Saari blog

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/haidt07/haidt07_index.html

“…that reasoning was not designed to pursue the truth. Reasoning was designed by evolution to help us win arguments. That’s why they call it The Argumentative Theory of Reasoning. So, as they put it, and it’s here on your handout, “The evidence reviewed here shows not only that reasoning falls quite short of reliably delivering rational beliefs and rational decisions. It may even be, in a variety of cases, detrimental to rationality. Reasoning can lead to poor outcomes, not because humans are bad at it, but because they systematically strive for arguments that justify their beliefs or their actions. This explains the confirmation bias, motivated reasoning, and reason-based choice, among other things.”
Now, the authors point out that we can and do re-use our reasoning abilities. We’re sitting here at a conference. We’re reasoning together. We can re-use our argumentative reasoning for other purposes. But even there, it shows the marks of its heritage. Even there, our thought processes tend towards confirmation of our own ideas. Science works very well as a social process, when we can come together and find flaws in each other’s reasoning. We can’t find the problems in our own reasoning very well. But, that’s what other people are for, is to criticize us. And together, we hope the truth comes out.
But the private reasoning of any one scientist is often deeply flawed, because reasoning can be counted on to seek justification and not truth. The problem is especially serious in moral psychology, where we all care so deeply and personally about what is right and wrong, and where we are almost all politically liberal.
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So, as I said, morality is like The Matrix. It’s a consensual hallucination. And if we only hang out with people who share our matrix, then we can be quite certain that, together, we will find a lot of evidence to support our matrix, and to condemn members of other matrices.

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They say, “here’s how you do the calculation to figure out the right thing to do, and just do it.”  Even if it feels wrong. “Tell the truth, even if it’s going to hurt your friends,” say some deontologists. “Spend less time and money on your children, so that you have more time and money to devote to helping children in other countries and other continents, where you can do more good.”  These may be morally defensible and logically defensible positions, but they taste bad to most people. Most people don’t like deontology or utilitarianism.

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“I believe that morality has to be understood as a largely tribal phenomenon, at least in its origins. By its very nature, morality binds us into groups, in order to compete with other groups.”

http://www.edge.org/3rd_culture/morality10/morality.haidt.html

http://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind.html

http://www.yourmorals.org/