MAR 9

15: MAR 9: Unit 2: Living in the Matrix / Working with Political Difference 1

Assigned

• Haidt, Chapter 8, “The Conservative Advantage”

In-class

• A continuum of views of justice...
• The Paradox of Moral Experience.
• Assign SW2: Understanding Political Difference

Paradox of Moral Experience

• The Paradox of Moral Experience involves a conflict between two "standpoints" for seeing values. 1 and 2 below:

• 1. We experience our morality as beliefs we hold true. They are compelling to us in a way that leads us to expect others to find them compelling. We can be surprised or frustrated that others do not see our reasons as compelling. From this standpoint, our moral truths feel necessary rather than contingent.

• Examples: "What's wrong with those (lib/con)s, don't they see X/Y?" "How can anyone think it's ok to act like that?")

• 2. But, when we study morality as a functional system that integrates people who see and interpret the world differently, it is less surprising that we often do not find each others' reasoning or choices compelling. We can also see how groups of people might develop "values cultures" that diverge on entire sets of values (or, "cooperative toolkits") while still solving some of the same underlying problems that all human societies face. From this standpoint, the functions of morality are universal, but the specific strategies that individuals and cultures take seem very contingent. But, knowing this, why don’t we experience our own values as contingent?
• Examples:

• Sociocentric / Individualist cultures, Specific histories that groups experience (Us vs. Europe vs. Oppressed peoples - Slavery, Sicily...)
• Honor Cultures v Shame Cultures
• Variations in Impersonal Honesty, Trust of strangers, focus on intentions, analytic thinking (Henrich C1).
• Roughly, 1 is normal experience, when you are "in your head". 2 reflects an attempt, through knowledge, to get a "third person" experience, to "get out of your head".
• Likely evolutionary basis: Belief commitment (believing that our beliefs are true) is advantageous, but we also need to be open to belief revision through social encounters.

• Some implications:

• We have a bias against seeing others' moral beliefs as functional. Rather, we see them as caused by their culture, and often wrongheaded. For example, we might say that "Italians are more sociocentric because their culture makes them that way." Rather than what the third person knowledge tells us: that sociocentric cultures function to solve basic problems, just like individualistic ones.
• On the other hand, if there are many cultural strategies ("cooperative toolkits", moral matrices, state of political discourse) that are "functional" (they work to broadly prompt life affirming outcomes in the society), then there might also be "disfunctional strategies. Rapa Nui. If morality is an evolved set of behaviors, including the capacity to be changed by our cultures, perhaps we can focus on ways of assessing it apart from ideology? Not sure....

Haidt, Chapter 8: The Conservative Advantage

• Hadit's critique of Dems: Dems offer sugar (Care) and salt (Fairness), conservatives appeal to all five receptors. Imagine the value of "rewriting" our own or opposing ideologies as Haidt imagined doing. Dems should appeal to loyalty and authority more. Neglect may be ommission and underrepresent Dems (recall discussion of labels and issues. We could add "values".)

• Republicans seemed to Haidt to understand moral psych better, not because they were fear mongering, but triggering all of the moral moral foundations. Equalizer metaphor.

• Measuring Morals

• The MFQ: consistency across cultures; large n;

• 162: Correlations of pol orientation with preferences for dog breeds, training, sermon styles. You can catch liberal and conservative "surprise" in the EEG and fMRI.(similar to early Hibbing reading).

• What Makes People Vote Republican?

• biographical note about tracking Obama on left/right triggers. Message on parental resp, but then shift to social justice, global citizenship, omitted flag lapel pin.

• 164: Haidt's argument for replacing "old story" of political difference: there's something wrong with conservatives! Note reactions to his essay: some libs/conserv found it hard to establish a positive view of their "opponents". Haidt has implicit critique of Libs by saying that organic society can't just be about 2 foundations. Experience with his essay. follow.

• Mill vs. Durkheim - responses to the challenge of living with strangers in modern society. Individualism vs. Organic society. Haidt’s essay triggers lots of political venom. From that response, however, Haidt noticed that he was missing a foundation: Fairness as proportionality. You reap what you sow. The fairness foundation mixed fairness as equality and fairness as proportionality.

• 6th Moral foundation: liberty and oppression: taking the "fairness as equality" from Fairness and considers it in terms of Liberty/Oppression. [Some discussion here. Note relation to Authority/Leadership in Hibbing. Equality here means social equality and social hierarchy. When do we expect equal treatment? When do we tolerate hierarchy? When to we rebel. Similarity to Authority/subversion, but more than legitimacy of one authority figure, rather social hierarchy.

