Haidt’s Moral Foundations Theory describes six psychological predispositions that helped humans survive and thrive in the cooperative environments we created for ourselves as we evolved to become “The Social Animal” that David Brooks describes in his book by that title.

Moral foundations perform several functions. They’re key elements of both types of cognition that Daniel Kahneman described in his book “Thinking Fast and Slow.” They’re part of the subconscious, automatic, practically instantaneous “fast” processes that are constantly running in the background of our minds to detect patterns of behaviors, situations, and circumstances associated with the adaptive challenges and opportunities that were faced by our genetic ancestors through the millennia. When such patterns are detected, these subconscious cognitive modules can send signals, red alerts, upward into consciousness. We use the word “intuition” to refer to this sort of subconscious cognition that rises into consciousness. Malcolm Gladwell famously wrote about it in his book “Blink.”

Moral foundations are also tools of “slow” conscious reason. They’re some of the logical constructs we use to justify and defend our intuitions to others, and to try to convince others that our own intuitions are the right ones. Our ability to reason evolved not to help us make better decisions and to find truth (although in rare and special circumstances it can be used for that), but rather to help us win arguments. This explains the mountains of evidence which show that humans are exceptional at finding the specks in each others’ eyes, but terrible at seeing the logs in our own.

Importantly, moral foundations are the building blocks of cooperative society; of civilization itself. Humans are the only species on the planet that evolved to form into cooperative groups, great in number, made up of individuals who are not related with one another, and then to compete with other groups. Moral foundations are the evolved psychological mechanisms that make this possible.

There are six foundations, they are care/harm, fairness/cheating, liberty/oppression, loyalty/betrayal, authority/subversion, and sanctity/degradation. The first three are known as the “individualizing” foundations because their object is the well being and autonomy of the individual. The latter three are known as the “binding” foundations because their role is to help individuals form together into cooperative groups.

Liberal morality, intuition, and reason, is built almost entirely on only the individualizing foundations, and of those mostly just “care.” Conservatism is built on all six foundations in equal balance. A Venn diagram of liberal and conservative moral foundations would represent liberalism as a circle around the first three foundations and conservatism around all six, completely enveloping liberalism. There is no liberal foundation that is not also a conservative foundation, but half the foundations of conservatism are for all practical purposes external to liberal intuitions and reasoning about the social world; about human nature.

I believe that Jonathan Haidt’s body of work supports the argument that the best metaphor for describing liberalism and conservatism is that of Flatland and Spaceland, where liberals are two dimensional “square” Flatlanders and conservatives are three dimensional “sphere” Spacelanders. Here’s his summary of Flatland from page 182 of his book The Happiness Hypothesis – Finding Modern Truth in Ancient Wisdom”

“One day, the square is visited by a sphere from a three-dimensional world called Spaceland. When a sphere visits Flatland, however, all that is visible to Flatlanders is the part of the sphere that lies in their plain-in other words, a circle. The square is astonished that the circle is able to grow or shrink at will (by rising or sinking into the plane of Flatland) and even to disappear and reappear in a different place (by leaving the plane, and then reentering it). The sphere tries to explain the concept of the third dimension to the two-dimensional square, but the square, though skilled at two-dimensional geometry, doesn’t get it. He cannot understand what it means to have thickness in addition to height and breadth, nor can he understand that the circle came from up above him, where “up” does not mean from the north. The sphere presents analogies and geometrical demonstrations of how to move from one dimension to two, and then from two to three, but the square stilI finds the idea of moving “up” out of the plane of Flatland ridiculous.”

The Flatland/Spaceland metaphor of liberalism/conservatism explains much more than just why liberals don’t get conservatives, it also explains the ubiquitous liberal memes about conservatives.

When half of morality is external to, and essentially inaccessible by, one’s intuition and reasoning about the social world as it is for liberals one is left with practically no rational alternative but to conclude that those who think differently must be, can only be, afflicted with some sort of cognitive, psychological, or social dysfunction like racism, sexism, homophobia, lack of empathy, excess greed, etc. etc. etc.

Go look up “sin” at a Catholic appologetics site to try to understand, unless you’re too in love with your strawman.

An unethical person is a evil person. An ethical person is a good person. There’s no ambiguity here.

But you cannot say that a person who has violated one of the ten commandments is always evil or even that a person who follows all ten is automatically good. That standard is a religious standard designed not to apply to everyone, but simply to apply to members of Moses’ clan and tribe. TO keep order. TO prevent disunity, bloodshed, and crime. THose are social functions. Moral functions. But not ethical principles.

It may not be enforceable, but that doesn’t make it any less moral.

And what makes the 10 commandments, including the first one, moral?

Who does it benefit? God? You? Society? All three?

What is it, if not society, when rules benefit such?

But society has no conscience. Only individuals have a conscience. Only individuals are ethical agents, capable of free will and thus good and evil. Society has standards, but those standards are both evil and good depending on who is using it and how.

WACO? No.

Spying on Republicans using federal powers? No

Executing German spies that have surrendered and given 110% cooperation, solely for political and public relations benefits? No

The Democrats and the Left only say they dislike state power. What they dislike is not having the state power to destroy their enemies.

You are going to have to come up with your “universal morality” and answer why one nation is right and another nation, Saudi Arabia, is wrong, Lumpen. Until you do, I don’t recognize your ability to judge whether my statements are inconsistent or not, for you have not demonstrated an adequate knowledge of the logic that I am using.

Well thanks for answering the test and challenge. That just means my probes have conclusively proved that you have nothing actual in terms of a bone to pick with my arguments or “definitions”, as you call them.

If you wish to argue against what I have said, you are going to be required to come up with a counter-argument. Not just “I used situational ethics as hypothetical examples to pick apart people’s constructed arguments”. To paraphrase. Arguments are more than just setting a bomb to blow a building apart, you know. It requires some kind of creation and construction, at least.

Your statements directly contradict each other. Maybe in that first quote you meant ethics. But that isn’t what you wrote.

My statements are not beholden to your biased and unwise judgments, Lumpen.

You do not comprehend them. You cannot act as if you comprehend them. And thus, you cannot deem yourself fit to judge them as consistent or inconsistent.

No, I did not mean ethics when I said morality. You may mean ethics when you say universal morality, but that has nothing to do with my views on such.

When you are looking at my arguments, you have to see it from my world view and my logic. If there is a problem with my logic, you have to point it out. Which means what? Which means that they appear inconsistent to you only because your perception of my views are flawed. You somehow think I am making a distinct differentiation between morality and ethics that makes them mutually exclusive with each other.

THey are not mutually exclusive to each other. Morality cannot exist without ethics, but ethics can exist without morality. That’s not mutually exclusive, as you can see.

Ethics holds higher importance than morality. Ethics covers more things than morality. Ethics is true universally, regardless of how many people in the universe agree with it or not. MOrality is only true if people agree that it is true. If nobody in a society agrees that something moral is moral, then it ain’t moral, period. No doubt about it. 99% of the people in America don’t think child sex is moral or right. Very different from the other 50% of humanity on this world, however.

Yeah… I remember that the next time I want to smoke in a restaurant, or get a septic tank permit, or buy a Humvee, or drive without a seatbelt, or don’t make my kid wear a helmet, or….