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Friday, April 04, 2008Waldo Jaquith: Our morality, shared and unshared.Interesting post and subsequent article (titled to serve the bias of Psychology Today's readership) regarding problems of moral foundations with regards to opinions: A significant reason that I find traditional partisan political discourse increasingly frustrating is each side’s unwillingness to comprehend that their opponent’s perspective is almost surely an honest one, rooted in firm moral beliefs. Lakoffian disciples believe that this is a problem of language, that they’re talking past each other. But it’s more than that. It’s two people with different moral norms, different imperatives, who don’t know that they have different norms.Of course, it's hard to even discuss the article when it summarizes the differences thusly: For liberals, morality is pretty much about harm and justice. To decide whether a policy is wrong, they want to know whether any one will be hurt by it and whether it will be fair to all those affected. Conservative care about harm and justice too, but they also care about three things that liberals tend to ignore: purity, respect for authority, and loyalty to the ingroup. Consider gay sex. A liberal will say, as long as no one is harmed, we should not prohibit gay sex; indeed such a prohibition would be unfair. A conservative might say that gay sex can be prohibited on the grounds that it is impure ("an unnatural act"). Or consider flag burning. A liberal will again say: no one is harmed, and everyone has the right to self-expression. Conservatives will say that flag burning is an act of desecration that disrespects the authority of this great nation. Or take preemptive war and regime change. Liberals will caution that it is bad to harm others and unjust to threaten the autonomy of other nations. Conservatives will focus on the threat that others pose to us here at home, and they will plaster their cars with stickers that say "support our troops," showing deep concern for the ingroup.That is idiotic. Of course, the article turns to Lakoff (a UC-Berkley linguist who dabbles in philosophy from time to time) and discusses problems of perspective between American liberals and American conservatives -- labels meaning quite different things on the other side of the Atlantic, in philosophical circles, and even amongst political science profressors -- and ends with some relativistic nonsense about how moral values may or may not be universal, because if they were we'd agree on everything all the time... The problem -- as I see it -- isn't one of language. Nor is the solution a search for a common agreement on all things under the sun. The problem is cultural in the sense that Americans love a good fight, no matter what the reasons. Additional culture problems would be an emphasis on emotion over reason (when was the last time you heard of an elementary or middle school teaching logic?) and the terrible, deplorable state of education in this country. If education's prime mission is the transmission of culture to the next generation, we are failing miserably. Worse, we may be wildly succeeding in transmitting the worst aspects to the detriment of the best. After all, how can you make the world a better place without treating history as prolouge to the present? The solution? Human beings have two ears and one mouth for a reason... and if I offered a solution, it would presume that I had one. Which I don't. But I'd be more than happy to listen to yours.
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JEFFERSONIAD POLL: Whom do you support for Virginia Attorney General?1) John Brownlee2) Ken Cuccinelli AboutShaunKenney.com is one of Virginia's oldest political blogs, focusing on the role of religion and politics in public life. Shaun Kenney, 30, lives in Fluvanna County, Virginia.ContactThe Jeffersoniad
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