Introduction:
Moral Psychology is a relatively new branch of Psychology that studies moral identity development. A moral act is considered as behavior that has either a moral or immoral consequence (Teper, Inzlicht, & Page-Gould, 2011). A moral act is any act that requires purity, free will, honesty, liberty, and meaning while an immoral act is smeared with corruption and fraudulence of any sort. It is believed; moral act leads to positive consequences and immoral to negative consequences. Many major topics included in this vast field are moral character, moral judgment, moral development, moral reasoning, moral responsibility, moral action, altruism, moral luck, moral emotion among other (Teper, Inzlicht, & Page-Gould, 2011). Moral Psychology can be applied in philosophy or psychology.
Moral Psychology is assumed to have begun with philosophers such as Aristotle, Plato, and Socrates. These philosophers believed in knowing good is doing good. They studied the way people make decisions based on moral identity. The struggle between good and evil has been the subject matter of moral psychology until it became a formal branch of psychology. Now this field is apparently expanding and flourishing; Jonathan Haidt’s (2012) work is evidence in that direction.
This paper will elucidate on Jonathan Haidt’s first chapter of his treatise “The Righteous Mind” titled, “Where Does Morality Come from”. The paper will then interrogate two journal articles which support the arguments raised in the chapter. In the articles, the paper will be seeking to unearth the researchers’ hypotheses, the manner in which they present their dependent and independent variables, their research design and structure and their findings regarding the original thesis.
Jonathan Haidt’s Chapter One: Where Does Morality Come from?
This chapter is the first in a series of other chapters falling under the broad theme “Intuitions Come First, Strategic Reasoning Second” which forms part one of the books. In this chapter, Jonathan seeks to illuminate on the origin of morality (Haidt, 2010). Here, he advances a broad array of theories, themes and propositions to expound on the idea of morality as pertains its origin. The first dichotomous view of the origin of morality is the nature-nurture dichotomy. In this categorization, Jonathan argues that those who believe that morality originated form nature are nativists and hold the view that morals are inscribed in our minds and are, therefore, God-give right from birth (Haidt, 2010). As such, newly born kids are born with their morals intact. As the bible would state, morals in this sense are God-given and cannot neither be acquired nor lost from the holder. Charles Darwin would also say that this type of morals are what he termed as “evolved moral emotion”
The second category in this dichotomy is nurture. Jonathan argues that those who hold this view are empiricists and that morals are acquired by observing and learning from elders. As such, a young child has got no morals at birth and as John Locke would say, such morals are learnt later during the developmental stages of the child by observing from adults and being taught to have good morals. Jonathan, however, holds this view to be wrong and develops a third categorization of this developing thought. According to him, there was a thought that developed in the year 1987 referred to as rationalism (Haidt, 2010).
This view held that moral psychology develops as the young child starts figuring out for themselves what is right or wrong for them as they grow up. This view was advanced by a famous zoologist Jean Piaget, who spent a lot of time studying how young children behaved and were able to conclude that this is only possible when the minds of the children were receptive and ready to acquire the morals and also when the adults impart them with the right experiences.
Jonathan, therefore, borrows this view from Jean Piaget to opine that indeed rationality is our nature and, therefore, good and sound moral reasoning is the hallmark of development. He, therefore, affirms Jean Piaget reasoning on this view. In a series of stories and experiences that arise in the chapter, Jonathan narrates a story on the researches of Lawrence Kohlberg, who made the proposition that the moral reasoning of a child was able to change with advancement in age and that children are able to judge moral behaviour and character by making observations on the things that happen to them on a day to day basis so that they can see whether a person will be punished for committing a certain offence and then they learn from such an experience whether such an act is good or bad. Lawrence also states that parents and other adults may at times act as obstacles to the moral development of the child by declining to allow the child to do something that would make the child advance morally, for example, playing with other children.
Jonathan lastly explains the theories advanced by his fellow scholar Shweder, who comes up with two more theories i.e. socio-centric and individualistic theories. Socio-centric theories are those theories that place the needs of the society and other societal groups at the forefront while individualistic theories are those that place the interests of the individual at the forefront (Haidt, 2010). This was meant to attack the discoveries of Jean Piaget and Kohlberg.
