Explain and assess Haidt’s ‘moral foundations’ theory

IntroductionThis es regularise entrust explain and valuate good Foundations Theory (MFT), which was originally positive by Haidt, and which he has since worked on with a number of collaborators. The start-off part of this essay will outline the philosophic background of the theory, crabbyly its relationship to Continental rationalism and British empiricism. This will be followed by an explanation and description of Haidts accessible intelligenceist Model (SIM), which provides the essential mechanism by which MFT functions. Next will cut an unpacking and explanation of the general claims of MFT, and the specific foundations it ventureulates. Finally, in that respect will be an sound judgement of closing to of the various critiques of the theory, during which its strengths and weaknesses will be considered. It will be conclude that MFT is a strong theory on the whole, which builds on stiff philosophical and scientific foundations and provides good descriptive represen tation of lesson systems. MFT rejects the rationalist depression that chasteity tidy sum be accessed by a priori ca substance abuse. Put simply, on that point argon four main justifications for this (1) there ar two cognitive processes that occur in servicemans debate and intuition the former of which has been oeremphasized (2) abstract thought is frequently motivated by other concerns (3) the cerebrate process fly the coops to cause post hoc justifications, even though we baffle the illusion of objective reasoning and (4) chaste action covaries with moral emotion more frequently than with moral reasoning. This is the heritage of Continental philosophy, whose champions were figures such(prenominal) as Descartes and Kant. The philosophical forerunners to MFT were the British empiricist philosophers, especially Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Hume, and Smith. These men conceptualised, to quote Hume, that Reason is, and ought only to be the slave of the passions, and stu b never pretend to any other office than to serve and succeed them. In philosophy, this position now falls within the school of intuitionism. This refers to the turn over that there ar moral truths and that when people grasp these truths they do so not by a process of ratiocination and reflection provided sooner by a process more akin to perception. The friendly element comes in because intuition occurs in relation to other people. As Haidt puts it, when faced with a social demand for a verbal justification, virtuoso becomes a lawyer trying to build a case rather than a judge searching for the truth. Based on this reason heritage, Haidt unquestionable the companionable Intuitionist Model (SIM). It is important to explain this flop because the SIM is the prequel to MFT, and provides the mechanism by which the latter works. There are a series of conjoins in the SIM that explain how people relate to moral problems. The maiden is the original judgement link. The model prop oses that moral judgments bet in brain automatically and effortlessly as the result of moral intuitions. The second is post hoc reasoning. This entails moral reasoning (rather than judgement), which is an effortful process in which individuals search for acquit for an existing, intuitive moral judgement. Research has revealed that everyday reasoning is heavy impair by the biased search only for reasons that support ones already-stated hypothesis. The third is the reasoned perspective link. This is the process by which the individual verbalises their reasoning in an attempt to persuade others of the validity of their already-made position. This reasoning can or sotimes affect the views of others, save this rarely happens because moral judgements are not base on logical arguments but on intuition. It has been hypothesised that persuasion, when it occurs, is effective because it elicits new intuitive judgements in the listener. The importance of using affective persuasion to change affectively ground attitudes has been demonstrated by Edwards and von Hippel. The fourth is the social persuasion link. Due to the particular that people are so receptive to the development of group norms, the virtuous fact that friends, allies, and acquaintances have made a moral judgment exerts a direct influence on others, even if no reasoned persuasion is used. This whitethorn indicate only outward conformity on occasion, but researchers have shown that private judgements can often be instanter influenced by the views of others. There are two additional links that are hypothesised. matchless is the reasoned judgment link by which people may at times reason their focus to a judgment by sheer force of logic, overriding their initial intuition. This tends to occur, however, when the initial intuition is weak and processing capacity is high. In other cases, it frequently