Jonathan Haidt: creating imaginary victims to justify righteous beliefs

[VWdieselnightmare]

I'm listening to the audiobook of Jonathan Haidt's The Righteous Mind for my GC book group (I know audiobooks are cheating, sorry) So far it seems to be about the psychology of belief and why people do terrible things in the name of being moral and righteous.

https://www.waterstones.com/book/the-righteous-mind/jonathan-haidt/9780141039169

Just come to a bit where he talks about conducting an experiment in the US and South America, among different communities and classes and languages. He found that wherever he looked, certain people (not everyone) always took a moral right/ wrong stance, even if there was absolutely no logical reason to do so. And they did it by creating victims to justify their moral response.

One of the questions that was asked was whether a woman who cut up and destroyed her national flag in the privacy of her own home with no one else to see was doing something bad. Some people said 'Well, if her neighbour had seen her do it, he might be offended, so it's bad'. The interviewer would tell them that there were no onlookers. Yet even when the interviewees recognised that their attempts to create a victim to be offended were bogus, they didn't change their minds that this was wrong of the woman.

Here I'm roughly quoting Haidt:They said things like ‘I know this is wrong but I just can’t think of a reason why.’ They seemed to be morally dumbfounded, rendered speechless by their inability to render verbally what they knew intuitively. These subjects were reasoning, They were working quite hard at reasoning. But it wasn’t reasoning in search for truth, it was reasoning in support of their emotional reactions. It was reasoning as described by David Hume — a slave to passion.

This tendency to adopt a moral or authoritarian position that can't be justified rationally seems to explain a lot of what we've seen recently with the Jo Phoenix tribunal (We are Right, She is Wrong) and the TRAs, who can't debate so just shout at us. I saw the photos from Filia with the young women outside the venue with the banner saying something along the lines that feminism that doesn't include transwomen isn't feminism. Which I'm sure they sincerely believe.Last year I listened to a Radio 4 programme recommended here about how authoritarianism is a natural trait among 30% of the population.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000y7sq

Don't know where I'm going with this, except to conclude that there is a proportion of the population that would appear to be more inclined to irrational moral, religious and authoritarian conviction that they cling to a against all rational debate. And that these are people who will never be won over by debate or logical questioning, because they are working from intuition and passion, not from rational thought. Over to people who know more to pick up the ball or put me right.

My point, is that if you're a complete beginner at something, as a random person may well be a complete beginner at thinking about moral issues, then I think it's an unfair expectation to put them on the spot as part of an experiment, and it's way too soon to be calling anyone irrational in that situation.

I don't think a beginner, with a moral belief, should immediately abandon it, just because they can't give an answer in an experiment.

What if perhaps, you gave them a couple of books introducing moral philosophy, and they had more time to think about the issue, and they came back with an answer later?

So something like, "I think I can explain my intuition now and give some reasoning for it", perhaps?

I wonder if you're treating the question as a test, with a right and a wrong answer? That's not what it was about, from what I could make of it. It was about understanding how people come to think what they think. A lot of us (me included) automatically make judgments based on things we've been taught from our society, our family, our education, our community, our myths and legends. Often via feelings or instincts. I suppose all that most of us can hope for is that over the course of life we learn that there may be reasons for thinking more deeply, or thinking differently.

@VWdieselnightmare

I wonder if you're treating the question as a test, with a right and a wrong answer?

No, I'm just saying the experiment doesn't mean much if you use an example like that.

What does it really tell us?

Some random person can't immediately justify a position when put on the spot.

I would be more concerned, for example, about Amnesty International claiming that the death penalty is a human rights violation, as that seems more obviously irrational.

Could you unroll your thinking on that — the AI death penalty issue?

What does it really tell us?

It tells us what people's instinctive response is and identifies what's influencing that instinctive response. It tells us how people do and don't rationalise. If Brexit taught us anything, it's how easily people are led by their instinctive response and how those who understand that can use their knowledge to influence a referendum.

15 years ago if you'd told people that children would be taught in UK schools that sex is a spectrum, humans can change sex, it's possible to be born in the wrong body and that a man has the right to call himself a woman, and a lesbian, and anyone who thinks otherwise is a hateful person, you'd have called them a mad fantasist. Now it's happened. We are still XX and XY chromosomes, men still have penises and women still have babies, men continue to assault and rape women at the old rates, but among people with influence a large proportion seem to have been persuaded that belief in gender is more important than the truth of biology. Understanding how this has happened is important.

