The Independent Whig
Care/Harm
Some of Haidt’s Metaphors Contradict His Findings
[Note:This post was edited on 3/30/13 to include the sentence in bold font.] This post is critical of select portions of Jonathan Haidt’s work so I want to make it clear at the outset that I think his approach, research, findings, and interpretations of those findings in the academic sense are right on the money. … Continue reading
The Moral Foundations
For convenience, a short description of each Moral Foundation is offered here, making heavy use of text from Haidt’s web site, http://www.moralfoundations.org, along with a portion of a transcript I typed while watching this video of one of Haidt’s talks (carefully, hitting “pause” and “rewind” many, many times) . All such text is in italics, … Continue reading
The Bees and the Hive: Liberal and Conservative Perceptions of Human Nature
The liberal vision employs only the moral color receptors cognitive tools of care/harm, fairness/cheating, and liberty/oppression. These are the Big E of the moral visual acuity chart. They, and the Liberal vision, are focused almost entirely on the individual; the bee in the hive of society. The moral intuitions of loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, sanctity/degradation, are the … Continue reading
Do Liberals Really “Care” More?
In Moral Psychology and the Misunderstanding of Religion Haidt makes the following observation about liberal morality: But if you try to apply this two-foundation [i.e., liberal] morality to the rest of the world, you either fail or you become Procrustes. Most traditional societies care about a lot more than harm/care and fairness/justice. Why do so … Continue reading
What is Liberalism?
(This post is an excerpt, with some minor updating, from the longer essay in the post What Is Rick Perry Talking About? ) What is Liberalism? Liberalism is the morality which is built on the two moral foundations of Care/Harm and Proportionality/Cheating (i.e. fairness), and eschews the others – as illustrated in this 19 minute … Continue reading
The Moral Foundations
Many of the ideas presented at The Independent Whig are built upon Moral Foundations Theory, developed by Dr. Jonathan Haidt, Professor of Psychology, at the University of Virginia. For convenience, a discription of each Moral Foundation is offered here, making heavy use of text from Haidt’s web site, http://www.moralfoundations.org, along with a portion of a … Continue reading
I Support Viewpoint Diversity
A politically diverse group of social scientists, natural scientists, humanists, and other scholars who want to improve our academic disciplines and universities. We share a concern about a growing problem: the loss or lack of “viewpoint diversity.” When nearly everyone in a field shares the same political orientation, certain ideas become orthodoxy, dissent is discouraged, and errors can go unchallenged.
Venn Diagram of Liberal and Conservative Traits and Moral Foundations and
The Independent Whig 