Moral Tribes: Emotion, Reason, and the Gap Between Us and Them

by Joshua D. Greene

impoverished

!!!

And liberals, according to Haidt, have exceptionally bad tongues. They can easily “taste” caring, fairness, and liberty, but they can barely taste loyalty, authority, and sanctity.

Wow, this an tremendously uncharitable and unwise reading. Greene is implicitly giving equal moral weight to all criteria without any consideration.

Haidt’s answer, once again, is that liberals have impoverished moral tongues, with half of their moral taste receptors severely weakened.

Where is this sourced? It's been a long time since I read Haidt, but i don't remember concepts akin to "impoverished". Did I ignore that, or did Greene assume it?

According to Haidt, American politics needs the “yang” of conservatism to balance out the “yin” of liberalism.

Misreading, I think. I hope. I agree with the assertion, but not with the subtext Greene is implying.

The government has no right to tell people what they can or can’t do. And so on. I reject this view, for reasons already given: We have no non-question-begging way of knowing who has which rights.

This is why, I think, Haidt underestimates its importance.

This had kinda turned into a grudge-match between Greene and Haidt, hasn't it?

hypothetical questions . . . widely underappreciated: For an excellent discussion of the allergy to hypothetical questions, see Kinsley (2003).

One can imagine an immense warehouse full of trillions of rabbits whose brains are hooked up to stimulators that intermittently produce mild levels of rabbit gratification. What each rabbit gets is not that great, but there are so many rabbits. Thus, utilitarian revolutionaries could, in principle, justify destroying our world in order to realize their dream of building an enormous rabbit gratification factory.

Oh, yeah, I can imagine that. But they'd use virtual rabbits instead.

“illusion of explanatory depth”: Rozenblit and Keil (2002); Keil (2003). applied this idea to politics: Fernbach, Rogers, et al. (in press). left their strong opinions intact: The demand for reasons did moderate some people’s views, but these tended to be people who couldn’t produce any reasons at all when asked.

Thomson (1985, 1990). Note that Thomson has changed her mind and now thinks that it’s wrong to turn the trolley (Thomson, 2008).

As evolutionary psychologists have pointed out (Miller and Todd, 1998), what we find sexually attractive is typically indicative of high reproductive potential.

Mercier and Sperber (2011)

I think he's fundamentally misunderstanding Mercier & Sperber.

Dunbar, R. I. M. (2004). Gossip in evolutionary perspective. Review of General Psychology 8(2): 100. Dunbar, R. I. M., A. Marriott, et al. (1997). Human conversational behavior. Human Nature 8(3): 231–246.

Dutton, D. G., and A. P. Aron (1974). Some evidence for heightened sexual attraction under conditions of high anxiety. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 30(4): 510.

Fernbach, P. (2012, May 27) Weak evidence. WAMC Northeast Public Radio. Fernbach, P. M., T. Rogers, C. R. Fox, and S. A. Sloman (in press). Political extremism is supported by an illusion of understanding. Psychological Science.

Foot, P. (1967). The problem of abortion and the doctrine of double effect. Oxford Review 5: 5–15.

Haidt, J. (2001). The emotional dog and its rational tail: A social intuitionist approach to moral judgment. Psychological Review 108: 814–834.

NEED TO STUDY.Cf. endnote, p. 385.

Kinsley, M. (2003, October 2). Just supposin’: In defense of hypothetical questions. Slate. Retrieved from http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/readme/2003/10/just_supposin.html

Miller, G. F., and P. M. Todd (1998). Mate choice turns cognitive. Trends in Cognitive Sciences 2(5): 190–198.

Nisbett, R. E., and D. Cohen (1996). Culture of honor: The psychology of violence in the South. Boulder, CO: Westview Press. Nisbett, R. E., K. Peng, et al. (2001). Culture and systems of thought: Holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychological Review 108(2): 291. Nisbett, R. E., and T. D. Wilson (1977). Telling more than we can know: Verbal reports on mental processes. Psychological Review 84(3): 231.

Paxton, J. M., and J. D. Greene (2010). Moral reasoning: Hints and allegations. Topics in Cognitive Science 2(3): 511–527.

NEED TO STUDY.Cf. endnote, p. 385.

Sloman, S. (1996). The empirical case for two systems of reasoning. Psychological Bulletin 119(1): 3–22. Sloman, S., Fernbach, P. M. (2012). I’m right! (For some reason). New York Times. Retrieved November 8, 2012, from http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/21/opinion/sunday/why-partisans-cant-explain-their-views.html?_r=0.

Thomson, J. (1985). The trolley problem. Yale Law Journal 94(6): 1395–1415. Thomson, J. (2008). Turning the trolley. Philosophy and Public Affairs 36(4): 359–374. Thomson, J. J. (1976). Killing, letting die, and the trolley problem. The Monist 59(2): 204–217.