Great write-up. Righteous Mind was the first in a series of books that really usefully transformed how I think about moral cognition (including Hidden Games, Moral Tribes, Secret of Our Success, Elephant in the Brain). I think its moral philosophy, however, is pretty bad. In a mostly positive (and less thorough) review I wrote a few years ago (that I don’t 100% endorse today), I write:
Though Haidt explicitly tries to avoid the naturalistic fallacy, one of the book’s most serious problems is its tendency to assume that people finding something disgusting implies that the thing is immoral (124, 171-4). Similarly, it implies that because most people are less systematizing than Bentham and Kant, the moral systems of those thinkers must not be plausible (139, 141). [Note from me in 2022: In fact, Haidt bizarrely argues that Bentham and Kant were likely autistic and therefore these theories couldn’t be right for a mostly neurotypical world.]Yes, moral feelings might have evolved as a group adaptation to promote “parochial altruism,” but that does not mean we shouldn’t strive to live a universalist morality; it just means it’s harder. Thomas Nagel, in the New York Review of Books, writes that “part of the interest of [The Righteous Mind] is in its failure to provide a fully coherent response” to the question of how descriptive morality theories could translate into normative recommendations.
I became even more convinced that this instinct towards relativism is a big problem for The Righteous Mind since reading Joshua Greene’s excellent Moral Tribes, which covers much of the same ground. But Greene shows that this is not just an aversion to moral truth; it stems from Haidt’s undue pessimism about the role of reason.
Moral Tribes argues that our moral intuitions evolved to solve the Tragedy of the Commons, but the contemporary world faces the “Tragedy of Commonsense Morality,” where lots of tribes with different systems for solving collective-action problems have to get along. Greene dedicates much of the section “Why I’m a Liberal” to his disagreements with Haidt. After noting his agreements — morality evolved to promote cooperation, is mostly implemented through emotions, different groups have different moral intuitions, a source of lots of conflict, and we should be less hypocritical and self-righteous in our denunciations of other tribes’ views — Greene says:
These are important lessons. But, unfortunately, they only get us so far. Being more open-minded and less self-righteous should facilitate moral problem-solving, but it’s not itself a solution[....]
Consider once more the problem of abortion. Some liberals say that pro-lifers are misogynists who want to control women’s bodies. And some socila conservatives believe that pro-choicers are irresponsible moral nihilists who lack respect for human life, who are part of a “culture of death.” For such strident tribal moralists—and they are all too common—Haidt’s prescription is right on time. But what then? Suppose you’re a liberal, but a grown-up liberal. You understand that pro-lifers are motivated by genuine moral concern, that they are neither evil nor crazy. Should you now, in the spirit of compromise, agree to additional restrictions on abortion? [...]
It’s one thing to acknowledge that one’s opponents are not evil. It’s another thing to concede that they’re right, or half right, or no less justified in their beliefs and values than you are in yours. Agreeing to be less self-righteous is an important first step, but it doesn’t answer the all-important questions: What should we believe? and What should we do?
Greene goes on to explain that Haidt thinks liberals and conservatives disagree because liberals have the “impoverished taste receptors” of only caring about harm and fairness, while conservatives have the “whole palette.” But, Greene argues, the other tastes require parochial tribalism: you have to be loyal to something, sanctify something, respect an authority, that you probably don’t share with the rest of the world. This makes social conservatives great at solving Tragedies of the Commons, but very bad at the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, where lots of people worshipping different things and respecting different authorities and loyal to different tribes have to get along with each other.
According to Haidt, liberals should be more open to compromise with social conservatives. I disagree. In the short term, compromise might be necessary, but in the long term, our strategy should not be to compromise with tribal moralists, but rather to persuade them to be less tribalistic.
I’m not a social conservative because I do not think that tribalism, which is essentially selfishness at the group level, serves the greater good. [...]
This is not to say that liberals have nothing to learn from social conservatives. As Haidt points out, social conservatives are very good at making each other happy. [...] As a liberal, I can admire the social capital invested in a local church and wish that we liberals had equally dense and supportive social networks. But it’s quite another thing to acquiesce to that church’s teaching on abortion, homosexuality, and how the world got made.
Greene notes that even Haidt finds “no compelling alternative to utilitarianism” in matters of public policy after deriding it earlier. “It seems that the autistic philosopher [Bentham] was right all along,” Greene observes. Greene explains Haidt’s “paradoxical” endorsement of utilitarianism as an admission that conscious moral reasoning — like a camera’s “manual mode” instead of the intuitive “point-and-shoot” morality — isn’t so underrated after all. If we want to know the right thing to do, we can’t just assume that all of the moral foundations have a grain of truth, figure we’re equally tribalistic, and compromise with the conservatives; we need to turn to reason.
