Impelled by James Joyner’s post at Outside the Beltway, “Why Moral Persuasion Is So Hard”, I took the same test he did at YourMorals.org. Here are my results on the “Moral Foundations” test:
As you can see in some areas I’m more aligned with liberals, in others more aligned with conservatives, in others somewhere between the two, and in yet others aligned with neither.
I took quite a number of the tests and that was more the rule for me than the exception. I didn’t align extremely closely with anybody. I’m eccentric; I’m used to it.
I want to make three points a bit more pointedly than James did. First, in my opinion most people are extremely immature in their moral judgments and there’s a good reason for it. They have the moral judgments of 7 year olds because most have received no systematic formal moral education other than whatever they received at their mothers’ knees. They’re more concerned about “niceness” or doing what’s expected of them than about whether things are right or wrong.
Second, I believe we are making a transition from a society motivated by internalized guilt (conscience) to one motivated by externalized shame (the opinions of others). I do not believe that development is compatible with liberal democracy, the sort of citizen-based society we’ve had for most of our history. It requires a lot more policing at all levels and a much more intrusive state. I don’t like it but I see nothing that can be done about it.
Finally, the variety and degree of moral disagreements are increasing in this country. What else would you expect? There is no global code of morality. To assume one is a fundamental error. With 15% of the country immigrants and a substantial percentage reared by immigrants who in some cases have wildly different moral views than the old WASP code fundamental moral disagreement is baked in. I don’t see much we can do about that, either.
What else can you expect when people are ashamed to say that they believe in a personal God?
This was in the air when I was a child and I suspect before that.
James Joyner’s post is like using a crayon and drawing paper to do calculus. Except, you could do calculus with a crayon and drawing paper. I glanced at the “moral” categories, and the source of his confusion is immediately understandable.
Morals are the output of a philosophical system not choices at a buffet. Morality requires a metaphysical and epistemological basis and logic framework, and sans these, there can be no morality, period.
Applying labels to concepts and agreeing or disagreeing with their application to actions is not morality. In some sense, morality is a just a measurement system, and moral judgements are simply measurements.
(Does anybody understand the concept of a ‘concept’, anymore?)
Human rights, fairness, and social justice are meaningless word salad. As I have written previously, an atheist with a Christian moral system is sad and pathetic. This can apply to Christians.
Often, I use the Socratic method to illuminate the inconsistencies of being racist and Christian. It is quite simply. Ask the person if they are really a Christian. Ask if they really believe what Jesus said or if it is just a load of crap. Ask if we are God’s children. Does that include black people. Does God want you to call one of his children derogatory names or mistreat His children.
(Sometimes, you can see the wheels begin turning, but other times, that is the last time you talk to that person.)
Religion is not an “opiate for the masses”. It provides the metaphysical and epistemological basis for a moral system, and theology provides a logic framework. Unfortunately, theology is not necessarily a rigorous logic framework.
Eliminating religion does not obviate the need for a metaphysical and epistemological basis. Until Darwin, human were unchanging and eternal, and therefore, human rights and justice could form this basis.
Because humans are simply animals, biological evolution rendered the concept of human rights nonsensical. At what point does an animal become human, and do human rights extend to all humanoids, to all animals. If not, why?
Because the universe is dynamic, an expanding universe rendered universal concepts nonsensical. It produces the same quandary as human evolution. Were these concepts universal prior to the universe existing? If not, how did they become universal?
One of the Popes was once asked what would happen if there were aliens, and his response was that they would be God’s creation.
As a former atheist, I created my moral system. It is not difficult, but without a predefined metaphysical and epistemological basis, one must be especially rigorous. For the logic framework, I used modern predicate logic. You must become the god of your system, but it is not as simple as it sounds.
I agree with that but I would add two observations. The first is that eliminating religion makes it quite difficult and the second is that most people won’t and don’t even bother. They just do what seems right to them without any real basis for their beliefs.
