Introduction

„The Righteous Mind: Why Good People are Divided by Politics and Religion“ is the title of Jonathan Haidt’s book summarizing his studies on moral, political, and religious psychology that came out in 2012.

As I am not knowledgeable enough to comment on the current state of evolutionary psychology 8 years after the publishing of this book, I will refrain from speaking directly of its enduring significance and persuasive power in the scientific communities in which it was received. I can only say that from having listened into many discussions of and among such scientists as Bret Weinstein, Heather Heying, Sam Harris, and Steven Pinker that Haidt’s ideas, although having encountered significant opposition from the political arena, found also a good deal of support among many evolutionary biologists and social psychologists.

If you would like, you can continue your research into the impact of this book on its Wikipedia page.

My primary purpose in this review is to document (for myself) and interact with some of the most significant ideas proposed by Haidt in his book. For the record, I really enjoyed the book. Haidt did a good job of appealing to my ‚elephant‘ nature and in doing so helped me overcome any emotional resistance I had to succumbing to the idea that I am an utterly biased creature. I agreed with most everything Haidt had to say, with a few nuances and exceptions here and there.

Significant Ideas

Evolutionary Theories About the Development of Morality are Plausible

Haidt argues that human morality is not at its most basic level, as is commonly believed, an outgrowth of the human capacity for reasoning applied to abstract concepts of fairness and justice, constantly worked out in every day life — as a sort of rationalism, but rather an complex network of innate moral intuitions which worked together to preserve human groups in our evolutionary history. Not only that, but this is a testable theory which can make falsifiable predictions and has explanatory power.

The primary starting point he makes is that, granted evolutionary theory is extremely powerful in explaining many of the features of the human body and genetic makeup, how can we not, then, further proceed to the conclusion that it has also played a significant role in explaining patterns in human psychology?

Culturally and politically speaking, the point Haidt makes here is a controversial one. Although many in the Western world have abandoned theism and particularly abrahamic religions as an overarching worldview that explains the biological features of the creatures as well as human psychology, many are not willing to accept the idea that naturalistic evolution is the primary explanation for human morality. The fear is that the is/ought distinction will be lost on society. I find this fear understandable.

If evolution is predicated upon the success of creatures which best ensure the reproduction of their own blood, doesn’t that mean that the ‚final cause‘ of the moral equipment we’ve developed as humans is sexual reproduction? And if we know that our final cause as humans is sexual reproduction, why not skip over the elaborate societal outworking thereof and skip straight to the rape, murder, theft, and rule over others which would directly guarantee it? Why not practice Eugenics and everything else that follows? What other dangerous conclusions about humanity might this field of research lead us to which could translate to real harm and violence in the real world?

We ought to remember, however, that the is/ought distinction is a real and important distinction, and that we cannot put a stop to scientific investigation or the search for truth simply because people may engage in faulty reasoning based on what we find. If evolutionary theory provides plausible explanations of human morality, in this direction we should go, while remembering that normative morality does not come from the sciences, but from the humanities, and we have yet to and never will find reason to accept a description of what is as a prescription for what should be when the discussion is about morality.

As a Christian who has in any case no issues with evolutionary explanations of humanity and even a fully naturalistic theory of the generation of genetic information within the confines of spacetime, I see evolution as a result rather of God having created a self-creating world. (why perform corrective miracles when it’s possible to do it right the first time?)

I am inclined to believe that God predisposed the physical world, however, with initial conditions which would lead to certain outcomes, and therefore I cannot affirm that evolution, even if its full course were to be limited to a fully naturalistic process, is in itself directed only towards reproduction. I believe that the evolutionary process of biological life had a real aim imposed upon it by God which includes but is not restricted to the propagation of reproductively successful species.

As God’s intention for humanity is to share an intellectual and emotional participation in the morality which constitutes his nature, this has implications for the moral development of his image-bearers and the scope of explanatory power that non-directed or non-influenced processes of evolution can and should play when one adopts a worldview which has implications for the teleology of processes developing human nature.

