Posted on 09/18/2007 3:56:37 AM PDT by shrinkermd
The first part of this article outlines Jonathan Haidt's theory of evolution and morality. Essentially, there are two types of morality--preverbal and postverbal. An interesting hypothesis and worthwhile in itself.
The second part discusses conservative/liberal differences in morality. While problematical and disputable his take is interesting.
Conservatives placed value on all five moral systems but they assigned less weight than liberals to the moralities protective of individuals.
Dr. Haidt believes that many political disagreements between liberals and conservatives may reflect the different emphasis each places on the five moral categories They found that people who identified themselves as liberals attached great weight to the two moral systems protective of individuals — those of not harming others and of doing as you would be done by. But liberals assigned much less importance to the three moral systems that protect the group, those of loyalty, respect for authority and purity.
(Excerpt) Read more at nytimes.com ...
- once saying that might be his most important book.
The article is interesting and has some useful insights; however, the work described has all the weaknesses of most social ‘science’ research. The researcher starts by creating a taxonomy of five types of moral values (why not 4? why not 6? why these particular 5?). He then uses anecdotal information as ‘data’. Finally, he generalizes his work to make the political points he wanted to. Not very ‘scientific’, and he could have saved himself the trouble and taxpayers the expense of going to India for his field studies. Unfortunately, that’s how things work in the social ‘sciences’.
Where I do agree with him, is the conclusion that modern liberals have exalted a few aspects of the system of morality developed by humans over many thousands of years (individual ‘rights’), and thrown out much of the rest of our moral system that allow societies to function with stability. He may think that ideas of ‘purity’, ‘authority’, and ‘loyalty’ are relics of hunter/gatherer days, but most conservatives think they are a little more fundamental.
You accuse him of having an agenda and imposing it on his data. That is a serious accusation which is not at all supported by the article. You may be the one with bias.
It is Memetics, not Genetics; cultural, not chemical. Cultures (like islamic ones for example) that never developed the golden rule meme fall apart from inside when not exposed to external threat. That is why “peace” in the middle east is a myth. If they killed all of the joos and other infidels (us), the killing would continue muslim upon muslim, until only one tribe was left.
Does this have anything to do with epigenes? From what I understand, they are the ‘vertical’ parts of the double helix, as opposed to the ‘ladder rungs’, and they are changeable (re-writable) as behavior changes.
Pure sophistry. He described his method and told you his categories came from wide cultural research. Did you read it? They didn't come out of the blue.
Yes. I read it. And yes, 'wide cultural research' means "I've read lots of books and I picked my five favorite categories". I've watched a lot of football games. If I spent an afternoon drinking beer with my friends and making a list of "the five attitudes of winning football teams", my list would have similar scientific merit.
But you discount his research as based on anecdotal information. There isn't really any other kind of information about humans.
Precisely. That is why social 'sciences' aren't science. History and philosophy are important disciplines that admit their methods and limitations. Sociology and Social Psychology dress up collections of anecdotes and personal opinion as 'science'.
All history and cultural study is based on experience, even when it is studied under controlled conditions. Statistical methods can apply to test significance.
Taking a survey and then sitting around and calculating means and standard deviations, doesn't make it science. It dresses up anecdotes.
I think his ideas are interesting. It is important to debate ideas. But the whole facade of using pseudo-scientific methods to disguise valued-based discussions is the reason why Sociology and related disciplines are held in such disrepute.
You are just bringing up things that are outside the scope of the article, so you can engage in venting your pet peeves and then express your own completely unsubstantiated opinions. That is sophistry. You do not offer any reason to think that he collected inadequate information or that the pattern he describes come from favoritism. Your critique is worthless, and your assertions groundless. The work may or may not be scientific. I couldn’t tell without seeing the data. However, the method is empirical and scientific. It follows observation, hypothesis, test hypothesis method.
