I recently became embroiled in a dialogue over a book review
I wrote for +Amazon.com. #The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by
Politics and Religion (Kindle Edition).The author of the book in question,
+Jonathan Haidt, created what he termed a “Moral Matrix” and used a very clever
test to evaluate there beliefs of self-proclaimed conservatives verse the
beliefs of liberals in terms of what he dubs as morals. The test is based on comparison
of response times to questions one agrees with verses response to those that
the subject did not agree with. Psychologists have proved the technique
reliable. It appears to be a more direct avenue to the brain; hence, more
reliable than galvanic skin responses (lie detectors) are.
The book author formulated an array of questions to evaluate
his six-factor “matrix”. In my non-professional judgment, the study was very
good and well run; nonetheless, in the book review, I questioned the author’s genetic
basis of four of his six-factors, suggesting that his “moral” foundations were
a product of reasoning and not a reference to fundamental genetic traits. I
made the statement that the foundation of social organization is politics and
that modern man divides their politics based on tendencies toward selfishness
or altruism; conservatism verses liberalisms. The six-factors the author scored
were harm/suffering,
fairness/injustice, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion,
and sanctity/degradation. Only two of
which I could accept as being fundamental, harm and authority: “suffering”
and “subversion” could be fundamental but only if one attributes suffering and
subversion to evolving altruism. The rest are products of reason.
My antagonists objected saying that the book author
accurately defended his categories as having a “genetic” and not a “reasoned”
basis. One respondent replied that my review was “a classic example of a
three-foundation world view stated as fact.” My position was ‘Selfishness, the
core of fiscal conservatism,’ and ‘altruism, as such, which is the core of
liberalism, and ‘if what ever does harm or leads to harm, it is amoral’ and
then used to (attempt to) refute other views”. His quotation of my view was only
accurate to a point. My review was “an attempt” to point out what the book author
did not seem to recognize; our core behavior is a product of genetic attributes,
consequently are innate traits, that scientists can define, buried deep in our
genomes. Our interpretation of these genetic traits is not the same thing as
the traits.
Humankind uses the power of reason to fit their behavior to
a biased agenda—in terms of emotions, psychologists have studied this unconscious-conscious
relationship extensively. Certainly, there is no more biased field for this
mental exercise than politics. The more I thought about our exchange over the book
review, I realized that my antagonists framed their arguments according to
politics. Reviewing the book, not from a scientific view as I did the first
time, but from a political perspective, it is decidedly pro-conservative. As an
aside, the use of the term selfishness to describe conservatives is not a pejorative;
how can it be if liberals are also selfish; it only a matter of degree.
The author scored conservatives as somehow being of a higher
moral standard on all six factors. Of
course, there was variation and liberal scored as high as conservative on a
few. However, to make my point about bias, insert the word ‘individual’ in
front of each of the individual members of the six pairs of words, and evaluate
the strength of partisan responses in terms of the sense of me, my family, my
group, and my nation. Now, remove the word
‘individual and insert the word ‘our’ in its place. Then evaluate the strengths
of conservative verses liberal responses to our families, our groups, our
nation, and us. My contention is that the experimental results would be
markedly different.
It was a great discussion and is still ongoing. However, my objective
here is to elaborate on my thoughts about the matter well beyond and in greater
depth then what a discussion of a book review would merit.
Physical anthropologist tells us the brains of our ancestors
started to enlarge two and one half to three million years ago. Scientists
generally accept the idea that human transition from bestiality started with
the enlarging brain—cause and affect argument aside. Animals do not have any
degree of reasoning ability much beyond reflexive response associated with
survival. Among many others shared animal traits, the more basic ones are
gregariousness, hierarchy dominance, and greed. All animals are greedy, in the
rough and tumble world of scarce food resources; it is how they survive. It may
be difficult for non-biologists to think about this but bacteria, plants, or
animals all share this selfish trait—obviously mindlessly. The ones that can
best extract nutrition from the available resources is the one that survives
being a rootlet in the soil or an animal in the forest. It is the foundation of
survival of the fittest.
Such things as “shared intentions” are not found in the
animal world; as the author said, you will never see two apes carrying a log.
Students of animal behavior would probably argue the point about animals
cooperating or not, but it seems essential true; people have learned to
cooperate and animals have not. Animals in a grazing herd could care less about
the “justice” associated with its neighbor having or not having enough to eat. Each
animal has the “liberty” to wander off but doesn’t. A lion eats to satiety while
he is “justified” in fighting off strangers. In contrasts, as part of our
humanization, we developed a sense of sharing resources perhaps as direct extensions
of instinctual gregariousness and nurturing; nurturing of infants, then
adolescents, then family, then fellow tribe members, then fellow humans (and
domestic animals), and then states or nations. When in life does selfishness or
altruism replace instinctual nurturing? When does group concern replace individualism?
Sharing is termed altruism, which is a form of “shared
intentions” well beyond reciprocal reciprocity so frequently observed in ape
behavior. All animals are greedy but none are altruistic other than in the case
of a nurturing mother. When I projected these thought to politics, for me it
translates to conservatives are more greedy and liberal are more altruistic
with the caveat that no human—short of mental illness—is entirely devoid of
either trait. If you were asked to explain why you are greedy or why you give
away what you don’t need or even gave away what you do need, you would generate
reasons. Logically, your reasons may seem “reasonable” but are not really a
true reflection of why you acted the way you did.
As a biologist, I believe that “ontogeny recapitulates
phylogeny”; remember that little ditty from biology class in grade school. I
think scientists could examine the evolution of the brain following that same
concept. It would require a drug that could peel away layers of evolutionary
development as it exist in the cerebral cortex eventually leaving only the brain
stem, it would be very revealing. It might surprise you but I believe alcohol
is that drug. I have watched educated, sophisticated people transform
themselves in to a state where all that remained was hunger, fighting, and sex
drive before respiratory arrest set in and death ensued. There are experiments cited
in the literature where scientists have examined personal political beliefs
before and following the ingestion of alcohol. Liberals became more
conservative. The experiments were terminated before liberals and conservatives
both end up in the same place—a committee on the use of human subjects in
research controls that. It would be a fascinating experiment if Dr. Haidt were to
do the alcohol experiment using his proven studied “moral matrix” protocol. My
hypothesis, as measure by his standards, is that liberal participants would become
more moral (again by his standard) before they passed out, conservative would
become more conservative and Rand Paul would not change.
URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated
No comments:
Post a Comment