Haidt Responds Bryan Caplan By Bryan Caplan, Mar 16 2010 SHARE POST: Don’t miss Jon Haidt’s response to my questions. It’s in the comments, but I reproduce it here in its entirety. Dear Bryan, and other commentators: The question you ask is one of the most important ones we’ve been trying to answer for the last 2 years. The original theory was not developed to understand politics; it was to understand cross cultural variation, while drawing on evolutionary psychology to help pick the best candidates for being true foundations upon which cultures can construct many contradictory moralities. That’s how we came up with the first 5. But once we applied it to politics, it quickly became clear that we were missing something about liberty/autonomy, and that fairness was much more complex than concerns about justice and equality (which liberals score higher on). As one of your readers commented, we do poorly by libertarians. But we’re about to fix that. If anyone wants to see the data as it grows, on the various kinds of liberty and various kinds of fairness, please go to www.yourmorals.org and take the “MFQ-Part B” NOw, as to whether liberals have the ingroup, authority, and purity foundations at all: As one of your readers said, it’s a matter of degree. So I’ve always thought that they have them, but don’t build nearly as much on them. But the story is different for each one: INGROUP: yes, liberals can do ingroup, but mostly just contra conservatives and racists. And they don’t do it terribly well. The Democratic Whip has a much harder job than the republican Whip. Social conservatives take to it so readily. Liberals and libertarians can do it, but not as readily or as reliably. Liberals in particular are universalists; they are morally opposed to tribalism, although they can kinda do liberal tribalism. So yes, liberals would consider voting for a republican as a kind of treason. AUTHORITY: This is the one that I think really is different. Many liberals tell me that we have authorities, but our authorities have to earn our respect, like a scientific authority. But i see this as something of a pun. The ethology of authority is related to dominance and submission, most primates do it, but conservative primates do it much more readily than liberal primates, and on the far left anti-authoritarianism is such a strong value. Dancing on MLK’s grave is extreme sacrlilege (see purity), it is not defying an order, defying the teacher, father, etc. I think this foundation might be one that some liberals lack completely, others have weakly. PURITY: I have long thought that liberal purity exists and is best found in liberal attitudes about the environment. I have a short blog post titled ‘in search of liberal purity’ here: http://www.yourmorals.org/blog/2010/02/in-search-of-liberal-purity/ So yes, your question about littering is a very good one, i might test it out if you give me permission. To see the current items that we are testing, please go to www.yourmorals.org and take the MFQ-C, which has items we are using to explore liberal purity. Bottom line: Moral Foundations Theory, in its first draft, has done a surprisingly good job of capturing the culture war, particularly the old one with the religious right. But it is incomplete, it is constantly being improved, and questions and criticisms such as yours are one of the most important ways that we improve it. We’re likely to come out with a revision in late 2010, based in part on what we find on the MFQ-B and C. Thanks for posing these questions, and inviting me to respond. jon
Mar 16 2010 Business Economics I Love Capitalism, Again David Henderson Driving home from skiing today--it was a gorgeous day in California, by the way--I saw a Bass Pro Shops in a city called Manteca. I had only seen it advertised on TV, but had never seen a real one. On TV it looked so huge that I thought the real ones could not be that big. Wrong. It really is that big. The place i... 9 Read More
Mar 16 2010 Cost-benefit Analysis "Everyone" Does Not Equal "Most Everyone" Bryan Caplan Robin replies to my recent post on Hanson's Fallacy:Few deals can guarantee to get everyone more of what they want, but by encouraging and enabling more better wider deals, the use of efficiency analysis sure seems to me to tend to get most everyone more of what they want. Isn't that good enough?Here's the reply ... 1 Read More
Mar 16 2010 Economic and Political Philosophy Haidt Responds Bryan Caplan Don't miss Jon Haidt's response to my questions. It's in the comments, but I reproduce it here in its entirety. Dear Bryan, and other commentators: The question you ask is one of the most important ones we've been trying to answer for the last 2 years. The origin... 18 Read More