leads to a kind of dualist way of thinking, where reasoned judgment is revealed verbally but the in tuition continues to operate. Inte lie iningly, on this point MFT diverges from the moral theory of Hume and the argument from excellent intuition. If this link does exists, there is no explanation of how one can reason their way to a intend of premises or axioms that can be used to support logic argument unless, of course, they reason in a circle. The other link is the private reflection link, through with(predicate) which moral reasoning can have an indirect causal effect on moral judgement by triggering a new intuition. This is said to be wherefore region-taking is so effective in creating new moral judgments. As Haidt puts it, Simply by putting oneself into the shoes of another person, one may instantly feel pain, sympathy, or other vicarious emotional responses. MFT makes some(prenominal) broad claims, which will be presented here in no particular revise. Firstly, it rejects the assumption of monism that all moral systems are ultimately reducible to a single goal or pri nciple, most uncouthly generalised as forms of justice, pleasure or happiness. Instead, it is pluralist and contends that there are numerous (but finite) basic values or virtues. As Isaiah Berlin put it, there is a plurality of ideals, as there is a plurality of cultures and of temperaments. This is derived from the fact that it is heavily influenced by evolutionary biology, especially the concepts of kin selection and reciprocal altruism. It too builds on more recent work by de Waal (1996), Ridley (1996), among others. As there are a multitude of adaptive challenges faced by human beings, it seems likely that there are also numerous dissimilar psychological tools fitted for a word form of conceptions. The second claim is intuitionism, which has already been discussed at some length. To reiterate briefly, it is the assertion that moral judgments, like other evaluative judgments, tend to happen quickly, without any considerable regard for reasoning or drawn out evaluation. Thi s aspect is encapsulated by Haidts (2001) SIM. Moral reasoning (as opposed to moral judgment) is generally utilised for strategic purposes in order to to explain, defend and justify our intuitive moral reactions to others. The third claim is nativism, which is the vox populi that there is a set of unconditional predispositions within human beings (innate in this case means organized in advance of experience). These are determined by genetic inheritance, but the first potation of moral development is malleable and is changed during electric razorhood and to an extent even during adulthood. whole meal flour et al. employ the metaphor of writing a book, distinguishing between natures first adumbrate and the editing process that begins with experience. Morality, therefore, is innate and highly underage on environ amiable influences. The belief that nature has installed a kind of zeal in certain species, one of which is humans, is suggested by studies of rhesus monkeys conducted by Mineka and produce (1988). whole wheat flour et al. (2012) think of this innate organization as being apply by sets of related modules which work together to guide and constrain responses to each particular problem. The final claim is that worship is influenced by cultural learning. This takes places through a set of learning modules, which are innate and can be used to build on ones genetic inheritance. For example, the tilt to bow in deference or respect is common to many cultures, but this is adapted to locally-specific cultural contexts and by the time a Hindi girl reaches adulthood, she will have developed culturally-specific knowledge that makes her automatically pioneer bowing movements when she encounters, say, a respected politician for the first time. In an American household, however, this foundation might be dropped early on. Despite both girls starting signal off with the same sets of universal learning modules.the universal (and incomplete) first draft of the moral judgement gets filled in and revised so that the child can successfully navigate the moral matrix he or she actually experiences. Different societies use different foundations to build their moralities, and some use all of them. MFT, therefore, is an intuitionist theory contending that human moral systems are the confederacy of innate predispositions and cultural learning. Additionally, judgements are made rapidly on the al-Qaeda of a plurality of in-built mechanisms, which have been hardwired into humans over the course of our species evolution. The rest of this essay will present, explain, and assess, in no particular order, the specific foundations postulated by MFT. There are supposedly five or six empirically supported foundations for moral judgements, but MFT allows for others being discovered in the future. The first