Different Moral Foundations (Liberal/Conservative)

[Deepak]

I think you need to re-read the John Stuart Mill quote. You are not presenting your other side in their most plausible and persuasive manner. There are indeed people, and indeed congresscritters and lots of those they influence who said exactly what you wrote, but that isn't the best argumentation that has and does exist on that side of the fence.

Well the best argument perhaps has a place in a philosophical discussion, or perhaps in refining the position to a compromise. And perhaps I'm missing something but isn't the implied step in agreeing to Cap & Trade or SMM indeed listening to the best argument from the other side?

As an intellectual endeavour Mill makes sense, but as a political tool it somewhat misses the mark: the polity of the opposing side actually has to believe and support those arguments. Death panels may not be the best argument but one thing is for sure - it mobilized the base.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

We are so beyond "....reasons on the opposite side" in the US.

Liberals: We want UHC.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you! State mandated markets is the way to go.
Liberals: Fine, we'll go with the state mandated markets.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you!
Liberals: What?! You said use a state mandated market system.
Conservatives: DEATH PANELS!!! YOU ARE GOING TO KILL GRANDMA!!!

Liberals: We want to mandate reductions in CO2 emissions.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you! Cap and Trade... let the market decide.
Liberals: Fine, we'll go with the Cap and Trade thing.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you!
Liberals: What?! You said use cap and trade
Conservatives: AL GORE FLIES ALOT!!! THEY ARE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU!!!
Liberal: *sigh*

Please keep in mind, there is almost no hyperbole in this post. I just injected a little outdated Adam Sandler humor.

I think you need to re-read the John Stuart Mill quote. You are not presenting your other side in their most plausible and persuasive manner.

Umm... yeah, I am. You'd notice that there was the original Liberal/Democrat position. The Conservatives demanded something else... and when the Dems shifted to it... THEY ARE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU!!!

There are indeed people, and indeed congresscritters and lots of those they influence who said exactly what you wrote, but that isn't the best argumentation that has and does exist on that side of the fence.

The hell it does. Cap and Trade and ACA are two examples of conservatives not actually holding to a position. The Democrats compromised, and the Republicans recoiled and demonized the position the Dems then were willing to accept and the ones the Conservatives proposed in the first place!

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

As an intellectual endeavour Mill makes sense, but as a political tool it somewhat misses the mark: the polity of the opposing side actually has to believe and support those arguments. Death panels may not be the best argument but one thing is for sure - it mobilized the base.

This is more suitable a comment for the other thread so I'll leave it at this: Talk of stuff like Death Panels works for Republicans. But I don't think the same sort of dishonest rhetoric will work for Democrats. They have fundamentally different constituencies.

- - - Updated - - -

The hell it does. Cap and Trade and ACA are two examples of conservatives not actually holding to a position. The Democrats compromised, and the Republicans recoiled and demonized the position the Dems then were willing to accept and the ones the Conservatives proposed in the first place!

That was dishonest and tribal maneuvering on the part of the Republican Party. That doesn't contain the best arguments against any of your positions.

 

[Jimmy Higgins]

The hell it does. Cap and Trade and ACA are two examples of conservatives not actually holding to a position. The Democrats compromised, and the Republicans recoiled and demonized the position the Dems then were willing to accept and the ones the Conservatives proposed in the first place!

That was dishonest and tribal maneuvering on the part of the Republican Party. That doesn't contain the best arguments against any of your positions.

My position is that there is no negotiating with the Republicans because they won't have it. That seems to be pretty damn clear at this point.

Hence why I pointed out the "...reasons on the opposite side", which amounted to making Obama a one-term President. You can't have a discourse when that is the reason for their "positions", if you even want to call it that.

 

[Deepak]

As an intellectual endeavour Mill makes sense, but as a political tool it somewhat misses the mark: the polity of the opposing side actually has to believe and support those arguments. Death panels may not be the best argument but one thing is for sure - it mobilized the base.

This is more suitable a comment for the other thread so I'll leave it at this: Talk of stuff like Death Panels works for Republicans. But I don't think the same sort of dishonest rhetoric will work for Democrats. They have fundamentally different constituencies.

