His view is in complete ignorance of recent ground-breaking research on the nature of human morality (see above link). Basically, most secular academics think of morality only in terms of harms and fairness, but, worldwide, people judge morality on three other dimensions as well: ingroup/loyalty (do we maintain a cohesive group?), authority/respect, and purity/sancity
Greene’s arguments ignore the literature
Read First, flame second: Greene writes on page 192:
Particular cultures exploit a subset of the possible moral intuitions we are prepared to experience, much in the way that particular languages exploit a subset of the possible phonemes we are prepared to recognize and pronounce (Haidt, pg. 827). According to Shweder and his colleagues (1997), these intuitions cluster around what he calls the “big three” domains of human moral phenomena: the “ethics of autonomy” which concerns rights, freedom, and individual welfare; the “ethics of community” which concerns the obligations of the individual to the larger community in the form of loyalty, respectfulness, modesty, self-control, etc.; and the “ethics of divinity” which is concerned with the maintenance of moral purity in the face of moral pollution
Well, I do apologize for not reading 192 pages before responding (in my defense, neither did anyone else). But the excerpt that you deemed representative of Greene’s work (and your commentary) did not show any assimilation of Haidt’s insights, so why should I have believed the rest of the dissertation would fill such a gaping hole?
The excerpt you just posted doesn’t seem to help either. Okay, he did in fact read Haidt. Do his responses to Haidt enable Greene to show how people are incorrectly viewing and classifying moral statements? If not, my original point stands.
I do apologize for not reading 192 pages before responding
I’m not sure you needed to. You just needed to read this bit of Roko’s excerpt properly:
In the previous chapter we concluded, in spite of common sense, that moral realism is false. This raises an important question: How is it that so many people are mistaken about the nature of morality?
The subsequent excerpts are aimed at the second purpose; not the first. (At least until Roko inteprets them in support of first at the end of the OP; but in context it seems reasonable to think they buttress the case against realism here, even if they don’t provide a stand-alone justification for it.)
Read First, flame second: Greene writes on page 192:
Particular cultures exploit a subset of the possible moral intuitions we are prepared to experience, much in the way that particular languages exploit a subset of the possible phonemes we are prepared to recognize and pronounce (Haidt, pg. 827). According to Shweder and his colleagues (1997), these intuitions cluster around what he calls the “big three” domains of human moral phenomena: the “ethics of autonomy” which concerns rights, freedom, and individual welfare; the “ethics of community” which concerns the obligations of the individual to the larger community in the form of loyalty, respectfulness, modesty, self-control, etc.; and the “ethics of divinity” which is concerned with the maintenance of moral purity in the face of moral pollution
Greene cites Haidt a lot.
Well, I do apologize for not reading 192 pages before responding (in my defense, neither did anyone else). But the excerpt that you deemed representative of Greene’s work (and your commentary) did not show any assimilation of Haidt’s insights, so why should I have believed the rest of the dissertation would fill such a gaping hole?
The excerpt you just posted doesn’t seem to help either. Okay, he did in fact read Haidt. Do his responses to Haidt enable Greene to show how people are incorrectly viewing and classifying moral statements? If not, my original point stands.
I’m not sure you needed to. You just needed to read this bit of Roko’s excerpt properly:
The subsequent excerpts are aimed at the second purpose; not the first. (At least until Roko inteprets them in support of first at the end of the OP; but in context it seems reasonable to think they buttress the case against realism here, even if they don’t provide a stand-alone justification for it.)
I did. Just not very thoroughly.
You would probably benefit from reading Greene’s introduction chapter where he summarizes his argument.
I’d benefit even more if you wrote a better summary ;-)