[RD] Jonathan Haidt's moral foundations test

[Synobun]

'Care' tends to be shared by everyone. But in a zero-sum world, it's the ratio of how much the other moral senses interfere with the care instinct.

A really great example is the urge to punish, where punishment itself is a desired outcome. Liberals tend to view punishment as a combination of deterrence and rehabilitation, and conservatives will agree. But there's also a justice component that liberals actually just cannot perceive as clearly, a moral good in and of itself.

"Cannot perceive" or "disagrees"?

 

[Farm Boy]

Care can legit be overdone. It's a kind of suffocation.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

"Cannot perceive" or "disagrees"?

When confronted by a necessary evil, do you focus on the evil or the necessity?

 

[Synobun]

When confronted by a necessary evil, do you focus on the evil or the necessity?

The necessity, but the question of necessity is a tricky one. I've had discussions with a few people who state that the death penalty is a "necessary evil". We seem to agree on it being an evil but rarely on it being necessary.

 

[danjuno]

Your scores:

• Care 86%

• Loyalty 44%

• Fairness 81%

• Authority 31%

• Purity 36%

• Liberty 39%

Your strongest moral foundation is Care.

Your morality is closest to that of a Left-Liberal.

 

[cardgame]

I also would have liked more context to a lot of these questions and therefore gave a lot of soft answers and skipped two or three outright. Nonetheless, I do think my scores are generally pretty accurate. Slightly smug that I have more fairness and liberty than the described left-liberal.

 

[El_Machinae]

"Cannot perceive" or "disagrees"?

Cannot perceive. I really recommend the book! The person who views punishment as morally important literally has a sensory percept that you don't.

We think we are logical, but a lot of our moral sense is post-hoc justification of implicit beliefs. You and I can construct very good arguments for why we don't value punishment for its own sake, but to insist that their instinct literally doesn't exist his to make a mistake.

It's like arguing nutrition with someone with a cold. I can have a cold, and insist that spices are good for the belly, and that everyone should eat as much spices as I do. But because I don't have the same senses as they do, my suggestion may appear logical but it will be actually impractical.

 

[Cutlass]

Haha Liberty Conservatives


The lack of details on the questions really bring out the foremost moral value.
Not enough info to make an intelligent choice, so gotta go with gut feeling.


Wonder if there are any Liberty Left Liberals out there?

See, for this I have a really hard time with this guy's metrics. By my standards, conservatism and liberty are incompatible concepts to the point of being very nearly mutually exclusive. I am liberal because the liberty of individuals is of critical importance to me. This test doesn't catch that. What this test catches is the idea of 'I'm libertarian because rules that I don't like don't apply to me'. But, on the other hand, conservatism is about you do what you are told, or you do what is expected of you. And you don't rock the boat.

Now to understand this, libertarianism is actually a spectrum, not a point. And is actually an extremely broad spectrum. But the breadth of the spectrum is being lost in the current political debate.

Care can legit be overdone. It's a kind of suffocation.

Robert Heinlein made the comment that a society should have the morality that it can afford. And he was hardly a liberal. But the point to understanding this is that a society which is stingy with it's morality will have fewer resources to to discuss what to do with than one that is more generous.

 

[Timsup2nothin]

The necessity, but the question of necessity is a tricky one. I've had discussions with a few people who state that the death penalty is a "necessary evil". We seem to agree on it being an evil but rarely on it being necessary.

I think the question applies to punishment in general. I can see locking someone up to protect society, and I can certainly see the merits in taking someone off the street who genuinely cannot get by given their skillset and societies rules long enough to change their skillset. But that leaves the question of punishment. Are we gaining anything by the adult equivalent of sending people to their room without their supper?

Having been in prison perhaps warps my perspective, but I just cannot see the merits of punishment when it entails having human beings answer the question "what do you do?" with "I keep human beings in cages for a living." Yes, the protection of society makes it necessary, but it requires some people to be absolutely evil. Extending it to "I keep people in cages for money, because people who think their hands are clean want them punished" takes it far beyond the pale.

 

[Hrothbern]

Some considerations:
* Punishment is a cultural invention not applied by animals on each other.
And correcting an animal on wrong behaviour needs to be done almost immediately. With the same speed as pain when you touch a hot object. Otherwise it has no sense, no positives at all.

* When I do something wrong myself and it has no consequences for other people (or God if you are religious). And I am the only person knowing that... what do I do ?
I want clearly not to do that "wrong" again... but how do I achieve that ?
Am I going to "punish" myself for myself ?
Or find another way ?

 

[Synobun]

I think the question applies to punishment in general. I can see locking someone up to protect society, and I can certainly see the merits in taking someone off the street who genuinely cannot get by given their skillset and societies rules long enough to change their skillset. But that leaves the question of punishment. Are we gaining anything by the adult equivalent of sending people to their room without their supper?

Having been in prison perhaps warps my perspective, but I just cannot see the merits of punishment when it entails having human beings answer the question "what do you do?" with "I keep human beings in cages for a living." Yes, the protection of society makes it necessary, but it requires some people to be absolutely evil. Extending it to "I keep people in cages for money, because people who think their hands are clean want them punished" takes it far beyond the pale.

