MARC D. HAUSER

Jon Haidt is certainly one of our most creative and influential social psychologists today. His views on morality, and especially moral intuitions fueled by emotions, have opened a new wave of research.  In fact, if it hadn’t been for Haidt’s important conceptual work in the early 2000s, most of us, myself included, would not be doing the kind of work we are doing today.  Since several commentators have already discussed Haidt’s critique of the new atheists, I would like to take a different approach here, and pick on a few points that come up in his essay.  In brief, though there is much to admire in Haidt’s psychological perspective on morality and religion, there is much lacking in his evolutionary theorizing.

Haidt states "Yet even if belief in gods was initially a byproduct, as long as such beliefs had consequences for behavior then it seems likely that natural selection operated upon phenotypic variation and favored the success of individuals and groups that found ways (genetic or cultural or both) to use these gods to their advantage, for example as commitment devices that enhanced cooperation, trust, and mutual aid."  This is bad evolutionary reasoning, and the kind of speculation that ultimately led Gould and Lewontin to have a field day with loose just-so stories. But there is more.  Just because there is variation doesn’t mean it will be selected. It has to be heritable variation. One has to show that the belief systems are genetically passed on in some way, or one has to argue for cultural selection, which is an entirely different affair, at least at the level of mechanism and timing of change. I don’t see any evidence that the observed variation in beliefs is heritable in a genetic sense.

Haidt states "…Dawkins has referred to group selection in interviews as a "heresy," and in The God Delusion he dismisses it without giving a reason. In chapter 5 he states the standard Williams free rider objection, notes the argument that religion is a way around the Williams objection, concedes that Darwin believed in group selection, and then moves on. Dismissing a credible position without reasons, and calling it a heresy (even if tongue in cheek), are hallmarks of standard moral thinking, not scientific thinking."

The main reason many biologists, Dawkins included, have classically rejected group selection thinking in favor of individual or gene level selection is because of both the explanatory power of the latter, as well as the predictions that follow from thinking about the world from a gene’s eye view. In particular, as soon as Hamilton, Williams and Trivers turned our attention to the level of the gene, the empirical torrent that followed was overwhelming. There were, and continue to be, literally thousands upon thousands of confirmatory papers on insects, fish, reptiles, birds, and mammals, humans included. Much, much less can be said of the "new" group selection, and this includes work on humans.  So Dawkins’ rejection is anything but facile, though it may appear so in a popular book which doesn’t really have as its main target, these kinds of details.

Haidt states, following a quote from Dennett’s "Breaking the Spell" that "I have italicized the two sections that show ordinary moral thinking rather than scientific thinking. The first is Dennett's claim not just that there is no evidence, but that there is certainly no evidence, when in fact surveys have shown for decades that religious practice is a strong predictor of charitable giving. Arthur Brooks recently analyzed these data (in Who Really Cares) and concluded that the enormous generosity of religious believers is not just recycled to religious charities." 

Brooks’ result is of interest, but perhaps a more fundamental question is whether religious background influences moral judgment? This kind of question attempts to distinguish issues concerning the evolution of morality as a biological faculty that guides our intuitive judgments of right and wrong from the ways in which cultural factors, including religion, can alter what we do in explicit cases.  Though the results are only beginning to emerge, my sense is that the effects of religious background are small or non-existent when it comes to aspects of our intuitive judgments, especially when we move away from familiar and well rehearsed cases. Consider a classic fantasy dilemma in moral philosophy, first articulated by Judy Thomson—the so-called violin case. 

Thomson’s interest at the time (circa 1970) was the debate over abortion.  In particular, she wanted to explore the claim, often assumed without argument, that the fetus has an obligatory right to the mother’s body. In her hypothetical case, a woman wakes up one morning to find a man, lying unconscious, next to her. Another man introduces himself and says "I am from the Society for Music Lovers. The man lying unconscious next to you is the world’s most famous violinist. He is in kidney failure.  While you were asleep, we plugged him into you. If you stay plugged in for the next nine months, he will survive. But if you unplug now, he will certainly die."  In one version of the story, the woman unplugs immediately; in a second version, perhaps approximating current cases of abortion more closely (i.e., restrictions on when it is legally permissible to abort), the woman unplugs after two months.

If you ask atheists and people with a religious background about the violin case, and especially the version that involves a 2 month period of staying attached, our results suggest no effect of religious background on judgments about the permissibility of detaching from the violinist.  That is, though it would be nice of the woman to stay plugged in for nine months, she is not obliged.  And whether you are an atheist or religious, you see things in the same light. What is important about this case, and others, is that it reveals a core difference between our evolved moral psychology, part of what I consider the core of our species’ moral psychology, and the cultural principles that are handed down for specific cases by specific institutions such as religion and government.

Haidt states: "These data are complex and perhaps they can be spun the other way, but at the moment it appears that Dennett is wrong in his reading of the literature. Atheists may have many other virtues, but on one of the least controversial and most objective measures of moral behavior—giving time, money, and blood to help strangers in need—religious people appear to be morally superior to secular folk."  Why morally superior? Perhaps they are better rule followers, worried about God’s lightening bolt! Perhaps they are better conditioned by their religious institution? 

The experiment is a bad one:  do religious people give more because of religion or because they would have given more anyways? Perhaps the people who join a religion would have been bigger altruists even if they had never entered the church, synagogue, or mosque. We simply can’t tell from such data. Dennett may be wrong, but Haidt isn’t correct in his interpretation of such results.  Fortunately, the kinds of insights that Haidt has brought forward in this domain means that we need not rely on armchair intuition to resolve such issues. We are in a new period of empirical enlightenment. Let the science of morality guide the way brother jon.