The full title is: The Righteous Mind - Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion

Jonathan Haidt has been studying, for some time, differences between Conservative and Liberal thought. I read an essay from him several years ago touching on some of the points more fully elaborated in the book and quite enjoyed it. The site http://www.yourmorals.org has a test you can take to measure you along his six vectors of morality.

He is a Liberal and the book is written to Liberals to help them understand (and be more tolerant of) Conservative values.

Spoilers follow:






So Major Points:

1) Our moral intuition comes first, then we justify it rationally. That is to say, we have our automatic reaction and then we make up a story about it. If you'd like to see this in action take these two sentences:

Can I believe it?

Must I believe it?

These are the questions we ask ourselves. The first is the question for things we've already decided we want to be true. The second is for questions we don't want to be true. Supposing you're not a fan of Sarah Palin, if you were presented with evidence she were intelligent you would activate the "Must I believe it?" portion of your psyche and your rational brain would happily provide you with evidence why you don't need to believe the new evidence. So now, deliberately turn the question around and ask "Can I believe it?" Slowly at first, but eventually more quickly, your rational brain would come up with at least a couple of reasons why you could believe. And if your brain can't do that on this question, choose one that's a little more simple.

The point here, though, really is that we have a giant elephant running our thought and a small rider on the elephant occasionally steering it. Often, the elephant doesn't let the rider direct it. Frequently, the elephant doesn't even ask the rider to direct it (and the rider is the elephant's servant, so it doesn't bother). When the elephant does ask for direction, it is to reach the elephant's goals.

Usually, the main reason the elephant asks for the rider's aid is when something surprises it. That was unexpected. So the rider has to either come up with an explanation which soothes the elephant and rejects the new information or come up with an explanation which soothes the elephant and incorporates the new information. But, if we aren't surprised by something, we are not going to make changes in our thought and especially not in our morality.

2) Liberals and Conservatives have different morality:

Jonathan has identified six measures of morality. Liberal morality highly values three. Libertarian morality highly values two. Conservative morality roughly equivalently values all six, giving perhaps less weight to one of the ones Liberals value. They are:

Fairness / Cheating - Did you honestly obtain what you have?
Liberty / Oppression - Are people free to make their choices and participate in opportunities?
Care / Harm - Do we help people or hurt them?
Loyalty / Betrayal - Do I stand by my group?
Authority / Subversion - Do I yield to appropriate authority and is that authority doing well?
Sanctity / Degradation - Does this lead more toward divinity or more toward baseness?

Liberals care about Care (a lot), Liberty (a lot) and Fairness (a little)
Libertarians care about Liberty (a lot) and Fairness (a lot)
Conservatives care about them all with Care being the least (but still strongly present).

However, the reality is that, even though Liberals have been actively rejecting some of these lately (for instance with attacks on churches in opposition to sanctity and the very common anti-authority position of Liberals ever since the sixties), the reality is that these do matter to Liberals. Take, for instance, the figure of Martin Luther King Jr. Liberals certainly hold him with some degree of sanctity (in general), even though many don't think of themselves as being very connected to that virtue.

3) We are 90% chimp and 10% bee

We have evolved as groups and we have group adaptations. These adaptations are what make us transcend the other primates. Studies have been done where chimps or orangutans are matched up with toddlers. They are given treats for accomplishing various tasks. The tasks which require cooperation are far less likely to be accomplished by chimps or orangutans than by toddlers (35% of the groups vs 85% of the groups). However, the tasks which are solo tasks are accomplished with equal effectiveness.

Part of what caused our groupish adaptation was how we translated "false positives". If you don't see a snake that is there, that's a false negative. And it has an evolutionary cost. However, false positives don't have much evolutionary cost. If you ran from a tiger that wasn't there, you still live and reproduce. So we are wired to have false positives in order to avoid more false negatives. As we started having these false positives, we also like having causal stories for what "happened" (instead of our own faulty perception). These stories eventually end up being spiritual stories.

Groups that have a common spiritual story outperform groups which do not. This eventually gave rise to religions. Religious societies tended to outproduce societies which are not religious. Part of the reason for this is that we have a "hive mind". When we are all on the same page about something, we can transcend our individuality and accomplish more. We also are far less likely to betray those in our group. We form teams in lots of ways. Sporting teams, Political teams, Religious teams.

4) We are more like Glaucon predicted than like Socrates predicted.

When we are unobserved, we are far less likely to do the morally right thing. We tend to do the selfish thing. The main reason we are moral is that we want to look good to our group (whatever it is). This means that religious motivators for morality are more effective than non-religious ones because there are in many faiths the concept of "constant observance". You are never acting alone and out of sight.

5) Societies which are more moral (and more morally homogenous) tend to be more effective.
This is not to say "better". Fascism, for instance, was tremendously effective at what it was trying to do. Dictators are as well. But positive societies with common and solid moral foundations are also tremendously effective at reaching their objectives.

6) Understanding how we are all acting toward our morals will, hopefully, help us be more tolerant of those we disagree with. And we sorely need to stop bickering and start solving problems.

Thoughts I had on the book:

By and large, I agree with the author and his conclusions. I have always thought that philosophical charity would help our political discourse immensely. Lately I've also been more mindful of what is and is not a rational response and I have far more irrational responses than I would like. I also found the groupish arguments compelling and can see advantages for people with strong group ties.

Problems I had with the book:

These are mostly minor. Some of the studies conducted did not have adequate sample sizes for the conclusions drawn. There were several studies, however, which reached similar conclusions. I would have preferred, though, that they all were representative samples. Another book I'm reading now explains how easy it is to be tricked by small samples.

The author does not know the full definition of deontology. He was not a fan of deontology, and that is because he primarily equates it with Kantian philosophy (which is entirely rational). As his descriptive claim of morality dismisses rationality (and favors David Hume's account of morality as being based in sensibility), he ends up dismissing deontology in its entirety in favor of consequential (and, in particular Group Utilitarian) morality. However, many of the moralities which he praises throughout the book (such as the sanctity ethic in India), are entirely deontological. They are just not Kantian (nor rational). I found this annoying to read, as it hurt the author's credibility. It is also clear that the reason he doesn't understand deontology is that he doesn't believe philosophy has adequate answers for ethics and that is why he started looking for an evolutionary psychologically and archaeologically satisfactory answer on the origins of morality (and, hence, never adequately studied philosophy).

My biggest problem with ending up with a consequential morality is that my current studies in Game Theory are leading me to believe that any consequential ethic can ultimately be reduced to Social or Individual Egoism (which is to say what is good for (my society / my self) is correct). I cannot support egoism as it violates my irrational elephant's morality.

All in all, though, it was a good read with lots of interesting things to think about. It is certainly a message that would benefit our country and its politicians.