The difficulty is the necessary rigorousness. You would likely create something similar to your existing system. Aristotle was a pagan, if not atheist. Much of St. Augustine writings can be adapted to a secular framework. I think your problem would be with your becoming the god (metaphysical basis) of your system.
I think that the reason most people do not bother is because they cannot. It requires an understanding of the underlying concepts, but I think that most people have no knowledge of concepts.
When you write about a “just war”, you are referring a body of concepts bound together with logic. It is more than St. Augustine’s Just-War Theory. This in turn impacts your writing about the Westphalian System and disagreements with R2P.
(I have a problem when my actions are not aligned with my values, and I suspect you do, as well. The Jesuits would be proud of you.)
“They have the moral judgments of 7 year olds because most have received no systematic formal moral education other than whatever they received at their mothers’ knees.”
I am skeptical that those who have had training or education in moral principles are better behaved that those who have not. There is no shortage of bad behavior among the clergy. Look at how the prosperity gospel has become so prevalent. Look at how Christians embrace politicians and scammers/grifters. I am up to abut 200 employees now, but I still know most of them pretty well. With 2 or 3 exceptions I would never be able to guess who is a true Christian based upon their behaviors.
I actually think a lot of our moral behavior is pretty well set in childhood and is put their by our families. It is pretty hard to undo that. It can be done but it takes work. I also think it tends to be more effective. I think modeling is much more effective than reading about it. The other source that I think you forget is literature. I think another major source of our moral learning is in the classroom with our english teachers and history teachers. Reading the classics and other good literature probably does a better job of imparting morals than Sunday school. ( I say that as former Sunday school teacher.)
Steve
Language is used to convey concepts. but language is not a substitute for concepts. Similarly, data is used to validate science, but data is not a substitute for science. Furthermore, morality is not a psychological phenomenon, and studying animal behavior, human or otherwise, is not how one deduces a moral system.
Morality is a system (or framework.). It is not a collection of ideas, actions, or feelings. This system is how ideas, actions, and feelings are deemed right or wrong.
(I am fully versed in the theological arguments, but I have a problem with Christians dropping one of the Ten Commandments.)
An example of word salad:
This is meaningless. It includes the following short list of undefined concepts:
tribal creatures
shifting coalitions
patriotism
self-sacrifice
“one for all, and all for one.â€
It sounds like something from a late night sophomore dorm room discussion.
That wouldn’t be my claim which is more about how you reach your judgments rather than what you end up doing. And I think that the “prosperity gospel” is garbage. Also heretical but that’s another subject.
I have actually read Aristotle, Augustine, and Thomas Aquinas, the primary sources for those concepts., Augustine and Aquinas in Latin. There are things you get from reading Aquinas in Latin you don’t get in translation. He was a pretty funny guy and it comes through in the Latin.
So the polls are showing that Republicans, a high percentage and especially men, are not going to take the virus. Wonder who part of the moral axis that fits?
Steve
I think it illustrates that trust in government is at an all-time low, particularly among Republicans. Trump contributed to that but so did a lot of other people in government who weren’t particularly Trump supporters, e.g. Anthony Fauci, various governors including Illinois’s.
Joe Biden could improve that. The question is will he?
@TastyBits:
Haidt and his collaborators disagree. They argue that metaphysics just provides a way to rationalize moral judgments that are actually products of evolutionary and cultural attitudes. That is, that our moral judgments are visceral and we than construct post hoc “reasons” for them.
That’s a good part of what I meant by “the moral judgment of a 7 year old”. I think that’s an artifact.
@Dave:
I would like to think our moral judgment would improve with more formal training but increasingly think most people would just have better language for justifying their instincts and prejudices.
“I would like to think our moral judgment would improve with more formal training but increasingly think most people would just have better language for justifying their instincts and prejudices.”
Totally agree. What people see modeled around them or what they learn in the early years of school are much more important.
Dave- Republicans have said for a long time that they dont trust government. They dont trust the media except for their own. They dont trust science. They did trust Trump. I think that if Fauci had never been born we would see the same distrust. Fauci is just an excuse you have made for them.