• The Liberty / Oppression Foundation

• ”The desire for equality more closely related to psychology of liberty / oppression that reciprocal altruism.

• Evolutionary story about hierarchy.

• Original triggers: bullies and tyrants, current triggers: illegit. restraint on liberty.
• Evolutionary/Archeological story: egalitarianism in hunter gatherers, hierarchy comes with agriculture.
• Emergence of pre-ag dominance strategies -- 500,000ya weapons for human conflict (and language to complain about bullies and tyrants) takes off. This changes the strategic problem. Parallel in Chimps: revolutions: "reverse dominance hierarchies" are possible.

• Cultural Evo Theory on cultural strategies toward equality: Societies make transition to some form of political egalitarianism (equality of citizenship or civic equality). We've had time to select for people who can tolerate political equality and surrender violence to the state. (Got to mention dueling here.) Culture domestics us. "Self-domestication".

• ”The liberty/oppression foundation evolved in response to the adaptive challenge of living in small groups with individuals who would, if gen the chance, dominate, bully, and constrain others.

• Liberal vs. Conservative triggers on Liberty/Oppression:

• Liberals experience this in terms of universalistic goals like social justice, abuse of the power of the most fortunate. Oppressed individuals.
• Conservatives triggered more by group level concerns. The nanny state is oppression, taxation is oppressive, globalism is a threat to sovereignty.

• 'Fairness as Proportionality’

• After mortgage crisis recession of 2008 some like Santelli thought it unfair to bail out banks and borrowers. This is really a conservative version of fairness as proportionality, which shares some features of the "reciprocal altruism", such as necessity of punishment.

• Public Goods games (again). Setup. 1.6 multiplier. Still, best strategy is not to contribute. altruistic punishment can be stimulated (84% do) even without immediate reward. cooperation increases. 84% paid to punish because we are triggered by slackers and free riders.

• In the research on Liberty / Oppression, Haidt and others find that concerns about political equality track Lib/Oppression, so fairness is about proportionality.

• Summary: Liberals have emphasize C, F, Lib while conservatives balance all six. Libs construe Fairness in more egalitarian ways and have diff emphasis for Liberty/Oppression. Many liberals and conservatives have a hard time forming a positive image of each other, but when you think about this, it sounds like something to work on. In light of this research and theorizing, one could see that as a character flaw or unsupported bias.

SW2: Understanding Political Difference (800 words)

• Stage 1: Please write an 800 word maximum answer to the following question by Monday, March 21, 2023, 11:59pm.

• Topic: We have been discussing political orientation and political difference from the standpoints of political science and evolutionary moral psychology (Hibbing & Haidt). Present their theories about the nature of political orientation and evolved moral foundations. Offer a brief assessment. Do you find them persuasive? Offer reasons either way. Then, in the last 150-200 words of your answer, identify practical ways to respect political orientation in others, and to avoid polarized and non-cooperative outcomes.

• Advice about collaboration: Collaboration is part of the academic process and the intellectual world that college courses are based on, so it is important to me that you have the possibility to collaborate. I encourage you to collaborate with other students, but only up to the point of sharing ideas, references to class notes, and your own notes, verbally. Collaboration is also a great way to make sure that a high average level of learning and development occurs in the class. The best way to avoid plagiarism is to NOT share text of draft answers or outlines of your answer. Keep it verbal. Generate your own examples.

• Prepare your answer and submit it in the following way. You will lose points if you do not follow these instructions:

1. To assure anonymity, you must remove your name from the the "author name" that you may have provided when you set up your word processing application. For instructions on removing your name from an Word or Google document, [click here].
2. Format your answer in double spaced text, in a typical 12 point font, and using normal margins. Do not add spaces between paragraphs and indent the first line of each paragraph.
3. Do not put your name in the file or filename. You may put your student ID number in the file. Always put a word count in the file. Save your file for this assignment with the name: PoliticalDifference.
4. To turn in your assignment, log into courses.alfino.org, click on the "1 Points - SW2" dropbox.
5. If you cannot meet a deadline, you must email me about your circumstances (unless you are having an emergency) before the deadline or you will lose points.

• Stage 2: Please evaluate four student answers and provide brief comments and a score. Review the Assignment Rubric for this exercise. We will be using the Flow and Content areas of the rubric for this assignment. Complete your evaluations and scoring by Friday, March 17, 2023, 11:59pm.