While Haidt is of course right that sound moral arguments often fail to sway listeners, “like the wind and the rain, washing over the land year after year, a good argument can change the shape of things. It begins with a willingness to question one’s tribal beliefs. And here, being a little autistic might help.” He then cites Bentham criticizing sodomy laws in 1785 and Mill advocating gender equality in 1869. And then he concludes: “Today we, some of us, defend the rights of gays and women with great conviction. But before we could do it with feeling, before our feelings felt like ‘rights,’ someone had to do it with thinking. I’m a deep pragmatist [Greene’s preferred term for utilitarians], and a liberal, because I believe in this kind of progress and that our work is not yet done.”
Thanks for the thoughtful comment! I agree that the normative parts were the weakest in the Book. There were other parts that I found weak, like how I think he caught the Moral Foundations and their ubiquitous presence well, but then made the error of thinking liberals don’t use them (when in fact they use them a lot, certainly in today’s climate, just with different in-groups, sanctified objects, etc.). An initial draft had a section about this. But in the spirit of Ruling Thinkers In, Not Out, I decided to let go of these in the review and focus on the parts I got a lot out of.
I’ll take a look at Greene, sounds very interesting.
About what to do about disagreements with conservatives, I’d say if you understand where others are coming from, perhaps you can compromise in a way that’s positive-sum. It doesn’t mean you have to concede they’re right, only that in a democracy they are entitled to affect policy, but that doesn’t mean you should be fighting over it instead of discussing in good faith.
I liked the final paragraph, about how reason slowly erodes emotional objections over a long time. Maybe that’s an optimistic note to finish on.
@EnestScribbler—You wrote that, “I think he caught the Moral Foundations and their ubiquitous presence well, but then made the error of thinking liberals don’t use them (when in fact they use them a lot, certainly in today’s climate, just with different in-groups, sanctified objects, etc.).”
Others noted that same problem. If the moral foundations truly are inherent in all of human nature, then presumably all humans use them, if not in the same way. But he also doesn’t deal with the dark side of the moral foundations. Some of the so-called binding moral values are, in fact, key facets of what social scientists study in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. How can one talk about the view of tribalism while somehow not seeing that mountain on the landscape?
As with the personality traits of liberal-minded openness and conservative-minded conscientiousness, Haidt doesn’t grapple enough with all of the available evidence that is relevant to morality. Many things that liberals value don’t get called ‘values’, according to Haidt, because he is biasing his moral foundations theory according to a more conservative definition of morality. So, liberals are portrayed as having fewer moral values, since a large swath of what moral values is defined away or simply ignored.
@TJL - You wrote that, “If we want to know the right thing to do, we can’t just assume that all of the moral foundations have a grain of truth, figure we’re equally tribalistic, and compromise with the conservatives; we need to turn to reason.”
It’s interesting how Haidt dismisses moral pragmatism and utilitarianism but then basically reaffirms it’s essential, after all. So essential, in fact, that it seems to undermine his entire argument about conservative morality being superior. Since the binding moral foundations have much overlap with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), that probably should give us pause.
Should we really be repackaging RWA and SDO as moral foundations? Is that wise? And if we interpret them this way, should we treat them as equally valid and worthy as liberal-minded concern for fairness, harm, and liberty?
There is an intriguing larger context to be found in the social science research. Under severely stressful and sickly conditions (high parasite load, high pathogen exposure, high inequality, etc), there tends to be a simultaneous population level increase of sociopolitical conservatism, RWA, and SDO; though each measures independently on the individual level. So, there really is a fundamental commonality to these binding ‘moral foundations’. Just look at the openness trait, of which not measures high in liberals but low in conservatives, RWAs, and SDOs.
These binding traits are also closely linked to disgust response, stress response, and what I call the stress-sickness response (related to parasite-stress theory and behavioral immune system). Is this really just a matter of differences in moral values? Or are we dealing with a public health crisis? Liberal-mindedness requires optimal conditions of health and low stress. Why would we want to balance liberalism with conservatism, RWA, and SDO?
Great write-up. Righteous Mind was the first in a series of books that really usefully transformed how I think about moral cognition (including Hidden Games, Moral Tribes, Secret of Our Success, Elephant in the Brain). I think its moral philosophy, however, is pretty bad. In a mostly positive (and less thorough) review I wrote a few years ago (that I don’t 100% endorse today), I write:
I became even more convinced that this instinct towards relativism is a big problem for The Righteous Mind since reading Joshua Greene’s excellent Moral Tribes, which covers much of the same ground. But Greene shows that this is not just an aversion to moral truth; it stems from Haidt’s undue pessimism about the role of reason.
Moral Tribes argues that our moral intuitions evolved to solve the Tragedy of the Commons, but the contemporary world faces the “Tragedy of Commonsense Morality,” where lots of tribes with different systems for solving collective-action problems have to get along. Greene dedicates much of the section “Why I’m a Liberal” to his disagreements with Haidt. After noting his agreements — morality evolved to promote cooperation, is mostly implemented through emotions, different groups have different moral intuitions, a source of lots of conflict, and we should be less hypocritical and self-righteous in our denunciations of other tribes’ views — Greene says:
Greene goes on to explain that Haidt thinks liberals and conservatives disagree because liberals have the “impoverished taste receptors” of only caring about harm and fairness, while conservatives have the “whole palette.” But, Greene argues, the other tastes require parochial tribalism: you have to be loyal to something, sanctify something, respect an authority, that you probably don’t share with the rest of the world. This makes social conservatives great at solving Tragedies of the Commons, but very bad at the Tragedy of Commonsense Morality, where lots of people worshipping different things and respecting different authorities and loyal to different tribes have to get along with each other.