It is pretty weird that they trust Trump, they want to vigorously support the idea that Trump single handedly was responsible for the vaccines, but they still dont want the vaccine. Heck, they could go get the Pfizer vaccine that had very little to do with any government. Nope, the sins lack of trust in government, this is giving in to conspiracy theory and making decisions based solely upon emotions and tribal affiliation.
Steve
Socrates, Plato, Aristotle, Aquinas, Descartes, Locke, (mostly) Hume, and Kant all thought so. That’s good enough for me.
@James Joyner
I am not sure where to begin, but I suspect Haidt has no idea of what metaphysics is. Metaphysics is foundational. It is the framework upon which any system is built.
At best, he is confusing religion with morality.
@TastyBits:
He has his BA in philosophy from Yale; one suspects the topic came up. But, ultimately, he’s a psychologist by training and simply thinks “reason is the press secretary of the emotions” and “when it comes to moral judgments, we think we’re scientists discovering the truth. But actually we’re lawyers arguing for positions we arrived at by other means.” That’s by no means a universally-accepted position but it’s one with long tradition even in philosophy; Hume would likely agree.
Hume thought that morals followed the passions but that when reason dictated, the passions complied. It sounds like what he’s proposing is a misreading of Hume.
@James Joyner
It has been quite a while since I studied. If I recall correctly, Hume was an atheist, and he pre-dates Darwin and the expanding universe. Also, he relies upon mathematics.
Prior to evolution and the expanding universe man was an eternal concept. Meaning, there was no need to establish a metaphysical basis. To the pre-Darwin Philosophers man was apart from animals, and since the universe and humans had always existed, there was no need to define the concept.
DesCartes’ metaphysical basis, “I think. Therefore I am.”, presupposes a thinking entity, and prior to evolution, this entity would be man. This requires that this thinking entity be corporeal, but this was easily resolved. (For an atheist, it takes a little more work, but it is not hard.)
Ayn Rand reformulated it to be “I am. Therefore, I think.” This presupposes thought, but the formulation is its own metaphysical basis. The entity would need to be established, and for an atheist, this would be through the senses. This entity would not need to be corporeal, and in fact, there is no way to establish anything physical.
An expanding universe is problematic because there was a beginning, and prior to that beginning, nothing can be known. The physics that exists today did not exist during the first few nanoseconds of existence.
With the advent of non-euclidean geometry, mathematics as a metaphysical basis becomes problematic. Assuming that three angles of a triangle equal 180 degrees is not always valid.
Hegel begins to provide the method to formulate a solution, and I believe that he was the “spiritual” father of General Relativity. Discarding a metaphysical and epistemological basis brings you to Sartre and Camus (somewhat).
I have not studied Haidt, nor do I intend to. In any case, Plato has been studied for almost 2,500 years, and he will still be studied for the next 2,500 years. In five years, Haidt will be in the bargain bin of the bookstore.
I do not mean to be dismissive, but I have probably forgotten more than he knows. Then, there is the issue of translations.
@James Joyner
I am not the sharpest pencil in the box, and often, it takes a while for me to figure out things.
Haidt is conflating morals with values. Loyalty is a value, but not a moral value. Loyalty may be a desirable quality, but it has nothing to do with morality. It is neither good nor evil.
Morality is neither conservative nor liberal.
Imagination, and particularly its subset, empathy, drives all of our shared morality and some of our shared immoral behavior too. “Do unto others as you would have them do unto you” requires that you first imagine yourself and the other in a situation. More expansive and inclusive imagining prevents most spurious associations and inappropriate or over reactions. The benefits of cooperation are easy to imagine. Altruism, sharing and caring for infants come from reacting to the imagined, empathized, pain or pleasure of others. It is easier to empathize with others who are more similar to your self image: which may lead to nepotism. This also leads to avoiding incest because too much empathy interferes with getting to and engaging in sexual activity. Reciprocity, payback, karma, coveting all derive from imagining yourself in someone else’s place. Moral codes end up being quick rules to guide you when you do not have time or sufficient knowledge of a situation for expansive imagining.