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Question
Do cultural differences in moral psychology explain political conflict on climate change?
Plan:
Work through Feinberg & Willer, 2013 ‘The Moral Roots of Environmental Attitudes’
2
‘Moral-foundations researchers have investigated the similarities and differences in morality among individuals across cultures (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). These researchers have found evidence for five >1 fundamental domains of human morality’
(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)
Why accept [descriptive, not normative] pluralism?
first consideration
harmful,
eg. hitting someone over the head with a textbook
impure,
eg. sucking your sisters’ fingers one by one
Chakroff, Russell, Piazza, & Young (2017)
Why accept (descriptive) moral pluralism?
first consideration
second consideration (coming later)
third consideration
There are cultural variations in concerns about specific domains,
and these are related to historical challenges.
ex: purity & pathogens
background: hominin habitats
‘the colonization of the world’s continents
by the end of the Pleistocene
represents
one of the clearest idiosyncracies of our species’
(Roberts & Stewart, 2018, p. 542)
different places—different dietary challenges
Perry et al. (2007, p. figure 2a)
not just enzymes, also morals ...
van Leeuwen et al, 2012 figure 1
‘historical pathogen prevalence
---even when controlling for individual-level variation in political orientation, gender, education, and age---
significantly predicted endorsement of Ingroup/loyalty [stats removed], Authority/respect, and Purity/sanctity;
it did not predict endorsement of Harm/care or Fairness/reciprocity’
(van Leeuwen et al., 2012; see also Atari et al., 2022)
Why accept (descriptive) moral pluralism?
first consideration
second consideration
third consideration
fourth consideration
‘purity concerns uniquely predict [...] attitudes about
gay marriage, euthanasia, abortion, and pornography (Koleva et al., 2012).
Purity also predicts opposition to
stem cell research (Clifford & Jerit, 2013), environmental attitudes (Rottman, Kelemen, & Young, 2015), lawsuits (Buccafusco & Fagundes, 2015), and social distancing in real-world social networks (Dehghani et al., 2016)’
(Graham et al., 2019).
Why accept (descriptive) moral pluralism?
first consideration
second consideration
third consideration
fourth consideration
2
‘Moral-foundations researchers have investigated the similarities and differences in morality among individuals across cultures (Haidt & Joseph, 2004). These researchers have found evidence for five >1 fundamental domains of human morality’
(Feinberg & Willer, 2013, p. 2)
opposition:
- Kollareth, Brownell, Durán, & Russell (2023) against purity as a domain of concern
- Gray, Schein, & Ward (2014) it’s all harm
- Curry, Mullins, & Whitehouse (2019)? ‘morality consists of ... solutions to the problems of cooperation’