I'm really enjoying this thread. Thank you OP!

Peter Bohossian's street epistemology provides interesting case studies in this area. The most recent one I watched, on YouTube, was from Australia. Two women were conflating their arguments and positions. Essentially, their views were based on a moral argument but they thought they had critically reasoned arguments to support their moral stance (maybe they thought their moral stance had arisen from critical reasoning).

During the discussion, when required to critically evaluate their views, they flipped back to moral reasoning when their arguments lacked substance. They didn't appear to recognise that this was the case, they seemed to conflate all the bits of information that appealed to them into a single justification, leaving them blind to the flaws in their thinking and not open to changing their views.

The street epistemology stuff is frustrating if you want to see people's views being held to account. I don't think this is what Boghossian sets out to do. He often asks a closing question whereby he asks participants what they think he thinks (he doesn't reveal this or try to change participant's views). Where participants don't engage in critical reasoning, they think his views are counter to theirs. I think this may be because they do have some insight into the weakness of their arguments but aren't honest with themselves about this. I think that this unrecognised self doubt leads to anticipating others won't agree.

I have been heartened in recent times about the discussions linked to single sex sports. More people are now recognising that the term 'inclusion' can require exclusion (e.g to include some people in some activities, this requires excluding others) and that the pay off of inclusion can be fairness. Whilst I strongly disagree with the view that transwomen should be included in the female category because this is morally right as opposed to lame arguments about this being fair.

Thank you. I'm feeling my way through this carefully because quite a lot of it's new to me and I don't have the language (and therefore the ability to think in depth) that I really need to get burrow in. Off to find Peter Boghossian. He was one of those who participated in the grievance studies hoax, wasn't he?

Is it possible to learn to think like people like him and Helen Pluckrose or do you have to be born that way?

I think it's a skill that is developed from being around people who model it and/or from having people ask you questions and discuss your ideas and thinking.

A key feature of being able to critically reason is the ability to stay emotionally regulated so you can use the thinking and reasoning areas of the brain.

Peter B has written a book called How to Have Impossible Conversations. You might find this helpful.

Thank you. Yes, trying to stay calm and not feel cornered and under attack is something I would like to think I've got better at in the last decade. Thanks for the recommendation. I've just heard that my plans to go away for a week at Christmas have had to be cancelled, so perhaps I'll reserve that time for some intensive reading and thinking and maybe start the new year a bit better informed.

They aren't a random person, but rather they have taken it upon themselves to think about moral issues.

They have had plenty of time to think about this issue.

They aren't just holding a personal opinion, but are making the strong claim of a "human right" and trying to push that moral policy on everyone else.

Remember, they aren't just worried about the risk of executing the innocent, or complaining about the excessive use of the death penalty by some governments.

They are saying that someone who is 100% guilty of raping and murdering 10 women has a "right to life" and it would violate their rights to execute them.

And as far as I know, they don't have any strong justification for that, or even any argument really?

Are they saying that they are willing to debate it and possibly change their mind?

So that seems to be way worse than a random person, that has a moral opinion, that they can't immediately justify when put on the spot as part of an experiment.

@VWdieselnightmare

It tells us what people's instinctive response is and identifies what's influencing that instinctive response.

But I don't think we do understand their response from such an experiment.

Are they just influenced by a meaningless taboo?

Or are they influenced by a moral principle that actually makes arguable sense, even if they can't explain themselves at the time of an experiment?

Are they just being irrational?

Or actually, is it perfectly reasonable that they don't immediately abandon a moral belief in this circumstance?

I presume that Amnesty objects to the death penalty on all sorts of human rights-based bases — not least because of the racial bias so obvious in many judiciaries, and the issues involved in trying to ascertain the truth. Many innocent people have been gaoled and killed by the state: goes without saying really.

I wish I had time to read more about Amnesty's thinking on the subject but I'm back at work after Covid and dealing with a backlog of stuff.

not least because of the racial bias so obvious in many judiciaries, and the issues involved in trying to ascertain the truth. Many innocent people have been gaoled and killed by the state: goes without saying really.

No, they just think it's always wrong in principle.

Nothing to do with racial bias or the risk of executing the innocent. They may also mention those things perhaps, but that's not their justification.

Isn't there an idea for pedophiles to be given access to AI child porn and sex dolls fashioned as under age. How would this fit into these distinctions here?