- - - Updated - - -

The hell it does. Cap and Trade and ACA are two examples of conservatives not actually holding to a position. The Democrats compromised, and the Republicans recoiled and demonized the position the Dems then were willing to accept and the ones the Conservatives proposed in the first place!

That was dishonest and tribal maneuvering on the part of the Republican Party. That doesn't contain the best arguments against any of your positions.

By tool I mean a mental tool with which to evaluate politics. I'm not suggesting that that copying the Reps' strategy is an effective tool for the Dems - nor does it's current convenience for the Republicans actually mean it's effective overall.

Specifically, the compromise has mostly been among Dems or with Ivy League grad think tank workin', CNN appearin', Beltway livin' conservatives (read: cucks). Since Reagan they've tried and failed on many instances to try to appeal to conservatives by bringing a compromised position to the table, being on the back foot because the Reps can attack, and getting routed or at least beaten back further. Consistently. And it gets carried to absurd extremes where you can find post-ACA commentary from think tank conservatives now saying single-payer would have been a better health care option for Obama to have pushed for.

A better position for the Dems, rather than anti-Death Panels, is to actually stake out what they really think their own best argument is and let the Reps either offer an alternative, and settle the matter in the ballot box, or at least use that as the starting point in the compromise. Again, let's remember what actually happened - the Reps made bad faith requests for changes to the ACA, which they were committed to not supporting in any respect.

To bring it back to the earlier post - the best argument is the one the other side is really making, not a rarefied philosophical debate you've been having with think tanks since the Truman era. Most voters don't form their positions by starting at Aristotle and working their way to the present day, so it's a terrible way to arrive at your platform proposals. Indeed it's one of the things that's responsible for the corrosion of lots of peoples' understanding of the effects of policy change. The Dems have compromise with an argument that they've decided is the best argument, but since the other side doesn't share that assessment the Dems end up defending the compromise to all parties while the Reps can always be on the offensive. Having backbone doesn't require them to be duplicitous.

 

[Jarhyn]

Further on the "Purity" aspect:

Would you pay more for a guitar Elvis used to play? Would you stir soup with a brand new flyswatter that has never been used? Studies on digust and how it is generated and what its benefits may be in modern society is an interesting question. I don't have a good answer, because I score very low on the scale. I wouldn't see any added value in that guitar and I would stir that soup.

I would also note that the more liberal model is not more complicated. Its much simpler. It operates primarily on only the two foundations of care and fairness, ignoring or downplaying all else.

On those questions: I am a very self-aware person. I have some internal triggers with respect to "purity", but they are my own madness and I would never impose this madness on anyone who does not love me. I would not buy the guitar, though I find a somatic "romanticism" in considering certain things as of "special" value. I would also not stir the soup; I have a neurosis in which things I encounter can become "trash" or "gross" in a somatic sense: a wrapped folded up is fine to touch, but in a ball and it's "gross" to me. There is no material difference, but it takes an act of steeled will for me to even touch a balled up wrapper. Another example of this concept is the scene in adventure time where finn's hat "eats" their food and they throw it all away... despite it not having changed at all materially, having come out the hat's 'butt' was enough to do this same thing for them.

The important part here is understanding that difference, the difference between the somatic 'moral' reaction that I can only ethically use to steer my own behavior (or those with whom I share love, so as to ask politely not to hand me "gross trash" such as balled wrappers), and that which I can apply as an expectation of others. I fully believe we should yeah this differentiation early and often. The bigger problem is that the same system of the brain that gives "gross trash" feels also generates the "their sex/pleasure is gross" feels.

Yes. Good points.

A more political version of this is beastiality. The image of a man having sex with a sheep is comical to some, revolting and thereby unethical others, and no amount of evidence that "the sheep liked it or the sheep initiated it" will suffice. I think the same goes for how a lot of conservatives saw/see gay sex and thereby them opposing gay marriage. It was/is seen as dirty and impure even to the point that it somehow managed to ruin their own normal sex and marriage.

