. And I think, in especially moral psychology, we've grossly disfigured our field by trying to get everything down to one if we possibly can. So I think, if you embrace virtue ethics, at least you put less of a value on parsimony than moral psychologists normally do.
But what you get in return for this messiness is, you get the payoff for being a naturalist. That is, you get a moral theory that fits with what we know about human nature elsewhere. So, I often use the metaphor that the mind is like a rider on an elephant. The rider is conscious, controlled processes, such as reasoning. The elephant is the other 99 percent of what goes on in our minds, things that are unconscious and automatic.
Virtue theories are about training the elephant. Virtue theories are about cultivating habits, not just of behavior, but of perception. So, to develop the virtue of kindness, for example, is to have a keen sensitivity to the needs of other people, to feel compassion when warranted, and then to offer the right kind of help with a full heart.
Another fascinating talk on Edge by Jonathan Haidt:
"1. I was recently at a conference on moral development, and a prominent Kohlbergian moral psychologist stood up and said, "Moral psychology is dying." And I thought, well, maybe in your neighborhood property values are plummeting, but in the rest of the city, we are going through a renaissance. We are in a golden age.
My own neighborhood is the social psychology neighborhood, and it's gotten really, really fun, because all these really great ethnic groups are moving in next door. Within a few blocks, I can find cognitive neuroscientists and primatologists, developmental psychologists, experimental philosophers and economists. We are in a golden age. We are living through the new synthesis in ethics that E.O. Wilson called for in 1975. We are living through an age of consilience.
2.Moral psychology is a descriptive enterprise, not a normative one. We have WEIRD chemistry. The chemistry produced by Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, Democratic societies is our chemistry, and it's a very good chemistry. And we have every reason to believe it's correct. And if a Ayurvedic practitioner from India were to come to a chemistry conference and say, "Good sirs and madams, your chemistry has ignored our Indian, you know, our 5,000-year-old chemistry," the chemists might laugh at them, if they were not particularly polite, and say, "Yeah, that's right. You know, we really don't care about your chemistry."
But suppose that same guy were to come to this conference and say, "You know, your moral psychology has ignored my morality, my moral psychology." Could we say the same thing? Could we just blow him off and say, "Yeah, we really don't care"? I don't think that we could do that. And what if the critique was made by an American Evangelical Christian, or by an American conservative? Could we simply say, "We just don't care about your morality"? I don't think that we could.
3.Morality is like The Matrix, from the movie "The Matrix." Morality is a consensual hallucination, and when you read the WEIRD people article, it's like taking the red pill. You see, oh my God, I am in one particular matrix. But there are lots and lots of other matrices out there.
We happen to live in a matrix that places extraordinary value on reason and logic. So, the question arises, is our faith justified? Maybe ours is right and the others are wrong. What if reasoning really is the royal road to truth? If so, then maybe the situation is like chemistry after all. Maybe WEIRD morality, with this emphasis on individual rights and welfare, maybe it's right, because we are the better reasoners. We had The Enlightenment. We are the heirs of The Enlightenment. Everyone else is sitting in darkness, giving credence to religion, superstition and tradition. So maybe our matrix is the right one.
4.Why is reasoning so biased and motivated whenever self-interest or self-presentation are at stake? Wouldn't it be adaptive to know the truth in social situations, before you then try to manipulate?
The answer, according to Mercier and Sperber, is that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That's why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, and it's here on your handout, "The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.
5. Hume was a pluralist, because he was to some degree a virtue ethicist. Virtue ethics is the main alternative to deontology and utilitarianism in philosophy. Virtues are social skills. Virtues are character traits that a person needs in order to live a good, praiseworthy, or admirable life. The virtues of a rural farming culture are not the same as the virtues of an urban commercial or trading culture, nor should they be. So virtues are messy. Virtue theories are messy.
If you embrace virtue theory, you say goodbye to the dream of finding one principle, one foundation, on which you can rest all of morality. You become a pluralist, as I've listed down there. And you also become a non-parsimonist. That is, of course parsimony's always valuable in sciences, but my experience is that we've sort of elevated Occam's Razor into Occam's Chainsaw. Which is, if you can possibly cut it away and still have it stand, do it. And I think, in especially moral psychology, we've grossly disfigured our field by trying to get everything down to one if we possibly can. So I think, if you embrace virtue ethics, at least you put less of a value on parsimony than moral psychologists normally do.
But what you get in return for this messiness is, you get the payoff for being a naturalist. That is, you get a moral theory that fits with what we know about human nature elsewhere. So, I often use the metaphor that the mind is like a rider on an elephant. The rider is conscious, controlled processes, such as reasoning. The elephant is the other 99 percent of what goes on in our minds, things that are unconscious and automatic.
Virtue theories are about training the elephant. Virtue theories are about cultivating habits, not just of behavior, but of perception. So, to develop the virtue of kindness, for example, is to have a keen sensitivity to the needs of other people, to feel compassion when warranted, and then to offer the right kind of help with a full heart.
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