• To determine the papers you need to peer review, open the file called "#Key.xls" in the shared folder. You will see a worksheet with saint names in alphabetically order, along with animal names. Find your saint name and review the next four (4) animals' work below your animal name. If you get to the bottom of the list before reaching 4 animals, go to the top of the list and continue.

• Use this Google Form to evaluate four peer papers. Submit the form once for each review.

• Some papers may arrive late. If you are in line to review a missing paper, allow a day or two for it to show up. If it does not show up, go back to the key and review the next animal's paper, continuing until you get four reviews. Do not review more than four papers.

• Stage 3: I will grade and briefly comment on your writing using the peer scores as an initial ranking. Assuming the process works normally, most of my scores probably be within 1-2 points of the peer scores, plus or minus.

• Stage 4: Back-evaluation: After you receive your peer comments and my evaluation, take a few minutes to fill out this quick "back evaluation" rating form: [1]. Fill out the form for each reviewer, but not Alfino. You must do the back evaluation to receive credit for the whole assignment. Failing to give back-evaluations unfairly affects other classmates.

• Back evaluations are due TBD, 2022, 11:59pm.

Tools for working with Political Orientation and Different Moral Matrices

• A big problem that Haidt's "Moral Foundations Theory" (MFT) leaves us with is, "How do we interact with people with different matrices and different experiences, especially concerning political value differences, when we hold our own views with conviction and sense of their truth? In other words, how do we deal with the Paradox of Moral Experience?

• Why this is soo difficult...

• We often unintentionally (and, for some people, intentionally) create "cognitive dissonance" in a discussion, leading people to find ways to stop the pain, rather than listen to the issues. This can escalate.
• We don't always have reasons for our convictions, but, as we know from the dumbfounding research, we "confabulate". We confuse intuitions with reasoned conviction. This can lead us to "pile on" arguments, thinking they are persuasive apart from the intuitions (moral matrix) that support them. But if you don't have those intuitions, the "pile on" can feel aggressive.
• We don't all react the same way when our views are criticized. (Remember Socrates' attitude here. Noble but difficult to achieve.)

• 1. Three Basic Strategies:

• A. Explore differences gently. Monitor your vital signs and those of your interlocutors.
• B. Find common goals or things to affirm. (Example of landlord interaction last semester.)
• C. Model exploratory thought. (How do you do that, specifically?) See sympathetic interpretation below.
• These strategies obviously move you in different directions in a conversation, but they can all be used together to manage "dissonance" and tension in a discussion.

• 2. Practice Sympathetic Interpretation

• In general, sympathetic interpretation involves strategies that mix "identification" (peanuts for the elephant) with "critical engagement" (rational persuasion, expression of value differences)
• Try to understand where a view is "coming from". Ask questions.
• Restate views, checking for fairness.
• Practice "strategic dissimulation" (controversial for some). "I'm still working out my views here..." when you really have pretty well worked out views, even one's you are proud of and think to be true (Paradox of Moral Experience)
• Practice "strategic self-deprecation" - Acknowledge knowledge deficits as a way of validating that the other person has a knowledge-base for their view, even if it's not likely to be persuasive to you.
• Use verbal cues that indicate (if possible) that views you disagree with are "reasonable" and/or "understandable". That could mean:

• 1. The view is reasonable, even if you disagree. Preface your disagreement by acknowledging this.

• Example: "Reasonable and well-informed people disagree on this..."... "Well, your in good company..."

• 2. The view seems unreasonable, but you focus on some intuitions that support it, even if you don't share these intuitions.

• Example: I can see how/why someone would feel this way..., but...

• 3. The view seems unreasonable and false to you, but it is one that many people hold.

• Example: Acknowledging that the view is widely held without endorsing it. You can also "deflect" to the complexity of the problem or human nature...

• 3. Other miscellaneous strategies (many contributed by students):

• Acknowledge that an opposing view may be insightful for others, even if not for you.
• Cultivate diverse relationships if possible.
• Avoid pejorative labels.
• Views can change even if orientations don't. Focus on views, not orientations.
• Accept differences that won't change (validate them in others, as you would other differences), focus on pragmatics and cooperation.
• Humor, if possible. Self-effacing humor can set the stage.
• Acknowledge physio-politics in the discussion. Give people "permission" or space to "out" themselves as libs and cons.
• Acknowledge your own orientation and expect it to be respected.
• Don't "sugar coat" differences. (Be true to yourself.)