Post 6900 - The Criticisms of Moral Foundations Theory.

A quick review of Jonathan Haidt (It's pronounced "height," BTW.  That may help you keep him straight from others.).  Really.  I'm going to try hard, here. Hmm, I like what I wrote in 2012, actually. The first five paragraphs pertain to this discussion. They cover my first two points. The third point, that they are objecting to him because of his lack of underlying theory, I now understand a little better.  Both Grim and DOuglas2 picked up on this right away as well.  Why is that an objection?  Let me quote from the first paragraph of the Curry article criticising Haidt.

The emerging consensus is that there is nothing mysterious about morality; it is merely a collection of biological and cultural traits that promote cooperation.

I remember thinking right out of the gate Is that really the consensus? There are lots of people who think that, but has it become generally accepted throughout the field? It could be. I don't keep up. But it seemed quick, given that this had not been the full consensus a decade ago.Not everyone thinks morality is "merely" anything.  Always beware words like that.  They are attempts to cow folks into avoiding arguing back.  Promoting cooperation as a definition of morality seems reductionist as well.  I am aware that there are those "god gene," or "evolution of altrusim" people out there, but I hadn't heard they had won the day.  Nor have they. Curry is engaging in a bit of sleight-of-hand here.

Reading Haidt's defense of his ideas in 2011, we get to see behind the curtain a bit.  There are what he calls East Polers (Harvard, MIT) versus West Polers (UC-Berkeley, UC San Diego), which have large conceptual differences. The subtext of the criticism against Haidt and his co-researchers is actually a disagreement with an entire school of thought within the field. Good to know. This isn't "Jonathan Haidt and his co-researchers have done this faulty work," it is "We think that whole crew over there is wrong, and Haidt is prominent." Thus, I suppose, this applies to my second immediate thought of last night, that others in the field are gunning for him. In this case, Curry has a theory of morality of his own.

Moving to my fourth idea from last night, we can dispose of it quickly.  In his self-defense essay, Haidt describes his invitations for people to criticise and improve on his ideas and how it came to be that he added a foundation on that basis.  That was years ago.  If Curry doesn't have that information, he has not even begun to do his homework and should not be writing from a purportedly academic POV.

All that being said, I still like a lot of what Curry has to say. He mostly discards Haidt's categories, though finds that they are sustained in bigger lots with somewhat different boundaries. I should say that he believes the mathematical attempts to identify factors of morality discard Haidt's categories, reducing the five to two. Purity as a moral category he has no use for whatsoever.  That is also an area where my strongest criticisms of Haidt were, but mine were entirely different, almost opposite.  I was focused on my observation that liberals have lots of areas where they use purity and disgust as moral categories, but Haidt's initial questions didn't pick those up, likely because of his original biases. I was granting it as a moral category.  Curry says the research doesn't support the notion that it amplifies moral decisions much either way.  Curry's theory that morality is built solely around issues of cooperation and harm may influence that.

He posits an overall morality which (he claims) holds up cross-culturally,

A review of this literature suggests that there are (at least) seven well established types of cooperation: (1) the allocation of resources to kin; (2) coordination to mutual advantage; (3) social exchange; and conflict resolution through contests featuring (4) hawkish displays of dominance and (5) dove-ish displays of submission; (6) division of disputed resources; and (7) recognition of prior possession.

In my research, I have shown how each of these types of cooperation can be used to identify and explain a distinct type of morality.

(1) Kin selection explains why we feel a special duty of care for our families, and why we abhor incest. (2) Mutualism explains why we form groups and coalitions (there is strength and safety in numbers), and hence why we value unity, solidarity, and loyalty. (3) Social exchange explains why we trust others, reciprocate favors, feel gratitude and guilt, make amends, and forgive. And conflict resolution explains why we (4) engage in costly displays of prowess such as bravery and generosity, why we (5) express humility and defer to our superiors, why we (6) divide disputed resources fairly and equitably, and why we (7) respect others’ property and refrain from stealing.

 It looks like it has a fair bit of overlap with the Tao, as described by CS Lewis in The Abolition of Man. So in the second part of Idea #5 of criticising Curry I see I have been unfair to him.  He is not just popping off about Haidt's theory not reaching an arbitrary threshold even though it is early in the day.  He is offering a set of foundations he believes does achieve that threshold, even though it is also new. It is based on older ideas, certainly, but the collection and unifying idea is newer. This runs over into my approval of Curry's ideas in my off-the-cuff Idea #6, which I am even more convinced of now.

Haidt may be trying to find the driving factors of morality when everything else is being held equal, looking for the neutral abstract motivators.  Curry points out that this is not how morality typically occurs.  Kinship loyalty, reciprocity, and status/hierarchical displays are themselves foundations of what we call moral behavior.

As we can see, the walk did not add much to my thinking.  My strength really is that my first draft of a response usually has most of what I'm ever going to get on my own.  I do pick up errors and rethink things from time-to-time, but that is more likely to occur in the context of someone else's thoughts.