is the care/harm foundation. Human offspring are unco dependent, and for an unusually long time and the intuitive reactions of females have been opti mized to detect signs of suffering, distress, or neediness for the purpose of raising more offspring. The original triggers of the Care/harm foundation are visual and auditory signs of suffering, distress, or neediness expressed by ones own child, but they can be activated by other children, baby animals, stuffed toys with childlike qualities, or descriptions of suffering. This foundation leads to the creation of equipment casualty such as kind and cruel, which are valued other than by different cultures (e.g., classical Sparta vs. Buddhist societies). The second is the fairness/ chess foundation. Social animals face non-zero-sum games in which it is advantageous to cooperate. Creatures whose minds are organized in advance of experience to be highly sensitive to evidence of dishonesty and cooperation, and to react with emotions that compel them to play tit for tat, had an advantage over those who had to figure out their next move using their general intelligence. Social assistant s with reputations for certain types of behaviour are therefore labelled with words such as fair, just, and trustworthy. The third is the loyalty/ lese majesty foundation. It was advantageous for our ancestors to form cohesive groups when competing for territory and resources. This same behaviour can be seen in troops of chimpanzees. So humans have developed an innate predisposition to form groups. This manifests today in numerous areas, from patriotism to sports and brand loyalty. The fourth is the authority/subversion foundation. Dominance hierarchies are common among many primates, and the ability to recognise and react by forming strategic relationships yielded an evolutionary advantage. Modules of the human mind in this foundation explain why we aim to many useful but constraining societal structures, such as the police force and political leaders. The varied development of this foundation explains why different societies (modern-day China vs. America) or groups (social conser vatives vs. liberals) value authority in different ways. The fifth is the sanctity/degradation foundation. Human evolution carried adaptive challenges, such as moving from tree-based to ground-based living, living in larger, denser groups, and eating more meat, some of which was scavenged. This undetermined us to a greater number of pathogens and parasites, and we therefore developed a pre-emptory, in-built sensitivity to factors other than the sensory properties of potential foods, friends, and mates. Disgust and the behavioral immune system have come to undergird a variety of moral reactions, e.g., to immigrants and sexual deviants There are numerous comments of MFT, most of which are directed at one of the four main claims undergirding it nativism, plurality, cultural learning, and intuitionism. One problem with nativism, for example, is that it is difficult to determine the extent to which the mind is hardwired. As graham et al., put it opinions range widely from minimalist positions, which say that there is barely any writing on the first draft of the mind, to maximalist positions such as massive modularity Indeed, the ambiguity here has led some to criticise MFT, and nativism in general, on the grounds that it lacks empirical neuroscientific evidence for the existence of modules. However, this is not fairish at present. Given that the field is yet to find a set of genes that, collectively, explains 5% of the variance in how tall people are what casualty is there that anyone will find a set of genes that code for mental modules (such as loyalty or sanctity) whose expression is far more casing to cultural influence than is height? There is also considerable criticism of the emphasis MFT places on intuitionism. For example, some turn over that that intuition and reasoning are best seen as partners in a dance, in which either partner can lead and the other will follow. However, whatever the prominent role of reason, this seems misleading at the very least. As has been referenced already in this essay, and as Hume showed in his Treatise, it is not clear how reason can be the first principles from which logical argument follows. Moral axioms cannot be given a logical foundation, and to the extent that they exist in nature and are hardwired, they cannot be expressed. Therefore, they are beyond realm of reason by their very nature. To say that reasoning can lead when it is necessarily guided by intuitive first principles is therefore unsupportable. Interesting critiques come from the monists, who disagree with the pluralism hypothesis. Gray et al. believe that the care/harm foundation is the only one that is truly foundational. Graham et al. (2012) call this Procrustean, citing the fact that certain moral