Second, if we were at a narrowly focused academic conference of sociologists where we had just listened to Dr. Haidt's presentations, you would be correct in calling me out of order for singling him out for criticism for using methods which are commonly accepted in the field. However, we are not at such a conference, where discussion is strictly limited to narrow technical critiques of methodology. The work has been reported in popular newspaper, and we are part of a news discussion forum, where it is fair game to discuss the broad implications of this kind of social research work.
Thirdly, what we choose to accept as 'science' has significant implications for the kind of policies society will adopt. If we choose to accept research based on artificial taxonomies, anecdotes and surveys as 'science' in the same sense that we accept controlled, repeatable experiments from well-established scientific disciplines like phsysics, chemistry and biology, then we will allow the Left to monopolize policy debates in fields from global warming, to education, to morality, because their is no shortage of 'scientific' research from universities that is largely based on surveys and anecdotes.
The social sciences have developed into a dead-end echo chamber of liberal thought precisely because anyone who raises questions about whether the fundamental research methodology of creating long lists of classifications and taking lots of surveys, is accused of 'sophistry'.
Do you recall ever seeing anything on "instinctive behavior?"
You are dishonest and give yourself too much credit without accepting responsibiity. Those characteristics are not admirable in any venue.
Hmmmm...then why are liberal causes like National Health Care always focused on crushing the individual, exalting the group, and respecting the authority of the wise and all-knowing Federal Government?
I think they are misusing labels - libertarian-minded people care about individuals, while liberal and conservative people alike want to use the power of the group (government) in differing ways to smack down individuals they don't like.
"In the end there can be only one!"
Notions of disgust and purity are widespread outside Western cultures. “Educated liberals are the only group to say, ‘I find that disgusting but that doesn’t make it wrong,’ ” Dr. Haidt said.
Also check out this bit of logic:
the fact that liberals and conservatives agree on the first two of Dr. Haidt’s principles — do no harm and do unto others as you would have them do unto you — means that those are good candidates to be moral virtues. The fact that liberals and conservatives disagree on the other three principles “suggests to me that they are not general moral virtues but specific ideological commitments or values,” Dr. Jost said.
It is also possible that liberal disagreement results from their one-sided ideological suppression of more nuanced moral vocabularies. Haidt claims societies are conservative by default, and liberalism is the anomaly. He elsewhere writes:
How did it come to pass that in much of Europe, and in some parts of the United States, moral concerns have been restricted to issues related to harm/welfare/care and justice/rights/fairness? We believe that a team of historians and sociologists could easily tell such a story, probably involving references to the growth of free markets, social mobility, science, material wealth, and ethnic and religious diversity. Mobility and diversity make a morality based on shared valuation of traditions and institutions quite difficult (Whose traditions? Which institutions?). These factors help explain the electoral map of the United States in the 2004 presidential election. When viewed at the county level, the great majority of counties that voted for John Kerry are near major waterways, where ports and cities are usually located and where mobility and diversity are greatest. Areas with less mobility and less diversity generally have the more traditional five-foundation morality, and therefore were more likely to vote for George W. Bush – and to tell pollsters that their reason was “moral values.”This dovetails with political theorists' take on the rise of Liberalism: religious disunity and economic pressures erode more complex ethical systems so that business ethics of fairness and self-interest become the primary ethical principles.
The wider vocabulary of traditionalist ethics allows for greater nuance in theory and practice. Though friendship or marriage, for instance, can be understood as matters of harm and care or fairness and reciprocity, the concepts of loyalty and purity provide further layers for ethical exploration and discussion. Authority and obedience are everyday phenomena in the workplace, but find little moral analysis in the academy.
That said, Haidt's analysis of liberalism applies just as much to many libertarian types. In his analysis, Theocons are the better conservatives.
National Health care exalts the sick, uninsured individual. But since it does so at everyone's expense, it actually puts the group in service to that sick person. From a certain point of view, socialism is the most selfish system of all: it demands the entire society provide for the needs of the individual.
As for respecting the government's authority, every non-anarchist shows some respect. Or don't you pay taxes?
It’s a bit counterintuitive that liberals would value individuals higher than the collective.
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