At the end of the chapter, Jonathan explains why he rejected the third theory that explains the origin of morals, the rationality theory. He gave the reasons that the moral domain varies with culture and, therefore, the fact that socio-centric beliefs place the interests of the society and culture at the forefront, they are, therefore, able to broaden the perspectives and encompass more aspects of the life of a human being. The second reason for the rejection was that moral reasoning can sometimes be influenced by disgust and disrespect because it sometimes operates as a post hoc operation and therefore morality cannot be said to be solely influenced by rationality. Finally, Jonathan advances the reasoning that moral reasoning and morality cannot be said to be influenced by the experiences and lessons children learn as they grow up. In this sense, culture must be said to play a big role in shaping the morality of a child as they grow up and, therefore, his rejection of the theory of rationality. That is the farthest Jonathan takes this chapter although the chapters that follow are interconnected with this first chapter of the book.
In the section that follows, the paper will interrogate two journal articles whose authors have supported these arguments since the theme is now set. Such articles will therefore discuss the origin of morality, in support of Jonathan’s propositions.
In this article, Chris Heathwood advances the hypothesis that moral values indeed must have a source. In spite of the fact that various categories of people hold different views as to the origin of morality, they all share a common denominator, and that is that morality must have originated from somewhere (Heathwood, 2012). The author of this article, therefore, suggests that such sources could be human nature, agreement between various classes of people or from God. He discusses moral realism as to include the fact that some things are grounded on moral properties of either being morally wrong or being intrinsically good (Heathwood, 2012). Secondly, when such values have properties, it does not mean that the attitudes of the observers of such practices or things must be blindly obeyed without question. He opines that all moral values can be questioned as regards their source and the authenticity of such sources.
Chris continues to say that sentimentalists believe that morality is firmly rooted in human nature, and this belief descends straight from the teachings of David Hume, a natural law scholar. Contractarians, on the other hand, agree that to some extent morality is part of human nature but also add that such morality is also grounded in the agreements that human beings make as they traverse their day-to-day activities (Denis, 2008). According to John Locke, morality originated from God and His teachings to mankind.
Chris works with two variables in the form of statements namely: If an act is said to be morally obligatory, then God must have commanded that act because He is the origin of morality. Secondly, according to Chris, of the God has, in fact, commanded the act, then it means that the act is automatically morally obligatory (Heathwood, 2012). Throughout the article, Chris develops mathematical formulae and propositions to make this theory work and at times even compares it with the Russian principle that if a person has made a promise that he would perform a certain act, then that person has in himself a moral obligation to perform that act because the pledge has come from them to perform that act, they have not been compelled to do so (Denis, 2008).
Regarding reductionist theories of morality, Chris is of the view that if morality can at any one time be reduced to a non-moral source, then morality in that sense will be said to have a non-moral source. Chris then concludes by stating that any claim that has the effect of suggesting that morality does not have a source must be ungrounded because from what he explains in his theory, morality has a source. This supports the original theory of Jonathan that indeed morality has a source, it does not just arise from nowhere, as some theorists opine.
Dennis seeks to advance the thesis that the idea the idea put forward by a number of people that all organisms are inherently selfish or exhibit some degree of selfishness and, therefore, immoral by nature is completely wrong and ungrounded. Dennis is of the view that the origin of morality can be traced from the fact that it arose to help in solving the social problems that human beings face when various people meet to show their conflicts of interest (Krebs, 1998). As such, a person who wakes up alone feeds alone and does all their things alone do not concern themselves a lot with moral behaviour.
However, when a number of people congregate together for a social reason, there is a need to uphold moral values towards each other (Krebs, 1998). As such, morality is as old as the society itself. The author, therefore, makes use of the society as the independent variable while morality is used as the independent variable.
Throughout the article, however, one thing is clear, that indeed, morality has a source as advanced by Jonathan and Chris in the works reviewed earlier in this paper.
Conclusion
References
Denis, L. (2008). Kant and Hume on Morality,”in Edward N. Zalta, ed., The Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Summer 2008 Edition. Available at http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2008/entries/kant-hume-morality .
Haidt, J. (2010). The Righteous Mind: Why good People are Divided by Politics and religion . Pantheon Books, New York .
Heathwood, C. (2012). Could Morality Have a Source? Journal of Ethics and Social Philosophy , Vol. 6 No. 2.
Krebs, D. (1998). The Evolution of Moral Behaviour, In C. Crawford & D.L Krebs (eds) . Handbook of Evolutionary Psychology: Ideas, Issues and Applications. Hillsdale, NJ Erlbaum , 337-368.
Teper, R., Inzlicht, M., & Page-Gould, E. (2011). Are we more moral than we think?: Exploring the role of affect in moral behavior and moral forecasting. Psychological Science , 22(4), 553-558.
