The Independent Whig
Loyalty/Betrayal
Are Moral Foundations Named Incorrectly, Leading to Misunderstanding?
I’m just thinking out loud here, but based on reactions to Moral Foundations from many liberals I can’t help but wonder sometimes if all of the foundations are properly named. I think Haidt’s choice of words for some of the foundations may be unfortunate because they’re potentially off-putting to liberals when they needn’t be. They’re loaded … Continue reading
Why Framing Liberal Positions With Binding Foundations Often Fails
Daniel S. Levine, Professor of Psychology, University of Texas at Arlington, recently posted a review of The Righteous Mind on Amazon.com in which he gives examples of how liberals might do a better job of appealing to conservatives by framing liberal views in terms of the binding foundations. I think Professor Levine’s examples are better demonstrations … 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
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 