"Moral intuitions"

What we can or should take from reading Haidt

Abstract

The paper attempts at a short critical overview of some works by social psychologist Jonathan Haidt, with respect to the consequences of Haidt's claims for the notion of morality and the possibility of philosophical discussion about moral problems. I will argue that while Haidt's findings and their interpretations are remarkable and illuminating, they rather distort some aspects of human morality and moral life and make their understanding more difficult rather than easier. In the first section I touch upon Haidt's concept of moral intuition and unclarity connected to its interpretation, following the way in which Haidt introduces this concept and works with it in his Mark-and-Julie example. In the second section I will indicate the consequences of this unclarity for Haidt's politico-psychological analyses. In the last section I will talk about the importance of the variety of philosophical theories of morality, neglected by Haidt. The common denominator of several of my criticisms will be Haidt's implicit assumption of a roughly utilitarian conception of morality, including its normative aspects, much as he declares his investigations to be purely descriptive and pluralistic.