Moral Foundations Theory
I have been reading and pondering Johnathan Haidt's Moral Foundations Theory for the past couple of days. The basic idea is this - there are five foundations upon which all cultures base their moral judgments:
"1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulate the theory in 2010 based on new data, we are likely to include several forms of fairness, and to emphasize proportionality, which is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions)."
-from Haidt's website
Here is Haidt's TED talk. Here is a paper I found very interesting, but which is fairly long. The basic idea of the paper is that liberals use the first two foundations a lot and the last three very little, whereas conservatives use all 5. These five are found across cultures and are evolutionarily advantageous for group survival reasons. Extreme liberals are less able to explain the decisions made by conservatives than extreme conservatives are of liberals because conservatives have a wider range of justifications.
Commentary:
I don't know if I buy that liberals don't use Ingroup, Authority and Purity. I think that may be true for liberal intellectuals, but hoi polloi are certainly not exempt. Being an economist exposes me to fighting ingroup based fallacies left and right (political pun). Liberals are often tempted to spout anti-trade rhetoric which is just dressed up xenophobia. They don't include foreigners in their fancy welfare systems, as I have discussed before for ingroup/outgroup reasons. The liberal obsession with unions is a phenomenon partially explained by ingroup reasoning - It is acceptable to fight for wage increases and benefits for union workers at the expense of non-union workers because non-unionized workers are an outgroup. Liberals defer to authority just as much, it just tends to be scientific and governmental authority rather than military and religious authority. Liberals tend to have unending faith for the powers of government bureaucrats to make decisions in other peoples lives with little evidence other than a faith in their authority. They discourage people questioning scientific consensus (against the very nature of the scientific method) based on the authority of scientists (although this faith is more reasonably placed, since at least the scientists have some expertise). Purity concerns are likewise strong among liberals, although they manifest in different ways. Food (war on obesity), cigarettes (although bizarrely not marijuana) and environmentalism are perhaps the best examples of liberal purity based reasoning. I think Haidt's sample was probably biased by smart, logical liberal academics rather than the rank and file democrats who make up the bulk of those who consider themselves liberal.
Perhaps the best example of Haidt's liberals (besides extreme socialist leftists) are libertarians. Libertarians tend to have a high percentage of anarchists among us, although we could be accused of authority based reasoning in regards to popular libertarian thinkers like Rothbard and Hayek. Ingroup reasoning is very rare among libertarians, who tend to be extreme rule egalitarians (although highly anti-outcome egalitarian) as well as utilitarians. Libertarians are often in favor of free immigration, free trade and free association, which are all anti-xenophobic stances. Perhaps a libertarian purity argument is purity of principal. People shouldn't coerce one another. Libertarianism sanctifies voluntary trade and private property.
This moral system attempts to categorize moral impulses and justifications without addressing whether any particular action is good or not, or how one may go about refining one's moral behavior. It is perhaps closest to utilitarianism which consists of reasoning #1 writ large. Unlike Kantian reasoning, it does not attempt to categorize any actions whatsoever, only motives. Unlike virtue ethics, it gives the practitioner no advice on how to fulfill their moral impulses, only acting as a guide about what to shoot for. Consequentialism is kind of a special case. It's almost a way of thinking about moral philosophy. I think that virtue ethics and utilitarianism account for consequentialism by prudence and long time horizons respectively. Kantian theory is anti-consequentialist to the core. Moral Foundations Theory is almost agnostic about it. I suppose that very few people are die hard consequentialists, so perhaps it's not useful for an anthropological theory to account for it. Who knows? Moral philosophy is not meant to be easy.
"1) Harm/care, related to our long evolution as mammals with attachment systems and an ability to feel (and dislike) the pain of others. This foundation underlies virtues of kindness, gentleness, and nurturance.