In conclusion, Haidt and I agree that evolutionary history probably plays a huge role in the development of human morality and psychology. But if he were to claim (and I’m not all too sure that he did), that evolutionary processes were the only thing that had to do with it, I think he would be breaching the bounds of methodological naturalism and entering into philosophical naturalism.

Human Reasoning: an Elephant and a Rider

Throughout human history, we have predominantly defined ourselves as primarily rational creatures who suffer from delusions, temptations, desires, and passions which prevent us from fulfilling our role primarily as rational creatures.

But Haidt disagrees. Based on some very compelling results from research he did in forming the ideas which constitute his book, he concluded that humans are primarily intuitive feelers who strategically justify their feelings with thoughts. Humans start with a moral intuition — which we will get to shortly — and reason from that deep moral intuition to conclusions that can be rationally justified.

Reason, then, takes a secondary role. Our rational minds are like riders on elephants. When the elephant slightly leans to the left, our rider automatically finds ways to justify the left turn. When we deeply feel that something is wrong, we find reasons for it, even if the reasons are very low quality. Haidt recounts a story of having overheard a father and his young son talking in a fast-food restaurant bathroom. The son insisted on asking why he couldn’t poop in the urinal. The father resorted to all sorts of explanations, the rather intelligent son hypothetically wiggling his way out of each one until the end, the father said, exasperated, something to the effect of „well, if you did, we’d all be in trouble!“.

Even as I heard the story, in the midst of laughing I thought to myself, ‚I know it would be wrong to do this, however a clear explanation does not come to mind!‘. I believe the answer is best described as resorting to a general ethical principle of cleanliness and order in our outer lives reflecting the internal order of our own minds. If we put things which we consider ‚unclean‘ in places which we consider ‚clean‘, or in any case cleaner, it would represent a violation of the internal order of our own minds. Try explaining that to your own child, or even more difficult, communicating it in a tweet. This is indeed a moral intuition that we all have innately. People who don’t adhere to it don’t do so randomly, they seem to be either disordered, psychologically undeveloped, or intentionally rebelling against it.

Fascinatingly, in the studies that Haidt and his colleagues conducted, even when voluntary subjects of interviews (specifically intended to appeal to different moral intuitions) could not find any rational justification for their views, they in many cases continued to hold these views strongly even when encountering persuasive arguments against them.

On the face of it, this suggests that as humans tend to hold to specific moral, political, and philosophical stances not primarily on the basis of a concern for what is true and ultimately correct, but because of the emotional and cultural meanings that they associate to them and how they correspond to their deeply held moral intuitions. Is that at all surprising? Does it conflict with your own experience at all?

But, as you noticed above, it was not the case that nobody changes their mind in response to persuasive arguments. Haidt argues that it is possible, but rare, for people to change their minds purely on the basis of arguments. He argues that the best way to convince someone of something is first to gain their empathy with it. When the elephant is already leaning in a certain direction, the rider may have at first been inclined to defend turning the opposite direction due to rational arguments, but will likely in the end be compelled to lean in the direction of the elephant due to the immense influence the elephant has on him.

This is a massive topic to unpack and I won’t be able to do it in a book review. Here are a few thoughts:

I suspect intuitively that the rider and elephant analogy is accurate, though flawed only by omission, in the sense that it captures a certain important glimpse of human behavior, but does not describe all that humans are capable of.

Is it true that rational thought is restricted to the rider and absent in the elephant? Is the elephant pure feeling or is cognition something that, so to speak, ‚runs underneath it all‘? Is there really so much of a distinction between our immediate consciousness and our deep seated consciousness in terms of their inherent nature of makeup? I have no hope of answering these questions fully, as I have only direct evidence from my own consciousness and mediated observations from other people.

From what I gather from my own consciousness, I can absolutely affirm that I tend to want things to be true and also to look for reasons to justify them. I also simply feel better when I read someone that agrees with me than I do when someone disagrees with me. But I can also say that I feel pangs of conviction after some time, that in order to do my full duty to the truth, I should really make an effort to open my mind and heart to those who disagree with me.