Hence my point that moral purity is nothing but a crock of shit when it comes to evaluating ethics. God I'm so sick of the general inability and lack of desire to clearly cleave those two concepts. But again, the only way we will ever get past this in our political dialogue is to educate. But we all know how certain people feel about that...

 

[untermensche]

Blind obedience to authority is immorality.

Not questioning so-called authority constantly is stupidity.

Just as blind loyalty is immorality.

What a bunch of nonsense.

I can see how lockstep Republicans might appear moral in these upside down categories.

Sanctity? What a bunch of shit!

 

[ruby sparks]

The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Jonathan Haidt, TED2008

[YOUTUBE]https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en#t-1094296[/YOUTUBE]

I thought he had some interesting ideas, some apparently decent data and was a good speaker.

 

[ronburgundy]

Haidt is good at justifying the other moral foundations. There is reason to care about sanctity and hierarchy, etc. But note that his justifications are always in terms of harm and fairness. (He might argue that you should respect the police--or the Pope or your parents or some other matter of hierarchy--in order to avoid harm. He never argues that you should avoid harm in order to respect the police.) Harm and fairness are, it seems to me, the bedrock of morality.

As a liberal, I agree completely.

But I think he wrote his book from a liberal mindset himself.

It isn't a "liberal" mindset, just an ethical one. Sanctity, authority, and respect only have any kind of ethical connotation when they relate to preventing harm, which is tethered to empathy on which all natural morality is based.
Otherwise, they are merely manifestations of authoritarianism used by the powerful to control others.

And if the goal is avoiding harm, then one would just emphasize that directly. Which is why people (e.g. conservatives) who emphasize sanctity, authority, and respect rarely do so in the service of avoiding harm but rather as a justification to cause harm or to coerce people to harm themselves in ways that benefit the authorities.

 

[Jolly_Penguin]

The moral roots of liberals and conservatives

Jonathan Haidt, TED2008

[YOUTUBE]https://www.ted.com/talks/jonathan_haidt_on_the_moral_mind?language=en#t-1094296[/YOUTUBE]

I thought he had some interesting ideas, some apparently decent data and was a good speaker.

Your video has become unavailable (or maybe only to my region?), but yes, Haidt is quite insightful.

 

[ruby sparks]

Your video has become unavailable (or maybe only to my region?), but yes, Haidt is quite insightful.

It's the TED talk from 2008 which I think is directly to do with your OP. Maybe you can google it using the title?

 

[Worldtraveller]

This may also be a perfect place to quote one of my favourite quotes

“He who knows only his own side of the case knows little of that. His reasons may be good, and no one may have been able to refute them. But if he is equally unable to refute the reasons on the opposite side, if he does not so much as know what they are, he has no ground for preferring either opinion... Nor is it enough that he should hear the opinions of adversaries from his own teachers, presented as they state them, and accompanied by what they offer as refutations. He must be able to hear them from persons who actually believe them...he must know them in their most plausible and persuasive form.”

- John Stuart Mill, "On Liberty"

We are so beyond "....reasons on the opposite side" in the US.

Liberals: We want UHC.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you! State mandated markets is the way to go.
Liberals: Fine, we'll go with the state mandated markets.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you!
Liberals: What?! You said use a state mandated market system.
Conservatives: DEATH PANELS!!! YOU ARE GOING TO KILL GRANDMA!!!

Liberals: We want to mandate reductions in CO2 emissions.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you! Cap and Trade... let the market decide.
Liberals: Fine, we'll go with the Cap and Trade thing.
Conservatives: NOOOOOOO! Their all going to laugh at you!
Liberals: What?! You said use cap and trade
Conservatives: AL GORE FLIES ALOT!!! THEY ARE ALL GOING TO LAUGH AT YOU!!!
Liberal: *sigh*

Please keep in mind, there is almost no hyperbole in this post. I just injected a little outdated Adam Sandler humor.

Agreed. There are several flaws with the 'thinking' in the OP, and by extension, Haidt, maybe.