Arguments against would be slippery slope / normalisation that could ripple out and affect actual children in population - you'd have to have solid information that it decreased inclination and posed no threats to wider population and getting that passed ethic committees would be very hard.

I know euthanise is popular on MN - and I'm not intrinsically opposed it but having experienced medical people round elderly relatives with underlying conditions who really want to live I have real practical concerns which proponents dismiss with there would be safeguards but doesn't actual reassure me.

I did heard on Radio 4 a proponent for getting rid of prisons - and that would be about the only thing that could make me support the death penalty. I think there's always going to be doubt in any human system, it doesn't act as a deterrent and bad people should suffer being locked away for their entire lives. I think without some kind of punishment society will be damaged. But I've been raised in a society that's slowly moved away from death penalty and has prisons- so I've been told about miscarriages of justices and had explanations/stories of why we've done that presented in many forms to me throughout my life and - so that informs my views.

I do remember some OU philosophy homework part of their then social science foundation course - why was it morally wrong to eat people and best I could come up with was kuru a prion disease believed to be spread by cannibalistic funeral practises. Plan crash victims eating dead bodies while awaiting rescue in Andes seemed unpleasant but a no brainer for me .

Flags seem odd as I'm British - but I can see an argument for not destroying items religious or secular that others hold dear in society - but if they don't know and it can't offend them that there's no issue I can see. If I'd be raised in USA I'd likely have absorbed their society attitude to flags very likely assumed that's universal and have a very different view.

I think obvious a section of the population needs belief or rules- otherwise religion wouldn't have been quite so popular so long across most of human societies. Secular societies are a more modern thing.

Innate mortality is harder though - as societies across history have had huge morality differences. I think some chimp and toddler studies do suggest we have some innate fairness monitor but beyond that we pick things up from society around us often subconsciously as we learn the societal rules and knowing why societies hold such views can be complex to unpick as cultures evolve over time.

an idea for pedophiles to be given access to AI child porn and sex dolls fashioned as under age.

Rape is the goal for which porn is the rehearsal.

Transgressions rarely remain in lane because the familiar fails to deliver the same level of transgressive thrill and there is a need for escalation to recapture it.

I believe they take the view that the right to life is the most fundamental of all rights, and in fact basis of all other human rights.

I suspect many people hold that as an intuitive position, and others as a faith based position (ie, they learned it.) But it has certainly be argued persuasively from a philosophical perspective.

Pragmatic reasons against it - like the impossibility of real fairness with such an unchangeable outcome - are separate as you say. These are the go-to arguments for many though, sometimes even though they believe in the right to life, because it is easier to make the pragmatic argument.

I think it's actually quite interesting how many political progressives have a rights based concept of social justice, but don't know much about how the concept of human rights is argued from an intellectual perspective.

I think most of us are going to agree with a general "right to life" principle.

You can easily be a skeptic of moral claims if you want, but it seems like a sensible enough principle that would be widely accepted.

However, I'm not sure how someone could show that you can't have an exception for the death penalty.

Presumably you need exceptions for war and self defence. Maybe euthanasia.

You could argue that self defence is necessary to protect life in a way that capital punishment isn't. You could say that you have consent for euthanasia when you mostly don't for executions.

But still, if you allow exceptions, you need to rule out that you can't have an exception for the death penalty also.

People have a general right not to be imprisoned. But of course that's exactly what we take away in response to a criminal conviction.

@TripleDaisySummer

and bad people should suffer being locked away for their entire lives.

You seem to be endorsing the retributive theory of punishment. Is that correct?

You think it's a good aim in itself to make criminals suffer, regardless of whether it benefits society?

Are you willing to then make prison conditions worse, to increase their suffering?

And that these are people who will never be won over by debate or logical questioning, because they are working from intuition and passion, not from rational thought.

To be honest I think that's all of us at times, depending what the argument is about. I am suspicious of this identifiable "proportion of the population" theory - maybe Haidt just hasn't found all the beliefs that other people cling to.

You might find Alison Lurie's novel "Imaginary Friends" amusing. What happens to a group of apocalyptics when their apocalypse date comes and goes - and what happens to the ethnologists who have been studying the group and have theories about how the group will react.

@AmaryllisNightAndDay

To be honest I think that's all of us at times

Yeah I think that's correct to a degree when it comes to morality.

