feotakahari

Haidt’s argument, which he supports through studies, is that human beings do not create logical arguments before they decide whether something is moral or immoral. Each person has various “tastebuds” that react to the nature of a specific action, and these determine whether your emotional reaction is positive or negative. If it “tastes bad” to you, you’ll try to create a logical argument for why it’s wrong, but you’ll keep insisting it’s wrong even if all your arguments are proven false.

As an example, suppose you’re told the story of someone who used an old flag to clean a toilet. If your “tastebuds” say that disrespecting tradition is bad, you’ll immediately decide that this is wrong, regardless of any logic involved. If you don’t have a “tastebud” for disrespecting tradition, you won’t see a problem at all. To the “tasteful” person, the “tasteless” seems blind, while to the “tasteless” person, the “tasteful” person is reacting to nothing.

Haidt outlines six scales, but observes that different people put different values on different scales. According to his research, people who are very liberal often value only one scale, care vs. harm. (In other words, Utilitarianism.) People who are very conservative often value all six, and they rank care vs. harm lower than other scales like authority vs. subversion. Hence why conservatives have so many values that make no sense to liberals, and why they’re so baffled that liberals don’t share those values.

From there, Haidt does a stupid, stupid thing. He jumps from describing what is true (different values exist) to saying what he thinks should be true (all values should be equally treasured.) He says conservatives are the ones with the right morality, and liberals have it all wrong because their morality is incomplete. David Hume rolls over in his grave as yet another philosopher flings himself headlong into the is-ought gap.

Myself, I go the opposite route. Utilitarianism places its value on a scale that almost everyone agrees is important. It creates a common ground for what people say “ought” to be true, which they can build off of without having to jump across what “is” true. If you and I both think that it ought to be true that people are made happy, and I say that marriage rights make gay people happy, you can at least understand where I’m coming from. But if you say that it ought to be true that people respect religion, and your religion says it’s wrong for gay people to marry–well, I can’t help but find that statement to be in questionable taste.