Haidt, Jonathan - Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion

02/22/2008

The Edge 222, The Reality Club 09/12/2007 (Link)

Author writes a paper partially related to his book, the Happiness Hypothesis and also reflective of his work in social psychology and philosophy. Specifically, the issue is around morality, and its relation to religion. Author starts with a contrast of rational moral doctrines that are rule-following and law-like and emotional or 'disgust' reactions to morally salient situations that are then post-hoc reasoned to justify. Part of this is a change in the way we see moral development-- from the older, Kohlberg-style levels of conscious rational thought, to automatic, unconscious processes more tuned to emotions e.g. revulsion, disgust. Author puts forward what he considers the main tenets of the new psychological study of moral reasoning:
1) Intuitive primacy but not dictatorship- we make snap judgments but our reasoning can override them
2) Moral thinking is for social doing- when we mount moral arguments, they are mostly for pragmatic, political purposes
3) Morality binds and builds- shared moral decisions and public discussion on what ought to be done binds people together, serving as social cohesion. Author discusses the renewing possibility of group selection to encourage cohesion, cooperation.
4) Morality is about more than harm and fairness- the academic books, written by academics, mostly talk about harms or fairness. Gilligan convinced us that there was another dimension: 'care'. But still this falls short of capturing the moral reasoning. Through his research, author concludes there are at least three more dimensions:
1- justice/fairness
2- harm/care
+3- ingroup/loyalty
+4- authority/respect
+5- purity/sanctity
These can be considered 'learning modules' that we have evolved to pick up given our cultural surroundings. The last three serve to bind people to a group, while the first two are 'individualizing', meaning that they serve to protect individuals from each other. Author points out that he has found secular liberals give the first 2 to morality, while religious conservatives take all 5 as morality.

The next part of the paper, author takes the work of the 'new atheists' to be not scientific thinking but the kind of 'moral' thinking he discussed above. He holds these 'scientific' thinkers to the standard of science and not of the 'moral thinking' he just developed. He uses examples from the books of Dawkins, Harris, Dennett. Harris gives a 'standard liberal definition of morality': morality is about happiness and suffering. Author proposes his alternative:

"Moral systems are interlocking sets of values, practices, institutions, and evolved psychological mechanisms that work together to suppress or regulate selfishness and make social life possible."

Author claims the 'standard liberal' definition is a 'contractual approach', while his is a 'beehive approach'. The beehive approach takes religion as a key component in the development of morality, and acknowledges that it has its discontents, but also points out that religious conservatives are more likely to give to charity, time, money, and blood. They also report being happier, healthier, and they live longer. This evidence author claims Dennett denies-- again being unfair to the proper place of religious commitments. Author concludes by saying that "every longstanding ideology and way of life contains some wisdom, some insights into ways of suppressing selfishness, enhancing cooperation, and ultimately enhancing human flourishing."

Replies
David Sloan Wilson:
These four questions need to be answered by the new atheists:
1) Is there any empirical evidence for the existence of supernatural agents?
2) If not, how can we explain the universal aspect of religion in naturalistic terms?
3) What are the effects of religion, good and bad, on human welfare?
4) How can we use these understandings to advance our society?
Wilson claims that e.g. Dawkins, only focuses on the first question, which leaves a lot out.

Michael Shermer
Religion is a force for both good and bad. It kills, maims, suppresses difference. Yet it also makes people happier, healthier, and promotes a more social cohesion. The difficulty is that when we get into complex societies of large sizes, we needed to make institutions that encouraged social cohesion and also human flourishing-- the two main ones were organized religion and centralized government. We now need to try to convince the world to make new institutions in the place of the old ones.

Sam Harris
Where is the 'wisdom' in the many, many religions that, e.g., conducted human sacrifice? Haidt might want to gloss over the actual beliefs and look at what purposes they serve, but the actual beliefs do matter-- they're bogus. Harris interprets the 3 'other' dimensions of morality as just subsets of the care/harm dimension. For example-- being worried about taking the lord's name in vain (respect/authority) is just being worried you'll go to hell (harm/care). Science shouldn't care whether false religious beliefs lead to better lives-- science is about getting the empirical work right, and religions generally fail.

PZ Myers
Myers likes in general the discussion of the expansion of morality. He heavily criticizes Haidt's likening of the new atheists to religious thinkers. Meyers says that Haidt equates the new dimensions of morality with religious practice. Must (necessarily) we have religion to have this full-fledged morality? Certainly not. Myers spins the discussion of welfare and charity, saying that most charities secular liberals do not trust, and that they are also dissatisfied moreso than conservatives with the direction of the country, world, etc. Myers also says that if believing in a false thing gives me extra life, extra happiness, he doesn't want it.

Marc Hauser
Hauser talks about the possibility of group selection for religious modules. Hauser concludes it has not yet been shown and that individual or gene-centric selection has been far more explanatory. Hauser also tries to distinguish two different issues:
- the evolution of morality as a biological faculty that guides our intuitive judgments
- the ways in which cultural factors, including religion, can alter our explicit moral judgments
The target here is the evidence that religious people give more. The problem is that in some moral judgments, both religious and non-religious decide equally. Do the religious give more because they are religious, or because they are more beehive oriented and are more likely to take on religion?

Hadit has a final entry, where he discusses three main points:
1) the possibility of group selection
2) religious people really are happier and more charitable
3) binding/beehive moralities can be good for us (emphasis on 'can')