I think we are all working from "intuitions" that can't be strictly proven, and in some moral disputes neither side may have the arguments to really be able to "win" in the sense that a reasonable person should be switching sides.

Presumably Haidt thinks that there is a section of the population that is unusually irrational and stubborn, and sticking to taboos for no reason. As I said above, I'm not sure that his experiment is actually showing people to be irrational.

There are certainly some people that would often be thought to be especially irrational in moral matters, like a fundamentalist Christian that just takes whatever the Bible says.

Now clearly, if the Bible isn't really the "word of God", then they are making a mistake to just go along with all of its moral ideas.

So we understand how they could easily be going wrong; but that then brings up the question of whether they have a justified religious belief, and while I don't think they do and I'm not a fan of Christian fundamentalism, that gets at least somewhat complex if they start appealing to things like having a "personal relationship with Jesus".

And really, if a Christian thinks that homosexuality is wrong because the Bible says so, I'm not sure this is really any worse than much of the left-wing declaring that "trans rights are human rights", "no debate". Or indeed, as I said, I doubt that Amnesty International should be viewed as rational either when it comes to the death penalty.

Personally I think that moral responsibility and moral duty requires libertarian free will, so moral beliefs are going to be very disputed here.

*Rudderneck"

The way to guard against it, she said, was that people needed to know the foundational moral principles they were working from, and know why they accepted those principles, and what their implications were. And that children needed to be taught this too.

When I was at school, I used to argue constantly ( politely) with my evangelical RE teacher. He was a young Earth creationist, he used to hand out tracts with things like "Pi has been calculated to a million numbers, there are more to come, therefore, God."

He was trying to convince us that humans walked the Earth with dinosaurs and told us about the "human" footprints next to the dinosaur ones in Kansas (?). I pointed out that National Geographic had an article, in which people had admitted to carving them.

His answer was that it was a moral lie to save children from the clutches of Satan and therefore, a good and moral act. I pointed out that he'd previously told us that lying is sinful and he replied, "Not in this case, it's for the good of mankind."

He also said that fossils were forgeries, manufactured by Satan, to take people away from God. But the dinosaur footprints were real, if course.

It's impossible to argue with such a mindset, with someone who can hold an infinite number of contradictory opinions, to suit whatever they are arguing for, or against.

I think if you allow murders and rapist to walk free with no punishment you'll get more crimes- the deterrent is wider than individuals.

Ideally prisons should reform - (man's argument I was reacting to was they suck at it) at worse they keep dangerous people of the streets for a time - and rest of population understands there are consequences to crime.

So no I don't want worse prisons but the argument on radio 4 I was reacting to was no prisons and all community punishments or no punishment but understanding and frankly I see that a recipe for vigilantly justice and law and order break down in society.

The punishment our society has arrived at for serious crime is loss of liberty - so yes they should suffer that as our courts decide - as that is the punishment element.

Personally I don't think prisons should be worse as I'm fine with the punishment being loss of liberty and prisons should get better at reforming who they can. Wider society getting people to care may be harder - as some will take view that prison should be as bad as possible but then I think the death penalty is popular in wider population in abstract form - specific cases less so.

Its' like defunding the police in USA - can see why some wanted it and many of their police services need desperate reform. However it's led to rise in crime because deterrent of getting caught and prosecuted that were there are gone in many areas that did that.

The result in some area big retailers pulling out of often poorer areas because losses and risk to staff are so high - leaving entire communities much worse off to point Chicago was talking about state opening grocery stores and politicians who backed defunded the police hiring private security to avoid robbery and getting public backlash in response.

I think it's true that no one is perfectly rational all the time.

But clear moral reasoning can be taught. Some are naturally better at it, but most people can get better at it, and understand how to question their own process. All that is really useful.

I also think the mistakes people make can be culturally taught. So that is something to guard against.

@Rudderneck

But clear moral reasoning can be taught. Some are naturally better at it, but most people can get better at it, and understand how to question their own process. All that is really useful.

Yes, but I still think with morality that while improving reasoning is a good thing, it's an area where there is a lot you can't prove, and there may be ethical disputes that you can't solve by people being better informed or having improved reasoning skills.

Some individuals may change positions because of learning new arguments or going over their thinking; but sometimes, different positions may be equally reasonable, or equally non rational, whatever. I don't think morality is subjective, but some areas might be I suspect, so maybe there isn't even a correct answer to some issues.