In the introduction and first two chapters of his work "The
Righteous Mind," moral psychologist Jonathan Haidt prefaces his conception
of social empiricism with schools of thought that serve as past precedents for
his landmark social theory, proceeding to explain the initial tenets upon which
his theory rests – the illusions of absolutely objective reasoning and moral
judgment.
Haidt begins quoting the cliché phrase coined by Rodney King “Can we all
get along?” following it up by explicating his authorial intent to provide a
framework to think about the divisiveness of politics and religion given the
premise that “human nature is not just intrinsically moral” but “intrinsically
moralistic, critical, and judgmental” (XIX). Describing human cognitive faculties
as “primate minds with a hivish overlay,” Haidt elucidates his hope to provide
tools to help his readers better understand themselves and their neighbors, in
order to avoid the hypocrisy detailed in his reference of Matthew 7:3-5 (XXII, XXIII).
Opening Chapter 1 with a coming-of-age narrative of his venture into
moral psychology, Haidt explores the field’s foundations. First, he defines a
nativist approach to moral reasoning, the notion that ethics are innate
entities bestowed to individuals by genetics or God. He moves onto an empirical
approach, the view that humans learn all moral reasoning from authority figures
and societal structures. Next, Haidt examines a rationalist approach, the
prevailing popular social theory among modern psychologists of the past three
decades. A rational model holds that “kids figure out morality for themselves”
primarily through interactions with other children, and its precepts were
established through Jean Piaget’s studies of ethical developmental stages in
children (6). After delineating these three precedents, Haidt initiates his
argument for a new moral psychology model, social empiricism.
Through a series of anthropological examples, Haidt proves that often
human intuitions override logical reasoning, showing that our reasoning cannot
be understood simply in terms of inherent and acquired learning but must also
be comprehended through six natural moral foundations that meld somewhat by
learned social conventions. Declaring the interdependent relationship between
objective reasoning and moral judgment, Haidt establishes his resolve to prove
that oftentimes our perception shapes our logic, and our logic justifies our
natural emotional responses, not the other way around. In this way, he starts
to justify his tongue-in-cheek title that our minds are naturally righteous in
the sense that they have distinct ethical underpinnings but also in the sense
that they are self-righteously predisposed to clinging to their beliefs as
exclusively right and the opposing beliefs of others as objectively wrong.
This book, expectedly, is pretty heavy, and though I enjoy it, I think
it’s important after reading its contents thus far to reflect not only by
summarizing them but also by relating them to my own life, so as to understand
Haidt’s scientific theory on a more personal basis. Though I plan to do this
more extensively throughout my reading, I’d like to lay out my reasons for
choosing this piece in the same way that Haidt introduces his conception of the
social empiricist theory.
First, I have always thought of myself as a relatively open-minded
individual but struggled to reconcile this disposition with concise personal
ideologies. In other words, I feel that when I don’t “take a stand” on an issue
because I can see both sides, perhaps I am seeing both sides all too well,
because my motivated fellow Poli Sci major classmates perceive my views as
wishy-washy or weak.
In many ways, Haidt’s model justifies my logical “wishy-washy”
decisiveness because before reading this book, I had already distinguished essential moral foundations in my own life but recognized that other
people have different motivating factors. Haidt’s theory has clearly expounded
and interpreted these factors as moral foundations in a way that makes sense to
me, but it hardly remedies the hypocrisy seen in exchanges between
individuals who don’t appreciate the ethical foundations of others, a subset
that I would classify as the hefty majority of people.
To this point, even though I don’t think Haidt’s theory offers the
alchemical gold of remedying ideological disagreements, I do think that it will
at least help me pursue the vocation I already wished to practice as an
unbiased and judicial defender of legality and pursuant of objective justice in
a very subjective world. Through the lens of social empiricism, I hope to learn
to better logically deduce and negotiate between differing ideological
realities in order to one day be a more effective attorney, and I can’t wait to
read more to work towards this goal.