Greene notes that even Haidt finds “no compelling alternative to utilitarianism” in matters of public policy after deriding it earlier. “It seems that the autistic philosopher [Bentham] was right all along,” Greene observes. Greene explains Haidt’s “paradoxical” endorsement of utilitarianism as an admission that conscious moral reasoning — like a camera’s “manual mode” instead of the intuitive “point-and-shoot” morality — isn’t so underrated after all. If we want to know the right thing to do, we can’t just assume that all of the moral foundations have a grain of truth, figure we’re equally tribalistic, and compromise with the conservatives; we need to turn to reason.
While Haidt is of course right that sound moral arguments often fail to sway listeners, “like the wind and the rain, washing over the land year after year, a good argument can change the shape of things. It begins with a willingness to question one’s tribal beliefs. And here, being a little autistic might help.” He then cites Bentham criticizing sodomy laws in 1785 and Mill advocating gender equality in 1869. And then he concludes: “Today we, some of us, defend the rights of gays and women with great conviction. But before we could do it with feeling, before our feelings felt like ‘rights,’ someone had to do it with thinking. I’m a deep pragmatist [Greene’s preferred term for utilitarians], and a liberal, because I believe in this kind of progress and that our work is not yet done.”
Thanks for the thoughtful comment!
I agree that the normative parts were the weakest in the Book. There were other parts that I found weak, like how I think he caught the Moral Foundations and their ubiquitous presence well, but then made the error of thinking liberals don’t use them (when in fact they use them a lot, certainly in today’s climate, just with different in-groups, sanctified objects, etc.). An initial draft had a section about this. But in the spirit of Ruling Thinkers In, Not Out, I decided to let go of these in the review and focus on the parts I got a lot out of.
I’ll take a look at Greene, sounds very interesting.
About what to do about disagreements with conservatives, I’d say if you understand where others are coming from, perhaps you can compromise in a way that’s positive-sum. It doesn’t mean you have to concede they’re right, only that in a democracy they are entitled to affect policy, but that doesn’t mean you should be fighting over it instead of discussing in good faith.
I liked the final paragraph, about how reason slowly erodes emotional objections over a long time. Maybe that’s an optimistic note to finish on.
@EnestScribbler—You wrote that, “I think he caught the Moral Foundations and their ubiquitous presence well, but then made the error of thinking liberals don’t use them (when in fact they use them a lot, certainly in today’s climate, just with different in-groups, sanctified objects, etc.).”
Others noted that same problem. If the moral foundations truly are inherent in all of human nature, then presumably all humans use them, if not in the same way. But he also doesn’t deal with the dark side of the moral foundations. Some of the so-called binding moral values are, in fact, key facets of what social scientists study in right-wing authoritarianism and social dominance orientation. How can one talk about the view of tribalism while somehow not seeing that mountain on the landscape?
As with the personality traits of liberal-minded openness and conservative-minded conscientiousness, Haidt doesn’t grapple enough with all of the available evidence that is relevant to morality. Many things that liberals value don’t get called ‘values’, according to Haidt, because he is biasing his moral foundations theory according to a more conservative definition of morality. So, liberals are portrayed as having fewer moral values, since a large swath of what moral values is defined away or simply ignored.
@TJL - You wrote that, “If we want to know the right thing to do, we can’t just assume that all of the moral foundations have a grain of truth, figure we’re equally tribalistic, and compromise with the conservatives; we need to turn to reason.”
It’s interesting how Haidt dismisses moral pragmatism and utilitarianism but then basically reaffirms it’s essential, after all. So essential, in fact, that it seems to undermine his entire argument about conservative morality being superior. Since the binding moral foundations have much overlap with right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO), that probably should give us pause.
Should we really be repackaging RWA and SDO as moral foundations? Is that wise? And if we interpret them this way, should we treat them as equally valid and worthy as liberal-minded concern for fairness, harm, and liberty?
There is an intriguing larger context to be found in the social science research. Under severely stressful and sickly conditions (high parasite load, high pathogen exposure, high inequality, etc), there tends to be a simultaneous population level increase of sociopolitical conservatism, RWA, and SDO; though each measures independently on the individual level. So, there really is a fundamental commonality to these binding ‘moral foundations’. Just look at the openness trait, of which not measures high in liberals but low in conservatives, RWAs, and SDOs.
These binding traits are also closely linked to disgust response, stress response, and what I call the stress-sickness response (related to parasite-stress theory and behavioral immune system). Is this really just a matter of differences in moral values? Or are we dealing with a public health crisis? Liberal-mindedness requires optimal conditions of health and low stress. Why would we want to balance liberalism with conservatism, RWA, and SDO?