Moral Perspective-taking
One of the many interesting things in Steven Pinker’s epic The Better Angels of Our Nature was about perspective-taking as a civilizing, violence-reducing tool. Very rationalist of him. He mentioned a...
View ArticleDisgust and Sanctity: Desperately Seeking Info on Sociomoral Disgust
I have just finished reading Jonathan Haidt’s new book Righteous Mind. I don’t think he left anything out. I think my kitchen sink was in there, with a Mr. Clean sparkle and shine to boot. Great book....
View ArticleWho Is Going to Be Shunned?
To borrow a metaphor from the philosopher of science Ronald Giere, theories are like maps: the test of a map lies not in arbitrarily checking random points but in whether people find it useful to get...
View ArticleAuthority Isn't 'Yes' or 'No' but 'Where'
In Moral Foundation Theory, the description of the Authority foundation leaves little room for doubt. Libertarians and Liberals have essentially no Authority foundation in their diet while Evangelicals...
View ArticleManaging the Free Riders: Liberals are Bully-detectors, Conservatives are...
It has become useful to me to think of Conservatives (broadly speaking, those holding a conservative moral viewpoint) as the cheater-detection unit for society and of Liberals (broadly speaking, those...
View ArticleThe Physiology of Disgust and Moral Viewpoints
I continue to wonder about giving the liberal moral viewpoint a complete pass on the binding foundations. In Righteous Mind, Jonathan Haidt modulates the theory somewhat by connecting the liberal moral...
View ArticleUnderstanding Ourselves, Respecting the Differences: Accepting Each Other as...
(This is an extended version of an article, written for a Religious Society of Friends (Quaker) audience, published in the Sixth/Seventh Month issue of Friends Journal, where I use Moral Foundation...
View Article"Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because...
““Just because an idea is true doesn’t mean it can be proved. And just because an idea can be proved doesn’t mean it’s true.”” - Jonah Lehrer The Truth Wears Out
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Tilting at a New Windmill: From Moral Foundation Theory to Cultural Cognition...
I have been frustrated for some time with some aspects of Moral Foundation Theory, as most recently explicated in Jonathan Haidt’s The Righteous Mind. When I first found it, it was a revelation....
View Article"Kinder und Narren sagen die Wahrheit."
““Kinder und Narren sagen die Wahrheit.”” - (Children and fools speak the truth.)Proverb
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My thinking about Cultural Cognition of Risk theory is clearly...
My thinking about Cultural Cognition of Risk theory is clearly achieving simultaneous depth and width.
View ArticleMissing Jonah Lehrer, Observing the Meritocracy
I feel sad about Jonah Lehrer. I feel sad that he fell into such error. I enjoyed his writing. I have missed him being in the mix, and am sorry that his hiatus has turned into an exit. It is a little...
View ArticleThe Moral Emotions, Openness, Liberals, Conservatives
Chris Mooney replies here to a post at the Daily Caller. Mooney highlights a great many interesting things, and his post is worth reading in its entirety, but I am going to ramble on and on in response...
View Article"Eternal truth, unfailing truth, truth that cannot be doubted, is not what...
““Eternal truth, unfailing truth, truth that cannot be doubted, is not what science is for.”” - David BerrebyUs and Them: Understanding Your Tribal Mind (p.9)
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"Us and Them," Openness, Groupishness, Care, Harm and Loyalty
I have been troubled, deeply troubled, by the effort in the social sciences to explain the differences between statistical conservatives and statistical liberals as innate, genetic, essential and...
View ArticleOn Statistical Liberal Sacred Commitments
I received an e-mail from someone trying to help me place my experiences as a traditionally-dressed Quaker visiting liberal groups into a more orthodox understanding of Haidt et al’s Moral Foundation...
View Article"Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult….Examine your words well, and you...
“Falsehood is so easy, truth so difficult….Examine your words well, and you will find that even when you have no motive to be false, it is a very hard thing to say the exact truth, even about your own...
View Article"The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view,...
“The knowable world is incomplete if seen from any one point of view, incoherent if seen from all points of view at once, and empty if seen from nowhere in particular. The essays in this book are meant...
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Parsing "Care" as a Moral Verb
It occurs to me that those of the statistical liberal moral/cultural viewpoint have one broad conception of what it means to “care” morally, while those of the statistical conservative moral/cultural...
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