In chs. 9 and 10, Haidt begins his defense of his third principle of empirical moral psychology:
(III) Morality binds and blinds.
The other two (with my interpolations), already defended in the book, are:
(I) Intuitions come first [in moral thinking] strategic reasoning [to moral conclusions] second
(II) There’s more to morality [moral thinking] than harm and fairness.
I spent the afternoon yesterday trawling JSTOR and EBSCO for articles. There is–and you’ll have to trust me on this–nothing more enjoyable than an afternoon spent in the library, skimming through scholarship that was being published when you were in grade school.
I couldn’t help chuckling over the sheer curmudgeonliness of this item, a critique of E.P. Thompson’s The Making of the English Working Class:
Dale Edward Williams, “Were ‘Hunger’ Rioters Really Hungry? Some Demographic Evidence,” Past and Present, vol. 71 (May 1976), 70-75.
Have scare quotes ever been so dismissive? The thesis, apparently, is “not really.” At any rate, they could have been hungrier.
Here are some snippets of actual conversations I had this week with colleagues. The first was with a colleague in the English Department.
English professor waiting for an elevator (ominously): Irfan, we have to talk.
Irfan: About what?
English professor: About [pause]…Ayn Rand.
He disappears wordlessly into the elevator. Continue reading
I’ve been a little too busy to blog much lately, but here are a few announcements of potential interest. Continue reading
It is fitting or appropriate to admire the admirable (and similarly, it is fitting to value the valuable). According the the fitting attitudes account (FA) of an action or person being admirable, admirability is nothing more than fittingness to be admired. And according to the reasons account of an attitude being fitting (RFA), an attitude being fitting is nothing more than the balance of reasons (of the right sort) favoring having the attitude toward the object. This gives rise the the “wrong kind of reason” problem: we need to say which reasons are the right reasons for admiring to make for admirability because a person or action is not rendered admirable by, say, my threatening her (or God threatening everyone) should she (or any given person) fail to admire, say, children torturing cats. Nor are these sorts of reasons relevant to it being admirable to help someone in need at some significant expense to oneself (e.g.).
(Note the change in the time of the event to 6:30 pm.)
I’m the co-chair, with Dr. Edward Ogle, of Felician University’s Committee on Leadership and Social Justice (CLSJ). Our theme this year is “Race and Criminal Justice in America,” and I’m pleased to be able to announce our kick-off event: a presentation by Professor Mark Denbeaux, of Seton Hall University Law School, on his recent co-authored study of racial profiling in Bloomfield, New Jersey (“Racial Profiling Report: Bloomfield Police and Bloomfield Municipal Court“).
The event will take place at 6:30 pm on Tuesday, September 27, 2016 in the Education Commons Building at Felician University’s Rutherford, New Jersey campus (223 Montross Ave, Rutherford NJ, 07070). I will serve as discussant; all are invited and welcome. (Note: Felician University’s sponsoring the event does not necessarily imply agreement with the contents of the Seton Hall Report, or with Professor Denbeaux’s views).
The CLSJ had originally conceived of the event as a debate between Professor Denbeaux and a representative from Bloomfield Municipal Government, but unfortunately, despite a summer’s worth of invitations to Bloomfield (several invitations each to the mayor’s office, to the Police Department, and to Councilwoman Wartyna Davis), Bloomfield has not only declined our invitation but declined to acknowledge it altogether. (If any relevant party in Bloomfield government sees this, and thinks that I’ve been too hasty in making the preceding claim, feel free to contact me at khawajai at felician dot edu. I’m still open to participation by a representative of Bloomfield Township, but the date and time of the event should now be considered fixed.)
Here’s a video based on Denbeaux’s report, from Vice News.
And here’s another video, an out-take from the first one, that opens in a new window. Here’s some press coverage of the report, from NJ.com. Some more, more, more, more, and yet more. (And one more, for good measure.) I neither fully agree nor disagree with Denbeaux’s report, and hope to blog it–as well as Bloomfield’s refusal to acknowledge my invitation–in the near future.
Postscript, September 1, 2016. Belatedly discovered this NPR interview with Professor Denbeaux. Hat-tip: George Abaunza.
Postscript, September 19, 2016: The time of the event has been changed from 6 to 6:30 pm.
In chapters 7 and 8, Haidt describes in detail his account of our innate “moral foundations”—a relatively small set of fundamental psychological mechanisms that underlie and produce our moral intuitions. In previous chapters, he has argued that moral judgment is driven primarily by moral intuition—that the intuitive dog wags the rational tail—and that our moral intuitions cover more areas of life than just harm and fairness. It is now time to get specific. Just what are these fundamental, innate sources of moral intuition, and how can we show that we really have them?
1.1(3) (part 1, para. 1, line 3 of Derek Bowman’s “The Circumstances of Justice”
We owe (or are due) things from each other and there are general principles (of justice) that specify just what it is that we owe to each other. That the verb here is ‘specify’ suggests a normative, explanatory role: the general principles explain why each of us owes it to each other to refrain from PHI-ing, but not to refrain from PSI-ing (or perhaps why each of us owes it to each other to refrain from PHI-ing in certain circumstances but not others). However, one of several to-me controversial things that Rawls’ characterization of justice suggests is that these general principles do not do this work, but rather some slightly different work – the work of justifying the adoption (perhaps the public adoption) of a prescriptive norm (or a nested set of prescriptive norms with a certain structure). That might go something like this: each of us is to refrain from PHI-ing with respect to each other person (and all of us is to stand ready to enforce the prescription to refrain from PHI-ing by demanding that potential rule-breakers don’t break the rule and by punishing actual rule-breakers). On this second way in which the general principles might work, they do something like specify conclusive reasons to construct a particular social practice. Continue reading
It appears that my book is officially out. In the hope of further enticing some of you to read it, or at least find a copy and flip through it, I here include a brief snippet from chapter 4 that may be of some interest. We pick up in the midst of my consideration of an alternative view (that of Mary Nichols in her Citizens and Statesmen) of what Aristotle means when he talks about ruling and being ruled “by turns” or “in part.” According to this alternative, I count as ruling “in part” with you provided that you rule me in a way that recognizes my existence as a distinct, independent, free person.
I’m sitting in the common room on the eighth floor of Al Abraj Housing Complex in Abu Dis, having a conversation with a friend, when we hear a loud boom.
“What was that?” he asks. He’s a newcomer.
“I have to get a closer listen.” I go to the balcony, and cock my ear in the direction of the booms.
Boom. Boom. Boom.
“I don’t think that’s firecrackers,” he says.
“Neither do I,” I respond.
BOOM.
“Definitely not,” I confirm. “Today is Friday, right?”
“Right.”
“It’s Friday Clashes in Abu Dis. You want to go?”
He looks at me. There’s a slight tinge of apprehension on his face. “No,” he says, at last. He’s a newcomer, after all.
“OK,” I say, brightly. “Well, I’m off.” Continue reading
Policy of Truth 