First, many conservatives make claims to 'just want to be fair', and if asked/polled, would say that it is a primary reason for much of what they do. Unfortunately, it's like the Myers-Briggs personality tests. If you rely on people to self report, they're going to be wrong more often than not. A conservative's idea of fair will wind up screwing lots of people (often, even themselves) and be about as unfair as it could be (see, for example the GOP position on taxes, and all the idiots that still support it in spite of overwhelming evidence). So they will claim that being fair is a big motivator, but it is far from so. This is even more evident in the Libertarian wing of the GOP.

Secondly, the thought experiment/ideas in the OP and Haidt's book assumes acting in good faith on 'both sides' when it comes to this. As Jimmy points out, this hasn't really been the case since Reagan. We are long past the point where high minded ideas and discussions like that can do any good.

 

[Worldtraveller]

I think you need to re-read the John Stuart Mill quote. You are not presenting your other side in their most plausible and persuasive manner. There are indeed people, and indeed congresscritters and lots of those they influence who said exactly what you wrote, but that isn't the best argumentation that has and does exist on that side of the fence.

Have you not read any of the posts by any of the other self described conservatives here? You don't even have to watch Faux Noise or listen to Breitbart. You're the one mis-representing the right wing (in the US) here, not Jimmy.

 

[Opoponax]

Secondly, the thought experiment/ideas in the OP and Haidt's book assumes acting in good faith on 'both sides' when it comes to this. As Jimmy points out, this hasn't really been the case since Reagan. We are long past the point where high minded ideas and discussions like that can do any good.

Agreed. The OP is about hypothetical people, or people that maybe used to exist, but don't anymore for all practical purposes.

What used to be conservative is now a goalpost shifting, hypocritical, dishonest machine.

Bill Clinton's infidelity was too much to bear. You could call that "purity" or "sanctity" or whatever fits the scheme. And it could reasonably called a conservative position because marriage and family usually suffers from infidelity, and the family is the core traditional unit of society. But then Trump comes along with his sexual assaulting, porn star fucking sleaze oozing off of him like an immediately pre-burst boil and suddenly conservatives are okay with that.

The OP simply doesn't apply to American conservatives because they are not the same subjects to which the OP refers.

It's a conversation that, as far as America goes, is only an abstraction.

 

[PyramidHead]

Regardless of political stripe, almost nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact that an ethical life is already impossible in the primary sense, that is, in the sense of adhering to the commonplace ideals that underpin all ethical theories: not harming others, respecting their boundaries, not manipulating people for personal gain, considering the interests of others before your own. Just being here in the same crowded space as everybody else, trying to postpone our deaths and add value to our lives, requires tossing all those primary responsibilities out the window. The mere act of staking one's right of self-defense and self-preservation necessarily involves the suspension of fundamental ethical ideals. But we have decided that we must be here, and we must plan on continuing to be here, so all of the secondary consolation prizes of moral philosophy need to be invented. We mistake them for actual ethical theories, when in fact they are just handbooks for how to achieve certain non-ethical goals (survival in groups, preservation of civilization, reduction of aggregate pain, etc.) after having already giving up the ethical high ground by simply persisting in the world, regardless of what we do or how we do it.

 

[ronburgundy]

Regardless of political stripe, almost nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact that an ethical life is already impossible in the primary sense, that is, in the sense of adhering to the commonplace ideals that underpin all ethical theories: not harming others, respecting their boundaries, not manipulating people for personal gain, considering the interests of others before your own. Just being here in the same crowded space as everybody else, trying to postpone our deaths and add value to our lives, requires tossing all those primary responsibilities out the window.

