There is an arresting image given by Haidt for our sense of morality he invokes a situation that as you
try to settle on a sense of morality are like a rational rider atop an elephant. Yes, you arE ratioanal you
know you may ride this elephant one way of the other, but no mater what you do it is the elephant who
is intuitivly calling the shots. The important moves are being made by the elephant - let us call this elephant 'socio economic culture.'
In fact, the main job of the rider of this elephant, is to come up with post-hoc justifications for where the elephant winds up. We rationalise what our gut tells us. This is true no matter how intelligent we are. Haidt shows that people with high IQs are no better than anyone else at understanding the other side in a moral dispute. What they are better at is coming up with what he calls "side-arguments" for their own instinctive position.
Where do these moral instincts come from? Haidt is an evolutionary psychologist, so the account he gives is essentially Darwinian. Morality is not something we learn from our parents or at school, and it's certainly not something we work out for ourselves. We inherit it. It comes to us from our ancestors, ie from the people whose instinctive behaviour gave them a better chance to survive and reproduce. These were the people who belonged to groups in which individuals looked out for each other, rewarded co-operation and punished shirkers and outsiders. That's why our moral instincts are what Haidt calls "groupish". We approve of what is good for the group – our group.
There is, as Haidt admits, violent disagreement about this thesis among evolutionists. What they can't agree on is whether the evolution of moral behaviour happened at the level of the group or the individual. At lot hangs on the answer, including whether altruism is at root selfish (it gives individuals and their genes the best chance of surviving) or not (it involves genuine individual sacrifices for others). But not a lot hangs on it for Haidt's argument, since his concern is simply to establish that this is the way we have turned out, not how we got here. He could add that the animosity between the two sides in this academic dispute – some of the protagonists really seem to have contempt for each other – shows how even the most intelligent riders can be under the control of their elephants.
Haidt wants us to understand that our moral instincts are inherently judgmental: being moral makes us moralistic. Much of the book is devoted to the experimental evidence that shows how often moral judgment is a case of us v them rather than right v wrong. In Haidt's terms, morality "binds and blinds". It binds us to the group and blinds us to the point of view of outsiders. This has profound implications for how we might think about some of our most deeply held beliefs. For instance, it means that what we believe is less important than with whom we share those beliefs. Haidt thinks this is particularly true of religion and it is why he thinks the arguments of the current crop of militant atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens et al) are misguided. They spend their time fretting about the irrationality of religious belief and ignore the fact that religion is about shared values and a sense of solidarity. Religion, Haidt says, is a "team sport". In one of the many striking images in this book, he suggests that "trying to understand the persistence and passion of religion by studying beliefs about God is like trying to understand the persistence and passion of football by studying the movement of the ball."
try to settle on a sense of morality are like a rational rider atop an elephant. Yes, you arE ratioanal you
know you may ride this elephant one way of the other, but no mater what you do it is the elephant who
is intuitivly calling the shots. The important moves are being made by the elephant - let us call this elephant 'socio economic culture.'
In fact, the main job of the rider of this elephant, is to come up with post-hoc justifications for where the elephant winds up. We rationalise what our gut tells us. This is true no matter how intelligent we are. Haidt shows that people with high IQs are no better than anyone else at understanding the other side in a moral dispute. What they are better at is coming up with what he calls "side-arguments" for their own instinctive position.
Where do these moral instincts come from? Haidt is an evolutionary psychologist, so the account he gives is essentially Darwinian. Morality is not something we learn from our parents or at school, and it's certainly not something we work out for ourselves. We inherit it. It comes to us from our ancestors, ie from the people whose instinctive behaviour gave them a better chance to survive and reproduce. These were the people who belonged to groups in which individuals looked out for each other, rewarded co-operation and punished shirkers and outsiders. That's why our moral instincts are what Haidt calls "groupish". We approve of what is good for the group – our group.
There is, as Haidt admits, violent disagreement about this thesis among evolutionists. What they can't agree on is whether the evolution of moral behaviour happened at the level of the group or the individual. At lot hangs on the answer, including whether altruism is at root selfish (it gives individuals and their genes the best chance of surviving) or not (it involves genuine individual sacrifices for others). But not a lot hangs on it for Haidt's argument, since his concern is simply to establish that this is the way we have turned out, not how we got here. He could add that the animosity between the two sides in this academic dispute – some of the protagonists really seem to have contempt for each other – shows how even the most intelligent riders can be under the control of their elephants.
Haidt wants us to understand that our moral instincts are inherently judgmental: being moral makes us moralistic. Much of the book is devoted to the experimental evidence that shows how often moral judgment is a case of us v them rather than right v wrong. In Haidt's terms, morality "binds and blinds". It binds us to the group and blinds us to the point of view of outsiders. This has profound implications for how we might think about some of our most deeply held beliefs. For instance, it means that what we believe is less important than with whom we share those beliefs. Haidt thinks this is particularly true of religion and it is why he thinks the arguments of the current crop of militant atheists (Dawkins, Hitchens et al) are misguided. They spend their time fretting about the irrationality of religious belief and ignore the fact that religion is about shared values and a sense of solidarity. Religion, Haidt says, is a "team sport". In one of the many striking images in this book, he suggests that "trying to understand the persistence and passion of religion by studying beliefs about God is like trying to understand the persistence and passion of football by studying the movement of the ball."
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