2) Fairness/reciprocity, related to the evolutionary process of reciprocal altruism. This foundation generates ideas of justice, rights, and autonomy. [Note: In our original conception, Fairness included concerns about equality, which are more strongly endorsed by political liberals. However, as we reformulate the theory in 2010 based on new data, we are likely to include several forms of fairness, and to emphasize proportionality, which is more strongly endorsed by conservatives]
3) Ingroup/loyalty, related to our long history as tribal creatures able to form shifting coalitions. This foundation underlies virtues of patriotism and self-sacrifice for the group. It is active anytime people feel that it's "one for all, and all for one."
4) Authority/respect, shaped by our long primate history of hierarchical social interactions. This foundation underlies virtues of leadership and followership, including deference to legitimate authority and respect for traditions.
5) Purity/sanctity, shaped by the psychology of disgust and contamination. This foundation underlies religious notions of striving to live in an elevated, less carnal, more noble way. It underlies the widespread idea that the body is a temple which can be desecrated by immoral activities and contaminants (an idea not unique to religious traditions)."
-from Haidt's website
Here is Haidt's TED talk. Here is a paper I found very interesting, but which is fairly long. The basic idea of the paper is that liberals use the first two foundations a lot and the last three very little, whereas conservatives use all 5. These five are found across cultures and are evolutionarily advantageous for group survival reasons. Extreme liberals are less able to explain the decisions made by conservatives than extreme conservatives are of liberals because conservatives have a wider range of justifications.
Commentary:
I don't know if I buy that liberals don't use Ingroup, Authority and Purity. I think that may be true for liberal intellectuals, but hoi polloi are certainly not exempt. Being an economist exposes me to fighting ingroup based fallacies left and right (political pun). Liberals are often tempted to spout anti-trade rhetoric which is just dressed up xenophobia. They don't include foreigners in their fancy welfare systems, as I have discussed before for ingroup/outgroup reasons. The liberal obsession with unions is a phenomenon partially explained by ingroup reasoning - It is acceptable to fight for wage increases and benefits for union workers at the expense of non-union workers because non-unionized workers are an outgroup. Liberals defer to authority just as much, it just tends to be scientific and governmental authority rather than military and religious authority. Liberals tend to have unending faith for the powers of government bureaucrats to make decisions in other peoples lives with little evidence other than a faith in their authority. They discourage people questioning scientific consensus (against the very nature of the scientific method) based on the authority of scientists (although this faith is more reasonably placed, since at least the scientists have some expertise). Purity concerns are likewise strong among liberals, although they manifest in different ways. Food (war on obesity), cigarettes (although bizarrely not marijuana) and environmentalism are perhaps the best examples of liberal purity based reasoning. I think Haidt's sample was probably biased by smart, logical liberal academics rather than the rank and file democrats who make up the bulk of those who consider themselves liberal.
Perhaps the best example of Haidt's liberals (besides extreme socialist leftists) are libertarians. Libertarians tend to have a high percentage of anarchists among us, although we could be accused of authority based reasoning in regards to popular libertarian thinkers like Rothbard and Hayek. Ingroup reasoning is very rare among libertarians, who tend to be extreme rule egalitarians (although highly anti-outcome egalitarian) as well as utilitarians. Libertarians are often in favor of free immigration, free trade and free association, which are all anti-xenophobic stances. Perhaps a libertarian purity argument is purity of principal. People shouldn't coerce one another. Libertarianism sanctifies voluntary trade and private property.
This moral system attempts to categorize moral impulses and justifications without addressing whether any particular action is good or not, or how one may go about refining one's moral behavior. It is perhaps closest to utilitarianism which consists of reasoning #1 writ large. Unlike Kantian reasoning, it does not attempt to categorize any actions whatsoever, only motives. Unlike virtue ethics, it gives the practitioner no advice on how to fulfill their moral impulses, only acting as a guide about what to shoot for. Consequentialism is kind of a special case. It's almost a way of thinking about moral philosophy. I think that virtue ethics and utilitarianism account for consequentialism by prudence and long time horizons respectively. Kantian theory is anti-consequentialist to the core. Moral Foundations Theory is almost agnostic about it. I suppose that very few people are die hard consequentialists, so perhaps it's not useful for an anthropological theory to account for it. Who knows? Moral philosophy is not meant to be easy.