http://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/137...6:09&out=06:32 So much to say about this little bit already!
1. I continue to think Haidt could use more philosophical sophistication. He ought to distinguish between "reason" or "rationality" on the one hand and "REASONING" on the other. His own summary of the difference between liberals and conservatives gives the emotional reaction an apparently cognitive content ("things are bad" or "things are basically OK"). No doubt this cognitive reaction is not purely a matter of reasoning -- experience naturally forms our views, but it doesn't follow that the cognition in question isn't a fit subject for reasoning. Emotional reactions are Gestalt "perceptions", not analyses. But so what? If I perceive a garter snake as dangerous, is my perception not amenable to reason? If I continue to fear garter snakes even after learning exactly how harmless they are, is not my fear irrational?
That our moral views are based on intuitive "perceptions" -- that even our reasoning about morality must depend upon intuitions -- ought to be no surprise to anyone. The claim that all such reasoning is only rationalization is what requires defense. I'm glad to see that Knobe is pressing Haidt on this point at least.
2. Haidt should

You know a conversation is interesting when it makes you want to learn more about naked mole rats.

The final point in this conversation seems to be that Mr. Haidt is so liberal he was able to overcome his disgust reflex when watching FOX. Even I am not that liberal.

I haven't finished the diavlog yet, but it might be helpful to add a link to a NYT piece by the cognitive scientist Stephen Pinker, "The Moral Instinct." It's been a while since I read it, but it gets into the various categories of morality and how different groups privilege some categories over others. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/ma...0Pinker&st=cse

Josh's question is good herehttp://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/137...3:52&out=25:32
Jonathan's reply fails to really answer it. As Jonathan admits earlier, a lot of liberals start off with the same immediate reactions as conservatives (regarding gay sex, for example). But (sorry Jonathan) what distinguishes liberals is their belief in the Enlightenment project of subjecting their immediate reactions (e.g. the feeling that a witch's curse caused the death of my cow, the feeling that gay sex is worthy of disgust) to rational critique. Jonathan's response is that liberals are the kind of people who like variety of experience. But isn't he first of all confusing correlation and causation? First of all, if you become convinced that you have no rational reason to back up your initial feeling of disgust at other ways of life, won't you be likely to try to become a more accepting person, and won't you try to value diversity? Second, it seems that some willingness to reconsider one's beliefs is a PRECONDITION of thinking rationally about something you already have a strong feeling about. If you are a very rigid person, then you won't try to be rational -- you will just rationalize

Really good post BN. Your questions and challenges make me want to hear Haidt's replys. I hope we will hear more on these topics.

Here is Jonathan's explication of "purity culture". Is there any way in which scientifically sophisticated people could believe this as actually true? Is there any way that a purity culture could accept Jonathan's evolutionary explanation of the origins of a culture like theirs? Or would a scientific understanding of reality (i.e., an understanding of what is actually true, as opposed to the myth) tend to undermine such a culture -- does such a culture depend upon a failure to understand itself? What "fluid" do we all share? On the other hand, would an understanding of human reciprocity undermine the liberal's concern for justice and harm? The social contract is (if understood historically) a myth as well. But, as Jonathan seems to recognize, the social contract appears to be a metaphor for game theoretic truths that may well justify reciprocity. (The prisoner's dilemma shows that reciprocal altruism is a better strategy for everyone to adopt than selfishness.) In one case, may debunk, in the other case, explanation may also justify. Haidt doesn't seem to recognize this as a possiblility -- seemingly because he assumes that there is no such thing as justification.

BN - I never before heard the term purity culture. I found the explanation interesting. Do you know of any good writings on this topic? I can't understand why humans would have ever believed that we all share a common fluid. When and where did (do?) such cultures exist?

Quoting ohcomeon: Really good post BN. Your questions and challenges make me want to hear Haidt's replys. I hope we will hear more on these topics.

Thank you, ohcomeon. I'd like to have Haidt back with someone like Railton. Knobe and Wilkinson are insufficiently critical of Haidt's approach, in my view. Even though I'm not that sympathetic to either one, it could be interesting to see Haidt and Shaun Nichols talk. Both are sentimentalists in some form, but Nichols doesn't attempt to explain moral norms directly in terms of natural selection. He appeals to a cultural process to explain our norms. It isn't obvious that there's any inconsistency between them. Haidt regards his evolutionary explanation as an explanation of the basic emotional building blocks out of which individual moralities are built, while Nichols focuses more on explaining why certain norms survive. However, I do think Will's general enthusiasm for all these sentimentalist accounts elides a lot of differences in detail between them all. If the BHtv overlords are watching, then: what about Railton and Haidt some time?