This is a false dichotomy that treats these ethical principles as all-or-nothing. Sure, in the most extreme sense one cannot live a life of modest comfort in the modern world and completely avoid any possible indirect harm to others. For example, even driving a car or using countless petroleum based products does some non-zero amount of indirect harm to others.
But it is quite possible to, and many people do, live and add value to out lives while also trying to minimize such harm. Two people are selling a product. One emphasizes the products actual positive attributes but does so in an objectively accurate way, while the other says whatever they think will get the potential buyer to pay the most money for it, lying about its properties and engaging in emotional/psychological manipulations to undermine reasoned thought. The fist person is applying the ethical principles while also trying to add value to their own lives, while the second person is going directly against those principles. Likewise, either a buyer or seller in a transaction notices a counting error by the other party where they gave to much $. Pointing out such an error is applying those ethical principles, and plenty of people still do such things. Outside of economic exchanges, there are not only acts of kindness but those who adhere to the ethical principle of considering other people's interests which includes other people's liberty and equality of rights Everyone has personal tastes and interests in how they would ideally like others to behave and think. But applying the core ethical principles requires that we allow them to behave and think as they choose without threatening coercion, unless there is a clear impact on tangible harm to others. Again, there are plenty of people who do apply this principles and huge variance in priority that people give it.

 

[Jarhyn]

Regardless of political stripe, almost nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact that an ethical life is already impossible in the primary sense, that is, in the sense of adhering to the commonplace ideals that underpin all ethical theories: not harming others, respecting their boundaries, not manipulating people for personal gain, considering the interests of others before your own. Just being here in the same crowded space as everybody else, trying to postpone our deaths and add value to our lives, requires tossing all those primary responsibilities out the window. The mere act of staking one's right of self-defense and self-preservation necessarily involves the suspension of fundamental ethical ideals. But we have decided that we must be here, and we must plan on continuing to be here, so all of the secondary consolation prizes of moral philosophy need to be invented. We mistake them for actual ethical theories, when in fact they are just handbooks for how to achieve certain non-ethical goals (survival in groups, preservation of civilization, reduction of aggregate pain, etc.) after having already giving up the ethical high ground by simply persisting in the world, regardless of what we do or how we do it.

Bullshit.

Living and trying to survive in the world doesn't need throw those ethical principles out of the window. rather, following those principles gives you and those important to you the BEST chance for a longer life and easier survival... it just happens that the benefits are not, strictly speaking, "free": in order to get the protection of the defense of others(a survival value of, say, 1), you have to also put forward the risk of being that defender (a risk of, let's say, .8). Benefit from society implies obligation as a part of that society.

Because ethics is strategy. Ethics only goes out the window when people *cheat*.

 

[PyramidHead]

Regardless of political stripe, almost nobody is willing to acknowledge the fact that an ethical life is already impossible in the primary sense, that is, in the sense of adhering to the commonplace ideals that underpin all ethical theories: not harming others, respecting their boundaries, not manipulating people for personal gain, considering the interests of others before your own. Just being here in the same crowded space as everybody else, trying to postpone our deaths and add value to our lives, requires tossing all those primary responsibilities out the window. The mere act of staking one's right of self-defense and self-preservation necessarily involves the suspension of fundamental ethical ideals. But we have decided that we must be here, and we must plan on continuing to be here, so all of the secondary consolation prizes of moral philosophy need to be invented. We mistake them for actual ethical theories, when in fact they are just handbooks for how to achieve certain non-ethical goals (survival in groups, preservation of civilization, reduction of aggregate pain, etc.) after having already giving up the ethical high ground by simply persisting in the world, regardless of what we do or how we do it.

Bullshit.

Living and trying to survive in the world doesn't need throw those ethical principles out of the window. rather, following those principles gives you and those important to you the BEST chance for a longer life and easier survival... it just happens that the benefits are not, strictly speaking, "free": in order to get the protection of the defense of others(a survival value of, say, 1), you have to also put forward the risk of being that defender (a risk of, let's say, .8). Benefit from society implies obligation as a part of that society.

Because ethics is strategy. Ethics only goes out the window when people *cheat*.

That's all secondary ethics. It's an ethics of how-to-live, already having assumed without reflection that living is something that is basically compatible with our ethical values. While carving out a strategy for a longer life and easier survival, it necessarily sidesteps the question of whether survival at all costs can be reconciled with ethics. Such as system is properly understood, then, as a set of norms and proposals for maximizing success in a certain context. Primary ethics, on the other hand, involves the surrender of personal interests (including, if need be, survival) for the sake of the other.

