My, my; such philosophic tripe. Good thing no one took that sort of thing seriously in, say, the early 1800's. One can just see Wilberforce thundering from the pulpit, "Slavery violates the five psychological foundations of morality!" Yeah, that'd convince them.

O well, I take comfort in the fact that such so-called 'thought' about morality is destined to die away and become a historical oddity, like the Shakers. We fascist bigoted rightwing conservative Godtalker types are outbreeding the average lib/leftist/atheist bigtime. And, thanks to the burgeoning homeschool movement, many of us aren't allowing the latter to have free access to our children's minds during those formative years. In fact, my teenage boys (three of them; how many kids do you have? and my oldest says he's going to have 6 kids, so I think I'm going to win the grandchild race) are even more conservative than I am. My daughter's only 7, so it's harder to tell, but she does love Jesus, so I have little doubt where she'll stand when she's older. Just think of it as evolution in action. Atheism/liberalism is a counter-reproductive survival strategy, doomed to failure.

Zach said the Haidt and Graham paper "does a good job of explaining why conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals can't understand and usually misinterpret."

I don't think it does a good job of explaining the "why." Other than that, I agree with the statement -- it does make the *observation* that conservatives have moral intuitions that liberals can't understand and usually misinterpret.

Part of it may be that, as the paper observes, the three additional moral intutitions nurtured by conservatives in fact *conflict* with the two moral intuitions that conservatves and liberals share.

Personally, I think liberals recognize the conflict, and prioritize the primary two intuitions (fairness, prevention of harm) *above* the other three intuitions (ingroup, hierarchy and purity), and only recognize the other three with they in some way tend to advance the first two. Conservatives, on the other hand, don't resolve the conflict, and simply act on whichever moral intuition happens to most serve their immediate interests.

But that's just my theory, as a liberal . . .

Phil, you caught some bad diction. I originally wrote that this explained why conservatives win elections, which seemed less accurate than what I meant to write, wherein the why should be replaced by a that.

As for the conflict/prioritization, I do think you're on to something. Only, the paper suggests that liberals do, at least in certain instances, really miss the other three intuitions. And conservatives seem much more aware of prioritization.

I'm sure we could find evidence either way, but perhaps the key questions are: who explicitly acknowledges the other intuitions and who would hold a worldview that entails constraints and tradeoffs? Ah, but I've stacked the deck.

"who explicitly acknowledges the other intuitions and who would hold a worldview that entails constraints and tradeoffs? Ah, but I've stacked the deck"

I think what usually leaves liberals dumbfounded (see the reference in the article to John Stewart's exchange with Rick Santorum) is the tendancy of conservatives to promote hierarchy, ingroup and purity *at the expense of* fairness and/or prevention of harm.

I could be wrong (conservatives obviously think I am) but to me, hierarchy, ingroup and purity are values that are only justifiable in terms of their service to the first two values -- fairness and/or prevention of harm.

What ultimately ends up happening is that activities supporting these latter three values are awarded a presumption of intrinsic value by conservatives, regardless of the relationship of these activities to fairness/presumption of harm.

Thus, a conservative would be more likely than a liberal to advocate for a hierarchy (like, say, mid-20th century segregation, or preference for heterosexual relationships) that is incredibly unfair, and/or causes harm, simply because *it is the existing hierarchy* and thus is a good in itself.

Yet (and again I could be wrong) hierarchy, in-group, and purity were all values developed originally *to promote the values of fairness or prevention of harm*. Conservatives abandon the roots of these values, and use them as ends in themselves.

The three conservative-only values, I think, are conservative-only because of the fact that conservatives untie these values from their service of the first two values, and see these values as ends in themselves. Which is how you get racism (over-used in-group) fascism (over-used hierarchy), and religious extremism (overused purity).

Phil,

I think you are correct in saying that hierarchy, ingroup, and purity are most valuable in their service to fairness and prevention of harm*. However, I would not label the former as entirely subordinate to the latter. Rather, certain aspects of hierarchy, ingroup, and purity make the other two ethics possible in the first place. They are the strong foundation which makes it possible to build a house to live in.