The rules in the Leviticus about contact with menstruating women etc. would be understood as "purity codes", and a culture that was particularly dominated by rules about what one may touch or not touch or eat or not eat (Jewish and Hindu cultures are Jonathan's examples, I think) would be "purity cultures" by extension. The idea is that contact with certain things "defiles" or "pollutes" one, and that one must avoid defilement and when one has been defiled, seek "purification" trhough some ritual. I think it's ultimately an anthropological notion, and it's certainly true that most cultures have a notion of "pollution" -- eg the ancient Greeks.
It's been a long time since I read it, but E.R. Dodds's _The Greeks and the Irrational_ surely has a secition on 'pollution'. Here's a Wikipedia article to start you off anyway:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ritual_purity

Thanks, BN. As usual, your contributions are enlightening and thought provoking. Keep up the good work! BTW - My husband is a contractor and is currently working on a building used for female purification on the grounds of a Jewish Center. He has been told it is the only such facility in the metro area. The metro area has a population of about 1.4 million.

Quoting ohcomeon: BN - I never before heard the term purity culture. I found the explanation interesting. Do you know of any good writings on this topic? I can't understand why humans would have ever believed that we all share a common fluid. When and where did (do?) such cultures exist?

Oh, come on! It's water! We all drink it and are made of it. Obvious!

Yes - I get that it's water. My modern brain just has a hard time coming up with why my taking a drink of water equals you taking a drink of water. If it did no one would ever die of thirst. And does that mean my taking a drink of beer equals you taking a drink of beer?

Haidt has a terribly simplistic conception of what liberalism is. Liberalism doesn't say that hierarchy must be dismantled and that no one should be able to tell others what to do. What it says is that authority is not an intrinsic, inborn feature of certain "noble" or "royal" individuals. Authority must be justified on a contractual or quasi-contractual basis, not on the basis of the "divine right of kings" etc. Again, liberals don't have to deny that people may be more than mere biological machines. Haidt confuses two entirely different groups: Naturalistic moralists and political liberals. Political liberals may grant that there is much more that is "sacred" than individual rights. What political liberals (as opposed to atheistic/naturalistic moralists believe is that the mutual recognition of the sacred must be voluntary -- at any rate, the state should not be imposing some particular view of the sacred on those who don't agree with it. Political liberalism (or the secularist aspect of it) really doesn't say anything about what is sacred or not. It says something about the role of the state in imposing a particular view of the sacred.
Of course, once

What a pleasure to listen to this discussion!
An upfront disclaimer: I am on Jonathan Haidt's side of thinking about this topic. I could have saved a lot of time writing in previous recent posts and just refer to his talk today. He is certainly more knowledgeable and very didactic.

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin:
1. I continue to think Haidt could use more philosophical sophistication. He ought to distinguish between "reason" or "rationality" on the one hand and "REASONING" on the other....

I actually like Jonathan's style which is very consistent with most of the more modern empirical philosophers. It is a way of candidly stepping back and demystifying some of the traditional concepts in order to facilitate empirical work. This is a different perspective from the armchair only traditional philosophy. Because I have a more formal background in science, I particularly like this approach.

Emotional reactions are Gestalt "perceptions", not analyses. But so what? If I perceive a garter snake as dangerous, is my perception not amenable to reason? If I continue to fear garter snakes even after learning exactly how harmless they are, is not my fear irrational?

These are good points. I recently wrote ad nauseam about this. I will not torture anyone else. But, yes, reason can alter

I have no disagreement with the claim that normative views must be discussed with an eye to moral psychology. But I suspect both Josh and Jonathan of believing that the dependency doesn't go the other way -- that we can settle moral psychology all by itself and normative ethics will be a kind of epiphenomenon. They seem to imagine that moral psychology is a value-free foundation on which one can build a normative view. My view is that you aren't really going to get either one right unless you try to do them together. Haidt's discussion here rides rough-shod over so many normatively important distinctions, that I certainly would not trust anything he eventually attempts to "read off" from his psychological theory.

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: Josh's question is good herehttp://bloggingheads.tv/diavlogs/137...3:52&out=25:32
Jonathan's reply fails to really answer it. As Jonathan admits earlier, a lot of liberals start off with the same immediate reactions as conservatives (regarding gay sex, for example). But (sorry Jonathan) what distinguishes liberals is their belief in the Enlightenment project of subjecting their immediate reactions (e.g. the feeling that a witch's curse caused the death of my cow, the feeling that gay sex is worthy of disgust) to rational critique.

Yes, I completely agree with you.

Jonathan's response is that liberals are the kind of people who like variety of experience. But isn't he first of all confusing correlation and causation? First of all, if you become convinced that you have no rational reason to back up your initial feeling of disgust at other ways of life, won't you be likely to try to become a more accepting person, and won't you try to value diversity? Second, it seems that some willingness to reconsider one's beliefs is a PRECONDITION of thinking rationally about something you already have a strong feeling about. If you are a very rigid person, then you won't try to be rational -- you

Quoting ohcomeon: Yes - I get that it's water. My modern brain just has a hard time coming up with why my taking a drink of water equals you taking a drink of water. If it did no one would ever die of thirst. And does that mean my taking a drink of beer equals you taking a drink of beer?

