Morality without religion? Marc Hauser 3

The conclusion of Marc Hauser's lecture on human moral psychology.

In this part, Dr. Marc Hauser discusses the impact of religious belief on moral decision-making.

Segments 2 and 3 will make much more sense if part 1 is viewed first:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KiUqBKGHp8o

Segment 3 will make much more sense if parts 1 and 2 are viewed first:
part 2:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F3SMzJD8axY

In this segment, Hauser completes his description of the Trolley problem and conclusions based on his research into how humans make moral decisions. A modification of the Trolley problem has been designed to reduce the variables in order to dissect out whether people are able to coherently account for the Principle of Double Effect.

NEXT ... does religious belief affect moral decision making. Place your bets ...


Marc D. Hauser is an evolutionary biologist who teaches at the Psychology Department at Harvard University.
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/HauserBio.html
http://www.wjh.harvard.edu/~mnkylab/

Moral Sense Test website:
http://moral.wjh.harvard.edu/

The term morality can be used either
1.descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
a.some other group, such as a religion, or
b.accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
2.normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be put forward by all rational persons.
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-definition/

The Trolley problem
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trolley_problem

Doctrine of Double Effect
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/double-effect/
Principle of double effect
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Principle_of_double_effect

My thanks to AncientAtheist for sending this link to a long, but interesting article by Steven Pinker:
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/13/magazine/13Psychology-t.html?pagewanted=1&a...

Category:

Education

Tags:

• Marc
• Hauser
• Trolley
• problem
• organ
• donor
• rescue
• human
• moral
• psychology
• social
• science
• research
• Moral
• Sense
• Test
• dilemma
• ethics
• philosophy
• emotion
• logic
• religion
• religious
• belief
• atheism

[cristianfcao]

2. They are of course individual and group differences in how the foundations work. As a liberal (I'm liberal myself, btw.) the ingroup/loyalty foundation may not guide most of your moral judgments on, say, immigration laws; however many liberals like sports, want their teams to win, may have prejudices of other teams' fans, and even moralize things you can do "for" your team, such as chanting during the game, and so on.

[musekiteer]

@cristianfcao

I think that there is a vast difference between wanting one's team to win and allowing one's moral decisions to be influenced by ingroup pressures. Perhaps I should say that I think that there *ought* to be a vast difference. I'm not saying that we do not all experience the influences that Haidt names, just that we ought not to place undue weight on irrelevances. Unfortunately many people are emotional "thinkers" who deify "gut" reactions.

[paenitet7nullum]

@datnotfair wich is why they should be able to simply take information in the cynical way of the scientist, or whatever else is uh.......cynical? idunno, think of something

[datnotfair]

@paenitet7nullum Control? Look at how much anarchy religion has coused throughout human history! An extream version is the attacks on September 11th and July 7th where innocent people became victims of people expressing religious views. That is not controll!

[paenitet7nullum]

but if it comes down to a simple choice of you or many other people, it just depends how much you like those people. im probly forgetting something but whatever anyways im an atheist, I hope you who reads this, gets laid

[paenitet7nullum]

well religion does change the rules, because I mean without fear of eternal damnation and as long as I don't get cought by the cops. I can do whatever the fuck i want. for animals with no religion there is no right or wrong, they just try to survive and make babies. But we are "group" animals and we are designed to help eachother out. the rules in nature are live and fuck. our rules are (i dont want to use the word "mostly") to protect other people. religion creates fear wich creates controle...

[cristianfcao]

@musekiteer Ingroup bias and group thinking are hugely extended. Sports are just one metaphorical way to exercise them. I too hope people would think better their moral/political judgments. BTW, Haidt doesn't deny human capacity for rational moral thinking, he says that it's not the most common way we come to moral judgments. There are some interesting discussions about these issues here: watch?v=sBsXIBEm8Ug (you can check other related videos in that channel)

[cristianfcao]

LOL I can't stop making typos! make that first word a "There", sorry :-)

[cristianfcao]

@musekiteer As I understand MFT, (I may be wrong but I’ve read many articles of it) Haidt thinks that these foundations DO play a key role in moral judgment, even at the most concrete level. They operate as INTUITIONS that people have (given by evolution and further cultivated by culture) that allow a person to have a moral judgment even when they are judging extremely difficult subjects, such as immigration laws, or moral dilemmas such as the trolley problem. ...cont.

[musekiteer]

2.

The worst example of this that I have seen recently was on a right-wing blog. The blogger pronounced that it was okay for Larry Craig to be hypocritical about homosexual sex so long as he officially attacked the practice. I am quite confident that the blogger would have been outraged if a Democrat had publicly decried gay sex one minute and then sought a homosexual encounter in an airport washroom in the next.