judgements, such as disgust, appear not to be accounted for by the care/harm foundation. Their dominance in this matter, however, is arguably misplaced. Disgust over, say, a dirty environment could be seen as a cause of harm. P erhaps those creatures with a predisposition to avoid grimy environments encountered fewer pathogens, for example, or were at less risk of being exposed to small but dangerous creatures such as spiders and snakes. Clearly, emotions, such as disgust, can potentially be explained by the care/harm foundation. The fuss here arises in attempting to make bold comment about the way our ancestors perceived the links between various phenomena and their effects. While it is possible to argue that matters of disgust have little to do with harm, perhaps there is link that has not yet been discovered. Some critics suggest that there should also be an oppression/liberty foundation. This is the potential sixth foundation being worked on by Haidt. Others point to the fact that MFT might be missing a waste/inefficiency foundation. These critiques focus on the particular pluralisms chosen for MFT. This is really a matter of fine-tuning, rather than any fundamental. This essay has sought to explain a nd assess Haidts MTF. It has emerged that its central claims are extremely well-founded. The SIM has strong roots that ascertain back to the empirical tradition in Britain and which still have not been successfully overturned. With the developments in psychology, neuroscience, and evolutionary biology, both intuitionism and nativism rest on firm foundations. There are philosophical and other objections that can be targeted at the pluralism element of MFT. This is not to say that it is incorrect but rather that the confidence with which the claim is made is not justified. This essay has not sought to manoeuvre deontological critiques of the MFT. There are those who would argue that MFT is asking the wrong questions, namely what morality is rather than what it should be. However, given that this problem was so adequately dealt with by Hume in his Treatise, it seems appropriate that scholars building on his legacy should develop a descriptive moral theory instead.BibliographyBerlin, Isaiah, My intellectual path in H. Hardy (ed.), The forefinger of Ideas 1-23, Princeton, NJ Princeton University Press, 2001Bruner, Jerome, The process of education, Cambridge, MA Harvard University Press, 1960Davis, Jody L.., & Rusbult, Caryl, E. Attitude alignment in close relationships, journal of Personality and Social psychological science, 81 (2001), pp. 65-84Edwards, Kari., & von Hippel, William, Hearts and minds The priority of affective versus cognitive factors in person perception, Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, 21 (1995), pp. 996-1011.Graham, Jesse, Haidt, Jonathan, Koleva, Sena., Motyl, Matt., Iyer, Ravi, Wojcik, Sean P. and Ditto, Peter. H, MoralFoundations Theory The Pragmatic Validity of Moral Pluralism, Advances in Experimental Social Psychology (2012)Gray, Kurt, Young, Liana, and Waytz, Adam, Mind perception is the essence of morality, Psychological Inquiry, 23, (2012), pp. 101-124Greenwald, Anthony. G., and Banaji, Mahzarin. R, Implicit social cognit ion, Psychological Review, 102, (1995), pp. 4-27Haidt, Jonathan, The righteous mind Why good people are divided by political science and religion. New York Pantheon, 2012Haidt, Jonathan, The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail A Social Intuitionist Approach to Moral Judgment, Psychological Review, Vol. 108. No. 4 (2001), pp. 814-834Joyce, Richard, The Evolution of Morality, MIT Press, Cambridge, MA, 2005 Mineka, Susan, & Cook, M., Social learning and the acquisition of snake fear in monkeys, in Thomas. R. Zentall &John. B. G. Galef (Eds.), Social learning Psychological and biological perspectives (pp. 51-74). Hillsdale, N. J. Lawrence Erlbaum, 1988Narvaez, Darcia, Moral complexity The fatal attraction of truthiness and the importance of mature moral functioning, Perspectives on Psychological Science, 5 (2010), pp. 163-181Perkins, David. N., Farady, Mike., & Bushey, B., Everyday reasoning and the roots of intelligence in Voss, James F.,Perkins, David N., and J. W. Segal (Eds.), Inf ormal reasoning and education (pp. 83-105). Hillsdale, NJ Erlbaum, 1991Skitka, Linda J. The psychological foundations of moral conviction, in Wright, Jennifer and Sarkissian Ryan H (eds) Advances in Moral Psychology (pp.267-281), Bloomsbury academic Press, 2010 Accessed 09/03/2014 http//tigger.uic.edu/lskitka/Foundations.pdfSuhler, Christopher. L., & Churchland, Patricia, Can innate, modular foundations explain moralityChallenges for Haidts moral foundations theory, Journal of Cognitive Neuroscience, 23(9) (2011), pp. 2103-2116Williams, Bernard, Rationalism in P. Edwards (Ed.) The encyclopedia of philosophy (Vols. 7-8, pp. 69-75) New York Macmillan, 1967