I also wonder whether there is room in this picture for the style of consciousness that many religious (and Stoic) teachings encourage and insist upon — a type of living in truth and reason instead of using ideas mainly as justifications for deeper intuitions and feelings. I don’t think that this would be such a historically insisted upon phenomena if it were not supported by the human hardware of psychology.

When I meditate upon truths or realities with a certain determination and intensity, the outward-oriented part of my brain (or the intellect, as some may call it) seems to fill and dominate my mind, and things like love, justice, peace, and primarily joy seem to flood my consciousness like a light shining into darkness. Surely if an illusion, it has been a persistent and life-changing one.

Is this accounted for by Haidt’s theory? Perhaps the ‚hive switch‘, which I will get to later, can account for it. I tend to think that many theories of human consciousness and psychology cannot help but play out like the oft-repeated parable of multiple blind men touching an elephant. These glimpses into the reality of human psychology are extremely valuable and important, but just as the Stoics‘ understanding of human consciousness as a struggle between logos (rationality and order) and passions which the logos could win was itself only a limited glimpse, I believe so also is the elephant and rider picture.

To be clear, I think that Haidt’s postulations about the dominance of ‚the elephant‘ in human’s mind is an apt descriptive account of humans as they commonly operate. But I also don’t believe that it portrays the full spectrum of human capability in terms of interaction with truth an reality. I could be wrong and have misunderstood him on this.

Intuitive Moral Foundations as the Bedrock of Human Moral Reasoning

As I mentioned earlier, Haidt concludes that the best explanation of Human morality is an evolved set of moral intuitions. Why, when the success game in evolution is about reproduction, would moral intuitions develop? The simple answer is that it is actually a very complex endeavor to ensure the reproduction of humans, and operating in groups is almost always more advantageous. As humans learned to operate in groups, over millions of years, the most successful and reproductive groups developed sets of moral intuitions which guided them towards more cohesiveness and team-play in groups. This ultimately allowed them to out-compete other hominids.

These are the five moral intuitions.

1. Care/Harm (Caring for others and preventing harm to them)
2. Fairness/Cheating (Resources should be distributed fairly. Cheaters should be punished)
3. Loyalty/Betrayal (Be loyal to your tribe; you deserve significant consequences for betraying them)
4. Authority/Subversion (Submit yourself to the established authority)
5. Sanctity/Degradation (Cleanliness and order in mind, body, and environment)
6. Liberty/Oppression (every person deserves to be free from oppression of others, and no person should oppress others)

I will not go into much detail about the exact nature of these moral intuitions as they are postulated — for that you’ll need to read Haidt’s book. Most noteworthy is that Haidt believes that the major source of political and religious disagreement is the selective emphasis and de-emphasis of specific moral intuitions in our mental lives, and that it does have some non-determinative genetic component. Indeed, research has shown that there are certain genetic components which can predispose someone in the direction of conservatism or liberalism.

 

Another thing worth shortly mentioning is that Haidt sees the common Left / Right political divide as extremely predictive of which moral intuitions one emphasizes. Liberal political beliefs are extremely predictive of an personal emphasis on only two moral intuitions, while being rather indifferent to the others: 1) Care/Harm,  and 2)  Liberty/Oppression. 

Conservatives, however, tend to focus on all six moral foundations as important values in society. This shouldn’t be too much of a surprise. After all, conservatives are often accused of being overly concerned about ‚what people do in their private lives and with their bodies‘. Perhaps this requires a closer look to better understand. Why is it that conservatives are often so characterized with a concern for how people conduct themselves in their private lives regardless of the fact that much socially aberrant behavior does not directly harm anyone?

Haidt makes it clear in his book that he learned while doing this research that his liberal understanding (or lack thereof) of conservative motives changed significantly when he came to understand that these moral foundations / intuitions were the primary motivation for conservative emphasis on specific political stances which seemed rather intrusive in others‘ lives, whereas his liberalism relied largely upon John Stuart Mill’s utilitarianism and the rather sterile principles of Liberty: „actions are right in proportion as they tend to promote happiness, wrong as they tend to produce the reverse of happiness“. 

He also described an experience he had living long-term in India as a moral education like nothing he had ever had before in the United States. As a liberal he learned for the first time, in another culture, to embrace all six moral foundations which are more commonly embraced by conservatives in the U.S.

