Gibbs on Haidt’s righteous mind

Gibbs on Haidt’s righteous mind

From Gibbs’ Moral Development and Reality:

“Haidt’s new synthesis leads to recognition of at least three serious limitations: descriptive inadequacy or negative skew; unwarranted exclusion or studied avoidance of prescriptive implications; and moral relativism” (33). He then goes into detail on those inadequacies. From the section on moral relativism:

“Haidt’s (2012) sentiment that liberals and conservatives should share meals and narratives and ‘get along’ is helpful, but missing is any call for rational dialogue or moral progress. Nor did Haidt appeal to ‘the right’ (consistency, reversibility, etc.), objective accuracy, or cognitive development. […] As noted, Haidt even likened moral judgments to diversely shaped babblings or tastes. […] Yet if ethical judgments ‘are nothing but the outflow’ of subjective affects, of esthetic feelings or sensory tastes, then ‘it would be as inappropriate to criticize ethical judgment as it would be to criticize gastronomic preferences.’ Given such analogies, what happens to moral objectivity? […]

“In the twenty-first century, the relativist tide has returned; we must swim against it as did Kohlberg and Piaget in their eras. Now, as then, we cannot afford the moral paralysis of a moral psychology that reduces development to enculturation or socialization. Fundamentally, we cannot afford a relativistic moral psychology whose functionalist evolutionary perspective encompasses pragmatic success, advantage, or utility, but not progress, consistency, or truth” (37).

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