Cosmos Philosophy | We Are Not Rational at All "Good People Are Always Self-righteous" Part 1

foreword

This book , "Good People Are Always Self-righteous" is the best-selling book by American moralist Jonathan Haidt . Although this book is positioned as a so-called "popular type" book, after a thorough reading, it is found that it is indeed not very easy to eat . Zhu Jiaan, a representative of the popularization of philosophy, once wrote an introduction to this book, and there are indeed many people on the Internet who have written their experiences .

These articles are not badly written, but for me, it is a bit "big talent and small use" to discuss this book in only one article . Therefore, compared with the above-mentioned articles, I intend to use a more detailed Attitudes are written against the content of the text , pointing out the various interesting examples the author uses.

The book is divided into three parts according to the author, and my post-reading feeling is also written according to this structure (I don't like the feeling of using the word "book review" very much, it is too critical and argumentative) This book brings me too many novelties Opinion , even if people in this generation don't read long texts anymore , it's really worth my "big book" on it .

The Metaphor of the Rider and the Origin of Morality

In each part of the book, the author uses a "central metaphor" to bring out what he wants to say, the first metaphor is "the separation of mind and intellect, like a rider on an elephant, riding an elephant. Man's job is to serve the elephant."

This metaphor follows the metaphor of his other book "The Elephant and the Elephant Rider". In the original book, the rider and the elephant correspond to two cognitive processes , namely the "controlled process" and the "automatic process" . , the elephant rider represents "intelligent thinking", that is, rational judgment, and the elephant represents the emotion and intuition of the "spirit".

To put it simply, people's moral judgments will go through two processes. In this book, he emphasizes that human judgments are not based on reason at all . Emotions always take the first step to make decisions, and then reason will play a role in the decision. Give reasons and arguments.

The author quoted Jean Piaget's point of view that children understand morality for their own sake. Moral knowledge is neither innate nor entirely empirical, but "the ability to learn morality" is innate. , without being taught, children will learn and understand moral knowledge on their own in the process of growing up, and show the role of this ability.

In the process of growing up, people gradually become rational people, just like caterpillars become butterflies. As long as they have enough nutrients (life experience, moral situation, moral knowledge, etc.), they will grow wings. (P.25-27)

This is the author's laying out of the development of human morality, and then he cites Richard Shweder's research that Americans and Indians are from different cultural backgrounds and have very different judgments of right/wrong . Indians think a 25-year-old son can't call his father by his first name, but Americans think so; someone has a married son and a married daughter, and when he dies, the son gets most of the property, and the daughter has only a little , Indians think it's normal, Americans think it's wrong. (P.38-42)

After the author's own research in the United States and Latin America, he also proved Swede's view that moral norms vary with different cultural traditions, and the difference in moral norms also depends on cultural groups. He also found that people in the upper classes would see inappropriate behavior as a violation of "social norms," and those in the lower classes would see it as a violation of "morality."

The author believes that the rational school represented by Piaget overemphasizes innate rationality and ignores the cultural education pointed out by Swede and others. He tries to integrate the two viewpoints and believes that morality is innate (evolved intuition) plus social environment. (different cultural backgrounds and life experiences).

Intuition takes precedence

After the author came to teach at the University of Virginia (University of Virginia), in order to obtain tenure within the specified number of years, a series of studies that needed to produce many papers within five years, one of which was that they invited 30 undergraduates. Come to the laboratory and conduct the experiment of "cockroach juice" .

The experimenter prepared some cockroaches and told the subjects that these cockroaches grew up in a clean environment. After buying the laboratory, they heated it to a very high temperature in a pressure cooker to ensure that no bacteria could survive . The experimenter told the college student that he was going to dip the cockroach in clean apple juice , and finally asked if he would like to take a sip?

As a result, 37% of the subjects were willing to drink the juice. The experimenter asked the college students who refused to drink it, what was the reason for their consideration, and most of the subjects said: " Sorry, I just don't want to do it, I can't give a reason. . "

Another experiment was to make up two counterintuitive stories in advance: a sister and a brother had incestuous sex, and ate a small piece of meat from a corpse that was about to be cremated on the grounds of not wasting meat. Most people have not received rigorous argumentation training. The experimenter asked them why they thought this behavior was bad. After being questioned by the experimenter, they abandoned and put forward various reasons , and firmly stepped on "these behaviors are wrong." position .

Almost none of the subjects changed their opinions, and even if the experimenter pointed out that these reasons were not sufficient and appropriate, the subjects still emphasized " I can never change my mind, I just don't know how to express my feelings, it feels very strange. The author thus proves, the British philosopher David Hume's point of view, that human beings always make moral judgments quickly based on emotions, and reasoning is only to find reasons after the fact . (P.68-74)

Going back to the metaphor of the elephant rider, the reason why the author chose an elephant instead of the horse that humans ride most often is that the elephant is bigger and smarter than the horse. The elephant rider (reasoning ability) did evolve over the course of human development , but that was because it was doing things that were useful to the elephant (sensibility) .

Even if the rider doesn't know what the elephant does, he is still the spokesperson for the elephant. It even rebranded the theory as "The Emotional Dog and Its Rational Tail " (P.81-84)

we always think

The author took his life interaction with his wife as an example. When his wife reminded him not to put dirty dishes on the countertop, he intuitively felt that "here I am again, and I am reading again." When he came back to his senses, he He found that he had made several excuses for this behavior, but he actually knew: you just forgot and didn't take it seriously .

The author cites a study by Alec Todortov in which experimenters collected photos of the first and second most voted candidates in hundreds of U.S. Senatorial elections and presented a set of two to the subjects. Candidate photos, and no political opinions or political party information are provided. The subjects are asked to immediately select the person who seems to be more capable .

After each photo appeared on the computer screen for only 0.1 seconds, the next photo was immediately replaced, and it was found that two-thirds of the people who seemed to be more capable generally won the election. People make judgments in the moment, based on a candidate's appearance and overall likeability, and the brain makes decisions much faster than expected .

The author also cites a study by Chenbo Zhong, in which subjects wash their hands with soap before filling out the questionnaire, and they become more attentive to details when it comes to questions of moral purity. behavior, it turned out that the subjects instead often wanted to try to clarify the matter, hoping to get themselves clean . (P.101-105)

The brain often evaluates immediately, and physical state sometimes affects moral judgment. In moral psychology, elephants will react immediately when they see other people's behavior. The rider, who was trying his best to predict the elephant's next move , began to look around , trying his best to assist the elephant's movements .

Moral psychology believes that people always care too much about what others think of themselves, but most of this care is unconscious. Conscious reasoning is the secretary of automatic judgment. The secretary will definitely give reasons for what position the boss takes.

Morality leads us to whatever conclusion we want, because when we want to believe something, we ask ourselves, "Can I believe it?" But when we don't, we ask ourselves, "I must Do you believe it?" Most of the time , the answer to the first question is usually yes , and the answer to the second question is no . (P.145-149)

Epilogue

This is the first time I write such an article, so please give me more advice. It is always easy to be too serious in theory, but I think it is necessary to pursue the truth.