I do agree about the negative outcomes of valuing only the three "conservative" ethics--a house cannot be just a foundation. So what we arrive at is, as Zach said, the need for balancing and trade-offs.

*I personally believe there's also a transcendent element of morality in the ethic Haidt and Graham call "purity," but that's not necessary to my argument here.

"Our claim here goes further: we argue that the “principles” of principled conservatism go beyond fairness..."

Conservatives and liberals also disagree on what constitutes fairness.

The example of gay marriage is cited earlier in the report addresses another disagreement, over the nature of human psychology. And it's hardly limited to the field of sexuality. Conservatives claim that

"...to include principles that liberals do not acknowledge to be moral principles, such as unconditional loyalty to one’s group..."

Unconditional loyalty? That may be true of leftist political correctness and Westboro Baptist Church, but it's not characteristic of even a majority of conservatives.

"...respect for one’s superiors..."

The Right and Left are the same on this note - they simply have differing sets of "superiors."

"...and the protection of female chastity."

Uh, male chastity, too.

Reading down, I'm not convinced that liberal morality doesn't have components of ingroup, hierarchy, and purity. (Radical liberals certainly exhibit them, as anyone who has encountered Political Correctness knows.) Both left and right have ingroups; in politics we call them "special interests." When reading the essay's description on hierarchy, the first fitting example to come to mind was modern unionism - hardly a bastion of the Right. As for purity - good grief! Only conservatives are capable of moral indignation??? Left and right have purity issues, but they define "purity" differently.

Their three exclusively conservative values are nothing that I remember ever recognizing as valid, as a conservative. I have met people who call themselves "conservative" who would emphasize those three, but I have also met many who, like myself, would not. (I have also, like Alan K. Henderson above, seen these ways of thinking in liberals, at least in a hybrid form.) They are making the mistake of thinking that conservatives and liberals can be precisely defined by their beliefs and approaches to thinking about morality, even though each label seems more to describe a movement or alliance than a unifying way of thinking. (It is a common mistake, and it is hard to avoid when talking about what "liberals" and "conservatives" are and what they believe, but it does affect the applicability of any conclusion about "liberals" and "conservatives.")

Also, even though it may be useful (though I am not certain that it is) for those who study these things to officially recognize "ingroup," hierarchy, and purity as something on which people could base moral judgments, those who study this are probably already aware of the influence that ingroup, hierarchy, and purity have on people, even if they classify them as amoral motives, instead of moral motives.

1.) Man is fundamentally good and ought to be aided in his quest toward perfection. Fairness, equality, and flat heirarchies ought to be the values of government.

2.) Man is fundamentally evil and ought to be limited in his ability to do harm. Justice, protection and a strong chain of command ought to be the values of government.

I used to think that conservatives and liberals break down on those lines, but I see aspects of both in both groups (if the behaviour of groups of men is a singular thing).

Interestingly, I think many of those on the right consider themselves to be in the first camp, but are really in the second camp when it comes to governing.

As I said before, Left and Right are both concerned with fairness, but have differing ideas on what's fair and equal. In economics, for instance, they argue over whether the ends (distribution of resources) or the means (how resources are earned) has primacy. In education, they argue over the purported fairness of school administrators trumping parental authority over certain academic and cultural issues, such as sex curricula and literature selections.

Support for "flat hierarchies" - or, more specifically, checks and balances - are a consequence of the "Man is fundamentally evil" assumption. Massive government programs are mostly products of the Left; all of them follow the rigid strong-chain-of-command structure and are sorely lacking in checks and balances. Free markets are a flat hierarchy, but the Left wants to insert heavy regulatory structure far beyond simple protections against commercial forms of theft such as fraud and embezzlement.

If conservatives are the justice-and-protection faction, then explain the sets of leftists who want to tax and/or regulate unhealthy food, ban animal testing, criminalize "hate speech" (the Canadians and British actually have such laws), use RICO anti-racketeering laws against abortion protesters, regulate political speech within 60 days of an election (McCain is a liberal on this issue), and bring back the Fairness Doctrine. Right and Left simply have different ideas on what constitutes justice and what protections government must pursue.