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The Righteous Mind – Intro and Chapter 1
Date: 2025-10-14 AO: 3rdf-timekeeper Q: bratwurst PAX: Salsa – JR Duer, citgo, Gump, frasier, soft_pretzel, Hippie FNGs: None COUNT: 7 Good turnout for the start of our new series – The Righteous Mind: Why Good People Are Divided by Politics and Religion. Pickup yours here: https://a.co/d/2M1os5y
Intro – Key points: 1. Righteousness is built into us – Haidt claims that our “righteous minds” are not a glitch but part of our evolutionary design. These minds allowed humans to form large cooperative societies (tribes, nations) even without close genetic ties. But that same design gives rise to moral conflict: different groups come to see “theirs” as right and “the others” as wrong. 2. Moral intuitions come first, reasoning second – One of the foundational themes Haidt introduces is that our moral judgments are rooted in quick, automatic intuitions. Reasoning often follows—to justify or rationalize those intuitions. He uses the metaphor of rider and elephant: the intuitive “elephant” does the heavy lifting, while the rational “rider” offers post-hoc explanations.
Haidt outlines the three major parts of the book: – Part I (Ch 1-4): how intuition dominates moral judgment and reason often plays catch-up. – Part II (Ch 5-8): the idea that morality is more than just harm and fairness — there are multiple moral foundations. – Part III (Ch 9-12): how morality both binds people together and blinds them to alternative moral perspectives — how group allegiance shapes moral vision.
Chapter 1: Key points – 1. Haidt begins by asking the foundational question: **How do people come to have a sense of right and wrong?** He examines the dominant theories in moral psychology and shows their limitations, then proposes a more nuanced perspective. 2. **Major themes and arguments:** 1. **Rejecting pure rationalism** – Haidt critiques the prevailing view (especially in Western psychology) that people arrive at moral judgments through conscious, logical reasoning (what he calls “psychological rationalism”). According to that view, children learn moral rules gradually and reason their way to more mature moral judgments. Haidt argues that this model fails to explain the speed, universality, and cross-cultural variability of many moral judgments. 2. **Nature and nurture, but not as pure opposites** – Instead of choosing between morality being entirely innate (nativism) or entirely learned (empiricism), Haidt suggests a middle path: moral intuitions are partly built in (a “first draft”) but shaped, refined, and sometimes overridden by culture, experience, and social learning. 3. **Cultural evidence against rationalism** – Haidt uses cross-cultural studies to show how many non-Western cultures do not draw a sharp distinction between “moral” and “conventional” wrongness (i.e. actions that break social norms). In such societies, many social taboos are seen as universally wrong, not just bad manners — showing that moral domains are broader than harm/rights alone. 4. **Intuitions precede reasoning** – he begins laying the groundwork here: many moral judgments are triggered immediately by intuition or emotion (the “elephant”), and reasoning (the “rider”) often follows to justify or rationalize those intuitive judgments. 5. **Moral dumbfounding** – Haidt discusses cases where people have a strong moral judgment but struggle to give rational justifications — they feel something is wrong but can’t fully explain why. These are instances of “dumbfounding,” which highlight limits of pure reason in moral judgment. 6. **The “elephant and rider” metaphor** – the idea of the mind as a rider (reason) on an elephant (intuition) is introduced here. The elephant does the heavy lifting; the rider often plays catch-up, serving the elephant rather than commanding it.
Intro – Key points: 1. Righteousness is built into us – Haidt claims that our “righteous minds” are not a glitch but part of our evolutionary design. These minds allowed humans to form large cooperative societies (tribes, nations) even without close genetic ties. But that same design gives rise to moral conflict: different groups come to see “theirs” as right and “the others” as wrong. 2. Moral intuitions come first, reasoning second – One of the foundational themes Haidt introduces is that our moral judgments are rooted in quick, automatic intuitions. Reasoning often follows—to justify or rationalize those intuitions. He uses the metaphor of rider and elephant: the intuitive “elephant” does the heavy lifting, while the rational “rider” offers post-hoc explanations.
Haidt outlines the three major parts of the book: – Part I (Ch 1-4): how intuition dominates moral judgment and reason often plays catch-up. – Part II (Ch 5-8): the idea that morality is more than just harm and fairness — there are multiple moral foundations. – Part III (Ch 9-12): how morality both binds people together and blinds them to alternative moral perspectives — how group allegiance shapes moral vision.
Chapter 1: Key points – 1. Haidt begins by asking the foundational question: **How do people come to have a sense of right and wrong?** He examines the dominant theories in moral psychology and shows their limitations, then proposes a more nuanced perspective. 2. **Major themes and arguments:** 1. **Rejecting pure rationalism** – Haidt critiques the prevailing view (especially in Western psychology) that people arrive at moral judgments through conscious, logical reasoning (what he calls “psychological rationalism”). According to that view, children learn moral rules gradually and reason their way to more mature moral judgments. Haidt argues that this model fails to explain the speed, universality, and cross-cultural variability of many moral judgments. 2. **Nature and nurture, but not as pure opposites** – Instead of choosing between morality being entirely innate (nativism) or entirely learned (empiricism), Haidt suggests a middle path: moral intuitions are partly built in (a “first draft”) but shaped, refined, and sometimes overridden by culture, experience, and social learning. 3. **Cultural evidence against rationalism** – Haidt uses cross-cultural studies to show how many non-Western cultures do not draw a sharp distinction between “moral” and “conventional” wrongness (i.e. actions that break social norms). In such societies, many social taboos are seen as universally wrong, not just bad manners — showing that moral domains are broader than harm/rights alone. 4. **Intuitions precede reasoning** – he begins laying the groundwork here: many moral judgments are triggered immediately by intuition or emotion (the “elephant”), and reasoning (the “rider”) often follows to justify or rationalize those intuitive judgments. 5. **Moral dumbfounding** – Haidt discusses cases where people have a strong moral judgment but struggle to give rational justifications — they feel something is wrong but can’t fully explain why. These are instances of “dumbfounding,” which highlight limits of pure reason in moral judgment. 6. **The “elephant and rider” metaphor** – the idea of the mind as a rider (reason) on an elephant (intuition) is introduced here. The elephant does the heavy lifting; the rider often plays catch-up, serving the elephant rather than commanding it.
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