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Tuesday, June 24, 2014

Values, Behavior, and Precedence

There is an interesting Moral Foundation Theory  proposed by Jonathon Haidt that that we have (at least) 6 different innate moral foundations upon which various moralities are developed. These innate types can be likened to Jung's archetypes ala the Meyers-Briggs typology. We have these types at a level below conscious choice - built in types (so to speak). The six foundations are Care/harm, Fairness/cheating, Liberty/oppression, Loyalty/betrayal, Sanctity/degradation, Authority/subversion. The order we apply these foundations to a given situation can be different for different people. And that can result in vary different understanding / evaluation / answers to the same situation



Again, one can think of these basic values / morals as built in. The next issue is what is there precedence in ones thinking / preferences / behaviour. Here, it is useful to point out how precedence makes a huge difference that can result in very different answers to the same question. To illustrate this, let us use a mathematics analogy:
` 1 + 2 * 3 = 9 `, or
`  1 + 2 * 3 = 7`
Depending on how you add and multiply. Note that the answers are different. And if you were innately born with a certain precedence preference you can be absolutely sure that your answer and only your answer is the right one.

Similarly, if you take the different possible precedences for Haidt's moral foundations, then well meaning, sincere, good people can be quite convinced that their  "answer" / perspective is the "right" / moral one. And they may well be willing to lay down their lives to back up their "answer" is being the right and only one. As you can see from the math equations above, depending on which precedence you apply to the operators above, you get very different answers.

And of course, with morals questions, the "equations" are far more complex and varied just as we are as individuals.

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