Tuesday, May 22, 2007

Revealing The Origins Of Morality -- Good And Evil, Liberal And Conservative

"Haidt['s] own research demonstrates that people generally follow their gut feelings and make up moral reasons afterwards. "Since the time of the Enlightenment," Haidt says, "many philosophers have celebrated the power and virtue of cool, dispassionate reasoning. Unfortunately, few people other than philosophers can engage in such cool, honest reasoning when moral issues are at stake. The rest of us behave more like lawyers, using any arguments we can find to make our case, rather than like judges or scientists searching for the truth. This doesn't mean we are doomed to be immoral; it just means that we should look for the roots of our considerable virtue elsewhere -- in the emotions and intuitions that make us so generally decent and cooperative, yet also sometimes willing to hurt or kill in defense of a principle, a person or a place."

Haidt argues that human morality is a cultural construction built on top of -- and constrained by -- a small set of evolved psychological systems."

Sciencedaily.com, May 18, 2007

Notice that you can also take a few interesting moral tests at Yourmorals.org



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