You won't get any argument from me on this. To an extent I agree that removing problematic members from society is a necessity but the conditions of that are mostly excessive from my point of view. I'm a strong believer in rehabilitation, and for those who are too broken to re-integrate into society they should still be offered the opportunity to be productive in a way they feel fulfilled by.

For the most part, I find it difficult to recognize "suffering = good as long as they committed a perceived grievance against society" as a legitimate and morally just viewpoint, or that me not accepting this is because I lack an entire sense as @El_Machinae suggests. It is pointless and accomplishes nothing besides self-satisfaction in people who believe that a criminal suffering is a good thing. Often this view extends to other demographics that they may not like. I don't give much weight to the theory that they think like this because they're rocking an extra sense that we libs just can't grasp. It seems corrupt by its very nature, or an extremely roundabout way of suggesting moral relativism.

Some considerations:
* Punishment is a cultural invention not applied by animals on each other.

Not entirely true. Crows and ravens exhibit behaviour that support the theory of recognized punishment and consequences.

 

[Mouthwash]

"Cannot perceive" or "disagrees"?

He's talking about intuitions here, so the concept of disagreement doesn't really apply.

For the most part, I find it difficult to recognize "suffering = good as long as they committed a perceived grievance against society" as a legitimate and morally just viewpoint, or that me not accepting this is because I lack an entire sense as @El_Machinae suggests. It is pointless and accomplishes nothing besides self-satisfaction in people who believe that a criminal suffering is a good thing. Often this view extends to other demographics that they may not like. I don't give much weight to the theory that they think like this because they're rocking an extra sense that we libs just can't grasp.

I suspect it's just that certain feelings may not be suited for large societies. When people you don't even know are receiving their punishment behind closed doors, it's easy to tell yourself that they are 'getting what they deserve'. This is bad because that punishment is reckoned in spans of time rather than pain or other immediate measures - it interferes with our gut sympathy to suffering as well as removing any impression on the criminal (his 450th day of toil in a cage is not going to give him any insight about his impulsive decision to rob a gas station).

The answer is obviously bringing back corporal punishment, which is one idea that liberals really are handicapped in considering.

 

[Gori the Grey]

but it doesn't enable itself, by itself, alone.

which of them does? what, of anything in the universe, does?

'Care' tends to be shared by everyone. But in a zero-sum world, it's the ratio of how much the other moral senses interfere with the care instinct.

Care knows that it's not a zero-sum world.

 

[Farm Boy]

None of them do. Just saying caring is not enough. Assuming most of the people who do harm are not moustache twirling cariacatures, and some of them are, that would necessitate that care done out of balance is responsible for some significant portion of wrongness. Like liberty without limit. Care in harmony probably produces the results it purports to seek more effectively when it isn't given unfettered reign. Right?

 

[Lemon Merchant]

Looks like I'm a left-liberal too. Based on all of the scores so far, I'm thinking there is a little bias in this test.

 

[El_Machinae]

For the most part, I find it difficult to recognize "suffering = good as long as they committed a perceived grievance against society" as a legitimate and morally just viewpoint, or that me not accepting this is because I lack an entire sense as @El_Machinae suggests. It is pointless and accomplishes nothing besides self-satisfaction in people who believe that a criminal suffering is a good thing. Often this view extends to other demographics that they may not like. I don't give much weight to the theory that they think like this because they're rocking an extra sense that we libs just can't grasp. It seems corrupt by its very nature, or an extremely roundabout way of suggesting moral relativism.

You won't get any argument from me about its lack of utility and even destructive consequences, but I swing liberal on that front as well. But it's a moral intuition you don't have, which is why you're rebelling so hard against the idea that some people find it morally important.

Given some levels of punishment, I can argue that it's a net damage. Given some levels of punishment, I can argue that the punishment is morally neutral (even if it goes beyond any deterrent effect). I don't find utility in punishment, outside of a deterrent or rehabilitative benefit. But there's a moral sense that punishment can be merely part of the scales of justice. If you look at many religious texts, punishment is often included for its own sake. These things didn't just get codified for funsies, they appealed to the moral intuitions of a segment of people. Using Haidt's language, your 'care' intuition is triggered by the idea of punishment, and you value justice less than people who're naturally conservative do.

But it's just one example. It's part of answering the question "why do good people disagree so vociferously on some moral arguments?". I've no doubt that you can write many paragraphs about how punishment for its own sake is a useless idea. But you're also not seeing something that other people are seeing. To argue that their senses are wrong is just missing the point. It's a wasted argument, because the more parsimonious answer is that their senses are different.

I'm not a moral relativist, but I believe in the natural selection of memes.

 

[Gori the Grey]

Based on all of the scores so far, I'm thinking there is a little bias in this test.

Or on CFCOT!

 

[Cutlass]

Or on CFCOT!

Or both.

 

[Mouthwash]

I don't find utility in punishment, outside of a deterrent or rehabilitative benefit.

You don't think the existence of a strong moral sense might imply it has some use, even one you haven't thought of?

 

[cardgame]

Uh oh, are we going down the evo psych road?