He came to the conclusion that there is genuine value to these six moral foundations and that the real moral world is much ‚thicker and richer‘ than the liberal moral understanding of the world. That evolution has built humans innately for a moral spectrum that goes far beyond just care, harm and liberty, but also sanctity of mind and heart, loyalty to cultural values, fairness and justice, and respect for authority, and any understanding of human nature needs to account for these moral intuitions. 

 

The Hive Switch

Lastly, Haidt reviewed research showing that humans have a specific module in the brain which is in a sense a ’switch‘, that when triggered by specific social circumstances, enacted such oft lauded human behaviors as self sacrifice, wonder, group identity, ‚losing oneself‘, and etc. 

This ‚hive switch‘ as he called it, is named after the behavior that bees are so well known for. Bees live extremely selfless lives and all is done for the sake of the hive. Haidt claims that although humans are primarily primate, there is a built in mechanism in the human mind which makes us also partly bee-like. Humans really are capable of selflessness towards those in their groups. But it doesn’t come naturally and specific conditions must be in place to trigger it.

A number of things have been known to trigger such experiences. Military marching techniques has been known to foster incredible experiences of oneness and self-sacrifice among soldiers. Meditation has been known to trigger wonderful mystical experiences in which humans allegedly have an encounter with a ‚much greater reality‘. Even some drugs are known to trigger experiences like this, which have ended up leading to persistent life-changing moral effects on the lives of those who participated in trials.

Haidt believes that the hive switch can be abused and has been to great degree in societies — the 20th century is full of examples of fascist dictators taking advantage of human groupishness towards heinous and awful ends.  The problem is that, as mentioned earlier, humans can be selfless — but the hive mechanism is purportedly evolved to support group survival, not universal human survival. That means that the hive switch could be triggered to support huge amounts of selflessness towards one’s own group, but out-group members can be simultaneously demonized as ‚the enemy‘. 

I believe that Haidt has touched on something very important about human psyche. I also believe that, again, it could fall prey to a lie of omission if it is considered the full picture of human psychology. 

Philosophical assumptions can determine our conclusions and unintentionally skew reality. If the goal here is simply to explain human behavior with full and unambiguous assumption of philosophical naturalism, the only conclusion that we could possibly come to is that the hive switch is purely oriented towards group survival. As a Christian, however, though I believe that the so-called hive switch is certainly a real phenomena which aided in group survival for humans throughout the process of evolution, I also believe that a theistic intention in the process of evolution would have had ‚experience of the Divine‘ in mind as an additional purpose of the hive switch.  As I believe that the hive switch is a shortcut into a deeper experience of the human intellect (outward oriented imaginative faculties), and that a truly religiously faithful life is characterized by regular pursuit exactly such things, I believe that this mechanism exists to some degree to usher people into deeper experiences with God and love for others. 

Other Reflections

 

The New Atheism’s Core Tenet Rejected

In his book Haidt takes a position in striking contrast to the ’new atheist‘ attitude toward religion at the time the book was released. The common new atheist’s militant perception toward religion as a ‚mind disease‘ which ‚poisons everything‘ advocated the complete eradication of religion in society, citing religious wars, strife, bigotry, and moral stances on marriage, among other things, as reasons that religion was very much bad for culture in society.  

Haidt argues, to the contrary, that religion is an essential component to the evolution of humans, and that communities of shared moral understanding like religion regularly trigger the hive switch and lead to generosity, shared meaning and purpose in life, and well-being. He argues that human psychology is now, whether we like it or not, is built for religious belief and religious communities, and that religion has caused more good in society than the new atheists are willing to admit, as well as far less evil in the past than they recognize. 

That the new atheist vitriol towards religion has toned down in recent years is noticeable. Even many atheists and evolutionary biologist have begun approaching religion more as a ’necessary fiction‘ which is predicated upon the needs of human psychology. 

In the end, this fits fairly well into my picture of the world. My only nuance is that religious belief after all is not a necessary fiction for human psychology but a necessary response to an ever-present Reality.