No, no. Only one fluid we share... I was just kidding because to my knowledge, as you said before, there is no shared fluid. Your name tempted me to include it in my response. Now seriously, they may have been referring to the concept of "ether", but, frankly, I have no clue.

Hey BN, I was wondering about your own moral views. If you've already discussed this, I'll look for your posts until I find it. But what I was particularly interested in was (a) whether you're a moral realist (which I suspect you are) and if so (b) what kind of moral realist you are: naturalist (a la Boyd and Railton), non-natural intuitionist (a la Regan, Audi, and Shafer-Landau), or some third option (Robert Adams style Divine Command Theorist, or Allen Wood style Kantian, which last is the camp I fall into).

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: Here is Jonathan's explication of "purity culture".

Is there any way in which scientifically sophisticated people could believe this as actually true? Is there any way that a purity culture could accept Jonathan's evolutionary explanation of the origins of a culture like theirs? Or would a scientific understanding of reality (i.e., an understanding of what is actually true, as opposed to the myth) tend to undermine such a culture -- does such a culture depend upon a failure to understand itself? What "fluid" do we all share?

Again, I didn't understand his talk about purity. My impression is that so far, they haven't looked at this very closely. So he is trying to come up with some general ideas. But, I agree, it wasn't clear, and some statements appeared phony.

On the other hand, would an understanding of human reciprocity undermine the liberals' concern for justice and harm? The social contract is (if understood historically) a myth as well. But, as Jonathan seems to recognize, the social contract appears to be a metaphor for game theoretic truths that may well justify reciprocity. (The prisoner's dilemma shows that reciprocal altruism is a better strategy for everyone to adopt than selfishness.)
In

I guess you are saying that the rules of cooperation, which implicitly include to place the benefit to the group before the individual benefit, stays within the group. When you look at inter-group relationships, those rules don't apply. I guess you would have to say additionally, that they don't specifically apply when there is an adversarial inter-group relationship.

Hello Ocean,
I can't make sense of the first of the quoted sentences -- I think you must have included bits from two different drafts of the same sentence? Unfortunately, it seems like the essential sentence for getting an idea of what you are saying -- could you revisit and reformulate?

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: Haidt has a terribly simplistic conception of what liberalism is. Liberalism doesn't say that hierarchy must be dismantled and that no one should be able to tell others what to do. What it says is that authority is not an intrinsic, inborn feature of certain "noble" or "royal" individuals. Authority must be justified on a contractual or quasi-contractual basis, not on the basis of the "divine right of kings" etc.

I think that besides the point about on whom power resides, liberals tend to advocate for a careful restriction of the amount of power. Haidt did talk a little about the extremes of conservatism and liberalism as being more restrictive and allowing less autonomy at the very beginning of the diavlog.

---Of course, once you recognize what liberalism is, it begins to be much harder to make any sense whatsoever of the "liberal" as a psychological type -- some very religious people will certainly turn out to be liberals.

I think it's important to differentiate between assertions that belong to liberalism (as an abstract conception or synthesis) from those that belong to "liberals" (the individuals who create or endorse the concept

Quoting Bloggin' Noggin: I have no disagreement with the claim that normative views must be discussed with an eye to moral psychology. But I suspect both Josh and Jonathan of believing that the dependency doesn't go the other way -- that we can settle moral psychology all by itself and normative ethics will be a kind of epiphenomenon. They seem to imagine that moral psychology is a value-free foundation on which one can build a normative view. My view is that you aren't really going to get either one right unless you try to do them together. Haidt's discussion here rides rough-shod over so many normative important distinctions, that I certainly would not trust anything he eventually attempts to "read off" from his psychological theory.

I'm not so suspicious because I think he is taking one step at a time, and at this time Haidt is looking at empirical data that describes the basic "state of affairs". I don't think that he is even looking at direction of causality. When Josh pushes him more in that direction, he talks about the direction from moral psychology towards normative ethics as, I would think, a

I guess I'll have to wait...

Haidt's research uses self-identification for "liberal" and "conservative", so you can't really criticize his definitions too much. He even argued in this episode for breaking them down into subtypes. Haidt's research is the most exciting development in political thought that I know of. This hour was pretty much the same as his interview with Wilkinson, a big picture summary of his research, but I still enjoyed it. Now that he's been introduced to the BH audience, twice, I'd like to see him go off on some tangents or dig deep into some aspect of his research. Anything that can enable a sane person to watch FOX News wit