This is a false dichotomy that treats these ethical principles as all-or-nothing. Sure, in the most extreme sense one cannot live a life of modest comfort in the modern world and completely avoid any possible indirect harm to others. For example, even driving a car or using countless petroleum based products does some non-zero amount of indirect harm to others.
But it is quite possible to, and many people do, live and add value to out lives while also trying to minimize such harm. Two people are selling a product. One emphasizes the products actual positive attributes but does so in an objectively accurate way, while the other says whatever they think will get the potential buyer to pay the most money for it, lying about its properties and engaging in emotional/psychological manipulations to undermine reasoned thought. The fist person is applying the ethical principles while also trying to add value to their own lives, while the second person is going directly against those principles.

But both, regardless of their tactics in business or elsewhere in life, are breathing each other's air, taking up each other's space, drinking each other's water, killing animals and other life so that they can have food and shelter, stepping on each other's projects, and willing to abandon all pretense of ethical sensibilities in the name of self-defense after a certain threshold of physical pain. These are permanent 'structural' components of being a person in the world, prior to what one decides to do, that disqualify or otherwise impede any ethical action before it begins. Within the world, when one is already here and already exerting pressure, disrespect, and aggression towards the other, in this zone we can compare behaviors and make judgments about who is more ethical; but I still think we need to acknowledge that even the one who is "more ethical" in the relative sense is not ethical in the structural sense.

 

[Wiploc]

Secondly, the thought experiment/ideas in the OP and Haidt's book assumes acting in good faith on 'both sides' when it comes to this. As Jimmy points out, this hasn't really been the case since Reagan. We are long past the point where high minded ideas and discussions like that can do any good.

Agreed. The OP is about hypothetical people, or people that maybe used to exist, but don't anymore for all practical purposes.

What used to be conservative is now a goalpost shifting, hypocritical, dishonest machine.

Bill Clinton's infidelity was too much to bear. You could call that "purity" or "sanctity" or whatever fits the scheme. And it could reasonably called a conservative position because marriage and family usually suffers from infidelity, and the family is the core traditional unit of society. But then Trump comes along with his sexual assaulting, porn star fucking sleaze oozing off of him like an immediately pre-burst boil and suddenly conservatives are okay with that.

The OP simply doesn't apply to American conservatives because they are not the same subjects to which the OP refers.

It's a conversation that, as far as America goes, is only an abstraction.

The Righteous Mind's publication date is 2012, not 1950. It's about the conservatives we have today.

I assume conservatives think they are acting in good faith, and think they are concerned with/guided by Haidt's six foundations. And if we don't talk to them in terms of more than the two liberal foundations, we'll hardly be communicating with them at all.

 

[Worldtraveller]

Secondly, the thought experiment/ideas in the OP and Haidt's book assumes acting in good faith on 'both sides' when it comes to this. As Jimmy points out, this hasn't really been the case since Reagan. We are long past the point where high minded ideas and discussions like that can do any good.

Agreed. The OP is about hypothetical people, or people that maybe used to exist, but don't anymore for all practical purposes.

What used to be conservative is now a goalpost shifting, hypocritical, dishonest machine.

Bill Clinton's infidelity was too much to bear. You could call that "purity" or "sanctity" or whatever fits the scheme. And it could reasonably called a conservative position because marriage and family usually suffers from infidelity, and the family is the core traditional unit of society. But then Trump comes along with his sexual assaulting, porn star fucking sleaze oozing off of him like an immediately pre-burst boil and suddenly conservatives are okay with that.

The OP simply doesn't apply to American conservatives because they are not the same subjects to which the OP refers.

It's a conversation that, as far as America goes, is only an abstraction.

The Righteous Mind's publication date is 2012, not 1950. It's about the conservatives we have today.

I assume conservatives think they are acting in good faith, and think they are concerned with/guided by Haidt's six foundations. And if we don't talk to them in terms of more than the two liberal foundations, we'll hardly be communicating with them at all.

It's not really worth trying to communicate with Nazis. HTH.