Moral Psychology

The idea of moral psychology appeals to me on various levels. I like psychology and morality, given my ministry occupation, is also appealing. Moral psychology is defined as combining philosophy and psychology; you’d think religion might get tossed in there but perhaps it is seen as just a part of philosophy. But then I like philosophy as well, even taught in a community college for a bit.

I mentioned a bit ago I was reading The Rightous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion by Jonathan Haiht. It appealed to me as it is in essence what the blog is about. I’m about a quarter of the way through and have to admit I am a bit underwhelmed. It is a bit, quite a bit, of the old nature versus nurture argument where he comes out on the nature bit, with us being hardwired into our moral thinking. He uses the analogy of us riding an elephant (nurture) and when are to work with the elephant where it leads us (reason.) He mixes in the thinking of Plato, David Hume [“reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions and can never pretend to any other office than to serve and obey them.”] He sees a line between Plato and Immanuel Kant to Lawerence Kohlberg (the later a moral psychologist) as rational delusionists. He like Thomas Jefferson who he sees  as using a balanced model between reason and emotion. He sees Plato, Hume and Jefferson in need of the insights of Charles Darwin and his understanding of evolution.

Though a liberal in background he believes that conservatives have a boarder moral base, in terms of natural (nature) based moral behavior while liberals use less of these natural tools are are “western, educated, industrialized, rich (this amazed me) and democratic.” Or as he puts it, “Weird.” Haidt doesn’t seem to pay much attention to social issues such a racism and human rights and talks basically about us be hardwired from birth in terms of group morality; so we are selfish and groupish at the same time.

In a way he explains conservatism and its popularity but his argument leaves me hungering for a bit more meat and disappointed by his low regard for the role of reason in human moral thinking.

In the end it seems to me he points out some problems we have and asks us “to let us try and work it out.” But without much solid basis for doing so. But then I, unlike Hume, trust reason over emotion, yet feel emotion is an important guide, just not the most important. Both betray us but both can be used and enlightened by what we religionists would call grace; a divine outside power that dwells within all of us. I guess I just expected more. But I’ll keep plodding along with it.

 In the meantime I just got It’s the Middle Class Stupid, by James Carville and Stan Greenberg; it should be very interesting. It begins by saying, "We are writing this book because we failed and that's not good enough." (Meaning we have failed the middle class.)

If any of you have read this Haidt’s book I’d be interested your take on it.